Convoy From Europa

[RicardoRix]

If you choose the tile placement first, the game engine then determines all legal locations, which may or may not include the South Pole. The move is still undo-able at this point since you haven't drawn any cards yet.

You use the word 'if' here at the start. Think about it, that's not how it works. You need a system that allows you to take a combination of effects in any order, that is the rules. BGA provide board game adaptions.

The deadlock that can arise is already covered on page1 of this thread.
This is a sequence of events not covered by the rules.

[xspuipuke]

I still don't see why you can't allow the player to choose the sequence of moves even if card draw is involved.

In the example of Nuclear Zone on the South Pole on Hellas, you would first need to determine whether playing Nuclear Zone is a legal move or not. That is already correctly implemented.

Once you choose to play it, you would get the choice of either drawing the card first or placing the tile first.

If you choose the tile placement first, the game engine then determines all legal locations, which may or may not include the South Pole. The move is still undo-able at this point since you haven't drawn any cards yet.

If you choose to draw a card before placing the tile, the move is no longer undo-able. But you can still use the information from the card you drew to determine where to place the tile. The list of legal locations would still be the same.

This would open up for players to make irreversible mistakes, as is the case with all card-drawing moves. But there is no reason it should result in a deadlock.

Nuclear Zone is not the only card that exists in the game.

Sure, you can make one card work. You could make another one work too. You cannot make any arbitrary card work that way. At some point your code becomes unreadable even for yourself. So the only way to do it robustly, maintainable in the future, is to allow the execution of an arbitrary set of effects that the user can choose in any order.

And this is the crux: Mathematically, it is impossible to ensure that such a sequence doesn't fail, especially with effects that might be added to the list along the way, with tile placements, triggers, etc.

Yeah, you might make the code so that Nuclear Zone never fails. And then you're stuck with the next card that does. Or a future card that we haven't even seen yet. THIS is the exact problem.

If like base + prelude (and maybe + colonies) was all there ever was going to be implemented on BGA, guaranteed, never to be changed for sure, you could program it in a way that stays true to the rules regarding card draw, as every single potential interaction between cards could be foreseen and I don't think in this set of expansions there is even one combo that would fail. But we don't have that. The code must be able to work with anything that will be added to the game at a later point. And, again, it is mathematically impossible to do that.

[Lytical]

It is mathematically impossible to compute whether or not an arbitrary chain of events will fail. Unless you code every single card combo separately (which is also impossible due to the number of possible effects in the game), you won‘t be able to reliably predict the outcome.

When you add in Point Luna card draw confirmation, does it fail? Can you try it? Make it a hard confirmation.

Point Luna already has a confirmation button for their card draw. Whether or not there is a button for the card draw does nothing towards solving the basic issue.

NO it doesn't, it's the general card draw confirmation which could be turned off. You have to make it a hard confirmation that couldn't be turned off like Mars University. Ironically, Mars University should be able to be turned off, since it's just annoying and slow down the game if the player decides that he doesn't need it. Try it, just give it a try and see if it fails. It will solve the problem.

[xspuipuke]

I advise you post a suggestion bug report, although I doubt the dev will make an exception for Point Luna card draw. And no, this will not change nor fix anything.

[jaymc1130]

Place a tile on the Hellas southpole with too little cash on hand, placing the ocean on the card (and draw it) rather than some place else so you get enough money back to pay the 6 MC cost, and you've got yourself a deadlock.

Placing the ocean somewhere where you gain insufficient rebates to pay for the ocean should not be allowed, in this case. I don’t see how this is relevant for Convoy though, which you have to pay for upfront. What is the deadlock scenario?

The deadlock is drawing the card from the card ocean, then not being able to pay the 6 mc, and the game would freeze. Ridiculous, you're absolutely right you shouldn't be able to place the ocean on a tile that doesn't generate the required rebate in mc to pay for the mc cost so this shouldn't happen to begin with...

[FrankJones]

I don't think I was being aggressive, just curt.
xspuipuke reply is more susinctly put.
The coding is simple statements, but when you have to do it yourself a whole load of reasons suddenly pop into view. If you dig into technical rather than personal reasons I'm sure it gets even more distant why just parsing english statements into code is not as simple as it sounds. Just because I can put a plaster on doesn't make me a doctor.

Okay, fair enough. I still don't understand what corner you think I painted myself into.

If terraforming Mars players cannot write a set of plain-language instructions to solve this problem, then it certainly cannot be coded. That was the point I was making. Purely from a logical standpoint, we cannot write a set of plain language instructions that would always follow the rules and never cause a card to be exposed during an action that needs to be canceled.

Also, I think you misunderstood me in the first place. I never said a person without programming knowledge could write code by using simple statements. I said that such a person could write the instructions in plain language and then hand them to a coder to have the coder write the actual code.

