Topic: Why do the newer OP patches hardcode dates for drone speeds?

[Scipio_66]

In ye olde days, like when I designed the Four Powers War server, drone speed dates could be set to any turn I wanted:
 * If I wanted the speed change dates to be 2267 and 2280 (as they are now hardcoded to be) I could set them thus.
 * If I wanted 20 years of slow drones, then 1 year of medium drones, and then fast drones, I could do this.

The readme for the new OP patch claims that drone speeds are now hardcoded to SFB dates.  This would be medium speed drones available in 2267 and fast drones in 2280.  This statement is not technically correct; except for standard servers that start in 2263.  Ship availability and drone speeds are actually controlled by an integer counter.  In truth, medium speed drones are now hardcoded to turn 4 and fast drones are now hardcoded to turn 17.

 

Now I'm stuck.  No matter what year I set my server to start, 4 years is the most I can set for slow drones.  I just tried setting my start year to 2253, and sure enough medium speed drones became available in 2257. This is causing me some trouble as I try to finish my Early Years server, which starts much sooner than 2263.  I'd like slow drones to last more than four years.  I used to be able to set this, now I can't.

 

I know more patches (or, in this case, unpatches) are beyond question.  I'm not asking for more patches.  I'm not asking for anything to be done.  I *love* all the fixes Dave put in the patch, and the fact he showed the dedication to do this work even after he left Taldren.

I'm just curious about the philosophy, as I bang my head against the wall and try to rig a workaround.  Why was a D2 admin-configurable parameter converted into a hardcoded parameter?  Era dates used to affect nothing but drone speeds (and the behaviour of the unused offensive plasma-D).  Now era dates control nothing.  I seem to have lost a tool.

Did hardcoding the dates for drone speed -- instead of letting these dates be set by the D2 admin -- fix some problem I am unaware of?

-S'Cipio the curious  

[Strafer]

As stated elsewhere, the alternative was worse.

[3dot14]

The alternative was One year of slow drones.

[Scipio_66]

Quote:
As stated elsewhere, the alternative was worse.  

Cool to know that such was stated.  Could you point me to where?  Much appreciation if you can.

And what was the alternative?  I used admin-controlled dates in a couple of D2 servers, and they seemed to work just fine.  Drones of differing speeds showed up exactly on the turn I wanted them to.  Was there a problem I was lucky enough to miss?

PS:  I know the previous patch hardcoded the dates differently and allowed only one year of slow drones, if that is what you are referencing.  I'm just wondering about the motivation of  hardcoding at all, rather than leaving the dates as admin-controlled settings in the gf files, as they used to be.

-S'Cipio the still curious

[FireSoul]

Quote:

Quote:
As stated elsewhere, the alternative was worse.  

Cool to know that such was stated.  Could you point me to where?  Much appreciation if you can.

And what was the alternative?  I used admin-controlled dates in a couple of D2 servers, and they seemed to work just fine.  Drones of differing speeds showed up exactly on the turn I wanted them to.  Was there a problem I was lucky enough to miss?

PS:  I know the previous patch hardcoded the dates differently and allowed only one year of slow drones, if that is what you are referencing.  I'm just wondering about the motivation of  hardcoding at all, rather than leaving the dates as admin-controlled settings in the gf files, as they used to be.

-S'Cipio the still curious  

I thought it was hardcoded to a specific date, not a 'delta' from the 0-year date..

[Strafer]

Quote:

Quote:
As stated elsewhere, the alternative was worse.  

Cool to know that such was stated.  Could you point me to where?  Much appreciation if you can.

It was in the D2 forum, shortly after the release of 2.5.5.0

[Kroma_BaSyl]

S'cipio,

I too would be interested in the answer, I thought I understood why this was done, but if they were working in the past I am now confused.  Are you sure they worked in the past with OP and not just EAW?

Also, could you work around this problem by just pricing medium/fast drones  sky high so that no one could afford them? Castrin did a neat thing on Empires by initially pricing medium and fast drones somewhat high when they were first released simulating limited availability, then lowering them once he wanted them generally available.

