- PHost 4.0a released on 22/May/2003
- PHost 4.0b released on 16/Aug/2003
- PHost 4.0c released on 13/Sep/2003
- PHost 4.0d released on 23/Oct/2003
- PHost 4.0e released on 01/Jan/2004
- PHost 4.0f released on 21/Mar/2004
- PHost 4.0g released on 9/May/2004 (not public)
- PHost 4.0h released on 10/Jul/2004
- PHost 4.0i released on 23/Jan/2005
- PHost 4.0j released on 22/Oct/2005
- PHost 4.0k released on 04/Sep/2006
Hosts: Replace the PHost program. If you want this
version behave like the previous one as close as possible, add the
following values to pconfig.src. We recommend you to
use the defaults, though, to try our new rules.
Remove the RobotsBuildFighters,
RebelsBuildFighters and
ColoniesBuildFighters parameters from pconfig.src, and
add a matching AllowBuildFighters setting
(usual default: No,No,No,No,No,No,No,No,Yes,Yes,Yes).
If you have used the default complete.src or
tim-host.src, please check the settings for
FighterSweepRate and FighterSweepRange. The
files shipped with versions up to 4.0b were bogus. The settings
should read FighterSweepRate = 0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,20
instead of just 20 - the latter allows fighter-sweep for
all players! The same goes for FighterSweepRange.
If you have mentioned the
WormholeScan phase in your
config file, be aware that this phase was moved.
In case you have re-assigned hull functions, be aware of
the changes introduced in 4.0i. For example,
ImperialAssault ships do no
longer have automatic PlanetImmunity.
The plang4en.hst file is no longer used, you can
remove it.
Players: Update the PVCR program. The current version
4.0k(2) plays combat generated by all current PHost versions and
all possible configurations.
- PHost now reports ship-specific hull abilities with a
util.dat record. (v4.0a)
-
Mine laying rules changed again:
every player's ships lay in Id order, but sequences are randomly
interweaved. This gets you predictability for the general case
while maintaining fairness in extreme situation. This order of
operation is called per-player Id
order, we expect to use it as a means of conflict resolution
in many more places (see below). (v3.4e/4.0a)
- Per-player-Id order is also used for
Super Spy Deluxe. (v3.5/4.1)
- Mines Destroy Mines got improved: instead of laying mines and
considering intersections with just that one field, PHost now
does a complete Mines
Destroy Mines after all mine laying. This gives us 100% Id
independence and predictability (in other words: fairness). The
main reason, however, is, that this will also consider mines
which overlap by another means: when you use add-ons which lay
mines (Starbase+, ACP) or a mine-level alliance is canceled. To
get back the old behaviour, turn on
AlternativeMinesDestroyMines. (v3.4f/4.0b)
- Added a command line switch to set config options on the fly
(-o option=value). See
Command Line Options for details.
(v3.4g/4.0c)
-
PControl got a face-lift. You can
now execute commands before and after each stage,
settings are cumulative, and you can specify shell commands
directly in pconfig.src. (v3.4g/4.0c)
- You can now use placeholders %d and %r in
PControl commands. You can
specify commands for Auxhost1 and Auxhost2 directly in
pconfig.src. You can refer to canned pcontrol
sequences to simplify your config files. (v3.4m/4.0k)
- The AllowBuildFighters config parameter replaces the
three original parameters (RobotsBuildFighters etc.).
You can now enable lfm for all
races. (v4.0e/f)
- Towed ships can now be configured to
cooperate (not break a
tow). (v4.0e)
-
remote has a new sub-command,
"give", to simplify use of remote control. (v3.4h/4.0e)
- Wormhole scanning was made simpler. The
WormholeScan phase
now happens after movement, at almost the same place as sensor
sweep. Therefore, you'll always (well, almost) see a wormhole
you've just traveled through. In addition, a new config option
WrmScanRange can be used to remove probabilities from
wormhole scanning. (v4.0e)
- You can now configure ships to burn fuel for each fight
they're taking part in (FuelUsagePerFightFor100KT).
