Prerelease 1.010C (Energy, teleporting, and force field tweaks; AI group move)

[x4000]

The latest prerelease of AI War is now out:  http://www.arcengames.com/share/AIWar1010C.zip

That version is an upgrade from version 1.009, so you have to already have 1.009 (or greater) installed. Just unzip it into your game folder (usually C:\Program Files\Arcen Games\AI War\ unless you specified something else). Please make sure that your unzip process keeps the folder structure from the zip file, rather than just unpacking all of the files into the base target directory.

What's new since 1.010B:
(Cumulative release notes since 1.009 are attached at the bottom)

-------------------

-If a ship is on a different planet from the tractor beam that is holding it, it will now be forced through to the other planet.  This should never happen anyway, unless the held ship fails to follow the tractor ship through the wormhole.

-Space Tugs, Mines, Missiles, Fortresses (super and regular), Force Fields, and Cutlasses all can now have a health regen rate of some variety.  In many cases it takes several hours to full heal one of these ships, but the general idea is that all non-repairable ships now have some capacity for self-healing.

-Thanks to recent changes to AI tactics when going through wormholes, the Special Forces Captain is a lot more difficult now.  It has been promoted to now be a HARDER AI type instead of a MODERATE one.

-Laser Turrets now require Mark II Turrets to be unlocked first, instead of Mark III.

-The cost of Mark III standard turrets is now half its prior value, and its health is now 4x higher.  The health of Mark II standard turrets is now 2x its prior value.

-Energy Reactor efficiency (mark I and II) now goes down by 20%/40% for each additional reactor beyond the first built on the same planet.  This will encourage players to not cluster their reactors on their home planet, which will also make them harder (more interesting) to defend.  Most existing savegames are likely to suddenly have a negative energy balance when loading this new version.  These never drop below a floor of 10% efficiency.

-The range of munitions boosters has been doubled.  However, munitions boosters now only work when they are not moving.

-The starting tech level of AI planets was being calculated too late in the prior map generation logic.  That has been fixed, which will change the scenarios from what they previously were.  For one thing, this will make AI players use lower-level force fields on lower-level planets, like they should have been doing all along.

-The protection radii of all of the force fields has been increased.  The size of the Mark I force field has been doubled, and the increases to the Mark II and II force fields are much smaller.  This makes the lower-level force fields significantly more useful for players and AIs, even though they are still way weaker than the higher-level force fields.

-Teleporting ships are no longer restricted from going through wormholes.  This limitation was too restrictive in practice, and now that the AI has wormhole defenses, this is no longer really needed, anyway.

-There is now a new settings option under Zoom/Pan settings:  Restore Zoom When Activating Control Group.  This restores the prior-saved zoom level at the other planet when switch planets during control group activation.

-The AI now uses group-move when attacking players from a guard position.  This helps to maintain the power of the guarding ships, rather than letting them get so easily strung out and weakened.

-Fighters are now 75% more resistant to cruiser shots, which makes homogeneous cruiser fleets less powerful.

CHANGES FROM PRIOR PRERELEASES
--------------

-Right-clicking enemy ships in the planetary summary was still centering on all of them, rather than cycling through them.  Fixed.




Edit: Fixed the thread topic to say 1.010C.   -Fiskbit

[Admiral]

-The range of munitions boosters has been doubled.  However, munitions boosters now only work when they are not moving.

Did you put in the "halt/stop" hotkey? That will be very useful for these ships, now.

Does it count as "moving" when the ship has been told to stop (or has arrived), but is hunting for the spot in the map to actually come to rest?

-Teleporting ships are no longer restricted from going through wormholes.  This limitation was too restrictive in practice, and now that the AI has wormhole defenses, this is no longer really needed, anyway.

Do they follow group-move semantics for long-distance warps (multi-hop)? How?

I can't wait to get my Engineer IIs in my battle groups!

Cheers!

[x4000]

Did you put in the "halt/stop" hotkey? That will be very useful for these ships, now.

Not yet.  Still on my list, though.  I've got about 50 things (no joke) just on my shortish-term list, and another 100+ things on my full list.  It's going to take me months to get through all of this, I suspect, and the list only keeps growing, rather than shrinking.  So I'm just trying to balance what comes out when based on what is quick, what is most useful, what has been on the list the longest, etc.

Does it count as "moving" when the ship has been told to stop (or has arrived), but is hunting for the spot in the map to actually come to rest?

