Re: [glob2-devel] Gradients (again)

[Andrew Sayers]

On Fri, Sep 16, 2005 at 04:41:22PM +0200, Leo Wandersleb wrote:
> andrew wrote:
> > ... I don't like the idea of leaving globs in buildings
> > constantly, because it would be confusing: it would be hard to tell
> > whether your buildings were being used for training or just storage, and
> 
> what could be solved with an extra indicator.

Logically that's fine, but in practice I suspect players would be more
likely to react to seeing their idle globs.  This isn't a problem that
can be argued out though - we'd need to see it implemented before we
knew.
<snip - more about whether this is a good idea or not>

> > I do like the idea of idle globs consuming food at a low rate.  I've
> > mentioned on IRC that it would have to be a significant fraction of the
> > normal rate of consumption (say about half),
> 
> half of the lowest consumption of basic globs or also increased by
> speed-updates?
> 

Again, this is an evidenciary question - the best answer is whichever
strikes the best balance between wasting globs' time and creating a
false impression.

> > Actually, allowing globs to idle in buildings also encourages the player
> > to build up huge armies, because they don't sit about taking up space.
> > 
> > With all that said, I can see a benefit in having a few warriors sitting
> > in each of your guard towers.  How about globs stand idle when they
> > have nothing to do, and guard towers can contain up to 4 warriors?
> 
> standing idle brings us the problem of proper pathmanagement. (2 bit trail
> gradient that's locally lowered by occupied globs each time they step on a
> tile and globally rised every once in a while. idles follow the
> trail-gradient and sit down on peaks.)

That's an important point, but assumes that towns are often full of idle
globs.  Once the inn bug has been fixed and idle workers can be set to
explore, this may not be the case any more.  I'd say that the problem of
idling can't be sensibly addressed until then.

        - Andrew