20-01-2004 19:23									#1
	Modifier EXPRESSIONS in TaskForceRules? Inflate your Upload Space

I had an interesting thought regarding TaskForceRules: I wondered what would happen if expressions or compound values were used in the Mandatory, Recommended, or Maximize columns?

My first attempt was to substitute two comma-separated modifiers in the Maximize column for several ship types. Unfortunately, that seemed to break the parsing completely.

My second attempt had more promising results. I still used two values in Maximize, but delimited with "+" instead of a comma, in effect making an expression out of it. For instance:

code:
Mandatory    Recommended  Maximize
		
InfoWeap     UniSpace     AccDisEn + FarDamag
InfoWeap     UniSpace     NearDamg + FireDlay
InfoWeap     UniSpace     PntDstWp
InfoMisl     InfoMisl     FarDamag
InfoFWpn     InfoFWpn     UniSpace
InfoWeap     UniSpace     FireDlay + MultFire
OffTgtRg     InfoWeap     OffTgtRg + OffSptRg
TrpCap       UniSpace     UniSpace
Colony       UniSpace     UniSpace
Outpost      UniSpace     UniSpace

	21-01-2004 03:03									#2
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I think you'll want to go back to commas, but use quote marks around the expression when you do. i.e.:

"AccDisEn, FarDamag"

The reason the + didn't break the parsing is because (I'd wager) the stuff after the space was simply ignored. If you look in other spreadsheets (racemodifiers, for instance) you'll see the quotes used.

	21-01-2004 05:17									#3
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Stormhound:

Good point! So noted; I'll give it a try again.

	21-01-2004 05:56									#4
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Stormhound:

Ummm... NOPE. As it happens, I DID do it that way already. When I added the comma-separated modifiers I did it in Excel, and saved the result, so Excel did in fact add the delimiting to those cells. What I cut-and-pasted above came directly from Excel, so of course the quotes weren't visible.

I just duplicated my original effort, and this time checked the text file in NotePad and, sure enough, those cells were delimited with commas.

So... it still didn't work, even done that way; it just doesn't like "lists" in that table. I should clarify that the effect of those cells being rejected rather than parsed was quite obvious: Auto Build designed an LR ship WITH NO WEAPONS AT ALL. Back to my original question, then:

Why does it at least parse the plus-separated expressions when the others were completely rejected, and does that suggest a slightly different form might have truly useful effects?