Anti-Tank Gun RTS Design

Anti-tank guns in the real world allow infantry to destroy armored vehicles from a greater distance and relatively greater safety than molotov cocktails, grenades, and most anti-tank rocket systems allow. They are most effective when used defensively, as they can be concealed and fire at the weaker side or rear armor of enemy tanks as they unknowingly drive past. Their main weaknesses are their lack of mobility and armor. The crew is extremely vulnerable to enemy infantry and the gun itself can easily be destroyed by a hit from almost any enemy tank.


You have to duck pretty low for that gun shield to deflect a bullet coming at you.

With these strengths and weaknesses in mind, what is the best way to design an anti-tank gun for the purposes of a real-time strategy game? Let's first look at how a couple of games have implemented them and then see how they should ideally be used in a game.

Codename: Panzers
The World War II RTS Codename: Panzers has quite a few anti-tank guns available for each side. The game employs a currency system that uses prestige for purchasing units. Between each battle or before starting a multiplayer game, players can choose what units they wish to buy within the prestige limit allowed. Anti-tank guns cost considerably less than tanks, usually 1/4 or less of the prestige cost of a self-propelled vehicle. They tend to have about the same range as the tanks in the game and deal a similar amount of damage.

However, they have several major weaknesses that limit their usefulness. The first is that their seemingly low prestige cost ignores a couple of additional costs. They have to be manned by an infantry unit in order to fire, which is not included in their price. Additionally, they are extremely slow when moved by this infantry unit alone so you will probably have to pay for a truck to hitch them up to.


Flak-88 towed by a German truck.

Some irritating interface issues make the process of towing an anti-tank gun with a truck a real hassle. When you start a game, your AT-gun will be lying unmanned on the battlefield. So, you probably want to hitch it to a truck. Click on the truck, tell it to pick up the AT gun. Then click on whichever infantry squad you want to man the gun and place them in the truck as well. Then, when you wish to deploy the anti-tank gun, you have to click on the truck, click on the unhitch button, then click on the infantry in the truck to get them out, click on the infantry who are outside the truck, then click on the unhitched AT-gun to get them to man it. By the time this process is complete, any tank driving by will have long bypassed the position you wished to deploy your AT gun in and you will have to try again later. Or it will have driven up and blown up the AT gun, truck, and machine gunned all of your infantry down.


The anti-tank gun in the middle is the least valuable part of this entire force.

The worst part is that there is no way to get around this process, you can't have the infantry, truck, and AT gun be considered as one unit at all. The control groups get messed up when you place the infantry in the truck and the AT-gun gets lost as well when it is hitched up.

The final glaring weakness of anti-tank guns is that they are extremely vulnerable to everything else in the game. Enemy infantry units, particularly snipers, can kill the crew in a few moments if they get close. Tanks can blow up most of the AT-guns in three to four hits from their main gun, while it takes an AT-gun more than ten hits to kill even the weakest tanks.

The only time they are useful is when you have multiple infantry units facing an unexpected armored vehicle and there happens to be an abandoned AT-gun nearby. In that case, it's great to have one infantry squad grab it and start firing at enemy tanks in the area. For any offensive purpose they are completely useless. Unfortunately, for most of the campaign you are supposed to be the aggressor so there isn't much use for a unit that is only moderately valuable in defensive positions. I never buy them during the campaign, you're always better off buying tanks.


How I leave anti-tank guns in Codename: Panzers-unmanned and idle.

Company of Heroes
Company of Heroes, also a World War II RTS, does a much better job of providing a useful anti-tank gun. The original two factions of the game, the Americans and the Wehrmacht, both have an anti-tank gun that can be built early in the game. They cost less manpower and have no fuel cost, so they are a lot cheaper than a tank. They differ significantly from those in Codename: Panzers.


German Pak-38 in Company of Heroes.

The anti-tank guns are both manned by a three man crew that comes with the gun's purchase cost. There is no need to buy an extra infantry unit just to use the gun. Two men are required to move the weapon about and fire it, the extra man fires his pistol or carbine at enemy infantry within range until one of the other crewmen die and he is needed to take their place. If two crewmen die, the third crewman automatically dies and the gun becomes abandoned for any infantry unit to pick up. The crew is extremely vulnerable to any enemy infantry in the area. A sniper can wipe out the crew with two shots, making it critically important to keep them safe from enemy soldiers.

