- PHost 4.0a released on 22/May/2003
- PHost 4.0b released on 16/Aug/2003
- PHost 4.0c released on 13/Sep/2003
- PHost 4.0d released on 23/Oct/2003
- PHost 4.0e released on 01/Jan/2004
- PHost 4.0f released on 21/Mar/2004
- PHost 4.0g released on 9/May/2004 (not public)
Hosts: replace the PHost program. Place the following
in pconfig.src to make this version behave as close as possible to
the previous one. However, we recommend not doing that,
since that turns off new rules, and this version is there to try
the new rules.
Remove the RobotsBuildFighters,
RebelsBuildFighters and
ColoniesBuildFighters parameters from pconfig.src, and
add a matching AllowBuildFighters setting
(usual default: No,No,No,No,No,No,No,No,Yes,Yes,Yes).
If you have used the default complete.src or
tim-host.src, please check the settings for
FighterSweepRate and FighterSweepRange. The
files shipped with versions up to 4.0b were bogus. The settings
should read FighterSweepRate = 0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,20
instead of just 20 - the latter allows fighter-sweep for
all players! The same goes for FighterSweepRange.
If you have mentioned the
WormholeScan phase in your
config file, be aware that this phase was moved.
Players: update the PVCR program. PVCR 4.0a should be
able to handle all PHost versions. Really :-)
- PHost now reports ship-specific hull abilities with a
util.dat record. (v4.0a)
-
Mine laying rules changed again:
every player's ships lay in Id order, but sequences are randomly
interweaved. This gets you predictability for the general case
while maintaining fairness in extreme situation. This order of
operation is called per-player Id
order, we expect to use it as a means of conflict resolution
in many more places (see below). (v3.4e/4.0a)
- Mines Destroy Mines got improved: instead of laying mines and
considering intersections with just that one field, PHost now
does a complete Mines
Destroy Mines after all mine laying. This gives us 100% Id
independance and predictability (in other words: fairness). The
main reason, however, is, that this will also consider mines
which overlap by another means: when you use add-ons which lay
mines (Starbase+, ACP) or a mine-level alliance is cancelled. To
get back the old behaviour, turn on
AlternativeMinesDestroyMines. (v3.4f/4.0b)
- Added a command line switch to set config options on the fly
(-o option=value). See
Command Line Options for details.
(v3.4g/4.0c)
-
PControl got a face-lift. You can
now execute commands before and after each stage,
settings are cumulative, and you can specify shell commands
directly in pconfig.src. (v3.4g/4.0c)
- The AllowBuildFighters config parameter replaces the
three original parameters (RobotsBuildFighters etc.).
You can now enable lfm for all
races. (v4.0e/f)
- Towed ships can now be configured to
cooperate (not break a
tow). (v4.0e)
-
remote has a new sub-command,
"give", to simplify use of remote control. (v3.4h/4.0e)
- Wormhole scanning was made simpler. The
WormholeScan phase
now happens after movement, at almost the same place as sensor
sweep. Therefore, you'll always (well, almost) see a wormhole
you've just travelled through. In addition, a new config option
WrmScanRange can be used to remove probabilities from
wormhole scanning. (v4.0e)
- You can now configure ships to burn fuel for each fight
they're taking part in (FuelUsagePerFightFor100KT).
This weakens a huge ship's position against many small ones a
bit. Likewise, you can configure ships to burn a fixed amount of
fuel each turn for staying ready
(FuelUsagePerTurnFor100KT). Idea: Eugene Goroh.
(v4.0f)
- The effect of experience training can now be scaled up or down
(EPTrainingScale); by default, you now get twice the
experience as before. (v4.0f) In addition, training now takes the
crew amount into account, so that a ship with little crew can be
trained faster than a battlestar with thousands of people aboard.
Idea: Degi. (v4.0g)
- Combat experience can now be scaled up or down according to
the damage taken by a ship, to award risky fights. Idea: Sascha
Rambeaud. (v4.0f)
- Players can now declare additional
enemies. Idea: Maurits van Rees. (v4.0g)
- Players can now transmit data about their
units to friends. Unlike VPA Data Transmissions, this
information is guaranteed to be current, and it interacts
correctly with the cheat check (i.e. a ship shown this way will
be interceptable). (v4.0h)
- The Federation now has more control over
Super Refit. The new
refit command allows to precisely specify
what components you want to build into the ship.
