Negative Theater prerequisite

[Professor_Tesla]

It would be interesting if we could have negative theater prerequisites as well as theater prerequisites. It could be used like the already existing RequiredHouses/ForbiddenHouses flags. For example:
[7TNKSNO]
Prerequisite=GAWEAP
Prerequisite.Theater=SNOW

[7TNK]
Prerequisite=GAWEAP
Prerequisite.Theater.Negative=SNOW

7TNK could then be built on all theaters except snow, and 7TNKSNO could be built only on snow.

[DCoder DCoder (dcoder1337)]

What's wrong with
Prerequisite.RequiredTheaters=(all except SNOW) ; it's TheaterS btw, not Theater
?

[Professor_Tesla (professor-tesla)]

Dang. Should have thought of that.

[MRMIdAS (mrmidas)]

I wouldn't mind either, it's only a small thing, but it's easier to defile one theatre you don't want rather than the 5 you do.

[Renegade (renegade)]

We care not for what you do with theatres in your private time >_>

And "easier" is relative here. It might be easier for you, but it means writing more code, testing more code, maintaining more code and running more code for everyone else.

Not to mention: Evidently, the functionality you want is already available, in a reasonable and not too complicated way. It would be a waste of development and testing time to add something that does the exact same thing, only so you can save a few keystrokes.

[MRMIdAS (mrmidas)]

lol. I did mean define, but I was in a rush, beer was calling.

and yeah it does mean more work for you guys, and in the end, you're in charge (not you particularly, but as a whole) so you decide what goes in and what doesn't.

your call like I say, just offering my 2c.

[Renegade (renegade)]

It's not just a question of more work for the developers. It also means that the extra code will have will be included for everyone using Ares. Which means additional delay, additional potential for bugs, and additional waste of processor cycles for everyone.

I just don't think it's particularly fair that every single user of Ares would be in potential danger of bugs and waste additional parsing processor cycles, and wouldn't even get anything new out of it. They could achieve the exact same things as before - only with half a line less of typing.

Maybe a little demonstration will help:

Prerequisite.Theater=TEMPERATE,URBAN,NEWURBAN,DESERT,LUNAR
Prerequisite.Theater.Negative=SNOW

24 characters less.
What you are proposing is additional work for the developers, additional delay for the users, additional coding for the modders (having to add an additional tag), additional code to execute for every single user of Ares, modder or player, and additional potential for bugs every single user of Ares, modder or player.

All of that - just to not have to type 24 more characters.

[DCoder DCoder (dcoder1337)]

At first glance, it does seem like a trivial addition. But writing an implementation that isn't subject to redeclaration bugs, i.e. defining a Prerequisite.ForbiddenTheaters=foo in a map which would correctly overwrite the rules' ForbiddenTheaters without runtime cost, is not as obvious as it would seem, and that's where we get into "more trouble that it's worth" territory.

If you want it so bad, feel free to reopen the issue and submit a patch.