This makes them sound less useful than the Codename: Panzer version, but they make up for their relative weakness against infantry by being much more useful against tanks. They have a longer range than tanks and also have special abilities that allow them to do more damage than tanks are able to inflict in return. The German Pak-38 can camouflage itself to save its shots for the vulnerable side and rear armor of American tanks. The American 57mm gun can fire armor-piercing shells that do much more damage and also penetrate the thickest armored German tanks like the Tiger and Panther. Most importantly, the anti-tank guns in Company of Heroes can kill most enemy tanks in a few hits instead of taking ten or more like in Codename: Panzers.


American 57mm anti-tank gun.

They are also much stronger defensively against tanks than their Codename: Panzers counterparts. Tanks usually target the crew manning the gun instead of the gun itself, and they tend to miss when doing so. This gives anti-tank guns a lot more survivability against armor. They can be vulnerable when tanks get close, as some of the faster tanks can easily get behind the AT-gun and fire on the exposed crew that way, but that's only an issue when the AT-gun is in the field alone without any support. With infantry with anti-tank capabilities or other tanks in the area of an anti-tank gun, it's very risky to try and get behind an anti-tank gun to kill the crew.


This anti-tank gun needs some additional support if it wants to survive an enemy armored assault.

The one problem with anti-tank guns in Company of Heroes is that they are great for most 1v1 maps but not maneuverable enough on the larger maps. They take forever to move from the base where they are built to the combat areas that tend to be around the middle of the map. There is no way to hitch them up to a half-track or other vehicle to get them into action faster.

Conclusion
Although the Codename: Panzers version of an anti-tank gun is a lot more realistic, the Company of Heroes version is a lot more desirable for the purposes of a RTS game. However, the ability to attach the gun to a truck to move it faster is a great addition to how they are treated in Company of Heroes. So, an ideal anti-tank gun in a RTS should have these characteristics to be useful for players:

-Less expensive than armored vehicles
-Much slower and less maneuverable than vehicles
-Vulnerable to enemy infantry, particularly snipers
-Greater range and good damage against vehicles
-Need to be treated as one cohesive unit-not as a combined infantry, truck, and gun that is an interface nightmare
-Should be able to be attached to vehicles to move into combat faster if needed

Any AT gun that meets those requirement will be a great strategic addition to a RTS game featuring tanks.


Although guns like this might be a little too large to move around the battlefield easily.

The Consequences of a Smaller Government

In the ongoing US budget discussions, one issue that does not seem to be addressed often is what the actual consequences of a smaller government presence will be for citizens. The main arguments are about taxes, social security, medicare, and other large budget issues for the federal government. However, federal budget reductions will also result in a smaller state and local government, as a lot of discretionary spending that seems likely to be axed is given to these groups. With the current anti-tax rhetoric spewed by people like Grover Norquist, it seems unlikely that extra local taxes will be approved to maintain services in most areas. So, what happens when government is "small enough to strangle in a bathtub?"


Die government!

Well, one example is that over the last couple of months in my city the public safety budget has been targeted for reductions. A few police officer positions were removed and the fire department has been reduced in size as well. A few people complained about this, but for the most part people were willing to let it go instead of having to pay higher taxes.


Maybe the government would have more success with tax hikes if they hired a nicer guy to implement them.

Unfortunately, last weekend five sexual assaults took place, including two rapes. The immediate reaction, of course, was that the reduction to the public safety budget was a terrible idea and the money should have been taken from somewhere else. The problem is that there is nowhere else to take this money from-there just isn't very much discretionary spending left in most budgets. Almost every state and local government has been facing budget issues for years now, there isn't any fat left to trim.


The four or five old guys have retired, everyone else is kind of important.

For another example, almost every government agency that I've been to has a ridiculously long line. Getting the title transferred on my car takes about one to two minutes of actual work, but it took about two hours due to the government office that I had to go to only having four employees to handle dozens of people. As it seems likely that more employees are going to be laid off or not replaced when they retire, the problem is only going to get worse. Maybe I need to order a pizza next time I need to get my driver's license renewed.


Looks like Mr. Norquist would like one too.