Yes.

-Teleporting ships are no longer restricted from going through wormholes.  This limitation was too restrictive in practice, and now that the AI has wormhole defenses, this is no longer really needed, anyway.

Do they follow group-move semantics for long-distance warps (multi-hop)? How?

I can't wait to get my Engineer IIs in my battle groups!

Actually, teleporting ships don't follow group move semantics anywhere -- on a local planet, across hops, nothing.  I think that's just going to be one of the limitations of teleporting ships, which somewhat offsets their "instantly there" ability, which is particularly useful when shifting a bunch of Mark II engineers between your planets, or across planets to an existing battlefield.  So I would think that teleporting ships will either be the last ships to arrive at a battle, or the very first by far.

Okay, now I'm really heading off for the night.

[Revenantus]

This thread should presumably be called, 'Prerelease 1.010C'.

The 'charge' system we've been discussing has been through a few iterations in my mind this morning. Here are my current thoughts;

1. All ships and turrets have a 'charge' attribute. Whilst a ship/turret's charge is non-zero they function as they do now. When a ship/turret's charge reaches 0 the following occurs;

-- Ships move at half speed.
-- Shields are set to 0.
-- Reload times are doubled.
-- Tractor beams can no longer be emitted.
-- Tachyon beams can no longer be emitted.
-- Cloaks fail.
-- Cloaking boosters fail.

2. Whilst a ship is at a planet with a friendly Command Station (which now regulate planet-wide power distribution, or something, yeah, whatever ), it does not lose charge, except in response to charge draining weaponry (Energy Vampires etc). This ensures that planetary defense is almost identical to the current system. Also, whilst at a planet with a friendly Command Station, ships and turrets anywhere in the gravity well have a passive recharge rate (very slow) that is proportional to the player's energy (Max - Used) + a base recharge rate. Ships and turrets will lose charge if the player's energy balance is negative.

3. Whilst in close proximity to a friendly generator (regardless of whether there is a friendly Command Station present), ships and turrets have a fairly high recharge rate. A small generator can recharge 10 ships simultaneously, whilst the large generator can recharge 25 ships simultaneously. A generator will need to be constructed at beachheads in order to provide charge for turrets, and potentially space docks and mobile repair stations. This generator could be a high priority target for the AI, and hence a new, 'fortified generator', could be added to the research tree.

4. Whilst a ship is in a system that does not contain a friendly Command Station, the following actions cause a reduction in charge;

-- Moving - The number of charge points lost per unit distance traveled increases exponentially with the number of hops the ship is from a system containing a friendly Command Station.

-- Firing - The number of charge points lost per shot is dependent on the ship type.

-- Repairing - Self explanatory.

Scouts are exempt from movement related charge costs. This ensures that the new system will not affect scouting. Scouts will, however, decloak if energy draining effects reduce their charge level to 0.

A passive-move command is added to cover situations in which the player may wish to conserve charge for whatever reason.

5. As we discussed earlier, the implementation of a system similar to this requires the addition of a number of auxilliary units, including Energy Vampires and Mobile Batteries.

6. What problem were we trying to solve again?

[darke]

-Thanks to recent changes to AI tactics when going through wormholes, the Special Forces Captain is a lot more difficult now.  It has been promoted to now be a HARDER AI type instead of a MODERATE one.

"You're imagining things!", he said. "They can't be that tough, you're just giving them too much of a resource boost!", he said. "This whiner must really suck at playing the game...", he probably thought.

At least I feel like I don't suck quite so much at this game now.

-Laser Turrets now require Mark II Turrets to be unlocked first, instead of Mark III.

-The cost of Mark III standard turrets is now half its prior value, and its health is now 4x higher.  The health of Mark II standard turrets is now 2x its prior value.

Yay! And there was much rejoicing.

-The starting tech level of AI planets was being calculated too late in the prior map generation logic.  That has been fixed, which will change the scenarios from what they previously were.  For one thing, this will make AI players use lower-level force fields on lower-level planets, like they should have been doing all along.

That does explain why that at the start when I'm surrounded by planets with force fields, they always seem to be Tech III even though the planet only has a few dozen Tech I units on it.

-Teleporting ships are no longer restricted from going through wormholes.  This limitation was too restrictive in practice, and now that the AI has wormhole defenses, this is no longer really needed, anyway.

