Network MA, Whyte (Full)

[thejeff]

Potential map issue:

I've been playing test games on the map to shake out pretender design and get a feel for the map size.
There seem to be some predetermined magic sites. The Steel Ovens (20% construction bonus) has been in province 53 3 games in a row. Do we want that?

At the very least everyone should know about it.
I'd rather not have anything that good predetermined.

Can someone who reads the map format confirm that it is preplaced?

[Tequilich]

Its on the map on my test runs as well.

[lch]

thejeff said:
Can someone who reads the map format confirm that it is preplaced?

You can read it with any text editor and I can see no such entry for the province. It doesn't even have the "many sites" flag. But it's very thematic appropriate that the steel oven is there, since there's a vulcano in that province.

[tromper]

My pretender has been given a thorough massage and a new suit, and claims to be ready to hit pavement.

[K]

Pretender up.

[thejeff]

So if it's not in the mapfile, why is it always there?

Just ran another quick test, went directly to 53 and there it was.

I can view the map file, but I don't know what to look for. How would a site be assigned to that province? Would it be in the terrain mask, or would there be another entry?

[Thrawn]

I'm patched to 3.08, and would prefer no graphs.

Can't wait to start!

[Saint_Dude]

I have loaded a R'lyeh pretender.

As far as the site at prov 53 goes: I have not done any modding in dom3. But in dom2, if I wanted to add a particular site to a prov, I would type in the actual name of the site (maybe there was another method that I was not aware of). However, it looks like in this instance that the site is coded with the terrain mask as thejeff has suggested. Prov 53 has a unique mask number (4202496). Perhaps we could just change is to the more common (4194306) and get rid of the site? Either that or we could just leave it in. If everyone knows it is there, it becomes just another thematic element in the scenario.

Oh, and I have patched to 3.08.

[lch]

thejeff said:
I can view the map file, but I don't know what to look for. How would a site be assigned to that province? Would it be in the terrain mask, or would there be another entry?

The terrain mask is battle terrain. neighbours and starting locations are clear, too. What would have to be in there is some "#addsite" command, I think. Very strange that this magic site *always* pops up in that province, but I had the Steel Ovens, a mine of superior iron and an Arena in there, too. Would be interesting to find out why it happens.

[lch]

I copied the terrain mask to every province in the game, set independent strength to 0 and went exploring with Caelum... I encountered 3 Vulcanos in the first five turns. Other heat-increasing sites like the Plains of perpetual drought seem to be common, too. In that game, there was *no* steel oven in 53, though... Maybe because it's a unique site and went somewhere else?