This weakens a huge ship's position against many small ones a
bit. Likewise, you can configure ships to burn a fixed amount of
fuel each turn for staying ready
(FuelUsagePerTurnFor100KT). Idea: Eugene Goroh.
(v4.0f)
- The effect of experience training can now be scaled up or down
(EPTrainingScale); by default, you now get twice the
experience as before. (v4.0f) In addition, training now takes the
crew amount into account, so that a ship with little crew can be
trained faster than a battlestar with thousands of people aboard.
Idea: Degi. (v4.0g)
- Combat experience can now be scaled up or down according to
the damage taken by a ship, to award risky fights. Idea: Sascha
Rambeaud. (v4.0f)
- Players can now declare additional
enemies. Idea: Maurits van Rees. (v4.0g)
- Players can now transmit data about their
units to friends. Unlike VPA Data Transmissions, this
information is guaranteed to be current, and it interacts
correctly with the cheat check (i.e. a ship shown this way will
be interceptable). (v4.0h)
- The Federation now has more control over
Super Refit. The new
refit command allows to precisely specify
what components you want to build into the ship.
Idea: Maurits van Rees. (v4.0h)
- You can now unload (or jettison)
money and ammunition, or transfer it to
enemy ships, using command processor commands. In addition,
these commands allow you to overcome restrictions imposed by your
client's unload or transfer function. (v4.0h)
- The Hull statement in
shiplist.txt can now take a list of hulls so you can
assign a function to many ships at once.
RacesAllowed and
PlayersAllowed are now
cumulative. (v3.4k/4.0i)
- There are now rules for combinations of hull functions.
Up to now, these had undefined, undocumented or just
not-well-thought-out behaviour. (v3.4k/4.0i)
- There are a few new hull functions (v4.0i):
-
PlanetImmunity combines the
previous special handling of the ImperialAssault ship and the
Klingon/Rebel racial ability.
-
OreCondenser is a new terraforming
function to improve the mineral density on a planet.
- The ability to tow is now defined by the hull function
Tow. The former Crystal/Privateer racial
ability to board ships is now also a hull function
(Boarding), ships need these two to
be able to board.
- There Chunneling special can
now be split into ChunnelSelf,
ChunnelOthers, and
ChunnelTarget.
- You can now make ships immune to Lokis and D19bs using
AntiCloakImmunity, and you
can make Lokis more powerful using
AdvancedAntiCloak. (4.0k)
-
Academy ships specialize on
educating crew and supplying battleships with new crew. There
is a new extended mission Exchange
Crew.
-
Repair ships can repair others in
deep space using the new Repair mission.
- Even when damaged, ships with
FullWeaponry can use all their
weapons in combat; ships with
HardenedEngines can go full
speed.
- Ships with HardenedCloak can
cloak even if damaged. (4.0j)
- Hull functions can now be restricted to certain
experience levels. (v4.0i)
- There are now some new utilX.dat records:
ships produce items,
ships being repaired,
modified hull functions. (v3.4k/4.0i)
-
Ion storms. This was the last major HOST
feature PHost did not have. Our ion storms use similar, but not
identical, rules. See Ion Storm
formulas. Together with that goes the new
Ion Shield ship function.
Comments appreciated. (v4.0j)
- There is a new command password to
change a player's password. The main intention is to allow hosts
to change the password of a dropped-out player. (v3.4l/4.0j)
- A new hull function Commander
allows you to build ships that give experience bonuses to other
ships in combat. Idea: Quirin Herman. (v4.0j)
- Ships must now decloak at once when they reach the
DamageLevelForCloakFail in combat. Previously, they
were given lots of time to supply-repair and stay cloaked.
(v4.0j)
-
CloakFailureRate is now arrayized. Idea: Quirin
Herman. (v3.4l/4.0j)
The options
AllowEatingSupplies,
BorgAssimilationRate,
ClimateDeathRate,
CloakFuelBurn,
DarkSenseRange,
EngineShieldBonusRate,
FuelUsagePerFightFor100KT,
FuelUsagePerTurnFor100KT,
HissEffectRate,
MaxPlanetaryIncome,
MaximumWebMinefieldRadius,
PlanetaryTorpsPerTube,
RecycleRate,
RobFailureOdds,
TowStrengthDistanceScale,
TowStrengthEngineScale, and
WebMineDecayRate are now also arrayized.