Conclusion
It's easy to say that government should be smaller. After all, it saves you money in taxes. The problem is that a smaller government means that when YOU need help you're not going to be able to get it. After all, one man's lifesaving government service is another man's discretionary spending.


What? You want a fire department? What kind of wimp are you!

The US Budget Discussion and Your Taxes

I felt this would be an appropriate topic given all of the ongoing federal discussions regarding what changes need to be made to the federal budget in order for an increase in the national debt ceiling to be approved by Congress and the President.


Discussing the federal budget is one of those topics that always brings members of both parties closer together.

I've heard many suggestions from people on the internet and in person on where budget cuts should be made. We should stop funding Pakistan. We should stop all foreign aid. We should pull out of Iraq and Afghanistan completely. We should cut spending all over the place but also not increase taxes at all. All of Congress should not take salaries and lose all their benefits until the budget is resolved and social security is saved. Maybe some of these suggestions would be logical, the problem is that I've never heard the people proposing them actually give any numbers on how much money these cuts would save.

Fortunately, I found a website, Third Way, that let's one see how much money the government spends on each of these areas and many more. Below are screenshots that are a summation of spending on each area of the budget:




Looking at the actual numbers, one can see how silly a lot of the easy budget cut proposals really are. Foreign aid sounds like a logical area to cut, after all if we can't afford to keep our own country running why should we be paying for Pakistan? Unfortunately, foreign aid is only 0.6% of the total budget and thus even completely cancelling all aid would not help much to resolve the problem. It would also have some consequences that I don't think most people who propose this consider. Foreign aid is one way that the United States, which, like it or not, is a leading power in the world, holds prestige and stature in the world. Cutting all of our foreign aid would make many countries unhappy with us, potentially resulting in losses of trade and influence throughout the world.

Stopping the wars in Afghanistan and Libya and cutting our remaining aid to Iraq is another popular solution. This is a somewhat fair point, as active combat operations take up around 5% of the total budget, or 25% of the total defense budget. However, it's not possible to just get up and leave without leaving a potential disaster behind. Additionally, it would be quite harmful to America's image in the world if we pulled out and the countries went to hell a couple weeks later. Besides, Barack Obama has already made progress with a withdrawal of most combat troops from Iraq and a scheduled withdrawal from Afghanistan. This proposal is rapidly becoming a moot point, we'll be out soon anyway, it's not going to help with the budget discussion.

As for Libya, it's a relatively minor commitment of US military power that probably won't cost more than a few billion dollars at the maximum. Sadly, that's almost nothing to the defense budget.


The rough equivalent of you throwing a couple staples in a trash can to the Pentagon's budget.

The common call for Congress to fuck off and give up their salaries and benefits, although understandable, also would have no impact on the budget. Congress's total cost is 0.2% of the federal budget and the largest portion of that is for the Library of Congress.

So with these easy decisions off the table because they won't help, what's left? Unfortunately, there are no easy, pain-free ways to solve the problem. The largest five categories of the budget are social security, defense, medicare, low-income assistance, and medicaid. Cutting any of these is obviously problematic, as they will affect the ability of the elderly to retire and reduce already low fixed incomes, affect national security, and potentially leave many without healthcare. The other option would be to increase revenues, most likely through a tax increase of some sort.

This leaves two main proposals by the Democrats and the Republicans. The Democrats http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifhave offered to reduce spending in many areas in exchange for some tax increases achieved through removing loopholes that many wealthy individuals use to avoid paying high tax rates. The Republican proposal, stimulated by some of the Tea Party representatives, is much less balanced; no tax increases allowed, fix the budget through spending cuts alone. Additionally, although Democrats have been willing to compromise, the Republicans seem much less willing to allow any ground on tax reform.

It is instructive to look at the state of Minnesota, whose state government is currently shutdown due to budget deadlock, to see why the Republican no compromise stance is problematic. If you're unfamiliar with this issue,


and Governor Dayton would prefer that you not be familiar with this issue,

here's an article summarizing the problem.

Essentially, the Republicans refuse to allow any income tax increase proposals while the Democrats refuse to pass a budget that would require harsh spending cuts to the Minnesota budget that would gut a lot of departments. The current result is that Minnesota has 22,000 state workers laid off for a few weeks now and has lost millions in state revenues http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifdue to closed state parks, the lottery being closed, and other productivity costs. The state's credit rating also took a hit due to this situation, going from AAA to AA+, meaning that any borrowed money will have a higher interest rate in the future. I'm sure that will help with the budget problem a lot.