I stand by that statement.

[xspuipuke]

The deadlock is drawing the card from the card ocean, then not being able to pay the 6 mc, and the game would freeze. Ridiculous, you're absolutely right you shouldn't be able to place the ocean on a tile that doesn't generate the required rebate in mc to pay for the mc cost so this shouldn't happen to begin with...

You cannot have it all. Either you force players to only place on the South Pole if they have 6 MC already or you force them to draw last. Both rules at the same time won‘t work.

For this kind of thing to work, the programming would need to have a way to foretell if any set of instructions will result in a legal state for some order of execution, including any followup effects that happen along the way and will be added to the list later. And I hate to repeat myself but this is proven to be impossible to do in general. It might be feasible for a limited set of possible operations (although I can‘t be sure of that either—I haven‘t studied the Boolean satisfiability problem so I don‘t know its exact extent). The halting problem is proven to be unsolvable though and you just can‘t argue with math. (Or you can but then I‘m out because it‘s a waste of time. )

[FrankJones]

There are other convoluted sequences too. It's not just Point Luna with Nuclear zone.

Thsarsis + spin-off + an expensive city card. Maybe Tharsis player miscalculates and expects to get 6 MC worth of rebates, but, oops, was off by 1 MC, and now has drawn a card from spinoff but only has 5 MC instead of 6.

[Corvus Mortis]

There are other convoluted sequences too. It's not just Point Luna with Nuclear zone.

Thsarsis + spin-off + an expensive city card. Maybe Tharsis player miscalculates and expects to get 6 MC worth of rebates, but, oops, was off by 1 MC, and now has drawn a card from spinoff but only has 5 MC instead of 6.

There are other convoluted sequences too. It's not just Point Luna with Nuclear zone.

Thsarsis + spin-off + an expensive city card. Maybe Tharsis player miscalculates and expects to get 6 MC worth of rebates, but, oops, was off by 1 MC, and now has drawn a card from spinoff but only has 5 MC instead of 6.

But these are all the same logic, and I don’t understand how it can’t be worked through:

1) Can you pay for the card? If no, not playable. If yes, then:

2) Are there legal spots you can play the tile? If no, not playable. If yes, then:

3) Is the -6 cost ocean a legal placement for the tile? If no, then all other effects can be safely resolved in any order. If yes, then:

4) Can the ocean be placed anywhere that results in the player having at least 6 MC left? If no, the -6 ocean spot is not a legal placement, revert back to #2 to confirm there are other legal placements. If yes, then:

5) The oceans can only be placed on hexes where the player will have 6 MC leftover. The effects of the card can be resolved in any order at this point.

[Yahyra]

There are other convoluted sequences too. It's not just Point Luna with Nuclear zone.

Thsarsis + spin-off + an expensive city card. Maybe Tharsis player miscalculates and expects to get 6 MC worth of rebates, but, oops, was off by 1 MC, and now has drawn a card from spinoff but only has 5 MC instead of 6.

There are other convoluted sequences too. It's not just Point Luna with Nuclear zone.

Thsarsis + spin-off + an expensive city card. Maybe Tharsis player miscalculates and expects to get 6 MC worth of rebates, but, oops, was off by 1 MC, and now has drawn a card from spinoff but only has 5 MC instead of 6.

But these are all the same logic, and I don’t understand how it can’t be worked through:

1) Can you pay for the card? If no, not playable. If yes, then:

2) Are there legal spots you can play the tile? If no, not playable. If yes, then:

3) Is the -6 cost ocean a legal placement for the tile? If no, then all other effects can be safely resolved in any order. If yes, then:

4) Can the ocean be placed anywhere that results in the player having at least 6 MC left? If no, the -6 ocean spot is not a legal placement, revert back to #2 to confirm there are other legal placements. If yes, then:

5) The oceans can only be placed on hexes where the player will have 6 MC leftover. The effects of the card can be resolved in any order at this point.

My expertise / degree is not centered on computer science... but my understanding is; the statements you have here written can indeed be implemented into (object oriented or 'hard' coded or etc.) code. How much effort is required to correctly, functionally compose this code and then, also, integrate this function, routines, etc. into the the existing framework and global implementation of this game on BGA... is another matter.

I know many of you, including this poster, have some awesome websites and thus, presumably, have excellent coding skills. It isn't personally feasible for me to work without salary so I do not donate my time* or effort here on BGA to develop these games. (* = well I guess I am, err, donating my time posting on this forum discussing the implementation of the game on here on BGA but you know... 'that's neither here nor there').

To those who donate their time on this (Asmodee? owned) profit generating platform, thanks again. I enjoy playing on here.

To those who think the implementation can (and perhaps could be easily) improved, I believe BGA is accepting self nominations to jump on the development team.