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CONQNEWS.DOC
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CONQNEWS.DOC
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TTThhheee CCCooonnnqqquuueeesssttt CCChhhrrrooonnniiicccllleee
08Sep85: A completely new robot strategy has been installed!
Watch out, because robots are sssmmmaaarrrttt now.
16Jun84: You can now get a list of recent users with the 'H'
command.
13Jun84: The new user stats page finally works!
11Jun84: You can now get info on a user.
09Jun84: Hacking on temperature. Weapons and engines now have a
chance of breaking when they get too hot. Tuning will
continue for a little while.
27May84: Bombing and beaming have been modified so that the
baud rate of your terminal doesn't have such a large
effect.
22Feb84: Message editing implemented. If you enter enter line
feed as the target of a message, you can send a new
message by editing the target and text from the last
message you sent (or attempted to send).
19Feb84: You can now do info on "time".
11Feb84: The driver bug that made bombing easy and ships faster
than speeding torps has been fixed. Also, it is no
longer possible for two terminals to control the same
ship. Now, when you reincarnate, you get to keep the
same ship number.
15Jan84: You can now switch teams as long as you haven't
entered any ships since the last time you resigned.
Weapons defaulting implemented; firing a weapon
without specifying a direction defaults to the last
direction you fired any weapon.
14Jan84: The tractor command has been split into two commands.
Use 't' to tractor another ship and 'u' to untractor
or attempt to break free of another ships tractor
beams. Also, when you attempt to tractor a ship, its
velocity relative to your ship must be warp 2 or less.
Shields now regenerate twice as fast (4 units per
second) when they are down.
09Jan84: Robot ships now automatically defend the home system
from attack. Ship tuning continues.
20Dec83: Massive ship tuning in progress...
10Dec83: A new fuel usage formula has been installed; now any
activity that uses fuel generates heat and adds to the
temperature of the ship. Also, a bug which caused the
autopilot to overshoot planets has been discovered and
fixed.
17Nov83: Phaser base hits have been lowered from 100 to 92.
13Nov83: New statistics are being kept (but currently, there is
no way to display them). Typing "i<cr>" will now give
info on the last thing you ask for info on.
03Nov83: A better acceleration formula has been installed.
23Oct83: Tractor beams aren't quite so deadly anymore. (This is
a major blow to Klingon battle tactics.) A new
acceleration formula that is team dependent has been
added. An orbit speed limit has been imposed so now
you cannot orbit if you are going faster than warp 2.
16Oct83: Ships now enter at least accurate info distance away
from their nearest enemy.
15Oct83: It is now possible to change war and peace settings
from the menu.
06Oct83: Shell spawning was removed. Spawn to DCL instead.
19Sep83: The first Decus distribution of CCCooonnnqqquuueeesssttt was mailed
today.
05Sep83: Torpedo detonation has been worked over so that all of
your active torpedoes go off when you die; this means
that you should always get credit for when your torps
kill the ship that killed you. Spawning to DCL was
added, use '$' followed by a line feed to spawn a
process.
01Sep83: The race dependent weapons factors have been tuned,
now Orions are 0.83, Klingons and Federations are 1.0,
and Romulans are 1.17. The course command has been
modified so that when you set course for a planet, you
get the same information as you do with the info
command. Also, when you set course for another ship,
if you terminate your command with line feed, you will
get info on the ship.
29Aug83: The Evil Display Bug took heavy damage yesterday and
finally fell this evening. Services will be held
Wednesday at the Red Hour.
24Aug83: The phaser command modified to set last phaser
direction even if your phasers are not ready yet. The
planet list is now sorted by planet name.
13Aug83: Torp alert code added. Now you will always be warned
when enemy torps get within accurate info range.
Code added to (hopefully) prevent driver thrashing
when cpu time is at a premium.
Cloaking modified to allow "silent running", i.e. you
can stay cloaked at warp zero for a long time. Also,
cloaking fuel cost depends on speed (cloaking at warp
10 is vvveeerrryyy expensive).
Towing modified; the maximum towing distance is now
larger. Also, breaking free of an unfriendly ships tow
does not always succeed and trying freezes your ship
up for a whole second.
12Aug83: Weapon tuning continues. Phasers are still quite
strong but this will be corrected in the near future.
Now distance is used to break ties when you are
searching for weak planets. This means that if you ask
for info on the weakest planet with 10 or more armies
and two planets have 10 armies each, you will be told
about the closer of the two. Also, the info command
has been modified to warn you that a planet is hostile
when you get info on it.
17Jul83: Several bugs related to the conversion to the new
ratfor fixed. Ken's version of phaser graphics added
(complaints to him). Also, there is now a user option
for phaser graphics.
04Jul83: CCCooonnnqqquuueeesssttt now runs from decnet ports!
03Jul83: Planet movement is three times smoother. Novice
players will now enjoy fantastic phaser graphics.
Firing phasers no longer locks up your ship, but you
still can't fire them more often than once a second.
Torpedos are... different. (Ken was *not* amused.) The
remote terminal bug is almost fixed.
On its one year anniversary, CCCooonnnqqquuueeesssttt now runs on two
Vaxen.
Remember, this is Be Kind to Klingons week, so don't
aim for Ken's gonads.
14Jun83: Full duplex screen updating implemented. Now you can
see your enemy attacking even when you are
constructing an insult for him. Common block updating.
Now the common block is flushed to the disk every 5
minutes. This should take care of the time warp
problem.
23May83: Captured system entry now works. The evil course 360
wandering bug has been fixed.
