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Can a roster accept user inputted string?

S

shaggai

Well-known member
I've been thinking about trying to do an AB3 file for Star Fleet Battles.

One of the main points of the game is that it has well defined time periods (in Y-years) in which certain options, ships, and even tactics become available. While it should be easy to handle this - there is one sticking point in that when a roster is built you would have to select a certain year. However, the game covers well over 100 Y-years and having a HUGE list of roster selections for Y075, Y076, Y077, etc. would seem extremely unwieldy.

If a player were given the option of controlling this by a string input - it would certainly be more user friendly. However is this something possible - or something that could be made possible in a future iteration?

That's all.
 
On options, you can have the user enter a value and/or cost. Check the options section of the docs for minuservalue/maxuservalue, they might do what you need.
 
OK - I think I got it. Like in the selection screen for the WH files - you have "unlimited size" or "fixed size" (enter value), in regards to determining the max size of the force.

I guess I would need to have something similar with the exception that the fixed size would instead be "Y-year" (enter value). But, is this something that can be modified for author usage - or is it something fixed to the AB3 program?
 
Actually I could really use this feature for Babylong 5 as well...all of the ships already have a stat for available year so all I would need was a user entered value...
 
There is no way to accomplish this with V3 right now, but I'll put this request on the todo list for a future release.

I'm not familiar with the mechanics of SFB, so I don't know whether this idea will work, but I am familiar with DBM having various units available during different date ranges (it's an historical game). For DBM, the list of units is manageable enough that each race can be broken down into an assortment of N date ranges. By selecting a data range that encompasses the exact year in which the game is to be played, the appropriate constraints can be enforced. For example, the ruleset for the years 1050 thru 1058 could be given the TWO tags "start1050" and "end1058", and then each unit could have a Member tag expression that verifies it falls within the established data range given by the tags.

Would something like this work for SFB? If the number of units is in the dozens, this might work reasonable well until we can add something more explicit like having the user manually enter a date.

Hope this helps,
Rob


At 01:59 PM 1/21/2006, you wrote:

I've been thinking about trying to do an AB3 file for Star Fleet Battles.

One of the main points of the game is that it has well defined time periods (in Y-years) in which certain options, ships, and even tactics become available. While it should be easy to handle this - there is one sticking point in that when a roster is built you would have to select a certain year. However, the game covers well over 100 Y-years and having a HUGE list of roster selections for Y075, Y076, Y077, etc. would seem extremely unwieldy.

If a player were given the option of controlling this by a string input - it would certainly be more user friendly. However is this something possible - or something that could be made possible in a future iteration?

That's all.
Click to expand...
 
Unfortunately, this approach won't work for establishing a global ruleset tag (or tags). It would work for something local to a given unit, but not on a roster-wide (global) level. :-(

-Rob

At 08:02 PM 1/21/2006, you wrote:

On options, you can have the user enter a value and/or cost. Check the options section of the docs for minuservalue/maxuservalue, they might do what you need.
Click to expand...
 
This is probably how we would implement it, but it's NOT something that is currently available. :-(

-Rob

At 10:05 PM 1/21/2006, you wrote:

OK - I think I got it. Like in the selection screen for the WH files - you have "unlimited size" or "fixed size" (enter value), in regards to determining the max size of the force.

I guess I would need to have something similar with the exception that the fixed size would instead be "Y-year" (enter value). But, is this something that can be modified for author usage - or is it something fixed to the AB3 program?
Click to expand...
 
A while back you explained to me how I could get AB to restrict availablility based on tags...Would this be useable for stat values?
(Incidentally I couldn't find the thread but it was a new feature with 3.1 I think)

At the moment I'm probably going to avoid trying to improvise anything since there is about seventy five years of time in which a single year can make a difference for various ships...Though it doesn't seem to be that great a concern as the ship date is listed as a stat...Gotta make the players do some thinking ;)
 
--- deathlynx <deathlynx@yahoo.com> wrote:
> A while back you explained to me how I could get AB to restrict
> availablility based on tags...Would this be useable for stat values?
> (Incidentally I couldn't find the thread but it was a new feature with 3.1 I
> think)
>
> At the moment I'm probably going to avoid trying to improvise anything since
> there is about seventy five years of time in which a single year can make a
> difference for various ships...Though it doesn't seem to be that great a
> concern as the ship date is listed as a stat...Gotta make the players do some
> thinking ;)

Well... what about creating a "Model", say "year XXX" that has a year tag
(hidden of course). Then the validation rules make sure that all other unit's
year ranges allow for that year value.

Would that work as a work-around?

Granted, if there are 100s of year "models" that would be required, then the
answer is "no". But perhaps this will trigger another idea that will work?

or how about a single model with a set of options to set the year. Then proceed
as detailed above. That might work better.


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I'm not sure whether you mean one thing or the opposite. So I try answering both ways. :-)

Stat values are local to an individual unit. Therefore, you can't use stat values to enforce global restrictions.

If you assign the "model year" to a unit stat, then you could write a rule to compare that value against the value of the established "year range allowed" tags. This would be a simple rule with "unit" scope.

Hope this helps,
Rob

At 07:19 AM 1/23/2006, you wrote:

A while back you explained to me how I could get AB to restrict availablility based on tags...Would this be useable for stat values?
(Incidentally I couldn't find the thread but it was a new feature with 3.1 I think)

At the moment I'm probably going to avoid trying to improvise anything since there is about seventy five years of time in which a single year can make a difference for various ships...Though it doesn't seem to be that great a concern as the ship date is listed as a stat...Gotta make the players do some thinking
icon_wink.gif
Click to expand...
 
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