Indirectly followed from suggestions by Chris Carr.
(v3.5/4.1)
- The alX and naX
friendly codes now also work on refinery
ships and can be used to limit the minerals consumed.
Idea: Patrick de Groot. (v3.4m/4.0k)
- PHost now includes the often-requested ability to change
the cost of starbases and fighters (StarbaseCost,
BaseFighterCost, ShipFighterCost,
FreeFighterCost). The first two of these options need
updated clients to handle the changed costs. Currently, no such
client exists, but we hope that such clients will now be made. To
avoid that hosts accidentally configure unplayable games, there's
the new AllowIncompatibleConfiguration meta-option.
(v4.0k)
- Likewise, there is now also an option that allows you to raise
or lower the number of fighters (MaximumFightersOnBase, v4.0k)
and defense posts (MaximumDefenseOnBase, v4.1) on starbases.
Raising these values needs updated clients as well.
- You can now set the UnitsPerWebRate different from
the standard UnitsPerTorpRate. (v3.4m/4.0k)
- Planets can receive additional experience for
good government (EPPlanetGovernment). Planets can
receive additional torpedoes due to experience
(EModPlanetaryTorpsPerTube) (v4.0k)
- Due to popular demand, PHost can now send
exact experience
reports. The upper limit for experience can now be
configured. (v4.1)
- There are two new options to configure PAL awards for
glory devices:
PALGloryDevicePer10KT and
PALGloryKillPer10KT. (v3.5/4.1)
-
hullfunc.dat is now described
in the documentation, and includes level-restricted and
ship-specific functions. (v4.1)
- The new option BuildChangeRelativePenalty can be
used to give a relative priority penalty to changed build orders
(instead of complete loss of points in PBP/FIFO mode). This
option kind-of supersedes SBQBuildChangePenalty.
(v3.5/4.1)
- When given a PlayersAllowed or RacesAllowed
without preceding Hull and Function in
hullfunc.txt, PHost would exit with an assertion
failure. This has been replaced by a proper error message.
(v3.4e/4.0a)
- Not really a bug, more sort-of a missing rule:
Dark Sense and
Super Spy now work properly even
when many players play the same race. When many players
Pillage or
RGA a planet, or many players
Rob, rules are now more fair
(per-player-id order).
(v3.4e/4.0a)
- Version 4.0 would not correctly communicate
Experience to PVCR, and PVCR would display
bogus warnings when seeing experience. (v4.0a)
- Experience score records came out
endian-swapped on Suns. Found by Stefan Glasauer. (v4.0a)
- When a ship got re-crewed, its
experience level would rise uncontrollably. Found by Daniel
Brüdigam. (v4.0a)
- PVCR 4.0 would spam the user with bogus warnings when used in
a 3.x game. (v4.0a)
- When a ship changed ownership (combat,
give, surrender,
boarding), its ship name would be sent
to the new owner even if AllowShipNames says it should
not. Found by Daniel Brüdigam. (v3.4e/4.0a)
- If the Beam up Clans mission was
used to gather more than 655 clans, PHost would remove too few
from the planet due to an overflow. It would report a bogus
amount in the message, too. Found by Bart Dopheide.
(v3.4f/4.0b)
- The FighterSweepRate and
FighterSweepRange now have correct defaults. With the
original defaults, everyone could use that ability, not just
colonies. Found by Holger Moritz. (v3.4g/4.0c)
-
Experience did not work at all on Linux in
version 4.0b. This problem was caused by an error in the
compilation. (v4.0c)
- When writing util.dat records, PHost would have
consulted the AllowMoreThan500Minefields of the
minefield owner, not of the player who's receiving the record.
(v3.4g/4.0d)
- Units did not gain experience other than by aging when a
PControl add-on is used. That is, neither
Training nor fighting gave you points.
auxhostX.ini works, though.
