No, I don't mean with the Bush Administration; save that for the Banter and Brawl. I think I've hit upon a bug with the gövt resource.

I was testing out certain weapon / outfit behaviors on A.I. ships... Or, I was trying to, at any rate.

I had, using missions, set two groups of ships in an empty, non-aligned system. For my own reasons, I wanted them to shoot at each other, so I set each to a different test gövt, and set those two governments to consider the other an enemy. At first, I set in each one's "Enemy" field only the idx of the other, leaving all other fields blank, and "Max Odds" at 3000%. This should be enough to get them at each others throats, right?

Wrong.

When that didn't work, I set each one's enemy field with the Rid of the other government. That didn't work either. I then started setting the fields to a variety of numbers, none of which worked.

I then started to look at how the gövt's are set up in Nova, and I noticed something. Many of the more important ones have themselves listed in their own "Class" fields.

So, I set each of my two gövt's to point to their own idx's in their "class" field, and the other one's idx in their "enemy" field.
e.g. Gövt A: Class A, Enemy B. Gövt B: Class B, Enemy A.

Lo and behold, they started shooting each other.

On a hunch I set new, absurd numbers in the respective fields.
-These are the actual numbers I used.-
e.g. Gövt A: Class 1776, Enemy 1945. Gövt B: Class 1945, Enemy 1776.

This also resulted in the two shooting at each other.

To simplify (Some of you may recognize this):
If John says "I like Cajun," and Cajun says "Cajun? Who's that?" then absolutely nothing happens between the two.

Cajun has to say "I am Cajun" before John can like / dislike him.

The Class/Ally/Enemy fields aren't related to the resource numbers. They're like NCB's, taking on whatever value they are assigned.

Does anyone else already know this, or am I just slow?

No no, please, save that for Just Chat, keep the B&B enjoyable.

from the Nova Bible said:

Class1-Class4
Allows you to assign this govt to up to four different "classes", which are simply arbitrary groupings of govts that you can use to flexibly assign allies and enemies. Two govts of the same class are not inherently allied unless one of them has that same class number set in one of its Ally fields. Set unused class fields to -1.

Ally1-Ally4
The number of up to four classes that this govt will be allied with. Set to -1 if unused.

Enemy1-Enemy4
The number of up to four classes that this govt will be enemies with. Set to -1 if unused.

Makes sense to me that if ally and enemy fields point to class values, you have to assign class values to the governments in question...

In your terms, John can't say "I like Cajun" - rather John can only say "I like Team Blue" and Cajun has to be assigned to Team Blue.

Yeah, Govts and Classes are a real pain. So much so that I was "forced" to make a guide that lists them all, which can be found in the addons page if you're interested.

I don't think it's a bug, Eugene- you just have to understand how governments work- and believe me, once you get used to it, you can do some really slick things with the government system.

First, the government's class fields do nothing in and of themselves! Also, you never use the idx or resource ID when setting allies/enemies- only class numbers, which you set yourself, obviously.

Now, getting to the meat- once you've assigned classes, even if two governments share the same class, it means nothing. That's when you start assigning enemies and allies. Now, take governments A, B, and C.
Gov. A Classes: 0, 1
Gov. B Classes: 1, 2
Gov. C Classes: 0, 2, 3

At this point, nobody cares particularly about anybody else. Now assign class 1 as an enemy in Gov. A. Those two now hate eachother, and C couldn't care less. Now assign class 1 as an enemy for gov. C. Now, everybody hates everybody, because hate is reciprocal. Change that to class 2. Now, A and B hate eachother, C and B hate eachother, but A and C are still neutral. All the while, the class 3 assigned to C has had no effect whatsoever.

Anyway, I forget where I was going with this. But I think you have it all figured out. Government classes are indeed very free form, much like NCBs.

Eugene Chin, on Oct 17 2004, 02:10 AM, said:

-snipView Post

You're slow. But that's not your fault. It's one of the things that make starting out in plugmaking with Nova substantially harder than with EVC or EVO, thus the reason I'm making starting guides. Don't hold your breath for the gövt annotated template, though: I'm currently taking a break.

ZP: 'bout time, I'd say

And, yes, Eugene, I have to say you're a little slow (no offence meant ;))
=> or is it only recently you started to open data files?

This post has been edited by Pace (haldora) : 18 October 2004 - 08:08 AM

Weepul 884, on Oct 16 2004, 08:37 PM, said:

In your terms, John can't say "I like Cajun" - rather John can only say "I like Team Blue" and Cajun has to be assigned to Team Blue.
View Post

I think this is the single best analogy for how this works.

I'm not sure how this works in translating the government compvalues and 'coolness', but I'd think that if something modifies Blue's government rating, it will affect Green's in the same way, and Red's in the opposite. If something modifies team Green, nothing else will change. Can anyone vouch for this?

John, Team Blue, Ally Blue, Enemy Red
Cajun, Team Red, Ally Red, Enemy Blue
Hector, Team Green, Ally Blue

~ SpacePirate

SpacePirate, on Oct 18 2004, 03:09 PM, said:

I think this is the single best analogy for how this works.

I'm not sure how this works in translating the government compvalues and 'coolness', but I'd think that if something modifies Blue's government rating, it will affect Green's in the same way, and Red's in the opposite. If something modifies team Green, nothing else will change. Can anyone vouch for this?

John, Team Blue, Ally Blue, Enemy Red
Cajun, Team Red, Ally Red, Enemy Blue
Hector, Team Green, Ally Blue

~ SpacePirate
View Post

Hmm, i thought alliance was reciporocal. So modifying team green will go in the same direction for team blue, but wont change anything with team red. I think your example would work exactly the same were there nothing set for cajuns ally/enemy field.