Rebuilding Units That Turn

Rebuilding Units That Turn

[Elijah Meeks]

Hey guys, I'm working on a Korean War game for Xconq,
modern, with Japan and China butting heads, should be
fun (There's a Spec Ops unit that can change back and
forth into a Pave Low Heli, who's only got 1HP but can
cause havoc behind the lines) and I'd like to do the
following:

For each unit type, have the base unit and also have a
Reinforced, Damaged, Heavily Damaged type.  This way,
when a corps is attacked and destroyed, it's turned
into a Damaged Corps, then when that's destroyed, it
turns into a Heavily Damaged Corps (Different names,
of course, understrength, et cetera).  While I know I
can simulate differences in combat strength based on
damage, I really think the graphical change is
important enough to warrant this kind of hack.  What
I'm wondering is, how do I set it up so that a Damaged
Corps can build a Corps and then disappear, without
signalling that the Damaged Corps is dead and
therefore a Heavily Damaged Corps needs to be spawned?

Hope that made sense.

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Re: Rebuilding Units That Turn

[Eric McDonald]

Hi Elijah,

On Wed, 19 Nov 2003, Elijah Meeks wrote:

> Hey guys, I'm working on a Korean War game for Xconq,
> modern, with Japan and China butting heads, should be
> fun (There's a Spec Ops unit that can change back and
> forth into a Pave Low Heli, who's only got 1HP but can
> cause havoc behind the lines) and I'd like to do the
> following:

Sounds fun.

> Hope that made sense.

Sure. You know how to climb down the damage ladder (I do the 
same thing with Bellum Aeternum city types, using a chain of 
wrecked-types), and now you want to climb back up.

I think what we might need to address this issue is the rest of 
the change-type functionality implementation. I do remember that 
the time.g upgrade mechanism has been mentioned several times. I 
have not yet looked to see what that is, but maybe it could be 
useful to you until change-type is fully implemented.

  Hope that helps,
    Eric

Re: Rebuilding Units That Turn

[Elijah Meeks]

> Sure. You know how to climb down the damage ladder
> (I do the 
> same thing with Bellum Aeternum city types, using a
> chain of 
> wrecked-types), and now you want to climb back up.
> 
> I think what we might need to address this issue is
> the rest of 
> the change-type functionality implementation. I do
> remember that 
> the time.g upgrade mechanism has been mentioned
> several times. I 
> have not yet looked to see what that is, but maybe
> it could be 
> useful to you until change-type is fully
> implemented.

Well, change-type definitely won't work, because then
the player would have to manually input it into the
interface (At least, that's how it was when I tried to
implement it in Specula for Dragons), so I was
thinking of simply using Build and then hp-to-build (I
think that's the table name) to kill off the unit that
builds it, leaving you with just one unit.  How's
upgrade work and is it easy to implement/use?


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Re: Rebuilding Units That Turn

[Eric McDonald]

On Wed, 19 Nov 2003, Elijah Meeks wrote:

> builds it, leaving you with just one unit.  How's
> upgrade work and is it easy to implement/use?

If you are talking about the time.g upgrade mechanism, the answer 
is that I don't know; I have not bothered to look yet. IIRC, 
Lincoln knows something about it, so I'll defer the real answer to 
him or another knowledgable person. You could also look in  
time.g (I think that is the file) and see if you can find it and 
figure it out.

Eric

Re: Rebuilding Units That Turn

[Lincoln Peters]

On Wed, 2003-11-19 at 15:13, Elijah Meeks wrote:
> Well, change-type definitely won't work, because then
> the player would have to manually input it into the
> interface (At least, that's how it was when I tried to
> implement it in Specula for Dragons), so I was
> thinking of simply using Build and then hp-to-build (I
> think that's the table name) to kill off the unit that
> builds it, leaving you with just one unit.  How's
> upgrade work and is it easy to implement/use?

The table is hp-to-garrison.  When used in this manner, it destroys the
old unit (by reducing it to 0 hitpoints) as soon as the new unit is
completed.  The code in your game would probably look like:

(table hp-to-garrision
  (heavily-damaged-corps damaged-corps 999)
  (damaged-corps corps 999)
)

This has a few serious problems problems, almost all of which I found
while working on bolodd.g (although some came up in space-civ.g):

1. No material transfer from the old unit to the new one.  If you have a
huge stockpile of fuel or ammo in a unit that was upgraded in this
manner, it disappears once the upgrade is completed.

2. Any tooling the old unit had is lost.  The consequences of this vary
depending on how your game is set up, but it can be quite frustrating.

3. If used with advanced units, the newly-completed advanced unit MUST
be given enough material automatically to sustain it for one turn, or
else it will starve before it has a chance to collect anything from the
environment.


I use the time.g-like upgrade mechanism in bolodd.g to allow the various
types of bases to upgrade (level 1 base to level 2, level 2 base to
level 3, etc.).  However, because of the issues I mention above, it
works, but it doesn't work well.  I plan to change it to use "Change
type" as soon as "Change type" is implemented in the interface(s).

Re: Rebuilding Units That Turn

[Jim Kingdon]

> The table is hp-to-garrison.  When used in this manner, it destroys
> the old unit . . . has a few serious problems

Uh, guys?  Maybe it would be simpler to just add a damage-affects-icon
table rather than all this change type complexity?  (at least for the
case currently being discussed).

I won't try to figure out what the syntax would be, but I'm thinking
of something like:

unit type infantry uses (image-name "soldiers") from 50%-100%
unit type infantry uses (image-name "bloody-soldiers") from 20%-50%
unit type infantry uses (image-name "staggering-soldiers") from 0%-20%

Re: Rebuilding Units That Turn

[Eric McDonald]

On Thu, 20 Nov 2003, Jim Kingdon wrote:

> > The table is hp-to-garrison.  When used in this manner, it destroys
> > the old unit . . . has a few serious problems
> 
> Uh, guys?  Maybe it would be simpler to just add a damage-affects-icon
> table rather than all this change type complexity?  (at least for the
> case currently being discussed).
> 
> I won't try to figure out what the syntax would be, but I'm thinking
> of something like:
> 
> unit type infantry uses (image-name "soldiers") from 50%-100%
> unit type infantry uses (image-name "bloody-soldiers") from 20%-50%
> unit type infantry uses (image-name "staggering-soldiers") from 0%-20%

I believe that more than an icon is at stake here. Damaged units 
have lessened capabilities (which cannot be wholly addressed 
through acp-damage-effect).

Eric