Found by Heiko Schlenker. You now know why the 4.0 version is
called "beta". (v4.0d)
-
util.dat Record 51 with
current minefield counts used wrong value for "unknown" entries
(65535 instead of -1). (v3.4g/4.0d)
- When AllowShipNames was off, PHost did not include
remote-control tags in the names. (v3.4g/4.0d)
- Bioscanning was broken in version 4.0c and reported all
planets as having Amorphs. Reported by Sascha Rambeaud. (v4.0d)
- Not actually a bug, but a very strange rule: with
UseAccurateFuelModel enabled, it was hard to have a ship
end a turn with exactly 0 fuel: if you have 3 kt, and your ship burns
2.2, this yields 1 kt remaining. If you remove one kt, you now have 2 kt
on the ship, which is too little for the move. The "fuel exhausted
distance" formula was modified so that such a move now works.
Encountered by Sascha Rambeaud. (v3.4h/4.0e)
- If a fuel-less refinery ship makes fresh fuel, PHost did not
allow that ship to use that fuel to defend against boarding or
for movement, except if an add-on was used between these stages.
Possibly, some other goofs lurked there, too. Again, found by
Sascha Rambeaud. (v3.4h/4.0e)
- If a pcontrol-add-on was used after
Movement, cloaking devices would
fail unless, after burning cloak
fuel and movement fuel, cloak fuel for another turn remains
on the ship. (v3.4h/4.0e)
- With AllowShipNames restrictions in effect, PHost
would blank some ship names in VCRs which it did not have to
blank. (v3.4h/4.0e)
- PHost now does explicit tow loop resolution, see the
description of towing for details.
Results were close-to-unpredictable before. (v3.4h/4.0e)
- Winplan-shareware users were not able to jettison stuff.
PHost now permits the Winplan-style of jettison for everyone.
(v3.4h/4.0e)
-
Intercept now does The Right
Thing[tm] for ships that broke free from a tow. It did not work
before. Found by Sascha Rambeaud. (v3.4i/4.0f)
- PHost could possibly crash when there are very many minefields
(more than 85) on a ship's waypath. (v3.4i/4.0f)
- PHost gave you a red error when you use planets.exe with certain
3rd-party maketurn programs. Encountered by Stefan Eilts.
(v3.4j/4.0g)
-
After commands in PControl
did not work if there were no Before commands for the
same section. PHost did not complain if a file referenced through
PControl did not exist. (v3.4j/4.0h)
- Long file names in a PControl
caused PHost to crash; absolute file names did not work. Found by
Elfi Heck. (v3.4j/4.0h)
- Fixed an overflow in money cost computation for
Gather-build Torpedoes when more than
65535 mc were used in one turn. This is not possible with
the standard ship list or PList, but can happen with other lists
such as Penger. (v3.4k/4.0i)
- With UseAccurateFuelModel enabled, cloaking could
fail when you end the turn with exactly 1 kt, claiming you
have too little fuel. The movement formulas can return fractional
values, so your ship may end its turn with, for example,
0.8 kt. This is rounded to 1 kt, but at first it is
smaller than the 1 kt needed to cloak.
Found by Sascha Rambeaud. (v3.4k/4.0i)
-
AssignTo=Ship did not work. Strange.
(v3.4k/4.0i)
- Even when the build queue was full, one ship slot could remain
empty. When the ship with the highest Id in the game was being
destroyed, PHost was getting confused with the "total ships in
game" number. (v3.4l/4.0j)
-
unload, transfer
and refit commands were lost if add-ons
were invoked before CargoDump
resp. SpecialMissions_1
(for example, in Auxhost1). Found by Georg Strünkmann. (v4.0j)
- If a hyperjumper was damaged
above DamageLevelForHyperjumpFail, fixing it would
still not allow it to jump this turn. Found by Sascha Rambeaud.
(v3.4l/4.0j)
- Add-ons could crash PHost by creating bogus build orders, for example
by not building the necessary parts. Found by Ed Robinson.