Although I don't think the Republicans are going to let the same thing happen in the national government, as common sense would hopefully suggest that it's not a great idea to hurt the United State's credit worthiness for a Pyrrhic victory, it does indicate a problem in the government that more and more Americans are noticing. The GOP's polls have worsened due to the budget discussions as it becomes obvious that the Republicans aren't looking for a compromise but are instead seeking an ultimatum-budget cuts and nothing else or the United States has to default.

This is a juvenile move because the cuts that would be needed to balance the budget would have to come from those budget categories mentioned earlier-meaning that they would have a huge negative effect on senior citizens, national security, and the unemployed and extremely ill. The only logical course of action, even if it's still unpalatable, is to increase revenues and cut spending. This allows for the cuts to not be draconian while still setting the United States budget up for the future so that we don't have to have this discussion again in five years.

My fear is that Congress and the President will end up making a compromise like what looks to be happening in Minnesota. Instead of actually fixing Minnesota's budget problems, the compromise is that future revenues will be used now so that the state government can resume operation. While that's nice in some ways, it means that the government might shutdown again in a year or two when that money runs out.

So what can you do? Well, tell your senator or representative that you aren't going to stand for a half-assed compromise for the budget and instead go for a long term solution to the U.S. budget. Yes, it won't be pleasant for either party, but it will be a hell of a lot better than setting the country up for a worse budget crisis in a few years when the compromise money runs out.

That also reminds me, another proposal a lot of people have come up with is to not pay their taxes until the government stops screwing up. That's not a great idea, as one notable actor discovered recently. Pay your taxes.


Even vampires couldn't stop Wesley Snipes, but the IRS managed to do it.

FPS Grenade Design

No, not this kind of grenade.

Grenades are present in almost every first or third person shooter. Most feature fragmentation grenades, which should be effective against crowds of enemies. Some also feature additional types, such as incendiary grenades, smoke grenades, sticky grenades, and flash grenades. Unfortunately, many games have ineffectual grenades that end up not being particularly useful, at least in single player. I should note that the focus of this is NOT on multiplayer segments of games. This is because it is good for balance reasons for grenades to be limited in effectiveness, as killing one person can be critical in a game.


Call of Duty's multiplayer deserves this title to some extent.

However, including the same restrictions needed for proper multiplayer balance frequently make them useless for single-player. So how do some single-player shooters mess this up? Well, grenades may not do much damage and have a poor blast radius-which makes them ineffectual at killing more than one guy at a time. Many cover-based shooters also have foes split up behind different walls and barricades so that it's almost impossible to hit more than one person at a time with them.


May as well throw one of these plush grenades instead.

Other games feature smart enemies that run from grenades or hurl them back. Although this does make the game more challenging, it also reduces the effectiveness of grenades dramatically.


Although I suppose it is fair for the AI to be able to see this icon just like the player can finally.

Other games reduce the effectiveness of grenades by making them far too rare and precious to be used. For instance, the FPS Area 51 limits you to eight grenades total at any one time, four of each of the two types found in the game. These restrictions are reasonable to a point, as you don't want someone to just hide behind a wall and throw eight hundred grenades at every enemy position. The problem is that there frequently aren't sufficient opportunities to replace these grenades, making it so that even in situations where a grenade would seem to be a good choice you may not want to use them as there may be a more difficult fight coming up.

A final problem comes when games have respawning enemies or just too many foes for your limited supply of explosives. Large numbers of enemies are great for grenades, but there's a point when it's still too many. Some levels in the Call of Duty series have been horrendous for this. You end up stuck crouched behind a wall for a good five minutes or so spraying at the hundreds of guys who just keep coming. You may have ten grenade launcher rounds and four or so frag grenades, but you'll run out of nades before they run out of troops.


Scheisse!

So does one create a useful grenade for a single-player game?

1. Give frag grenades good single-target and splash damage.
The biggest problem with grenades is when they just don't do enough damage to be useful. Except against bosses or armored enemies they should be one-shot kills if they are thrown or launched close to an enemy. Usually throwing a grenade requires the player to leave cover, change from their primary weapon to a grenade, and hurl it the appropriate arc and distance to land near an enemy position. This risk needs a corresponding reward or there's no reason for the player to switch from spraying rounds with their rifle or machine gun.

