Re: [Rails-devel] Selling shares (was: Further 1835 testing)

[Erik V. <eri...@xs...>]

I have committed fixes, and also added 5 new test cases that address the
recent issues around nationalisation and selling certificates.

Erik.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Erik Vos [mailto:eri...@xs...]
> Sent: Monday, November 21, 2011 3:43 PM
> To: 'Development list for Rails: an 18xx game'
> Subject: Re: [Rails-devel] Selling shares (was: Further 1835 testing)
> 
> > > From: Stefan Frey [mailto:ste...@we...]
> > > B) Player T3 sells 30% of WT: There is no selection to chosse either
> > > one 20% or two 10% certificates for exchange of the president
> certificate.
> >
> > Not sure if this was an accidental or a deliberate oversight, but in
> > any
> case
> > the current share selling process was not prepared at all to allow
> > such a choice.
> > It's now overhauled to allow a selection of exchange certificates in
> > case
> of a
> > dump.  In all dump cases (in all games) the exchange certs are now
> > mentioned as well.  Where a choice is possible, the selling choice
> > list
> has
> > separate options to cover the different exchange certs.
> 
> It turned out that this was not the whole story. The above-mentioned fix
has
> disabled dumping half (or even whole) presidencies in some cases.
> 
> Actually, I found myself seriously entangled in a catch-22 situation with
> respect to the old question: do we sell shares (or better: a share, to be
> understood as a percentage of ownership), or do we sell certificates? It
turns
> out: we need to do bits of both.
> Originally, it was all about share(s).  1835 made it necessary to change
that to
> some extent, but selling 20% certificates remained a bolt-on feature.
> 
> Now Stefan has pointed out some deficiencies with 1835, which forced me to
> turn around and largely base the selling process on selling certificates.
> The wording has (on Stefan's request) also been changed that way.
> But on further testing I found that dumping (selling a presidency) did not
> always work any longer.
> The problem is, that if you can dump a presidency, you can sell a share
(half
> the presidency) that is not represented by a certificate.
> In other words, you sell a certificate that you don't own - that doesn't
even
> exist.
> 
> I think I have now fixed that as well, but the whole selling process has
> become pretty kludgey this way.
> Dumping a presidency is now represented in the sell option list as selling
one
> or two (additional) *single* (i.e. 10% or 5%) certificates.
> And I'm still not convinced that all possible cases are covered, so I'll
remain
> testing for a while.
> 
> I intend to add a number of relevant cases to the test set.  But the test
set
> cannot cover cases where invalid options are wrongly proposed, or chosen,
> or accepted.