[net.games.emp] disturbing famine

mclure@sri-unix (07/26/82)

One of our players reported a disturbing problem today.  He had massive
famine today.  He had some agribusinesses contracted, and then upon
updating, 1800 people starved in each sector.  He says that he had done
identical things with past versions of the game and it had worked
without the starvation and that this starvation should certainly not
have happened.  He is the one who wrote the hairy robot player, so he
knows what he is talking about.

	Stuart

dudek (07/28/82)

  On our version of empire (about June 82), contracted agribizzes seem
to : 1) eat 2) sell 3) produce
on each update. As a result, is you leave an "a" contracted for
more than one update (sometimes 2), the food surplus is
used up and starvation occurs.  This is rather nasty, and, if you
ask me, unrealistic.