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Exciting news! I've finely brought this project to a testable and reviewable state. A big change since my last posts is that I've managed to make the performance impact minimal. The inertia system pay for itself and is kinda having 0 cost including the collision detection logic and other logic related to it. Having a lot of units that have the "charge" effect fighting is also demonstrated to be reasonable on performance with only a few percent increase in simulation cost for a given battle. This project have a lot of implications, and anyone willing to be testing the PR and giving feedback would help tremendously to make it move forward. If you are able to, please do. PR link

Sounds like the gui/session/session.xml file is out-of-date. Are sure you have nothing modified and no mods loaded?

Good to know! And a big thanks to @Vantha

@Vantha

Just opened 0ad, and got this. I got it even without mods. 0ad would start -> I would go to matches -> new game -> then start, and it would start, and then it would quit

True. But not everyone can contribute the same way. Making tools more accessible could bring in more creators.

I get it. But I still think there's untapped potential for solo content. And I have huge respect for what the devs have built. That's why I'm here.

With a Pull Request you ask that your code be merged into the source code.

Not really, right now in the game, when you abort ship or engine training, you get the whole refund. This might be unrealistic, but maybe it would be too punishing and different from other RTS to do otherwise. I didn't think of the second point, and although it makes sense, you can't get a refund from engines that cannot be garrisoned, and you are using a different rule than with ships. That's why I thought for them to go back to the Arsenal. Sure, but that's what salvaging would be. Right now the game only destroys. That's why you return the ship to the Dock to get resources back, it's not the same as scuttling. It's not so much about an actual exploit, but a gap in the logical working of things. If at 70% built I realise I want to destroy the building without benefiting from it, waiting for completion would give back more resources, making this refund scheme unnecessarily irrational, while ignoring calls for it "not to be too simple and rewarding". This is exactly my latest Salvage proposal: "do what you want to do, but require unit(s) to do it ("salvager(s)")". If you just garrison it you don't even need animations, which could be just construction in reverse. If the refund will be the corresponding loot or a "fraction of the materials used" (maybe the first is calculated as the second?) it's just a choice that can be discussed (it's all the same for me, as long as the rule is simple, but in reality salvaging is of course more rewarding than loot). But, on top of that, I didn't want to remove the Self-Destruct option because some people will surely want to delete things ultra fast without any salvaging. That's why I now proposed for it to work like always, but in a queue (you imagine the arsonists, they were supposed to do things ultra fast and as an excuse to solve the collapse issue anyway). Other things to consider regarding the destruction queue: when queued at the same time, elements should be ordered from lower to higher HP. Whatever addition to the queue comes at the end of it. If 50% of the ownership is lost (I think this is the limit to destroy them in the first place right now), elements have to be unqueued (limiting a player's ability to destroy a lot of buildings just before losing ownership, which is what the AI always unsightly does). While units, if considered, should have their own queue (running in parallel), a single queue icon (skull) should appear on the right, showing the remaining time of the whole process (that is, the longest time considering both building and unit destruction queues), which can be aborted by right-clicking on it (already destroyed/dead elements remain so of course, while whatever was being processed at that very moment ends damaged/injured). Unqueuing individual elements should also be possible, maybe by pressing some icon indicating that they are in the destruction queue. The HP drain could be around 1000 or 500/s.

Hello my friend, how are you? Sorry for my ignorance, but what exactly is a PR?

Sorry, did not see your message before responding to your previous one. The discussion is less about the refund as such but more abpout shouldbalow the user to simply deletey a building (as well as a unit). For buildings, this goes back to the proposal to extend the destruction process a bit. In fact, what if we need at least one unit commanded to "work" on the building to destroy it, providing a similar benefit as when you destroy your enemy's buildings? This could be exactly the same process as attacking an enemy building (only with a differnt animation possibly). Instead of having a building-cenbtered command "delete" we would need a command to units "destroy my builidng", similar to "build that builidng". This could elegantly take care of my previous question "what if an enemy attacks your building while you were destructing it yourself". The mechanism to arbitrate resources in case of concurrent destruction by two parties attacking the same building is part of the game already (I think/I hope, at least this exists for conquering, never checked for destruction of an enemy builidng together with an ally).

This is one of the many compromises to gameplay we have to make, I guess. Hmm. You are right. So no refund after destruction at all because the same principle applies to buildings, ships, siege engines? To provide a refund, - ships need to go back to the dock (done) - siege engines need to be manned (at least one unit) prior to destruction I believe we agree already on these two. There is no refund for buildings when they are at 100% (finished), ever. From the real world, I believe that old buildings (ruins) were often used as a quarry/resource for erecting new ones, hence I question the rule 100% built- 0% refund. The rule in game (0% built/100% back up to 100% built/0% back) certainly applies to the resources you had originally put aside to construct that building. After it has been built (100%) you spent 100% of resources, so destroying currently means losing all of it. Could refunding be exploited? Not really: You get a higher fraction back if deleting after finalizing it, but you had to invest the 100% before. The only cheat here is, that you benefited form the building's function (e.g. research a new technology) while it was working and still get a refund after its destruction.

