Empire Server Files

Release notes for Wolfpack Empire 4.3.33

This release fixes many bugs, some critical, some abusable.  Player
visible changes include changed retreat syntax, submarine
identification on return fire, removal of autonav and sail, and the
new stockpile command.  Deity visible changes include stricter
checking of configuration tables, ability to build anywhere, and
further improvements to the edit command.

Deities are urged to use this release for new games.  Upgrading
mid-game is not supported, and expected to result in total disaster.
Fine print: you should be able to upgrade with the empdump utility, if
you know what you're doing.

This release was made from the Git repository at

    http://git.pond.sub.org/?p=empserver;a=summary


Released files:

Source code
 * empire-4.3.33.tar.gz             Everything
 * empire-4.3.33.zip                Same thing, different wrapper
 * empire-client-4.3.33.tar.gz      Just the client
 * empire-client-4.3.33.zip         Same thing, different wrapper

Pre-formatted documentation
 * empire-info-text-4.3.33.tar.gz   Text
 * empire-info-text-4.3.33.zip      Same thing, different wrapper
 * empire-info-html-4.3.33.tar.gz   HTML
 * empire-info-html-4.3.33.zip      Same thing, different wrapper

Binaries
 * empire-client-4.3.33-*           Clients for various systems

User contributed files:
 * contrib/empire-server-4.3.33-i386-win32.zip
                                    Server binaries for Windows
				    (Ron Koenderink)

Change log:

Changes to Empire 4.3.33 - Wed May 20 18:17:43 UTC 2015
 * New client option -r for restricted mode.  Contributed by Marisa
   Giancarla.
 * The add syntax deprecated in 4.3.29 is now gone.
 * The explore, move, test, transport syntax deprecated in 4.3.27 is
   now gone.
 * The bmap flag syntax deprecated in 4.3.27 is now gone.
 * Stricter configuration validation:
   - Reject odd WORLD_X instead of making it even silently.
   - Reject odd WORLD_Y.
   - Reject missiles that lack capability VTOL instead of adding VTOL
     silently.
   - Reject ships that can carry planes, but have neither capability
     plane nor miss, instead of adding miss silently.
 * Outlaw ships that can drop depth charges, but not fire.  No such
   ships exist in the stock game.  4.3.31 permitted them, but keeping
   them working has turned out to be bothersome.
 * Changes to fire and torpedo:
   - Don't disclose that the torpedo's path to the target is blocked
     by land when the target is out of range.  Screwed up in 4.2.2.
   - When a submarine gets hit by return fire after firing its deck
     gun, the defender again learns the submarine's uid and type, just
     like for surface ships.  This is how it worked before Empire 2.3.
   - When a submarine gets hit by return fire after launching a
     torpedo, the defender again learns the submarine's uid.  Before
     Empire 2.3, he learned uid and type.
   - Print "Kaboom" even when the target is out of range.
   - Always clear missions when firing guns or dropping depth charges.
     Screwed up when missions were added in Chainsaw.
   - Report "Sector X,Y ready to fire" instead of "Sector X,Y firing",
     because the sector isn't firing, yet, then.  Also report ships
     and land units ready to fire.
   - Suppress bulletin when player shells or torpedoes his own ship.
 * When artillery on a bridge span shelled down the supporting bridge
   head, the bridge fell and the artillery drowned alright.  But then
   the bridge rose right back.  Broken in 4.3.14.
 * Fix board to charge mobility even when defender is less than 100%
   efficient.  Broken in Empire 2.
 * The convert command charged security land units mobility until
   4.3.16 broke that.  Drop this undocumented feature instead of
   fixing it.
 * Fix news to report the actual owner of ships sunk by return
   torpedoes instead of POGO.  Screwed up when return torpedoes were
   added in Chainsaw.
 * Don't disclose uid, type and owner of torpedoed submarines.  The
   latter leaked through the news.
 * Changes to bomb:
   - Fix damage to mobility when bombing planes.  Has always been
     broken.
   - Include position when reporting bombing of a land unit, like we
     do for ships.
   - Suppress bulletin when player bombs his own assets.
   - Report bombing of plane to owner once, not twice.
   - Don't permit bombing of dead planes.  Missed when we did the same
     for dead ships and land units in 4.3.16.
 * Changes to retreat and lretreat:
   - Be less loquacious when changing orders.
   - Deprecate pseudo-condition 'c'.  Use retreat path 'h' to cancel
     retreat orders.
   - Change query syntax from "retreat SHIPS" to "retreat SHIPS q".
     Consistent with mission, and makes prompting for arguments more
     usable.  Keep accepting the old syntax for now, but deprecate it.
   - Reject invalid retreat paths instead of silently ignoring invalid
     characters during retreat.  Unfortunately, the path needs to be
     valid even with deprecated pseudo-condition 'c', where it's not
     actually used.  This might break some existing usage.
   - Fail without charging BTUs when the player gives no conditions.
   - Fix infinite loop when third argument contains '?'.  Broken in
     4.3.16.
 * Rename retreat flag "torped" to "torpedoed" in xdump retreat-flags.
   This could conceivably break clients.  No actual breakage is known.
 * Rewrite automatic retreat to fix its many bugs and inconsistencies
   with navigate and march:
   - When a ship defeats a boarding party, but suffers enough damage
     to sink, retreat the victim's group (if any) instead of ship#0.
   - Permit retreat exactly when navigate and march would be
     permitted.  Before, land units happily retreated while on the
     trading block (forbidden with march since 4.0.9), crewless
     (likewise since 4.0.0), kidnapped in a foreign sector
     (inconsistent since land units were added in Chainsaw 3), loaded
     on a ship (likewise) or a land unit (inconsistent since that
     became possible in 4.0.0).  Ships retreated while on the trading
     block (forbidden with navigate since 4.0.9).
   - Land units can now retreat into foreign sectors exactly when they
     could march there: when the sector is allied, or when the land
     unit is a spy (with the usual risks).
   - Land units can now retreat into mountains.
   - Land unit retreat now resets fortification.
   - Group retreat now happens only along a single path.  Before, you
     could scatter a group in several directions, and even retreat in
     far away places.  The latter was a highly abusable design flaw.
   - Bulletins provide more useful information in fewer words.  In
     particular, they always report the end sector.
   - Fix retreat after a torpedo hit to include the torpedo damage in
     its mobility cost calculation.
   - When retreat runs into a sector that cannot be entered, don't
     consume the retreat direction.
   - Don't charge mobility for retreating in direction 'h'
   - You can no longer make your own ships or land units retreat.
   - Clear mission only when the ship or land unit actually retreats.
   - Land unit group retreat could corrupt the land unit file or crash
     the server.  Screwed up when Chainsaw added land unit retreat.
   - Fix ship retreat when helpless.  Surface ships claimed to retreat
     in a bulletin, but that was a lie.  Submarines didn't even
     pretend.
 * Don't tell the player he sunk a ship when it survives an attack
   with bomb, fire, launch or torpedo, but sinks during retreat.  bomb
   even reported where it had retreated to when it sank.
 * Land mine fixes, affecting march and, if option INTERDICT_ATT is
   enabled, attack and assault:
   - Fix march sub-command 'm' to not let non-engineers hit mines.
     Broken in Empire 2.  Fixed in 4.0.17 for ships only.
   - Engineers now risk hitting mines twice instead of once on sector
     entry, just like minesweepers.
   - No sweeping with zero mobility.  Screwed up when Chainsaw added
     land units.
 * Navigate and march cleanup and bug hunt:
   - Stop on non-fatal mine hits, too.  Before, we carried on, and
     ships that lost all crew were left behind only at the next
     prompt.  Note that we already stop on non-fatal interdiction
     damage since Empire 2.
   - Fix use-after-free when a flagship or leader stays behind without
     a prompt following immediately.
   - When something other than movement charged mobility, the charge
     was lost on the next movement, unless there was a prompt in