W00t. Time to build up an assault force of teleporting engineers.

My psychic ability also foresees a sudden change that will make AI data centers, gates, ion cannons and command centers either immune or highly resistant to lightning attacks that the teleporting ships possess.

-The AI now uses group-move when attacking players from a guard position.  This helps to maintain the power of the guarding ships, rather than letting them get so easily strung out and weakened.

-Fighters are now 75% more resistant to cruiser shots, which makes homogeneous cruiser fleets less powerful.

Useful, and much yayness. This might help with the survivability of my own fighter fleet, they seem to get taken out far easier then any other of my ships.

[darke]

Ok, weird bug time.

Playing game, got squished. (Tech IV planet was a little too, umm, hurty.) Loaded it up, suddenly I had large-negative energy (-438k or so), of course that doesn't make things work quite right.

Quit back to main menu, loaded again. Still large negative. Quit the game completely, got back in again, it's back to it's original positive 438795 energy.

The graphs in the score screen all said I should have the right value, it's just on the main screen, and obviously somewhere in the maths, it was saying it was negative.

[x4000]

This thread should presumably be called, 'Prerelease 1.010C'.

The 'charge' system we've been discussing has been through a few iterations in my mind this morning. Here are my current thoughts;

1. All ships and turrets have a 'charge' attribute. Whilst a ship/turret's charge is non-zero they function as they do now. When a ship/turret's charge reaches 0 the following occurs;

-- Ships move at half speed.
-- Shields are set to 0.
-- Reload times are doubled.
-- Tractor beams can no longer be emitted.
-- Tachyon beams can no longer be emitted.
-- Cloaks fail.
-- Cloaking boosters fail.

2. Whilst a ship is at a planet with a friendly Command Station (which now regulate planet-wide power distribution, or something, yeah, whatever ), it does not lose charge, except in response to charge draining weaponry (Energy Vampires etc). This ensures that planetary defense is almost identical to the current system. Also, whilst at a planet with a friendly Command Station, ships and turrets anywhere in the gravity well have a passive recharge rate (very slow) that is proportional to the player's energy (Max - Used) + a base recharge rate. Ships and turrets will lose charge if the player's energy balance is negative.

3. Whilst in close proximity to a friendly generator (regardless of whether there is a friendly Command Station present), ships and turrets have a fairly high recharge rate. A small generator can recharge 10 ships simultaneously, whilst the large generator can recharge 25 ships simultaneously. A generator will need to be constructed at beachheads in order to provide charge for turrets, and potentially space docks and mobile repair stations. This generator could be a high priority target for the AI, and hence a new, 'fortified generator', could be added to the research tree.

4. Whilst a ship is in a system that does not contain a friendly Command Station, the following actions cause a reduction in charge;

-- Moving - The number of charge points lost per unit distance traveled increases exponentially with the number of hops the ship is from a system containing a friendly Command Station.

-- Firing - The number of charge points lost per shot is dependent on the ship type.

-- Repairing - Self explanatory.

Scouts are exempt from movement related charge costs. This ensures that the new system will not affect scouting. Scouts will, however, decloak if energy draining effects reduce their charge level to 0.

A passive-move command is added to cover situations in which the player may wish to conserve charge for whatever reason.

5. As we discussed earlier, the implementation of a system similar to this requires the addition of a number of auxilliary units, including Energy Vampires and Mobile Batteries.

6. What problem were we trying to solve again?

I think you basically nailed it.  I will also be including some rebalancing of the energy reactors (if players are building several large reactors per planet with the current system, this would 1. cost way too much, and 2. give 100,000s of extra unused energy).  The energy vampires as a ship class would wait for an expansion, but I'll probably make some sort of "energy vampire turret" in the meantime.

Here's another thought -- I'm thinking that it might make sense to NOT have movement be affected by reduced charge.  We basically already have engine health for that, and having a bunch of ships lose charge and then go slow way in enemy territory is likely to be really annoying.  For scouts, the removal of cloaking and cloaking booster is enough to make the charge loss deadly.  For other ships, just being so much less effective in combat (or tractor beams, or whatever) is reason enough.  I'd also add that force fields without charge should fail.  This really sets up a very interesting local power system, which I really like.

...And now, part of me is wondering if a global energy balance actually does fit with this at all.  That was basically intended to be a sort of population cap limiter, but now this new system is much more elegant and localized.  I had been looking for a system-within-a-system, as I said last night, but I really like the system that we're arriving at, and I think that having the global energy costs only adds complexity that isn't really needed.  Thoughts, everyone?

