Tech Tree Revision: Production, Construction

[Bigjoe5]

I loaded Destroy_Crash.sav, hit turn a few times, but got no crashes.

Good. That presumably means it's fixed.

Is there a way to specify how many times per turn a fighter can fire its own weapons? edit: Also, when I specify 0 for antishipdamage, the game crashes.

[Geoff the Medio]

Is there a way to specify how many times per turn a fighter can fire its own weapons?

Apparently not, but there probably should be.

when I specify 0 for antishipdamage, the game crashes.

When "the game crashes" there are often bits of information about why in the log files of the client or server, or output on the console window. Could you check?

[Bigjoe5]

I've found the problem (I think). In the log files, it states that the game crashed because I put a lower value for anti-fighter damage than for anti-ship damage for an interceptor. This means (I think) that the game is confusing anti-fighter damage and anti-ship damage. I tested the error with higher numbers. No matter what, if I try to make an interceptor have higher anti-fighter damage than anti-ship damage, the game crashes upon universe generation, and if I try to make a bomber have higher anti-ship damage than anti-fighter damage, it likewise crashes.

On the other hand, if I've somehow made the mistake of confusing bombers for interceptors, then everything is working perfectly. However, I highly doubt bombers are supposed to be used against fighters and interceptors used against ships.

[Geoff the Medio]

My looking through the ShipDesign code suggests that was the problem. It appears the order of anti-ship and anti-fighter powers was different between the parsing and the internal data structure. I've made changes, and will hopefully commit them to SVN.

[MikkoM]

There was some doubt about whether the construction tree was any longer necessary, particularly since Geoff made the construction meter's usefulness limited to supply range.

When was this done? And what kind of effects it has on the economy model? I obviously haven`t noticed all of the major changes.

I also tried to finally test Bigjoe5`s modifications and downloaded what appeared to be the latest version from the Tech Tree Revision: Playability topic, but the modifications only produce an error with standard v. 0.3.13.

[Bigjoe5]

The change in question is post-v.3.13, so you wouldn't have noticed it; Geoff made meter growth a constant of 1 per turn until it reaches maximum, but that system has a few problems. Similarly, the reason it's crashing is that you don't have the latest revision; Geoff added a stealth parameter to hulls and some new effects such as CreateShip and Create Building which are in use. Most likely, since the hulls with the stealth parameters can't be parsed by v.3.13, the ship hulls which are used in premade_ship_designs.txt and starting_fleets.txt don't actually exist, according to the game, therefore the game crashes when it tries to place the starting fleets.

You could verify this by checking the FreeOrion log files. When v.3.14 is released, which probably won't be for a few months at least(?), my content files should work, regardless of whether or not they've been committed.

Anyway, the tree I've made is far from being suitable for FO, but it's at least playable and allows some interesting things, which makes it an improvement over the previous one, IMO. There needs to be a lot more discussion about the progression of empire development and strategy, and IMO, the nature of the tree itself, before any really significant work can be done.

[Geoff the Medio]

v0.3.13 shouldn't be able to run Bigjoe5's latest content files for the reasons he's mentioned. If pd wants to host my latest windows build that I sent, that could be made more widely available.

v0.3.14 won't be released at least until tzlaine has time to make it, and he's been pretty short on FreeOrion time recently.

[pd]

If pd wants to host my latest windows build that I sent, that could be made more widely available.

No problem, there you go: http://optisch-edel.de/fo/windows%20builds/