(v3.4l/4.0j)
- Ships now de-cloak automatically when they change ownership.
This is the natural consequence of the mission being reset.
Problem pointed out by Martin Williams. (v3.4l/4.0j)
- When a base changes ownership, clear the shipyard order
(fix/recycle) to avoid a few goofs with "give". (v3.4m/4.0k)
- Comments in hullfunc.txt could confuse the parser
and make it do the Wrong Thing. (v3.4m/4.0k)
- Ships are again allowed to drop all their fuel and some other
stuff in one turn. Reported by Heiko Schlenker, Mathias
Kaeckenmeister. (v3.4m/4.0k)
- If a remote-control ship was doing imperial assault, the wrong
player was receiving the message or PHost even crashed.
Found by Ingo von Borstel. (v3.4m/4.0k)
- PHost did not prevent ships from fighting each other even if
they have no offensive potential or no effective weapons against
their current target. This would generate combat recordings that
immediately end before a shot has been placed. It would also prevent
these ships from attacking following targets against which their
weapons are effective. Found by Heiko Schlenker.
(v3.4m/4.0k)
- When using FuelUsagePerFightFor100KT, aggressors
would continue fighting if they ran out of fuel. Found by Eugene
Goroh. (v4.0k)
- Ships that were cloaking and hyperjumping at the same time
but had not enough fuel to do both crashed PHost. They do now
decloak a little bit earlier, so that they no longer burn cloak
fuel. Found by Thomas Klebes. (v3.4m/4.0k)
- Add-ons could cause PHost to crash by submitting bogus
cargo dump orders. (v3.4m/4.0k)
- Mutual Intercept across
map borders should now yield more
intuitive movement.
(v3.4m/4.0k)
- In combat, ships can now fire at the enemy ship even if the
enemy has fighters in flight, if BeamFiringRange and
BeamHitShipCharge say so. In addition, with some
(mis-)configurations, fighters could fly off too far and never
return. This has been fixed. If a configuration is used
where this is possible, you need to upgrade to PVCR 4.0k(2) to
watch your battles. (v4.0k)
- The shipscan.ext file now
contains the turn number and timestamp of the current turn as
stored in lastturn.hst, not the previous one.
(v3.4m/4.0k)
- PHost 4.0k was crashing on games mastered with fewer than 500
planets when experience was being used. Found by Chris Carr.
(v4.1)
- Moving at full speed with a ship repaired using supplies did
not work when add-ons were used before Movement. Reported by
Harry Bur. (v4.1)
- All decloaked ships now generate a
util.dat record (previously, only ships
orbiting a planet did so). The record also includes
whether the ship was caught before or after movement.
(v3.4e/4.0a).
- A mine-laying ship now sends you a
util.dat record as well as a message
even when it could not lay mines because the field was already maximal.
The message will report that 0 mines were laid. (v3.4f/4.0b)
- When you're hit by the Tim Continuum, your planets' happiness does
not change. This way, you won't benefit from 0% tax, but you won't be
hit too hard by growth tax. After all, you don't collect taxes either.
Idea: Sascha Rambeaud (v3.4f/4.0b)
- Messaging was completely revised. Therefore, you receive a
number of new failure records (broken tow,
gather failed, cannot colonize, cloak failure (incl.
anti-cloak)). Some other messages are now also
sent to the remote-controller of a ship (beam up, lay mines,
colonize, hiss (planet and ship), rob (robber and victim), super
spy deluxe, build fighters, ground attack, mine hit, minefield
passed, cyborgs gather debris, wormhole travel, chunnel
initiated/traveled, boarding, hit by glory device, cargo
trimmed). This should end the confusion about "why didn't my
remote-controlled ship end up with the same amount of fuel
predicted" or similar. Some other messages are deliberately not
forwarded (exploration, for example). (v3.4g/4.0d)
- The absolute fighter bay limit was raised to 50. A 20-bay ship
with 3 ExtraFighterBays now has 23 bays in total. (v3.4g/4.0d)
- The CPEnableGive option can now take the value
Allies to allow only ship givings between allies.