[darke]

Ok, weird bug time.

Playing game, got squished. (Tech IV planet was a little too, umm, hurty.) Loaded it up, suddenly I had large-negative energy (-438k or so), of course that doesn't make things work quite right.

Quit back to main menu, loaded again. Still large negative. Quit the game completely, got back in again, it's back to it's original positive 438795 energy.

The graphs in the score screen all said I should have the right value, it's just on the main screen, and obviously somewhere in the maths, it was saying it was negative.

Managed to replicate it.

Load game (current save has 516k), quit game back to main menu.
Load same game, oooh, it's down to 141k! Quit game back to main menu.
Load same game, ooooh, it's now in the negatives at -234k!

I'm guessing there's global some variable hanging around that's not being cleared between load/saves.

[x4000]

"You're imagining things!", he said. "They can't be that tough, you're just giving them too much of a resource boost!", he said. "This whiner must really suck at playing the game...", he probably thought.

At least I feel like I don't suck quite so much at this game now.

The way you play, with all those bonuses to the AI and all those starting wormholes, I never thought you sucked.  I still think that you are setting yourself up for extra-difficult situations, but the special forces captain is hard enough in general to warrant HARDER status now, for sure.

Yay! And there was much rejoicing.

Yeah, there were a lot of good darke features in this one.

That does explain why that at the start when I'm surrounded by planets with force fields, they always seem to be Tech III even though the planet only has a few dozen Tech I units on it.

Yeah, that was kind of annoying.  I'm glad to have that one taken care of!

W00t. Time to build up an assault force of teleporting engineers.

My psychic ability also foresees a sudden change that will make AI data centers, gates, ion cannons and command centers either immune or highly resistant to lightning attacks that the teleporting ships possess.

Hmm, that's probably a good idea.  And I think that the teleport raiders are going to gain an electric-based attack, too.

-The AI now uses group-move when attacking players from a guard position.  This helps to maintain the power of the guarding ships, rather than letting them get so easily strung out and weakened.

-Fighters are now 75% more resistant to cruiser shots, which makes homogeneous cruiser fleets less powerful.

Useful, and much yayness. This might help with the survivability of my own fighter fleet, they seem to get taken out far easier then any other of my ships.

That's the hope!

[x4000]

I'm guessing there's global some variable hanging around that's not being cleared between load/saves.

You got it, that's exactly right.  I'll have a fix version in a few minutes.

[Admiral]

Does it count as "moving" when the ship has been told to stop (or has arrived), but is hunting for the spot in the map to actually come to rest?

Yes.

May I suggest you think about several things with these ships?

1) If their effects are cumulative, then maybe nothing needs to be done.

2) If their effects are not cumulative, put some thought into the movement heuristics so that in a group, they are spread out when they come to a rest, so as to be affecting as many ships as possible.

3) In the alternative, have a "scatter" keypress that will spread them out randomly?

Cheers!

[x4000]

Does it count as "moving" when the ship has been told to stop (or has arrived), but is hunting for the spot in the map to actually come to rest?

Yes.

May I suggest you think about several things with these ships?

1) If their effects are cumulative, then maybe nothing needs to be done.

2) If their effects are not cumulative, put some thought into the movement heuristics so that in a group, they are spread out when they come to a rest, so as to be affecting as many ships as possible.

3) In the alternative, have a "scatter" keypress that will spread them out randomly?

Cheers!

They actually are cumulative, at least up to 3x.  Most of the time they are likely to scatter fairly proportionately, anyway.  Those sorts of optimization search algorithms are pretty intense on the CPU when there are a lot of ships to collision-detect against, so I'm not sure I want to add in more than the randomization that is presently there.  With the longer range of the munitions boosters (which I could make even longer, if need be), I think that will basically allow keeping them just kind of wherever in the pack, so that they always have at least 3 non-fully-boosted ships in their range.  That's the goal, anyway, rather than going in the more CPU-intensive route.  I have to kind of pick my battles with items like that for individual ships on the main thread.

[Admiral]

I think you basically nailed it.

I think he got a framework in place that was good, summarizing many of the possibilities. I don't think implementing all the possibilities is a good idea.

