herwin
Posts: 6059
Joined: 5/28/2004 From: Sunderland, UK Status: offline
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Andy Mac Not getting changed as I said up front we are not doing a full rewrite of Land COmbat its out of scope. We have weaked it but somethings will remain as was I understand. The issue is that a numerical integration algorithm (which is what a game engine is in the end) has to satisfy three things if it is to generate accurate outcomes: convergence, consistency, and stability. Convergence says that the solution generated by the algorithm has to approach an exact solution as the integration time step goes to zero. Consistency says that the local error of the method also has to go to zero as the step size decreases. Finally, stability says the algorithm has to be numerically stable--e.g., the system cannot be stiff, with multiple time scales. If it doesn't satisfy those conditions, it will generate flaky answers. Euler's forward integration method (which is used by most game engines) is known to be flaky. If you use backwards integration, you'll get much better stability, but at the cost of not modelling threshold phenomena (breakpoints) well. You really need to use a compromise, like Crank-Nicholson. Using 1-day turns with 60 mile hexes means that you're working with rather stiff systems, and you're likely to get severe inaccuracy in your ground combat system.
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Harry Erwin "For a number to make sense in the game, someone has to calibrate it and program code. There are too many significant numbers that behave non-linearly to expect that. It's just a game. Enjoy it." herwin@btinternet.com
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