Standing orders

Standing orders

[Lincoln Peters]

I'm looking at standing orders (because I think that they would make
games like bellum.g and bolodd.g a lot easier), but I'm still unclear on
a few things:

1. In bolodd, there is a "tower" unit that does not move, and it can see
and fire at any hostile units up to 8 cells away.  It can also
manufacture guided missiles of various kinds.  Can I use standing orders
to tell it to attack any hostile units within its firing range, but to
manufacture missiles if there are no hostile units in range?  Can a
standing order cause it to halt construction of a missile in order to
respond to enemy units (or could a doctrine serve that purpose)?  Can I
make it prioritize the units that it attacks (e.g. attack the units with
the highest offensive-worth first)?

2.  Assuming that I can use standing orders for towers (as described
above), I might want to use similar standing orders for missile units. 
I would want them to attack units only if (1) the missile would reduce
the opponent's hitpoints by at least half, (2) the missile would not
inflict more damage than twice the opponent's hitpoints (so I don't see
powerful missiles being used against weak units), and (3) there are no
friendly units within its detonation-range of the target.  Can standing
orders be so complex?

3. I can see that if I want a choplifter to shuttle units between two
bases, for example Lund and Vethog, I could use two standing orders,
such as "if choplifter in Lund occupy Vethog" and "if choplifter in
Vethog occupy Lund".  I could then instruct a passenger to move to
either Vethog or Lund (whichever is closer), wait for the choplifter,
then occupy it (at least it would work in theory; I don't see anything
in the interface to issue such orders).  Can I instruct the choplifter
to go into reserve for one turn between arriving and departing, or to
wait until at least one unit occupies it?  And can I change its standing
orders later?


I'll probably have more such questions as I learn what I can do with
standing orders.

Re: Standing orders

[Hans Ronne]

>I'm looking at standing orders (because I think that they would make
>games like bellum.g and bolodd.g a lot easier), but I'm still unclear on
>a few things:

From the manual:

Standing orders are basically a combination of a test or condition and a
task to be performed when the condition is met. Some interfaces may provide
a dialog to guide you through order setup, but all support the textual form
of the command, which is:

if type test task

where type is a name of a unit type, test is some sort of condition, and
task is a task, as described previously. Possible tests include at
location, in unit, and near location dist.

Examples:

if armor in Paris move-to Antwerp
if bomber in London move-to 33,54
if bomber at 33,54 hit-position 34,60

You are limited to the three specific test for unit location (at, in, near)
but anything that can formulated as a single task can be a standing order.
Whether or not the rather complicated examples you gave can be standing
orders depends on whether you can express them as a single tasks. You can,
however, have several standing orders that work together, as illiustarted
by the above example.

Hans

Re: Standing Orders

[Eric McDonald]

Hi Alan, Lincoln, others,

On Fri, 14 Nov 2003, Alan Kenwright wrote:

> Lincoln Peters wrote:
> 
> > 1. In bolodd, there is a "tower" unit that does not move, and it can
> see
> > and fire at any hostile units up to 8 cells away.  It can also
> > manufacture guided missiles of various kinds.

It is good that you mentioned that they are guided. Something that 
Xconq does not currently have is the concept of the different 
varieties of missile weapons: projectile (launched along a simple 
path, unguided), guided (player guided, arbitrary target), and 
seeker (computer guided, locked target).

Empire Master (which Chris Eliot is no longer developing; he is 
now a CS professor) did make the distinction between guided and 
unguided missiles, and I found it to be quite useful. For 
example, one could define spy satellites to be projectiles with no 
range restricitions.

> strategy, and secondly because the game had quite concise and precise
> rules (which are available on the net at
> http://boardgamegeek.com/viewfile.php3?fileid=3097 ).  

Very interesting....

> Unfortunately my programming skills are pretty well none-existent, so
> it's not something I could undertake and I'm not asking anyone to do it
> for me.  I just offer it up because if you've never seen the game you

Thanks for suggesting it.

> missiles and a dice - which is used in the most bizarre way, but I won't
> spoil it for you)

Quite novel. :-)

> re-workings of the standard game (substituting chariots or spaceships
> for tanks, or whatever) and it would be good to see some new elements of
> play/strategy coming in.  

One idea I have been toying with for awhile is a hex-based 
Stratego-like game. I think I have figured out ways that most of 
it could be implemented with Xconq.... Would this interest anyone?

> Alan.

Alan, I seem to remember you emailing me a couple of months ago, 
and you mentioned that you were successfully running Xconq on XP. 
Have you had a chance to try the installer yet, and, if so, did 
that work for you?