(v3.4h/4.0e)
- The wormhole scan record now includes
the Id number of the corresponding Ufo as well as whether the
wormhole is bidirectional or not. Messages now start with an
(-u) tag (except for Tim-compatible English messages),
which allows clients to link the message to the wormhole.
(v3.4h/4.0e)
- PHost now clears PBx fcodes after a
normal (i.e. not clone) ship build. (v3.4h/4.0e)
-
Ramscoop now also works when you're
intercepting, to match HOST behaviour. (Akseli Mäki) (v3.4i/4.0f)
- The util.dat PAL record was modified
so that it reports PBPs used. Idea by Stefan Glasauer.
(v3.4i/4.0f)
- The documentation now makes use of the <link rel="...">
element to provide some neat navigation possibilities with
browsers that support it (try enabling "View/Show/Site Navigation
Bar" in Mozilla). (v4.0f)
- The default experience level
settings were changed to allow faster advance. (v4.0f)
- PHost now processes AssignTo=Ship
statements for all ships created by Master, so you can create
such ships more easily. (v4.0h)
- PHost now accepts spaces in numeric fcodes. That is, a friendly code of
"23 " or " 23" is accepted to mean the same thing
as "023" for chunneling and combat. (v3.4j/4.0h)
- Jorge Sánchez provided an update of the Spanish language
file. (v3.4j/4.0h)
-
Gather-build Torpedoes now happens
after mkt and does no longer override
it. (v3.4k/4.0i)
- Ships which are brought above the DamageLevelForCloakFail
limit by a glory device must now decloak after the Glory Device
phase; this prevents them from entering a foreign chunnel.
(v3.4k/4.0i)
- The definition of the Level2Tow
function has changed. In alternative-tow mode, Level2Tow no
longer is an absolute win over normal ships. (v4.0j)
- Ships which have both glory
devices now do low damage to own ships. They were doing high
damage before. (v3.4l/4.0j)
- PHost now enforces the rule that FCodes consist of printable
characters only. (v3.4l/4.0j)
-
CPEnableGive now also configures availability of the
gsX friendly code. (v4.0j)
-
Wormhole travel damage is now
computed in exact numbers, not truncated, so you can now also get
damage which is not a square number. Idea: Mathias Käckenmeister.
(v3.4m/4.0k)
- As a simplification, PHost now resets waypoint, primary enemy
and friendly code on all events a ship changes ownership. This
has almost no effect on gameplay, but closes another covert
channel for anonymous games. (v3.4m/4.0k)
- It was possible to name ships in a way such that
planets.exe crashed when the ship name was cited in a
message. PHost now includes a filter to avoid that.
(v3.4m/4.0k)
- The AllowDeluxeSuperSpy option was disfunctional
since at least PHost 3.3, and has therefore been removed from the
documentation (it is still accepted). To disable Deluxe Super
Spy, disable the
DeluxeSuperSpy stage of
host processing. (v4.1)
- The language file, plang4.hst, now has a
different format. The file can be manipulated by standard tools,
and compresses much better than the previous one, so that the
PHost distribution files are much smaller now. (v3.5/4.1)
- For simplicity and robustness, beamup
now always has precedence over extmission,
no matter what order they are received in. (v3.5/4.1)
- The Formulas Document has been
completely revised and expanded. It should now list all relevant
formulas, and no longer require you to revert to the 3.x
documentation. During that process, a few formulas were modified
slightly. For example, actual climate deaths would often differ
by one from the reported amount, due to hard-to-describe rounding
effects not obvious from the formula (this one reported by
Mathias Käckenmeister). The formulas should now be enough to
reproduce PHost's behaviour in a prediction tool. (v3.5/4.1)
- Mining now yields a little more minerals, by using
Round instead of Trunc in the formula. Idea by
Mathias Käckenmeister. (v3.5/4.1)
Back to top
PHost 4.0 released on 04/Mar/2003.
First public beta release. See What's new in
PHost 4 for changes compared to PHost 3.x.
Back to top
This document is maintained by The Portable Host Project
(support@phost.de).
Last updated 05 January 2007.