OFFICIAL: University Treaty

[Jamski]

Its not a programming bug.

The probe action takes place in the prober's turn, not the probee's, so only the prober has the choice.

Well, maybe its an oversight

-Jam

[Googlie]

Yeah - I never really understood that one.

If your probe action was successful, then I don't think any notice should be given to the aggrieved party (either in PBEMs or single player games). You got in, stole, and got out

If you were unsuccesful, then you got caught, and the aggrieved party then has the option of a response, all the way from "oh, it's you - that's OK then" to "This means WAR"

If you frame someone else then it means your probe team left some evidence pointing towards a third party, thus giving the probee the same choice of options but this time directed against the third party

But in single player games (or PBEMs when probing the AI and framing another AI) you get both the probee and the framee declaring vendetta - how the heck did the framee know it was you if your action was successful?

I'm not a programmer, but it seems to me that it's not that hard a task to do it right.

And even in PBEM,s if the singleplayer format were followed, the probee would just get a message next turn saying "so and so has just stolen tech/ec's/your daughters (or whatever) - what do you want to do"

But I think that Chris Pine or someone acknowledged that this was a bug (or a misporgrammed item, I think he called it) and IIRC it was he who suggested the now-used PBEM rule in one of the early OWO forums

G.

[Jamski]

Its things like that which make me wish I was competent enough to code a new patch for SMAC...

-Jam

[Nubclear]

Or that Firaxis was completly dedicated to all their products.

Oh how far the giants have fallen

[Vander]

SMAC/X 2? That'd be fun. Not a new story, more just a new GUI, maybe units and systems.