Max Payne is an example of a game that did a pretty good job with this. Regular grenades and the grenade launcher were both one shot kills on almost every enemy as well as on Max Payne himself. This made them an appropriately frightening increase in lethality from the pump-action shotgun, desert eagle, and 9mm pistol featured at the beginning of the game.


Max Payne spraying a mobster grenade launcher team with dual Ingrams before they can kill him in one hit.

2. Make scenarios where each grenade type is useful.
In games that feature several types of grenades, it's important for each type to be useful throughout the campaign. This needn't be done by forcing the player to use them in certain battles, but instead can be accomplished by making each type extremely useful for certain situations.

An example of doing this wrong would be Call of Duty Modern Warfare's campaign. The game features smoke grenades, but they aren't particularly useful except for one or two missions where you're instructed to use them to block the vision of an armored vehicle spraying heavy machine gun fire at you. This basically renders them equivalent to the frequent provision of C4 or some other explosive just to blow up a door to progress further in a level-the modern version of collecting keycards.

A much more interesting way to implement smoke grenades was used in Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2. Weapons that have thermal sights can see through smoke to find the outlines of enemy soldiers-so smoke works to obscure their aim while still allowing the player to fire with complete accuracy.


I see you!

Unfortunately this was only used once in the game and was never allowed as an option for the player again. If done properly, this would just be an available technique for the player to use in any engagement where they happened to have smoke grenades in their inventory.

Another interesting possibility would have been to have a few machine positions in each level that the player could choose to suppress with gunfire, neutralize with a well placed grenade launcher round, or render helpless through a few smoke grenade tosses. Games need to give the player a bag of tricks for each enemy and let them choose the most appropriate one for each situation, not shoehorn them into one approach due to limited resources.


Although if you're going to a force a player to pick one option, everyone loves grenade launchers!

I'd have to say that the game that uses multiple grenade types with the greatest success is Resident Evil 4. The frag grenade can clear out an entire group of enemies with a simple toss but is appropriately limited in supply to ensure that you only use it when really necessary. The incendiary grenade doesn't do quite as much damage but is much more common and is a great way to delay enemies, as anyone who walks through it stumbles around in fiery agony for a few moments.


AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!

Finally the flash grenade stuns enemies for a few moments but has one additional unique effect that makes it valuable. It instantly kills any of the Plagas parasites that occasionally pop out of the heads of slain enemies. These are fairly resistant to normal ammunition and inflict extremely powerful damage to the player, so flash grenades are great to have for big fights with lots of Plagas parasites.

3. Provide enough grenades to let the player use them when needed.
So now you have a few different kinds of grenades that are useful throughout the game. Now make sure there's enough of them so that the player can actually use them! In Call of Duty I frequently ran out of grenades because there were just too many enemies in certain parts of the game for the supply available to be sufficient. It's true that the regular weapon worked well enough, but why limit the strategy of the game to nothing more than popping in and out of cover to spray a few rounds at the enemy soldiers?


Sometimes it seems like cover based shooting was based off of whack-a-mole. Shoot the guy who jumps out of cover, then the one to his left, repeat until it stops. Grenades help mix it up a little bit.

Resident Evil 5 seemed to forget why the grenades from Resident Evil 4 were useful. They were a relatively small item to keep in the inventory and were great for sticky situations against hordes of enemies. Unfortunately, RE5 decided to limit the player to only being able to hold eight items at a time, of which each weapon and ammunition amount took up a slot, along with healing items and armor. This left the grenade in a sad spot. Although they were roughly as useful as the grenades in RE4, they just weren't as consistently useful as ammunition or healing items are. This forced me to leave many grenades lying around for poor African children to discover in the future, an unhappy outcome.

Conclusion
Too many single-player campaigns neglect to make grenades useful enough to be a core part of gameplay. They need to be powerful, have many opportunities for appropriate use, and be plentiful enough that the player is willing to utilize them in regular combat.

Why Are We Here?

