Bug or WAD: Cannot capture slaves while sieging...

[Ballbarian]

Nation:
Mictlan (EA)

Situation:
Deep in enemy territory, my army has suffered huge losses of slave chaff and the plan was to take an enemy province containing a fortress and make a stand. I figured that I would have half of the commanders maintain the siege and the Tribal Kings (730) would capture slaves to reinforce the ranks for catching arrows. To my surprise, when you select "capture slaves", the commanders orders revert back to siege immediately.

Confusion:
Seems strange that I can perform a blood hunt, summon allies, or reanimate undead while a portion of the army maintains the siege, but I can't capture slaves...

[Dedas]

Maybe the population is hiding in the fortress? Only kidding of course.

[Gandalf Parker]

It might not be either one. It might be nitpicky but programmers can get touchy about bugs. A bug is code that doesnt work. They dont tend to include things that they hadnt considered so they consider the code to be working fine and the "bug" as a logical suggestion for a change in the game.

If it doesnt tick you off, this sounds kindof like that. I never considered it before but you make an excellent point. It could be an awfully sweet benefit to Mictlan but I havent heard too many say that Mictlan has too much going for it now.

[thejeff]

Well, I test software for a living at the moment and we certainly count things the programmers hadn't considered as bugs. Of course, our bugs can lead to things like planes falling out of the sky, so we don't really care if the programmers get touchy.

It's also very difficult, without looking at the code, to know whether it's code that doesn't work, or something not considered. A good programmer can make guesses based on behavior and how the code is likely to be structured, but if you're not familiar with coding...

So this doesn't really seem like a useful distinction when reporting problems.

In this particular case, since the order can be selected, but immediately reverts I'd suspect it was a bug, even in the more restrictive usage.

[Gandalf Parker]

Well Ive managed programmers for a living and had to learn that calling something a bug could lead to not getting the "bug" fixed. We got careful about using "suggested change" if it wasnt broken code.

Gandalf Parker
--
The administration of programmers has been compared to herding cats.
Basically you shoo them all in a particular direction by standing behind
them, waving your hands and making loud noises. Eventually one of them
might get there.

[MaxWilson]

thejeff said:
Well, I test software for a living at the moment and we certainly count things the programmers hadn't considered as bugs. Of course, our bugs can lead to things like planes falling out of the sky, so we don't really care if the programmers get touchy.

But the distinction Gandalf pointed out is at least as much about requirements that didn't get included as it is about scenarios that got overlooked. Is the fact that MS-DOS only had 640K of memory available a "bug"? It seems a strange use of terminology considering the origin of the term: contamination in your vacuum tubes that makes your program malfunction. If the rules for Dominions are illogical or unbalanced in a given situation, that's Kristoffer's problem and potentially a design flaw in the game. If the program doesn't work the way the game is designed to work, then it's a bug in the program and Johan's problem. To me, the distinction sounds useful.

I agree that the can't-recruit-slaves situation sounds like a UI bug, given that the option is visible but not selectable.

-Max

[Gandalf Parker]

MaxWilson said:
I agree that the can't-recruit-slaves situation sounds like a UI bug, given that the option is visible but not selectable.

-Max

Good point. Well its been brought to Johans attention.
Its a good catch whatever it is

[Sombre]

Do people actually use slaves then? I tried rounding some up but it seemed sort of a waste of a turn building commanders to do it.

[Ballbarian]

I never turn down free chaff. They catch the arrows while my Jaguar Warriors flank the enemy.

On the use of the word "bug", I don't consider myself a professional programmer, but I do get paid to write the occasional program, and I maintain one of my creations at work. When somebody does something that I did not anticipate, my program presents the user with a friendly message box:

"Congratulations! You have found a bug. Please pass the following error message along to your underpaid programmer:"

Planes don't fall from the sky, but the state auditors frown when the books don't balance. Hmmm, come to think of it, I think they are always frowning...

[Gandalf Parker]

Sounds like one of mine that said "tell them I need a raise"