Idea: Maurits van Rees. (v4.0h)
- You can now unload (or jettison)
money and ammunition, or transfer it to
enemy ships, using command processor commands. In addition,
these commands allow you to overcome restrictions imposed by your
client's unload or transfer function. (v4.0h)
- When given a PlayersAllowed or RacesAllowed
without preceding Hull and Function in
hullfunc.txt, PHost would exit with an assertion
failure. This has been replaced by a proper error message.
(v3.4e/4.0a)
- Not really a bug, more sort-of a missing rule:
Dark Sense and
Super Spy now work properly even
when many players play the same race. When many players
Pillage or
RGA a planet, or many players
Rob, rules are now more fair
(per-player-id order).
(v3.4e/4.0a)
- Version 4.0 would not correctly communicate
Experience to PVCR, and PVCR would display
bogus warnings when seeing experience. (v4.0a)
- Experience score records came out
endian-swapped on Suns. Found by Stefan Glasauer. (v4.0a)
- When a ship got re-crewed, its
experience level would rise uncontrollably. Found by Daniel
Brüdigam. (v4.0a)
- PVCR 4.0 would spam the user with bogus warnings when used in
a 3.x game. (v4.0a)
- When a ship changed ownership (combat,
give, surrender,
boarding), its ship name would be sent
to the new owner even if AllowShipNames says it should
not. Found by Daniel Brüdigam. (v3.4e/4.0a)
- If the Beam up Clans mission was
used to gather more than 655 clans, PHost would remove too few
from the planet due to an overflow. It would report a bogus
amount in the message, too. Found by Bart Dopheide.
(v3.4f/4.0b)
- The FighterSweepRate and
FighterSweepRange now have correct defaults. With the
original defaults, everyone could use that ability, not just
colonies. Found by Holger Moritz. (v3.4g/4.0c)
-
Experience did not work at all on Linux in
version 4.0b. This problem was caused by an error in the
compilation. (v4.0c)
- When writing util.dat records, PHost would have
consulted the AllowMoreThan500Minefields of the
minefield owner, not of the player who's receiving the record.
(v3.4g/4.0d)
- Units did not gain experience other than by aging when a
PControl add-on is used. That is, neither
Training nor fighting gave you points.
auxhostX.ini works, though.
Found by Heiko Schlenker. You now know why the 4.0 version is
called "beta". (v4.0d)
-
util.dat Record 51 with
current minefield counts used wrong value for "unknown" entries
(65535 instead of -1). (v3.4g/4.0d)
- When AllowShipNames was off, PHost did not include
remote-control tags in the names. (v3.4g/4.0d)
- Bioscanning was broken in version 4.0c and reported all
planets as having Amorphs. Reported by Sascha Rambeaud. (v4.0d)
- Not actually a bug, but a very strange rule: with
UseAccurateFuelModel enabled, it was hard to have a ship
end a turn with exactly 0 fuel: if you have 3 kt, and your ship burns
2.2, this yields 1 kt remaining. If you remove one kt, you now have 2 kt
on the ship, which is too little for the move. The "fuel exhausted
distance" formula was modified so that such a move now works.
Encountered by Sascha Rambeaud. (v3.4h/4.0e)
- If a fuel-less refinery ship makes fresh fuel, PHost did not
allow that ship to use that fuel to defend against tow-capture or
for movement, except if an add-on was used between these stages.
Possibly, some other goofs lurked there, too. Again, found by
Sascha Rambeaud. (v3.4h/4.0e)
- If a pcontrol-add-on was used after
Movement, cloaking devices would
fail unless, after burning cloak
fuel and movement fuel, cloak fuel for another turn remains
on the ship. (v3.4h/4.0e)
- With AllowShipNames restrictions in effect, PHost
would blank some ship names in VCRs which it did not have to
blank. (v3.4h/4.0e)
- PHost now does explicit tow loop resolution, see the
description of towing for details.
