Re: Reduced Visibility Table?

[Hans Ronne <hronne@comhem.se>]

>It is not invisible and invulnerable against all unit type, but again
>some kinds of units. For instance subs may not hit fighter, and may
>not be seen by fighter. Or Satellite may see ground units, but no
>hit may be possible from one to another, and the cell containing
>a satellite (even hostile) should allways be free for ground units.

This you can do with the tables in my first reply to Elijah.

>Or another example : aircraft should be able to jump over a line of
>small guerilla in order to bomb further. When I played xconq, bombers
>needed to destroy the first units to grab a hole in ground lines, as
>if ground units were ten thousand kilometer high.
>
>The impossibility to jump over a continuous line of defender was
>a great limit of xconq, for at least all modern games where aerial
>and submarine operation are designed. Is it possible to solve this
>difficulty ?

There is usually dedicated space for aircraft etc. in each cell, so this
should not be a problem. It could be a ZOC problem, however. It is also
possible that your unit is trying and failing to capture the invisible
unit. When you click in an adjacent cell, this is what the current unit
tries to do (the order is important):

1. capture any enemy unit present.
2. overrun the cell (move + attack) if an enemy unit is present.
3. attack any enemy unit present.
4. fire at any enemy unit present.
5. detonate itself in the adjacent cell.
6. extract materials from the adjacent cell.
7. if all of the above is impossible, move into the cell.

(see advance_into_cell in ui.c)

An enemy unit with a small but non-zero capture chance will therefore block
all other actions including a simple move into the cell. This is true even
if the enemy unit is invisible, since the code looks at real units rather
than unit images.

The above list of priorities is also the reason why you have to disable
capture and direct attack if you want units that can fire to do so at point
blank, and not just from a distance.

One way to check if you are blocked by attempts to capture is to do an
explicit move action instead, by chosing Move To from the Play menu. If the
unit can at all move into the cell it will do that rather than trying to
capture etc.

Hans