  Regards,
   Eric

Re: Standing Orders

[Eric McDonald]

On Fri, 14 Nov 2003, Hans Ronne wrote:

> >xconq isn't really a framework which is general enough to implement a
> >game like that.  There are plenty of details (non-hexagonal map ...
> 
> Non-hexagonal maps would be easy to implement if we had a more useful
> country/province concept. One would just set movement costs within the
> province to zero, and get a Risk-type game. Right now, you can define

Good thinking. We should make sure that idea is in doc/PROJECTS.

Eric

Re: Standing Orders

[Hans Ronne]

>xconq isn't really a framework which is general enough to implement a
>game like that.  There are plenty of details (non-hexagonal map ...

Non-hexagonal maps would be easy to implement if we had a more useful
country/province concept. One would just set movement costs within the
province to zero, and get a Risk-type game. Right now, you can define
provinces as features, but they just serve as decorations. They don't mean
anything to the kernel.

Hans

Re: Standing Orders

[Jim Kingdon]

> "Apocalypse" (which was originally called "Warlord")
> http://boardgamegeek.com/viewfile.php3?fileid=3097

Hmm.

xconq isn't really a framework which is general enough to implement a
game like that.  There are plenty of details (non-hexagonal map, more
complicated combat rules than just "attack and randomly win or lose",
etc, etc), but the most fundamental is whether you hope to have a
general AI still able to figure out how to play the game.  Even with
xconq's existing level of generality, it can still be an issue for the
AI, because it can't just have things hardcoded like what units to
build.

It does sound like an interesting game, though.

Re: Standing Orders

[Hans Ronne]

>I've enjoyed playing Xconq over a number of years and am truly grateful
>for all the hard work the developers have put in.  The improvements over
>the last 12 months have been great.  My only reservation is that a fair
>number, though by no means all(!), of the games modules are just
>re-workings of the standard game (substituting chariots or spaceships
>for tanks, or whatever) and it would be good to see some new elements of
>play/strategy coming in.

Thank you for your kind words. As for something very different from the
standard Xconq game, you may want to check out the Specula game by Elijah
Meeks. It is available at:

http://castironlife.sourceforge.net/spec.zip

I will add it to the distribution when I am done updating the game library.

Hans

Re: Standing Orders

[Alan Kenwright]

Lincoln Peters wrote:

> 1. In bolodd, there is a "tower" unit that does not move, and it can
see
> and fire at any hostile units up to 8 cells away.  It can also
> manufacture guided missiles of various kinds.

This interested me.  It reminded me in some ways of the missiles that
get built in a game of "Apocalypse" (which was originally called
"Warlord").  These board games have both  been out of production for
years (and the names re-used for other things), but were actually very
good map-based games not hugely dissimilar to Xconq.  The reason I bring
this up is firstly that the game (the two are actually the same game
just made by different companies and played on different sized maps) had
some quite unusual and interesting aspects, both in game play and
strategy, and secondly because the game had quite concise and precise
rules (which are available on the net at
http://boardgamegeek.com/viewfile.php3?fileid=3097 ).  I played quite a
number of games of Apocalypse and never found a situation where the
rules were ambiguous or unclear, which is generally a pretty good sign.
It's primarily a strategy game based on war and is therefore not overly
"realistic" (neither is chess, but that's a pretty good game too).  The
thing which made the game a bit long winded was having to count the
numbers of various kinds of territory occupied (mountains, rural areas,
urban areas, etc) to calculate the number of armies allotted, which it
strikes me would be far better done by computer.

Unfortunately my programming skills are pretty well none-existent, so
it's not something I could undertake and I'm not asking anyone to do it
for me.  I just offer it up because if you've never seen the game you
might find it entertaining (it's pretty easy to make a version, all you
need is a map, lots of  small counters, something to represent nuclear
missiles and a dice - which is used in the most bizarre way, but I won't
spoil it for you), and because the people designing new games might find
some inspiration in some of the strategy elements.

I've enjoyed playing Xconq over a number of years and am truly grateful
for all the hard work the developers have put in.  The improvements over
the last 12 months have been great.  My only reservation is that a fair
number, though by no means all(!), of the games modules are just
re-workings of the standard game (substituting chariots or spaceships
for tanks, or whatever) and it would be good to see some new elements of
play/strategy coming in.  Even if no-one wants to take me up on that, I
hope some of you have a look at Apocalypse and let me know what you
think.  (I should maybe add that I'm not a wargamer - Xconq and
Apocalypse are about as far as I go in that direction with maybe an odd
game of Risk if the situation demands it).  If anybody is interested in
Apocalypse and can't manage to find/make a map, please get in touch and
I'll see if I can find one.

Cheers
--
Alan.

Alan M Kenwright                        Phone +44-191-334-2095
Senior Research Officer (NMR)
Department of Chemistry
University of Durham
Durham  DH1 3LE       UK