Players will only be able submit one command per round. The game engine will reject any additional commands sent by the player.
Phase 1 will be a maximum of 5 rounds long, if a player is unable to place their ships during these 5 turns they will be destroyed and the opposing player will win.
But the engine does not work this way for Phase 1, the bot is supposed to write all 5 commands in the move.txt file. Are the rules going to be updated or is the engine going to change to follow these rules?
I agree that it is confusing. In fact, I don’t see the syntax for the ship placement or firing commands documented anywhere - I had to go looking in the code and the sample files.
But, what they mean is, in each round in Phase 1, you have a chance to send a placement command for all five ships together. If your placement is invalid somehow (eg. ships overlap or stick out of the grid), your bot is given another chance to place the ships and the game stays in Phase 1. If you fail to place ships correctly five times, your opponent wins.
As long as you check that your ship placement is valid before writing out the placement command, you should never need more than one of your five chances.
I agree with Malman !! imagine if we were to place a single ship per round int the 1st phase and something went wrong somewhere in between then it would be over for you instantly
Sorry about the confusion in the rules, but what Malman said is correct. Each player has 5 chances to place their ships before being eliminated, this means that at worst case scenario phase 1 will be 9 rounds long, if each round one player fails and the other succeeds in alternating fashion until 1 player reaches 5 failed attempts. During each of these attempts all 5 ships have to be placed to increase efficiency and decrease the amount of mistakes that could occur while placing a ship. If something is still unclear, please let me know.
