maximum crew

[Guest]

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

If i create my own shiplist, what is the maximum crew such a ship can
have? I want to use the sihp with thost. I already saw ships with ca
3200 crew.

 

[Guest]

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

not sure but 9999 sounds reasonable

 

[Guest]

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

Op 2005-02-25, rgronwald@hotmail.com schreef <rgronwald@hotmail.com>:
> If i create my own shiplist, what is the maximum crew such a ship can
> have? I want to use the sihp with thost. I already saw ships with ca
> 3200 crew.

In Plist 2.4 the ship with the largest crew is the Robotic Basilisk
Class Station with 6402. I don't know how Thost handles it. I think
it's okay though. See
http://www.geocities.com/the_vagabund/PList2/plist2.html

I see Stefan Reuther has just updated peng to version 0.31; it's a
Portable Shiplist Compiler. I haven't used it though and haven't
created own ship lists with other tools either. Anyway, the docs may
be helpful, though I don't see a maximum on crew mentioned there:

http://www.phost.de/~stefan/peng-docs.html

--
Maurits van Rees | http://maurits.vanrees.org/ [Dutch/Nederlands]
"The question of whether computers can think is like the question of
whether submarines can swim." - Edsger Wybe Dijkstra

 

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

Maurits van Rees wrote:
> Op 2005-02-25, rgronwald@hotmail.com schreef <rgronwald@hotmail.com>:
> I see Stefan Reuther has just updated peng to version 0.31; it's a
> Portable Shiplist Compiler. I haven't used it though and haven't
> created own ship lists with other tools either. Anyway, the docs may
> be helpful, though I don't see a maximum on crew mentioned there:

peng does not enforce any limits, therefore there are none mentioned in
the docs.

As far as I know, HOST also has no sanity checks on the crew (they are
not really needed: all ships are created by HOST and/or MASTER, and
clients cannot change the crew, so whatever HOST puts there stays there).

So you only have to make sure not to trigger any overflow in the
program. The only critical thing I can imagine is boarding, where ship
crews are scaled and shuffled around. I think you are on the safe side
by assuming a limit of 10000 (or, 16383, if you insist, such that adding
two crews does not overflow). 10000 is a common limit for 16-bit values
in VGA Planets. Every integer that comes in through a turn file has this
10k limit, so using it as a limit for crew would make sense. Although,
as I already said, crew never is changed by a client and thus never
appears in turn files.


Stefan

 

[Guest]

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

Hmm actually the crew will be important as it is a special ship that
shall be colonized (mission colonize). putting 9.999 crew will only
allow for 100 clans and that is a bit low. This will very likely be a
safe number.
Harry bur already wrote me:
>...the value will be stored with 2 byte as a 16 bit.

>without predign this will be 0..65535 with presign 32768..32767. a
value smaller then 32767 should be save but who knows.

A very cheap ship that in total will cost 200 MC and will yield 600
supplies and 320 clans might be interesting for special races in
special set ups. if 650 clans are possible is unsure. If this will work
and run smoothly will probaly have to be testeted carefully. Thanks for
your advice. If such a ship will ever be created is unsure yet, i will
anounce it here when it finaly is done. I was only thinking if it is
possible.

 

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

<rgronwald@hotmail.com> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:1109629483.189621.172180@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com...
> Hmm actually the crew will be important as it is a special ship that
> shall be colonized (mission colonize). putting 9.999 crew will only
> allow for 100 clans and that is a bit low. This will very likely be a
> safe number.
> Harry bur already wrote me:
> >...the value will be stored with 2 byte as a 16 bit.
>
> >without predign this will be 0..65535 with presign 32768..32767. a
> value smaller then 32767 should be save but who knows.

Well, i forgot that boarding thing. So half the 32766 and you have the
16383. Also, "who knows" can always be subst. by "Stefan knows"

cu, Harry

 

[Guest]

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

thanks again for the input. as the ship will not have any weapons it
will not be able to towcapture others. one less problem. the ship shall
have 32000 crew for using the "colonize" mission and thus there would
then be 320 clans at the planet ...

 

[Guest]

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

rgronwald@hotmail.com wrote:
> A very cheap ship that in total will cost 200 MC and will yield 600
> supplies and 320 clans might be interesting for special races in
> special set ups. if 650 clans are possible is unsure.

65535 crewmen will definitely not work. BASIC has only two sorts of
integer data types. The 16-bit one is -32768 .. +32767, and the 32-bit
one is about -2*10^9 .. +2*10^9. There is no unsigned data type, so a
ship with 65535 crewmen cannot exist in HOST.

My concern was about places where crew is used in formulas. The only
really suspicious place would be boarding. If you have 90% traitors,
*and* "90%" is computed as "traitors = crew*90/100", you'd better make
sure that "crew*90" does not overflow. But it seems the traitors are not
computed this way, and "traitors = crew*0.9" does not overflow. So
probably you can use up to 32767 crewmen. I would not exercise the limit
fully, but I would say 32000 is save.

(One place where a ship with 32767 crewmen fails is when it tow-captures
an MDSF. At least in some host versions, the captor gets 4 free crewmen
for doing this capture. Thus, it would end its turn with -32765)


Stefan

 

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

Kai Rosenthal wrote:
> What are the actual formulas used to determine which portion of crew
> goes over after a successfuly battle-capture (as opposed to a tow-capture)?

None. The 10 men "battle crew" are free. (At least in PHost, and I'm
99.9% sure that in HOST, too).


Stefan