Amiga Empire by Chris Gray - Weather


Amiga Empire has a fairly simple model of weather. There are two pressure
centers, a high pressure center and a low pressure center. Each is of
controlled randomly varying intensity, and each follows a path according to
some randomly varying vectors. Thus, they will tend to move in a given
direction at a given speed, but both the direction and speed are subject to
random perturbation. The "weather" at any given sector is determined by its
distance from the two centers and the strength of the centers. If the two
centers are equal in strength and exactly coincide, the entire world will
have neutral (pressure 0) weather. The low pressure center is considered to
be a storm, and the high a dome of calm, dry air.

The 'weather' command will show you the current weather over a given
rectangle - you do not have to own the sectors within the rectangle. Also
shown are the exact positions of the two extremes. Two factors compiled
into the program control the effect of weather. A pressure of -6 or higher
has no effect on anything - it is considered to be good weather. A pressure
of -7 (STORM_FORCE) does no damage, but cuts in half all construction. This
factor affects increases in efficiency and mobility of sectors and ships,
and the production for sectors. A pressure of -8 (MONSOON_FORCE) stops all
such construction. A pressure of -9 (HURRICANE_FORCE) or lower will do
damage to sectors and ships updated under that weather. The amount of
damage done is random. Damage affects efficiency, mobility and goods and
people in the sector or ship.

A deity has direct control over the weather, but will normally not fiddle
with it. The most likely fiddling is to control the range of the strengths
of the extremes. This can cause more or less bad weather. There is of
course nothing stopping a deity from planting an extremely severe storm
directly over someone's country. An update of the country could then be
devastating. Such an act is probably quite unfair and likely unwarranted.
(If a deity really wants to be silly, he/she can designate all of your
country to be sea sectors!)

The 'forecast' command is available to provide a rough forecast of the
weather. It must be done by an efficient weather station sector, however.
The range of the forecast in terms of how far from the weather station it
covers, is determined by the efficiency of the weather station. The range
of the forecast in terms of how far you can forecast into the future, is
determined by your country's technology factor and the number of civilians
in the weather station. The implementation of 'forecast' is such that it
simply steps the weather simulator forward the required time and does a
simple 'weather' plot of the result. The inaccuracy results from the game's
random number seed being used for other actions in the meantime, so the
real weather doesn't exactly follow the forecast weather. Long-term
forecasts are less accurate than short-term ones because of this.