MINES: Nevermind

[Fuchida]

Originally posted by Didz


Lol! Its been a long time since I've heard that excuse. Takes me back to my system design days.

[Its not a bug, its a feature]

I don't think expecting the player to check he has minelaying ships in his minelaying task force is an unreasonable expectation on the part of the programmer.

Maybe I should point out you need carriers in your Air Combat tasks forces and transports in your Transport task forces because the program doesn't appear to check that either.

[Didz]

Originally posted by Fuchida


I don't think expecting the player to check he has minelaying ships in his minelaying task force is an unreasonable expectation on the part of the programmer.

Maybe I should point out you need carriers in your Air Combat tasks forces and transports in your Transport task forces because the program doesn't appear to check that either.

Sorry! I obviously didn't explain the point I was making very clearly.

I'm not expecting to be able to lay mines with ships that don't have the capability to lay mines. Any more than I expect to be able to fly torpedo bombers off the deck of PT boat.

However, I also don't expect the program to tell me that an MSW TF is going to Mine a hex when it doesn't have the capability to do so. This is misleading and its bad programming. And I wouldnt' expect it to allow me to set up an Air Strike from a TF containing nothing but PT boats either and I wouldn't expect a ship list containing PT boats to appear when I tried to transfer planes from a land base to a ship even though I ought to know that PT boats can't receive aircraft.

Its not about whether MSW's should be able to lay mines its about whether the program should generate inaccurate messages.

Incidently, in my expereince nothing is an 'unreasonable expectation on the part of the programmer'. I once had a guy who honestly considered it unnecessary to label the data fields on a system input screen because 'they are defined in the input data record format in the appendix at the back of the technical manual'.

[Mark W Carver]

Originally posted by Fuchida


I don't think expecting the player to check he has minelaying ships in his minelaying task force is an unreasonable expectation on the part of the programmer.

Here, here.. I agree.

[Fuchida]

Originally posted by Didz


However, I also don't expect the program to tell me that an MSW TF is going to Mine a hex when it doesn't have the capability to do so.

I understand what you mean about this. The program is obviously checking the task force type before outputing the message rather than the ships. However, I have done more than a little programming myself and I would guess the reason is that checking each ship in a task force to see if it has mines or not is extra processing.

Not much you might say, but once you go down that road of assuming an ever-increasing need to hand hold the user and double checking everything the user does to check if it is sensible, you slow the game down. So you have to decide on what is a reasonable level of common sense of the part of the user. In this case, assuming the user will put the right sort of ships in his task force is reasonable.

The simplest solution would be to simply remove the 'will mine' message. That way there is no misleading information and no extra processing.

Originally posted by Didz
Incidently, in my expereince nothing is an 'unreasonable expectation on the part of the programmer'. I once had a guy who honestly considered it unnecessary to label the data fields on a system input screen because 'they are defined in the input data record format in the appendix at the back of the technical manual'.

If you think the above compares to expecting the user to put minelaying ships in a minelaying task force, then I think we will have to agree to disagree.

[siRkid]

One thing I noticed and reported as a bug is subs given the mine mission will not pick up new mines when they are refueled at port. You have to disband them and then create a new TF. It is then that you see the message loading mines. I've only played US so I don't know if the same is true for the Japs.

[Supervisor]

I understand what you mean about this. The program is obviously checking the task force type before outputing the message rather than the ships. However, I have done more than a little programming myself and I would guess the reason is that checking each ship in a task force to see if it has mines or not is extra processing.

Not much you might say, but once you go down that road of assuming an ever-increasing need to hand hold the user and double checking everything the user does to check if it is sensible, you slow the game down. So you have to decide on what is a reasonable level of common sense of the part of the user. In this case, assuming the user will put the right sort of ships in his task force is reasonable.

You could set up a check-bit that is set to either true/false (minelay/no-minelay) depending on whether there is a minelay-capable ship in the TF. Thereafter, you would only have to check the TF when it is created or changed (due to transfer, damage, etc.). Then the message displayed would check the flag and print (or not print) the "will MINE" message.

This will use a little processing time, so they will have to evaluate whether the extra processing is worth it. Now that I know what is happening, I can live with it either way.

In a related vein, does the "will MINE" message show up if the minelayer is out of mines? If not, then they must be checking ammo status before printing/not-printing the message. Also, I have found that if you change the destination of a minelayer after it has left port, it will apparently NOT lay mines until it has returned to port and refueled/replenished (Japanese ML out of Shortland).