I frankly think the "zero charge" is much too harmful. I also think the whole command station/energy reactor proximity is too complex, and the limit on the number of ships per energy reactor is also too complex (and the posited limits too low - you have attack forces in the thousands of ships, after all). The "Net energy surplus" affecting the recharge time is an interesting mechanic, though.

I don't see the point in leaving new ships out of the whole "Charge" introduction, frankly. I think they should all be in there simultaneously (well, within a point release anyway), or not at all. Unless there is some sort of development roadblock that I don't know about.

The next question is: Is the AI subject to the "charge system?" I would imagine not; it would create a lot of problems for the AI to act reasonably, especially since it never seems to construct "base" type structures as it is. You could always have it re-take systems, rebuild wormhole generators, etc., though. (As if the AI needs to be stronger.)

Here's another thought -- I'm thinking that it might make sense to NOT have movement be affected by reduced charge.  We basically already have engine health for that, and having a bunch of ships lose charge and then go slow way in enemy territory is likely to be really annoying.

I'm fine with that.

For scouts, the removal of cloaking and cloaking booster is enough to make the charge loss deadly.

I'm still thinking the only negative effects should be on direct offensive capabilities. Try one thing and then rebalance, then go from there? It's as Darke said; if everything is affected by it, it becomes just an alternative health mechanic.

I'd also add that force fields without charge should fail.

Yeah, I really didn't like this mechanic. I use force fields so rarely as it is (I find they're so limited, can't be repaired, are an obvious target, and don't actually save anything unless you have a local offensive capability) that this would essentially destroy their utility entirely. They're useful for the AI, but not so much for the player. (They'd be useful against humans, I think.)

...And now, part of me is wondering if a global energy balance actually does fit with this at all.  That was basically intended to be a sort of population cap limiter, but now this new system is much more elegant and localized.  I had been looking for a system-within-a-system, as I said last night, but I really like the system that we're arriving at, and I think that having the global energy costs only adds complexity that isn't really needed.  Thoughts, everyone?

I didn't quite understand this tangent...

Cheers!

[darke]

The way you play, with all those bonuses to the AI and all those starting wormholes, I never thought you sucked.  I still think that you are setting yourself up for extra-difficult situations, but the special forces captain is hard enough in general to warrant HARDER status now, for sure.

That does explain why that at the start when I'm surrounded by planets with force fields, they always seem to be Tech III even though the planet only has a few dozen Tech I units on it.

Yeah, that was kind of annoying.  I'm glad to have that one taken care of!

In the game I've been just playing has been against two Turtle AIs, I did notice a nice progression of a couple of the tech I's, then a Tech II, the the Tech III's. As far as tossing forcefields in, it may be worth trying to get it to increase the number of lower level forcefields, rather then upgrade to a higher level one. It probably needs testing with less defensive AIs a bit more, but it seems a shame to never see anything but a Tech III after the first three planets.

W00t. Time to build up an assault force of teleporting engineers.

My psychic ability also foresees a sudden change that will make AI data centers, gates, ion cannons and command centers either immune or highly resistant to lightning attacks that the teleporting ships possess.

Hmm, that's probably a good idea.  And I think that the teleport raiders are going to gain an electric-based attack, too.

*innocentwhistle* Haven't had much of a chance to test out how well teleporting engineers work in combat yet, current game is more scorched-earth to try and ramp up the AI's populations to check if things come out reasonable.

Currently things look ok, about 3 hours in and a Tech II world that started around 200ish is now up about a thousand. Tech III worlds aren't too bad to take out with squads of Tech II ships. Tech IV is still nasty, for every assault on a world that started around 800 total ships, with mostly Tech II ships and a Tech III set of parasites (I send in a mixed attack of about a thousand ships), I normally loose around 200 of my ships (usually low level ones), and by the time I build up to hit them again, their net loss is only about 50 to 75 of their Tech IV ships.

Think I really should have Tech III of fighters/bombers/cruisers before hammering them, but it's a nice test of things.

And of course because I've been entirely on the offensive I haven't had a chance to test all all the shiny upgraded turrets.

[x4000]

I think you basically nailed it.

I think he got a framework in place that was good, summarizing many of the possibilities. I don't think implementing all the possibilities is a good idea.

Hmm, that seemed like a pretty full design, not a list of possibilities, to me.  It basically mirrored what I was thinking of doing from last night, but with some refinements and smoothings.  But I'm a lot less in love with this whole concept after reading darke's comments on the other thread.