Since now I see your mod applies to "finished" buildings, I guess you are not considering that. Independently of Salvage working with "salvager(s)" to avoid the issues mentioned, got a better idea to deal with Self-Destruct: make a destruction queue, each structure getting sequentially destroyed by quickly draining their HP (giving a little time to each element for the queue to work). This solves the unsightly collapse issue, only gets noticeable the more buildings at a time one wants to destroy, doesn't involve other units ("arsonists"), adds absolutely no micro, and opens the possibility of eventually aborting the process before it starts or while it's under way (in that last case, one ending with a damaged structure because of the HP drain). Doing the same for units is a possibility, for them to die in fast succession instead of all at the exact same time, which, like the collapse issue, is quite goofy.

But automatically deleting the building for usable resources is exactly that, plus being automatic, plus getting resources back, plus the animation makes less sense. The only purpose of the "arsonist" (which was never intended to be a new unit, but a role present units take) is to avoid the simultaneous collapse of everything. Besides, you are defeating the purpose of how the game works. As mentioned: when you delete a building, "the amount of resources you get back depends on how much has been actually built. That is, if 35% of the structure has been built, one gets 65% of resources back, and so on". This implies "100% built means 0% of resources back". The present behaviour "makes perfect sense if one thinks of it as the resources having been set apart beforehand for construction, the resources already used being lost". If you want to press just delete and get resources back, you'd need to change how the whole thing already works, otherwise it makes no sense (if you get back, say, 30% with your method, if a structure is already 70% built and you want to destroy it, it'd be more rewarding to wait until it's completely built and then destroy it ). EDIT: Unless you are already considering all this, and what you get back is the unbuilt fraction and a fraction of the fraction already built, which would be the general rule (at present the fraction of the fraction already built is 0%, and you want to give it a value). There's another possibility in between all of this: do what you want to do, but require unit(s) to do it ("salvager(s)"), the action is just Salvage, could be quite fast (unrealistic since it should be like unbuilding it, but whatever), and not only avoids the collapse issue, but ends not being in contradiction with present implementations or "too simple and rewarding". One assumes they got out just before destruction I guess, but sieges are completely weird in the game anyway (which I think needs fixing).

@wowgetoffyourcellphoneTHIS IS PHANTASTIC! It is inspiring and providing an athmosphere well aligned with the situation. Could you try and regenerate some of the game's title screen art with such images?

OK, that is exactly what the mod already does (only the animation remains "delete" and does not show selling the ship) Side note: The mod does not provide store-specific credit (which I believe is ok), i.e. when returning a ship, you are getting back a fraction of resources for general purpose. Store credit would mean you get a reduction for your next ship. The remaining question is if a building needs to be garissoned with at least unit in order to allow deletion (mimicking arson). I still have doubts on that concept: burning down your building does definitely not give back much useable resources. Requiring a person to be in placed inside the building to be destroyed appears counter-intuitive to me (this is already strange with a manned tower or siege engine: the crew survives destruction, other than for a ship where they sink together).

The Romans landed at Carthage.

Please make a PR for the base game. lol You're in luck too! The next Release will fix rain particle orientations.

Spoiler Alerts! lol

Aristides the Just in my current writing project. (Ostracized^) (Storming Psyttaleia before Salamis) (Ready to march the army to Plataea)

I had not heard of the Celts using this term; i assumed it was something from the Greco-Roman sphere only. According to wiktionary Rammaz means strong (only coming to mean ram in proto-west germanic); now Bukaz does mean buck already so it is kind of plausible. Maybe something like Hand ram: Bagmawaldōz (beam wielders),Gataslahanōz (gate smashers) Covered ram: Rammabukkaz That could work. Or something with those verbs? https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic/wihslōną https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic/saljaną Also the axeman champion is called Slōgijanōz, maybe could be renamed to Slōgijanaz (my understanding is -az is singular and -ōz is plural).

Fantastic image!

Salvage then, as has been just discussed: returning something (a ship) to a store (the Dock) and getting store credit (salvageable fraction).

Maybe you guys already decided on something, but what if you could like convert a ship. It is like selling or returning something to a store and getting store credit. You sell you ship back, and some of the wood can be used for another one

No new actors are needed for anything, it's just the present units doing or getting stuff done when garrisoned (unseen). Simplest would be that it can only be attacked (but the process should be fast enough for this to have no relevant use case). It shouldn't be capturable or salvageable, unless there's a method to stop its ongoing destruction (implying complicating things).