                           Concept : Autonavigation

NAME
   Autonav - Giving ships automatic sailing orders

Level: Expert

In  a  very short while after acquiring ships the effort of moving ships after
every update gets very boring.  And the more ships you have, the more work  it
is.   Hence the concept of autonavigation.  Like any self-respecting dictator,
you don't personally drive your  ships  around  (except  when  you  want  to),
instead  you  command  you  ship captains to take their vessels to a specified
destination.  This is done via the "order" command.

Each ship can be ordered to proceed to a destination.  During each update, the
ship  will  try  and use ALL the mobility it has and use the shortest possible
path.  It will also avoid any known mines (sectors marked with an 'X'  or  'x'
on your bmap).  Note that this movement is all done before mobility is accumu-
lated, so that after the update is complete the ship will have a full  updates
worth of mobility in case you need to move it by hand.  Should a ship be fired
upon by forts or strike a mine they will stop moving!  This will prevent  your
ship  from foolishly getting sunk in enemy waters.  The "order" command covers
many special cases.

The autonavigation capability is dependent upon the per country  map  database
accessed  via the "bmap" command.  If you order a vessel to a destination that
causes it to cross a previously unexplored area,  the  ship  will  attempt  to
cross  that  area  as if it were water.  One of the features of the bmap func-
tionality is that when a ship is navigated, it automatically uses its radar to
see the local sectors (much like real life).  This sector information is added
to the per country map database.  Thus upon running into a previously  unknown
obstruction,  that  information  is  added to the map database and on the next
update, a new path to the destination will  be  calculated  which  avoids  the
obstruction.  This process applied iteratively means that a ships will eventu-
ally find its way around any obstruction, provided that  a  path  exists.   In
reality,  this  is  a limit to this process.  In order to limit the processing
that is done to find a path to the destination, the internal  path  string  is
limited to 28 characters.

The  other  capability  of the autonav function is autotrading.  By specifying
two destinations and two commodities,  the  ship  will  move  back  and  forth
between the two destination loading and unloading the appropriate commodities.
Specific examples can be found in the "order" info file.

The same rules for navigating, loading, and unloading apply for Autonavigation
as they do when you do these things by hand, namely that you may only use har-
bours owned by nations which consider you to be  a  friendly  trading  partner
(see info relations).

SEE ALSO
   navigate, order, Ships, Update

