Topic: running out of fish with atlantis

I don't think fish migration would be a good idea. At most, I'd have them spawned randomly and remaining still, like trees do. that should not overly tax the cpu.

I think the problem must be addressed. if fish breeder need at least one fish to reproduce it, and all the tiles are chosen at random, then no matter how many fish breeder one has, sooner or later individual tiles are running out of fish. and eventually all the fish will run out. which is bad, since atlantean economy can't work without fish. Depletion takes time - depending on the coast, 4 to 10 hours before becoming a serious issue in my experience - so it don't affect much games between humans, but there are people (llike me) who like to use setting for really long games (my last settlers2 game took 22 hours, not counting reloading). Those really long games would be screwed up if fish get depleted. And shorter games would not be affected.

I think the simplest solution woud be to set fish breeder to be able to regenerate fish even when it falls to zero. after all, gamekeepers can do it, i don't see why fish breeders would be different.

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That would certainly work; the only reason I didn't suggest it is that the staff didn't seem to want fish breeders to work without pre-existing fish.

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Yes, it should definitely be slow to regenerate from 0.

DragonAtma wrote:

That would certainly work; the only reason I didn't suggest it is that the staff didn't seem to want fish breeders to work without pre-existing fish.

That's of course a good point. I had a quick look at the code and there seems to be a starting resource variable. If Widelands knows if there were ever fish in that hex, that can be used as a precondition for breeding at all.

Busy indexing nil values

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An important point is that balancing the tribes is not that easy. One must not focus on single points, but on the whole economy. The Atlanteans have other advantages, e.g. big mine range, and other disadvantages, e.g. they need extra log for smoking their fish, and so on. So no radical changes should be made without a huge amount of testing.
However, if the spawning rate of fish is slow enough, I personally would approve it.

Yes, I agree with the balancing issue, however I do not believe fish running out because of random is part of the balancing factor. having the breeders capable of regenerating empty fish tiles, or having fish very slowly respawn like trees would not alter the balance in any way. In fact, i believe it would be better balanced like that, as fish shortage is not a balancing factor, but something that will completely cripple an atlantean economy if it goes missing. It doesn't allow for smart playing, like an healty balancing factor should. You either have it, or you don't, and the way you play has very little influence on how much of it you have. It is epecially unbalancing in a few maps with few coasts, where the lenght of the fishable coast is the limiting factor to how much an atlantean economy can grow. you have to cram as many fisheries as you can in a little space, and even if you use a good strategy the fish will still randomly run out, and then you won't have an economy anymore. Balance is about clever counterplays and exploitable weaknesses, not arbitrary caps and events outside of the player's control.

I think I'd approve the idea of giving the breeders a lower spawning rate if the area is out of fish. it encourages good planification by punishing those who let their fish run out, and it allows an opponent to starve the enemy fisheries close to his borders, but at the same time it is not a crippling blow from which one cannot recover.

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