[DH123]

You can still do your Early years server.

- Use Mission scripts that do not use fast drones.  Evil Dave has these.
- Set drone price so high ( 1 million PP Per drone) that nobody can afford them.

Problem solved.  

[Scipio_66]

Quote:

Firsoul formulated:

I thought it was hardcoded to a specific date, not a 'delta' from the 0-year date..  

Alas, no.  All years in the dyna are a delta.  Example:  First Year Appearence for ships is a 'delta' from zero.  Thus the F-CA+ shows up in "year 2" rather than "2265".  If you set your base year to 2253, you'll see the F-CA+ show up in 2255 unless you change it's FYA.

Likewise with the new hardcoded drone speed dates.  You used to be able to set the delta for when the drone speeds would change; now they are hardcoded to turns 4 and 17.

Quote:

Strafer stated:
It was in the D2 forum, shortly after the release of 2.5.5.0

The only such discussion I can find from that time period is this one:

http://forums.taldren.com/ubbthreads/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=UBB2&Number=184031&Forum=UBB2&Words=drone%20speed&Match=Entire%20Phrase&Searchpage=2&Limit=25&Old=allposts&Main=182238&Search=true#Post184031

which I participated in.  Is this what you were remembering?  Unfortunately, it doesn't answer the question of why we have hardcoded dates for drone speed changes.  In fact Mr. Ferrel seems to imply that he thought at the time the dates were still configurable, and that the original hardcoding of only one year for slow drones was a mistake.

The single-year hardcode was changed to a four-year hardcode in the last patch, so I'm guessing this time it was done intentionally.  But I'm still not sure why this elimination of flexibility was considered a good idea.  Taldren could have simply changed the default speed-change dates in the time.gf file to SFB dates (for a year zero of 2263).   This would have gotten them the exact same effect on default drone speeds and yet left the parameters adjustable by the D2 admin.  After all, not *every* D2 is a replay of the General War.

Like I said, I accept that it is too late to do anything about this.  I love the fixes in the patch; especially the cloak that now works properly.  I'm not asking for anything to be done.  I'm just really (politely) curious about the rationale behind the hardcoding.  It is possible this change fixed some other bug or avoided some other complication.

-S'Cipio  

[AdmiralFrey_XC]

Scipio,

Hats off to this display of polite conversation.

Regards,

[CptCastrin]

Quote:
Like I said, I accept that it is too late to do anything about this.  I love the fixes in the patch; especially the cloak that now works properly.  I'm not asking for anything to be done.  I'm just really (politely) curious about the rationale behind the hardcoding.  It is possible this change fixed some other bug or avoided some other complication.

-S'Cipio  

Well I can't say at what point the drones got out of whack but when it was found we (the testing group) all tried to figure what would be the best course of action.

The drones originally had been available based on the era settings but some where they got hardcoded. The reason is unknown but it couldn't be reverted so the final result was to at least ensure that the dates matched the SFB dates. Unfortunetly when the final call was made there was a bit of confusion and the final dates of availability were based on the delta of YTD and not the actual "calendar" year (of course the later was probably impossible as anyone changing the year (like I did on Empires) would cause  other errors).

So now we have the current setup. All availability is based on the time elapsed (YTD) delta which is really not bad ... till you want to dial the year way back, like for the Four Powers War. Still there are a few ways around it (one was already stated) and at least you know *exactly* when the drones will pop out.

Hope that helps.

Peace.

   

[Scipio_66]

CaptCastrin:

That's exactly the sort of information I was looking for to satisfy my curiosity.  Thank you for taking the time to answer.

Too bad about this being non-revertible in the patching process.  Time for me to go design workarounds.  :-)

Early era is not too hard, you can (as DH pointed out) just boost the price of faster drones to 1,000,000 a piece.  That way no one (except Fluf) will be able to afford anything except the free slow drones.

