Re: Olympia: Lots of Stuff

rich.skrenta (skrenta@cbnewsg.cb.att.com)
Tue, 21 Apr 1992 13:19:41 GMT

jh42393@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Jonathan Heidbreder ) writes:
> Also, add to each 'interaction' command another field, telling the unit
> how many days to maximum use to execute the command....

Rather than amending each command to have a "time to attempt contact"
field, I would rather have a CONTACT [days] command.

contact 501 3 # spend three days trying to find Osswid
attack 501 # kill him!

If the contact failed, so would the attack, and no extra time lost.

When you arrive in a province, some people might be visible to
you right away, and you would see them in your turn report. They
might be visisble to you because of your high observation, or their
low stealth. You would not need contact them.

So who do you see right away?

Units whose stealth is < your observation.
Units declared cooperative or friendly to you.
Units stacked with region features, such as
castles, ships, etc, unless the
feature itself was hidden.

And would the following bring someone to a visible state?

Attacks
Large construction tasks, such as ships and castles

Realize that when a new player enters the game, he probably won't
see anyone at all in his province. Is this desireable? High stealth
units might see him, however, perhaps we should shround new players
in the "mist of newbies" so they aren't seen for a few turns.

Also, the notifications about who's going where would only appear
if you had contact with the unit, so many of them would not be
seen.

Is 'contact' uni-directional? I have observation-10, so in my
turn report I see everybody. Some of them see me. Do I receive any
indication of who sees me vs. who doesn't?

Greugor [861], player character, unseen by

"unseen by"?? Bletch. "contacted", "seen by", "uncontacted"? Surely
someone here can come up with a better designation here than I have
been able to.

> Add to Observation:
> log base 2 of the number of men in the unit # more eyes
> Add to Stealth:
> log base 2 of the population of the province # more people to hid among
> Subtract from Stealth:
> log base 2 of the number of men in the unit # more bodies to see

This is good stuff. There are some deltas for observation vs. stealth
at the moment (for instance, fog increases everyone's stealth). But
that code needs to be looked at.

> Thus, it will be harder to find people in large cities and the more
> men who are looking the more likely it is to find them, and the larger
> the unit the more noticible it is.

Yes!

> So far, a most excellent game!

Thanks.