     between.  For instance, mobility lost to mine hits could come
     back.
   - Fix parser not to get confused by white-space.
   - Make ships use radar always, not just most of the time.
   - Land units now use radar automatically like ships.
   - Report flagship and leader changes immediately, and always.
     Before, they were reported only around a prompt.
   - Wipe mission and retreat orders less eagerly.  Before, they where
     sometimes wiped even for ships and land units the command
     rejected.
   - Give up fortification only when a land unit actually moves or
     sweeps.
   - Report where exactly ships and land units sweep mines.
   - Nicer error messages for sub-command 'm'.
   - Fix sub-command 'm' not to drop engineers without mobility from
     the march.
   - When denying ships entry to an unfriendly sector with canals,
     don't disclose whether it's above 2%.
   - Both navigate and march now require all their ships and land
     units to be in the same sector.  Support for scattered ships and
     land units complicates the code and blows up the test matrix.
     It's also rather obscure; I suspect accidental use has been more
     frequent than intentional use.
   - Check for sector abandonment before anyone marches instead of
     right before moving the last land unit.  Fixes a bug that could
     scatter the group when something interferes while waiting for the
     player to confirm abandonment.
   - When marching a mixed group of spies and non-spies into a
     non-allied sector, remove non-spies from the group, and move the
     spies.  Before, only the spies before the first non-spy moved
     into the non-allied sector, which could scatter the group.
     Screwed up when 4.0.0 added spy units.
   - Don't permit trains to march out of sectors without rail.
   - When navigating a mixed group of ships with and without canal
     capability into a canal, remove incapable ships from the group,
     and move the capable ships.  Before, only the ships before the
     first incapable ship moved into the canal, which could scatter
     the group.  Broken in 4.3.0.
   - Fix navigate buffer overrun for impossibly long paths taken.  No
     remotely sane game configuration provides a ship fast enough to
     trigger it.  Broken in 4.0.0.
 * Remove option SAIL (commands follow, mquota, sail, unsail; ship
   selectors mquota, path, follow) and autonav (commands order,
   qorder, sorder; ship selectors xstart, xend, ystart, yend,
   cargostart, cargoend, amtstart, amtend, autonav) due to multiple
   issues:
   - The orders are executed at the update.  Crafty players can use
     them to get around the update window.
   - Usability is poor, especially for autonav.
   - Few players use them.
   - Documentation is inaccurate.
   - Code has bugs, some of them critical.
   - It's almost 1300 lines of rather crufty code nobody wants to
     touch.
   - Code sharing complicates maintenance of the navigate command.
 * Configuration tables reader and empdump improvements:
   - Better error messages.
   - Export now omits redundant data by default.  Use empdump -c to
     include it.
   - Import can cope with omitted sectors and realms.  Omitted sectors
     become sea, and omitted realms become empty.
   - Column order is now unrestricted.  Before, some tables required
     an ID field to come first.
   - Support splitting any table.  Before, tables sect, news, lost,
     realm, game, infrastructure could not be split.
   - Support strings longer than 65535 characters.
 * Fix empdump -i to reject strings that are one character too long.
   The bug affected ship table columns path, name and rpath, land
   table column rpath, nat table columns cname, passwd, ip, hostname
   and userid.
 * Reject nat selectors relations, contacts and rejects, because they
   don't actually make sense.  They exist just for xdump.
 * Drop the code to resolve player IP address.  It's been disabled
   since 4.2.13.  Deprecate nat selector hostname.
 * Fix bridge spans next to a bridge tower or head taking damage to
   fall when they should with EASY_BRIDGES off.  Has always been
   broken.
 * Fix bridge spans next to a collapsing bridge tower to fall when
   they should with EASY_BRIDGES on.  Broken in 4.3.12.
 * When you scrap a plane, you get crew back only proportionally to
   plane efficiency.
 * Changes to build:
   - Fail the attempt to build a bridge not next to land or bridge
     tower more nicely.
   - Deities can now build anywhere, without materials, work or money.
   - Building a plane no longer uses at least one military.  Military
     for crew are now rounded just like the other materials.  The
     special case dates back to 4.2.3.
   - Report missing materials more nicely.
   - You now need the required materials rounded up to be present.
     Actual use is still randomly rounded.  Before, crafty players
     could exploit the rounding to save materials, or build
     sufficiently cheap things without materials.  In the stock game,
     linf and many plane types could be built without materials.
 * Remove option TREATIES.  Usability is very poor, virtually nobody
   uses them, conditions are incomplete, the code is buggy, and a
   burden to maintain.
 * Test suite improvements:
   - Coverage extended to commands build, navigate, march, fire,
     torpedo, retreat, lretreat, falling bridges, automatic retreat,
     command info page completeness, and the empdump utility program.
   - Maintainability of tests much improved.
   - Test harness refactoring.
   Much work remains.
 * Adjust stack sizes.  Stack overflow was possibly for tiny worlds.
 * Fix start, stop to not operate on dead units when used by a deity.
   Screwed up when start, stop were extended to units in 4.3.6.
 * Nukes can be grouped into stockpiles, just like ships can be
   grouped into fleets.  The new command stockpile does for nukes what
   fleet does for ships.  Likewise the new nuke selector stockpile.
 * wingadd no longer costs BTUs, for consistency with fleetadd and
   army.
 * Changes to edit:
   - Keep missions centered on ship, plane or land unit centered when
     teleporting it.  Screwed up when Chainsaw added missions.
   - Preserve "does not follow" when copying ships.  Preserve "no
     distribution center" when copying sectors, and don't mess up
     coastal flag.  Screwed when Chainsaw added the means to copy a
     ship or sector.
   - You can now edit nukes.
   - Suppress bulletin on no-op ship, plane, land unit location
     change.  Screwed up in 4.3.32.
   - You can now edit ship, plane and land unit types.
   - Changing the owner of a ship, plane or land unit away from POGO
     now works.
 * Fix "make uninstall" to remove HTML info pages (which are not
   installed by default) and directory share/empire/.
 * Fix "make install" to remove stale formatted info pages.
 * Code refactoring and cleanup, portability improvements.
 * Info file fixes and improvements.

Change log just for the client:

 * New client option -r for restricted mode.  Contributed by Marisa
   Giancarla.