Ghost in the Cell - Wrong number of factory disabled turns

Feedback & Bugs
#1

In the game description of GitC, it says:

Following a bomb explosion, the factory won’t be able to produce any new cyborgs during 5 turns.

I was looking at the updateGame() method of the game’s Referee, and I am quite sure that factories are only disabled for 4 turns instead. That happens because the factory.disabled is first decreased by 1, and after that checked for equality with 0. That means that the factory will not be able to produce only during turns that start with a disability of 5, 4, 3, or 2.

There are thousands of bots that would be affected by a change in implementation now, but perhaps you could update the game description so it matches reality, to avoid confusion for new multiplayer competitors.

Keep up the great work!

#2

I was a bit confused by this as well, and I’m not sure how best it should be worded but bombs do kill 5 turns of production because it stops 4 turns of production and on the turn it hits the factory it kills the units that were just produced and never had a chance to be used.

#3

Take a factory with 10 cyborgs, 3 production, 13 enemy troops and a bomb incoming on current turn.
The factory will stay with the owner with disabled production for the next 4 turns and produced units playing a critical role this turn.

The issue is that first disabled counter is decremented, then new units are produced, whereas by spec these actions should’ve been in reverse.

#4

It’s true there are counter examples, my point was for the more common cases. If this change is made bombs are going to, more often than not, deny 6 turns of production. I’m just not sure if that change should be made. I’m ok with either.

#5

The situation that inoryy describes is one where the freshly produced units are extremely useful.

Take a factory with 10 cyborgs, 3 production, 13 enemy troops and a bomb incoming on current turn.

The freshly produced units are actually always useful, at least by acting as an “absorbing shield” for the damage.
Given a factory with 40 cyborgs, if the factory was truly disabled by the bomb in the turn it hits, it would end up with 20 cyborgs right after impact. However, if 3 units get produced meantime, you end up with 22 cyborgs (saved 2 cyborgs). Also if you have a production of 1 or 2, you end up with 21 cyborgs (saved 1 cyborg). Somehow the newborn units are used to their half potential. In no case are all new-units completely wiped out by the bomb.

You could say that a bomb in general disables the factory for 4, 4.5 or 4.33 turns, respectively for productions of 1, 2, 3.

#6

Well not always. In my experience of the game bombs almost always hit factories with less than 10 units.

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