Re: PBeM, illegal orders

On Mon, 10 Apr 2000 15:48:53 -0400 (EDT), Roger Books
<books@mail.state.fl.us>
wrote:

>What do you do when someone issues illegal orders in a PBeM?
>I'm thinking about setting stuff up to chop the orders to
>what the ship is capable of and going on, sound reasonable?

When I ran a PBEM game 2.5 years ago (or was it 3.5? Geez!) I allowed
the
admiral to give default orders that took over if no orders, or illegal
orders,
were given. This caused some problems as some players felt left out of
the
game when the admiral submitted the group's orders on his own.

You can handle it in two ways: 1) do the illegal orders as much as
possible;
2) ignore the illegal orders and do the default (usually straight ahead,
no
change in speed). 

Either way will work, and comes with it's own set of
advantages/disadvantages,
but your method is probably the most reasonable. The problem will be if
a
thrust change is illegal along with an illegal turn. What do you do?
Give the
most thrust first, then turn, or turn first then change velocity due to
thrust? Be consistent and post how you will do it ahead of time, and you
should be fine.

Allan Goodall		       agoodall@interlog.com
Goodall's Grotto: http://www.interlog.com/~agoodall/

"Surprisingly, when you throw two naked women with sex
toys into a living room full of drunken men, things 
always go bad." - Kyle Baker, "You Are Here"