Mid era is harder, if you want/need a longer mid era.  How do you price fast drones out of reach, without making medium speed drones too expensive?  This might require new mission scripts to put an override on drone speeds.  <pondering..... pondering.....>  Of course, you have a longer hard-coded mid era than short era, so you've got time to adjust FYA to space ship releases.  You could always just set the number of turns per year longer in mid era and make it last as many real-time days as needed.

Anyway, thank you again for your informative and helpful answers.

-S'Cipio

[DH123]

Quote:
CaptCastrin:


Mid era is harder, if you want/need a longer mid era.  How do you price fast drones out of reach, without making medium speed drones too expensive?  This might require new mission scripts to put an override on drone speeds.  <pondering..... pondering.....>  Of course, you have a longer hard-coded mid era than short era, so you've got time to adjust FYA to space ship releases.  You could always just set the number of turns per year longer in mid era and make it last as many real-time days as needed.


-S'Cipio  

The 2280 ships are built to fight fast drones.  

You can extend Mid era by slowing down the server. 2 days per game year would be best IMHO.    

[L0vetobowl]

  No No No....real time. One game yeah should equal one *real* year.Yeah, yeah, that would be cool, heh heh  

[DH123]

Quote:
  No No No....real time. One game yeah should equal one *real* year.Yeah, yeah, that would be cool, heh heh  

Except if you start in middle era, then you spend 5 weeks in late.  

[Dogmatix!]

Quote:

Quote:
  No No No....real time. One game yeah should equal one *real* year.Yeah, yeah, that would be cool, heh heh  

Except if you start in middle era, then you spend 5 weeks in late.  

 


Sounds horrible!  Who'd set something up like THAT!?  

[Scipio_66]

In ye olde days, like when I designed the Four Powers War server, drone speed dates could be set to any turn I wanted:
 * If I wanted the speed change dates to be 2267 and 2280 (as they are now hardcoded to be) I could set them thus.
 * If I wanted 20 years of slow drones, then 1 year of medium drones, and then fast drones, I could do this.

The readme for the new OP patch claims that drone speeds are now hardcoded to SFB dates.  This would be medium speed drones available in 2267 and fast drones in 2280.  This statement is not technically correct; except for standard servers that start in 2263.  Ship availability and drone speeds are actually controlled by an integer counter.  In truth, medium speed drones are now hardcoded to turn 4 and fast drones are now hardcoded to turn 17.

 

Now I'm stuck.  No matter what year I set my server to start, 4 years is the most I can set for slow drones.  I just tried setting my start year to 2253, and sure enough medium speed drones became available in 2257. This is causing me some trouble as I try to finish my Early Years server, which starts much sooner than 2263.  I'd like slow drones to last more than four years.  I used to be able to set this, now I can't.

 

I know more patches (or, in this case, unpatches) are beyond question.  I'm not asking for more patches.  I'm not asking for anything to be done.  I *love* all the fixes Dave put in the patch, and the fact he showed the dedication to do this work even after he left Taldren.

I'm just curious about the philosophy, as I bang my head against the wall and try to rig a workaround.  Why was a D2 admin-configurable parameter converted into a hardcoded parameter?  Era dates used to affect nothing but drone speeds (and the behaviour of the unused offensive plasma-D).  Now era dates control nothing.  I seem to have lost a tool.

Did hardcoding the dates for drone speed -- instead of letting these dates be set by the D2 admin -- fix some problem I am unaware of?

-S'Cipio the curious  

[Strafer]

As stated elsewhere, the alternative was worse.

[3dot14]

The alternative was One year of slow drones.

[Scipio_66]

Quote:
As stated elsewhere, the alternative was worse.  

Cool to know that such was stated.  Could you point me to where?  Much appreciation if you can.

And what was the alternative?  I used admin-controlled dates in a couple of D2 servers, and they seemed to work just fine.  Drones of differing speeds showed up exactly on the turn I wanted them to.  Was there a problem I was lucky enough to miss?

PS:  I know the previous patch hardcoded the dates differently and allowed only one year of slow drones, if that is what you are referencing.  I'm just wondering about the motivation of  hardcoding at all, rather than leaving the dates as admin-controlled settings in the gf files, as they used to be.

-S'Cipio the still curious