13May83: Even more driver hacking, now the "phase" of the
Universe is kept in the common block. This means that
five minute things will happen every five minutes of
game time, etc. You can now send mail to "The
Implementors" by sending a message to "i". Finally,
the self-destruct code was modified so that it really
takes fifteen seconds to exit, even if some cretin is
running rat4.
07May83: Tuned driver startup logic. Added a new "nearest"
thing to look for, nearest team planet, "ntp". This
was done to appease the CCCooonnnqqquuueeesssttt GGGoooddd,,, who was not
happy with the hack to "nap". Also, all of the nearest
planet special strings may now be qualified with an
army threshold. A new user option, "terse", has been
added. For the most part, turning this option shortens
the "press space for more" prompts. The manual entry
has been revised; check it out for more information.
29Apr83: A new and improved CCCooonnnqqquuueeesssttt manual entry has been
written and installed. The user rating formula has
been improved. When getting information on or setting
course for the nearest army planet, "nap", only
planets that are owned by your team and have more than
three armies are considered. Also, if you terminate an
information command with LF instead of CR, you will
get info about the second nearest object. Code was
added to automatically disable insert and delete line
display. (That's right, you can throw away your local
copy of termcap without getting seasick!) Inverse
video has been added to the pagefile routine. Finally,
the CCCooonnnqqquuueeesssttt operator program is even MMMOOORRREEE powerful
than before.
14Apr83: New command implemented. ^R now can be used to force
the screen to be updated completely. Also, a new user
option forces the screen to always be completely
updated, even during battle.
12Apr83: Many, many more bugs fixed. Many more features added.
Now LF can be used to send a message to the last ship
you sent to. Driver hacking is now complete; it is
IIIMMMPPPOOOSSSSSSIIIBBBLLLEEE for more than one driver to run at the same
time. It is not possible to run a driver manually from
a terminal. The player ships now notice that the
driver has died within 5 seconds. When a the player
who has the driver exits CCCooonnnqqquuueeesssttt,,, he causes the
driver to kill itself; the other players then bid for
running it. This means that the Game is not
interrupted just because someone logs off.
19Mar83: Many, many bugs fixed. Many features added. Cloaking
now works. Also, enhanced informational scanning
implemented.
08Dec82: Re-organized the display somewhat to enable the
terminal package to make use of clear-to-end-of-line.
04Nov82: Implemented some restrictions on playing: no playing
over dialups, by GUEST, or during prime time
(7:00-18:00 weekdays). Priority is set to 2.
28Oct82: Fixed bug in bombarding.
25Oct82: Added n, ne, ns, np, nep, nr, nf, and na.
24Oct82: Added a number of new features, the biggest of which
is orbiting planets. Also I juggled some of the
parameters in an attempt to make the teams more equal.
18Oct82: Added a "shit-list" flag, to prevent obnoxious people
from playing. Added a real neat feature which finally
lets broadcast messages from the outside world get
through. Made the game run at a lower priority.
13Oct82: Changed the "p" command to not enter a mode. Now it
just fires a single torp and goes back to command
mode.
06Oct82: Fixed a bug, added a feature. Recompiled with the
re-written raw I/O library - should go faster now.
22Sep82: Added a "last words" feature - when you conquer, you
get to leave a message for everyone to see.
20Sep82: Minor tuning mods. Also the doomsday machine is now
both less common and more sadistic.
13Sep82: After three weeks of downtime, I finally found the
major bug in the slow-turning code. As usual, a
strongly-typed language would have caught it right
away. I believe there are still some minor problems
with slow turning - let me know if you notice
anything.
23Aug82: Turning now takes time, and it takes more time the
faster you are going. Slow down to turn.
20Aug82: Ken the Kunning Klingon discovered an embarrassing bug
- I had a test reversed in the routine takeplanet so
that every time you conquered a planet you also
conquered the Universe.
18Aug82: Fixed annoyingly persistent bug which prevented
planets from being taken.
08Aug82: Couping should work now. Watch out for the doomsday
machine.
29jul82: I did some rewriting to try and get the driver to
restart automatically when it dies. It doesn't quite
work yet, so beware...
27Jul82: Arrow keys work. Locking onto planets works.
25Jul82: The universe was conquered for the first time tonight,
by the Orions. It almost worked perfectly. At the last
instant, the common block got locked up. Also, the
Orion team didn't get credit for the win. Both bugs
should be fixed now, so I am looking forward to the
next conquest.
24Jul82: Engine temperature and fuel consumption are now pretty
much working. I still have to do some fiddling with
the constants to get things exactly right.
18Jul82: Fixed a bug which prevented anyone but Romulans from
killing people. On second thought, maybe I should have
left it in...
16Jul82: More commands added, including info. Also,
self-destruct now works even if the driver is dead.
This should make Mister Xavier happy.
12Jul82: You can now change course and fire torpedoes.
Commander Saavik immediately took advantage of this by
traveling to Earth and destroying hoardes of
feddie-bears.
03Jul82: The display works pretty well now. More commands work.
The first interplanetary voyage took place today:
Commander Saavik piloted the Romulan flagship to
Sirius. The ship was incinerated upon arrival. Saavik
then journeyed to the edge of the galaxy, where she
was one again incinerated. Score: galaxy 2, Saavik 0.
02Jul82: The display started working today. Some commands work.
28Jun82: Ships are flying now. However, the display generation
and command interpretation still needs to be done, so
it is not much use.
27Jun82: The news option was installed today. Ships should be
flying pretty soon. The driver is working, I just have
to add the code to launch a ship.
Questions, comments, bug reports, suggestions, advice, insults to LERES.