Re: Olympia: good additions and bad additions

From: skrenta@usl.com (Rich Skrenta)

Date: Sat, 11 Jul 1992 22:54:23 +0000

eh1s+@andrew.cmu.edu (Edwin Huang)
> I'm not sure if this will throw it in an infinite 0 action loop or
> if it will simply end the 0 time executes and wait till the next day to
> begin 0 day xecutes again.

Only one idle set will be queued per day.  Otherwise, any zero time
command would cause an infinite loop.  This includes commands that fail,
since they generally take zero time.

gl8f@fermi.clas.Virginia.EDU (Greg Lindahl)
> Everyone wins, except poor Rich, who
> has to write more code. But he'll have more free time with his modem
> for his alt.binaries.pictures.blood-n-gore feed...

I think you're getting me confused with Russell "Billions and billions
killed" Wallace.  :-)

From: srt@aero.org (Scott "TCB" Turner)
> To me this seemed like an abuse, so I avoided doing it

It's sort-of an abuse.  If players are trying to accomplish something
reasonable, such as control of a territory, and there is no other way
to do it, then I don't have a right to complain.

There's a similar problem with LOOK right now.  Some players are using
zillions of looks to make sure they see everything.  The solution isn't
for me to take away the look command. Rather, I should fix the turn report
so they don't need to do this.

> The main problem is that (I believe) someone can still arrive, shop,
> and leave before you get a chance to attack him

Location control, hmmm.  The mechanism will probably allow declared
attitudes to bar people from entering the region.  The attitude might
appear on the exit blurb:

West, wilderness, to Hothras [214], 20 days, unfriendly

Plan 1 lets players actually get location entities into their factions.
Locations could execute limited commands, such as DECLARE.

Plan 2 would only let players stack with the locations.  The stack
leader's attitude would determine whether units could enter the
region unchallenged.

Plan 3 says that whoever is stacked with the local castle controls
the region.

There would need to be a way to say whether you would accept being
turned away from a region, or whether you wanted to try to fight your
way in.  Perhaps MOVE 214 would let you be turned away, but ATTACK 214
would attempt to enter and conquer Hothras.

There could, of course, be stealth uses to sneak into a place that was
declared hostile to you.  This would let units scout out the size of the
forces inside, which they wouldn't otherwise know.

--
Rich SKrenta

References

Re: Olympia: good additions and bad additions
srt@aero.org (Scott "TCB" Turner)
Sat, 11 Jul 1992 21:00:22 +0000