One of my friends asked me why it's worth making an effort in life. Even with recent economic difficulties, it is still possible to find a job capable of supporting yourself or a family that does not require all or even most of your mental and physical faculties. With that in mind, is it really worth all the stress needed to get a promotion, move on through graduate school, and keep successfully completing research projects, business ideas, and whatever other work comes your way? Wouldn't it be easier to just get that fairly lax position and do a mediocre job of it, going through life mostly unnoticed and spend most of your time off work relaxing?

My friend's question addresses one of the most basic questions that everyone will ask themselves at one point or another. Why are we here? What purpose are we supposed to serve in the life that we have?

One of the most common answers is that we are here as a test to see if we are worthy of Heaven or some other afterlife. I find this to be a singularly terrible answer. One of my favorite authors, Steven Erikson, had a great passage in one of his novels about this:

There is something profoundly cynical, my friends, in the notion of paradise after death. The lure is evasion. The promise is excusative. One need not accept responsibility for the world as it is, and by extension, one need do nothing about it. To strive for change, for true goodness in this mortal world, one must acknowledge and accept, within one's own soul, that this mortal reality has purpose in itself, that its greatest value is not for us, but for our children and their children. To view life as but a quick passage along a foul, tortured path-made foul and tortured by our own indifference-is to excuse all manner of misery and depravity, and to exact cruel punishment upon the innocent lives to come. I defy this notion of paradise beyond the gates of bone. If the soul truly survives the passage, then it behooves us-each of us, my friends-to nurture a faith in similitude: what awaits us is a reflection of what we leave behind, and in the squandering of our mortal existence, we surrender the opportunity to learn the ways of goodness, the practice of sympathy, empathy, compassion and healing-all passed by in our rush to arrive at a place of glory and beauty, a place we did not earn, and most certainly do not deserve.

Explaining that the purpose for life is for some afterlife essentially ignores the question. I hear this all the time in the empty gestures of sympathy people make to each other after terrible events.

"Your father is in a better place now."

"These things happen, there's nothing you could have done."

"Everything happens for a reason."

The main thing these three statements have in common is that they all relieve responsibility. Humans have no control over their fate, it's all up to chance or the whims of a higher power. But this just isn't true. The hard work of millions of people have led to us having more and more control over what happens to us. Five hundred years ago, if you got a bad cut it was all up to your body's immune system to determine whether you would develop septic shock and die or not. Now we have antibiotics that allow these sorts of wound infections to be relatively minor events.

The answer I gave to my friend's question was this. You're right, it is easy to just accept some minor, unknown role in the world and go through it unnoticed. It would probably make life a lot simpler, perhaps even make you happier if you are content with that. But there is a reason to work hard and try and create something for humanity. Any improvements you make to the world get passed along; the combined efforts of the millions of people on the world result in an improvement to the average welfare of humanity. It's true that not everyone is capable of say, discovering penicillin, but those discoveries are not possible without the support of thousands of other people who grow crops, deliver those crops to stores, clean laboratories, and fulfill other essential tasks of society.

It's true that some things seem worse. The economy hasn't been the best in the United States recently. It seems like there are more riots and unrest throughout the world than before-particularly in the Middle East, Italy, Greece, and other economically troubled regions. Although Osama bin Laden is dead, there are still large numbers of effective terrorists in the Afghanistan/Pakistan region. It's easy to look at these events and feel like it's impossible to fix them. How is an individual person supposed to accomplish anything against the weight of governments, the realities of globalization and economics, and large-scale terrorist groups?

We can look at the example of Mohamed Bouazizi of Tunisia. His extremely public death by self immolation after he was forbidden from selling vegetables inspired the riots that brought down Tunisia's long serving dictator. One person can make a difference.

The world has come a long way in the last few hundred years. Fewer farmers are supporting millions of people more than ever was possible in the past. Cellular phones, airplanes, and the internet have made it so much easier to connect with others across the globe. People are living much longer than all but the luckiest individuals with the best genetics were capable of in the past. We can even take pictures of this:



These advances were all made through the combined work of hundreds of thousands of individuals. That is what your mental and physical labor contributes to-the progression of man.

That is my answer to why we are here. It's not as sexy as saying that it's all to see if you're worthy for a glorious afterlife, but it's the best I've yet to hear. Join me and don't accept that the something can't be done or that the negatives in the world are inevitable and irresolvable. Maybe some things are, but at least no one can claim that we didn't try our damnedest to fix them. We can all contribute to bettering humanity, one step at a time.