Results were close-to-unpredictable before. (v3.4h/4.0e)
- Winplan-shareware users were not able to jettison stuff.
PHost now permits the Winplan-style of jettison for everyone.
(v3.4h/4.0e)
-
Intercept now does The Right
Thing[tm] for ships that broke free from a tow. It did not work
before. Found by Sascha Rambeaud. (v3.4i/4.0f)
- PHost could possibly crash when there are very many minefields
(more than 85) on a ship's waypath. (v3.4i/4.0f)
- PHost gave you a red error when you use planets.exe with certain
3rd-party maketurn programs. Encountered by Stefan Eilts.
(v3.4j/4.0g)
-
After commands in PControl
did not work if there were no Before commands for the
same section. PHost did not complain if a file referenced through
PControl did not exist. (v3.4j/4.0h)
- Long file names in a PControl
caused PHost to crash; absolute file names did not work. Found by
Elfi Heck. (v3.4j/4.0h)
- All decloaked ships now generate a
util.dat record (previously, only ships
orbiting a planet did so). The record also includes
whether the ship was caught before or after movement.
(v4.0a/3.4e).
- A mine-laying ship now sends you a
util.dat record as well as a message
even when it could not lay mines because the field was already maximal.
The message will report that 0 mines were laid. (v4.0b/v3.4f)
- When you're hit by the Tim Continuum, your planets' happiness does
not change. This way, you won't benefit from 0% tax, but you won't be
hit too hard by growth tax. After all, you don't collect taxes either.
Idea: Sascha Rambeaud (v4.0b/3.4f)
- Messaging was completely revised. Therefore, you receive a
number of new failure records (broken tow,
gather failed, cannot colonize, cloak failure (incl.
anti-cloak)). Some other messages are now also
sent to the remote-controller of a ship (beam up, lay mines,
colonize, hiss (planet and ship), rob (robber and victim), super
spy deluxe, build fighters, ground attack, mine hit, minefield
passed, cyborgs gather debris, wormhole travel, chunnel
initiated/travelled, tow-capture, hit by glory device, cargo
trimmed). This should end the confusion about "why didn't my
remote-controlled ship end up with the same amount of fuel
predicted" or similar. Some other messages are deliberately not
forwarded (exploration, for example). (v4.0d/3.4g)
- The absolute fighter bay limit was raised to 50. A 20-bay ship
with 3 ExtraFighterBays now has 23 bays in total. (v4.0d/3.4g)
- The CPEnableGive option can now take the value
Allies to allow only ship givings between allies.
(v4.0e/3.4h)
- The wormhole scan record now includes
the Id number of the corresponding Ufo as well as whether the
wormhole is bidirectional or not. Messages now start with an
(-u) tag (except for Tim-compatible English messages),
which allows clients to link the message to the wormhole.
(v4.0e/3.4h)
- PHost now clears PBx fcodes after a
normal (i.e. not clone) ship build. (v4.0e/3.4h)
-
Ramscoop now also works when you're
intercepting, to match HOST behaviour. (Akseli Mäki) (v4.0f/3.4i)
- The util.dat PAL record was modified
so that it reports PBPs used. Idea by Stefan Glasauer.
(v4.0f/3.4i)
- The documentation now makes use of the <link rel="...">
element to provide some neat navigation possibilities with
browsers that support it (try enabling "View/Show/Site Navigation
Bar" in Mozilla). (v4.0f)
- The default experience level
settings were changed to allow faster advance. (v4.0f)
- PHost now processes AssignTo=Ship
statements for all ships created by Master, so you can create
such ships more easily. (v4.0h)
- PHost now accepts spaces in numeric fcodes. That is, a friendly code of
"23 " or " 23" is accepted to mean the same thing
as "023" for chunneling and combat. (v4.0h/3.4j)
- Jorge Sánchez provided an update of the Spanish language
file. (v4.0h/3.4j)
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PHost 4.0 released on 04/Mar/2003.
First public beta release. See What's new in
PHost 4 for changes compared to PHost 3.x.
Back to top
This document is maintained by The Portable Host Project (support@phost.de).
Last updated 11 July 2004.