I frankly think the "zero charge" is much too harmful. I also think the whole command station/energy reactor proximity is too complex, and the limit on the number of ships per energy reactor is also too complex (and the posited limits too low - you have attack forces in the thousands of ships, after all). The "Net energy surplus" affecting the recharge time is an interesting mechanic, though.

Yeah, that's true.  This is getting too complex for its own good.  Right now I'm leaning towards darke's "overcharge" idea from the other thread, but even that has drawbacks of basically encouraging turtling to a bad degree.  On the one hand, I could ramp up AI wave strength to compensate, which actually could make those battles more interesting, but then it throws the balance of the special forces ships all out of whack, etc, as well. 

So the question really does come down to what problem we are trying to solve here.  My original goal was basically to have players need to be energy reactors in unpleasant locations, and then protect them.  This is (sort of) already accomplished with the energy reactor efficiency changes from the B version.  All of the other stuff kind of came up as we went, and I got excited about the potential for a fuel-like mechanism, but once again that has pretty much fallen through as overly-complex/redundant-with-existing-features.

One possibility, then, might be to have the proximity of reactors (basically, just having one be on the same planet) be relevant for constructors, docks, force fields, turrets, etc.  Some sort of power grid system for them might be interesting, sort of, and it would certainly be simpler.  At this stage, I'm really starting to think that there is enough going on with the offensive ships that even the overcharge might not be a good idea.  If the feature is there, it either becomes too overpowerful and thus overbalanced, or necessary for expert play.

I don't see the point in leaving new ships out of the whole "Charge" introduction, frankly. I think they should all be in there simultaneously (well, within a point release anyway), or not at all. Unless there is some sort of development roadblock that I don't know about.

I'm not sure what you are referring to in this case.  All of the ships would have the charge logic.  The only thing I was not going to do was add a whole new class of mobile "bonus" ships based on being charge drainers.

The next question is: Is the AI subject to the "charge system?" I would imagine not; it would create a lot of problems for the AI to act reasonably, especially since it never seems to construct "base" type structures as it is. You could always have it re-take systems, rebuild wormhole generators, etc., though. (As if the AI needs to be stronger.)

No, I wasn't planning on this being a system for the AI.  I don't think it really adds anything there other than internal complexities that the players wouldn't even see.

I'm still thinking the only negative effects should be on direct offensive capabilities. Try one thing and then rebalance, then go from there? It's as Darke said; if everything is affected by it, it becomes just an alternative health mechanic.

This is a great point.  Of course, now I'm questioning even the offensive aspects.  Don't worry, I'm not the shoot-first type with a feature of this scope unless I'm really sold on it.  So far, I'm not there.

I'd also add that force fields without charge should fail.

Yeah, I really didn't like this mechanic. I use force fields so rarely as it is (I find they're so limited, can't be repaired, are an obvious target, and don't actually save anything unless you have a local offensive capability) that this would essentially destroy their utility entirely. They're useful for the AI, but not so much for the player. (They'd be useful against humans, I think.)

As it stands, if your energy balance goes negative overall, force fields shut off (basically that entire list of stuff that Revenantus had is all the things that shut off when your energy balance is negative.  I know you don't like force fields for your own use, and that's cool -- it's a style thing -- but a lot of players are finding them incredibly useful.  I disagree that advanced factories are easy to replace, especially in a multiplayer game.  Having lost four of them in my current three-player game, we're now basically limited from having any Mark IV units.  We should have put up force fields, but I didn't think to.  And using force fields, especially mobile ones, in certain situations on the AI planets has proved really effective for several players.  I think it just depends on the playstyle of the individual player.

...And now, part of me is wondering if a global energy balance actually does fit with this at all.  That was basically intended to be a sort of population cap limiter, but now this new system is much more elegant and localized.  I had been looking for a system-within-a-system, as I said last night, but I really like the system that we're arriving at, and I think that having the global energy costs only adds complexity that isn't really needed.  Thoughts, everyone?

I didn't quite understand this tangent...

It actually wasn't really a tangent, but I don't agree with it anymore, anyway, so nevermind -- don't worry about trying to follow it.

I think this whole discussion has kind of "gone down a rathole" to use the lingo from my business software speccing time.  There's a lot of sound and lights here, a lot of code for me to write, and a lot of complexity for players on top of an already complex game, but I'm not really sure what the positive benefits are at this stage.