[Announce] PHost 4.0i/3.4k

Archived from groups: alt.games.vga-planets (More info?)

Hi there,

PHost 4.0i and 3.4k are out now. Whereas 3.4k only has small changes,
4.0i adds quite a boatload of new stuff. Our topic-of-the-month is
HULL FUNCTIONS.


>>> NEW FUNCTIONS

We've added a few new ship functions ('hullfuncs'). Most of them were
already discussed at the phostdev list, some were added for the
benefit of the new PList 2.5. All of this only works in 4.0i.

+ "ChunnelSelf". This function is like Chunneling, but the ship will
move alone through the chunnel. It cannot take others with it, nor
can it be a chunnel mate.

+ "ChunnelOthers". This function is like Chunneling, but it can only
initiate a chunnel for other ships. It cannot move through its
chunnel, nor can it be a chunnel mate.

+ "ChunnelTarget". This ship can act as a chunnel mate. It cannot
initiate a chunnel.

+ "OreCondenser". This is a new terraforming function. Ships with this
function will increase ore densities on planets up to 50%.

+ "AntiCloakImmunity". Ships with this function are immune to
AntiCloak ships (Loki).

+ "Academy". These ships specialize on educating crews. Their training
experience will rise four times as fast as for a normal ship. They
can also exchange crew with other ships using the new "Exchange
Crew" mission, in order to give these other ships more and/or better
crew.

+ "Repairs". These ships can repair other ships in space using the new
"Repair" mission.

+ "HardenedEngines". This provides extra protection for the ship's
engines, so the ship need not slow down when it is damaged by a mine
hit or otherwise.


>>> OLD FUNCTIONS

A number of special abilities were turned into hull functions.
Previously, these functions were derived from certain properties of
the ship as well as config options (e.g. AllowOneEngineTowing). The
abilities are now freely assignable (e.g. you can disallow towing for
the Basilisk). The default assignments remain such that games continue
unchanged. That is, the config options are still evaluated, but only
to set the default function assignments. The options will possibly go
away in the not-so-near future. All of this applies to 4.0i only.

+ "Tow". This function defines what ships can tow. Previously, the
number of engines in combination with the AllowOneEngineTowing
option defined who may use the Tow mission.

+ "PlanetImmunity". Ships with this function cannot be attacked by
planets. Previously, Klingon and Rebel ships were implicitly immune,
as were Super Star Destroyers.

+ "Boarding". Ships with this function can board other ships by
locking a tow beam on them (therefore, they must also have a tow
beam, i.e. the Tow special). Previously, this was a racial ability
keyed to Orions and Tholians.

+ "FullWeaponry". Ships with this ability have full weapons even when
damaged. This ability previously was part of the Fed Crew Bonus;
therefore, all Fed ships have it by default if AllowFedCombatBonus
is enabled.

If you use 'Init=Clear', you'll explicitly have to deal with these
functions, otherwise your ships will not be able to tow or board etc.


>>> COMBINATIONS

This release adds new combination rules: a ship which has two or more
related hull functions will do extra new things. These rules apply to
the 3.x and 4.x lines.

+ ships with alchemy and refinery functions convert supplies into fuel
directly.

+ some more functions interact with cloak: ramscoop makes only half
the normal fuel when cloaked, hyperjumpers and chunnel initiators /
mates must decloak, cloaking Lokis don't decloak themselves.

+ if a Glory Device ship also has an AntiCloak device when it goes off,
it will perform an AntiCloak operation first and thus decloak all
ships in 10 ly range before doing damage.

+ ships with both Heat functions heat with double speed up to 50F.


>>> NEW SYNTAX

You can now assign functions to many hulls at once. Possible new
syntax includes
Hull = 1-10 (hull numbers 1 to 10)
Hull = 1,3,7 (hull numbers 1, 3 and 7)
Hull = 1,3,9-11 (hull numbers 1, 3, 9, 10 and 11)
Hull = * (all hulls)
This functionality is available in both versions.

You can now restrict hull functions to certain experience levels. To
do that, precede the RacesAllowed or PlayersAllowed line with a Level
assignment.
Hull = 1
Function = Cloak
Level = 2
PlayersAllowed = +
This will allow the function to ships of level 2 or higher. To assign
a range of levels, use
Level = 0-3
This assignment will allow the function to level 0-3 ships, but not
to level 4 and up.

Each Level assignment is only valid for the immediately following
action statement (unlike Hull or Function which remain valid until
replaced). This works by synthesizing a new "Cloak-which-works-only-
at-level-2-and-above" device and giving the ship that. This happens
completely internal to PHost, you need to know it only because there
is a limit of at most 64 such synthesized devices (of which each can be
assigned any number of ships, though!), and because you cannot take the
device away by taking it away the ordinary Cloak device. This
functionality is available in version 4.x only; for compatibility, 3.x
accepts the statement, and ignores all assignments which create devices
that don't work at level 0.

As you may recall, there's the file AUXCMDS.TXT using which you can
"inject" command messages into the host run. PHost 4.x now accepts
some new special commands:

+ "control: addfunction <ship> <function>"
Permanently assigns the special <function> (e.g., "cloak" ) to ship
<ship>. This can be used to make ships unclonable, for example,
without making the whole class of ships unclonable via shiplist.txt.

+ "control: removefunction <ship> <function>"
Permanently removes special <function> from <ship>. This cancels
a previous "addfunction". You can only remove functions assigned to
ships, not those assigned to a whole class of ships (AssignTo=Hull).

+ "control: inhibitfunction <ship> <function>"
Prevents <ship> from using <function> this turn. This can be used
by add-ons, for example, to forbid cloaking in a particular area
or to forbid hyperjumping under certain conditions.

The addfunction/removefunction commands currently cannot handle
level-restricted functions. inhibitfunction will, however, forbid all
flavours of the specified function for one turn.


>>> FIXES

These fixes apply to both lines.

+ with UseAccurateFuelModel, cloaking could fail if ships have just 1
kt fuel left (because 1 kt actually was 0.99 kt or something like
that). Found, again, by Sascha Rambeaud.

+ "mkt" and "Gather-build torps" now work together.

+ "Gather-build torps" could overflow and use too few credits.

+ interestingly, AssignTo=Ship for hull functions did not yet work,
and never did. Which is very strange because I'm absolutely sure I
have already seen it working. Before the 4.0 release.

+ 'config/plist.txt' has been fixed to work with PList 2.3 and PList
2.4. The previous version worked with PList 2.3 only.


>>> PITFALLS

The current PDK cannot yet deal with the new hull functions. I have
updated the CVS version to handle 'enemies' added last time, but
currently it neither understands 'Level' nor the new names. Most add-ons
should work unmodified nonetheless.

The distributions currently do not contain an updated mission.ini. I
hope you can live with that


>>> FINAL

Finally, there are some new util.dat records and small fixes. The
biggest of these changes probably is that glory devices that cause ships
to go over the no-cloak damage will decloak these ships immediately
after the GloryDevices stage, so they can no longer enter a foreign
chunnel. What a change.


-> <http://phost.de/phost40i/>
-> <http://phost.de/phost34k/>


Stefan