All the TRN files of the players from all the players who are taking part in the current turn must be in the game data directory when you run HOST.
You can only run HOST once per game turn.
TRN files from other games are rejected by HOST and erased.
A person hosting a game called me up and told me about the following problem:
Nine people are currently playing a game. One person somehow lost their RST file. So they had the person hosting the game run HOST again. The player with the missing file then put the new RST file on floppy and went home. They next day everyone puts all ten of their TRN files in the host directory and HOST is run. Everyone notices none of their new commands are recognized and the HOST says all but one file is stale. What went wrong?
Answer: When HOST was run the second time all old TRN files and RST files became stale files from last turn. Only the player that lost the RST has a fresh file after they grabbed the new RST file after the HOST program ran. All ten of the other players missed TWO turns because of this. The last turn because they had not turned in their TRN files yet and the current turn because the files that they did turn in were stale and had to be rejected.
ONLY RUN HOST ONCE PER TURN.
You may wish to make a backup directory to store all the current RST files after you run HOST, just in case someone loses their RST file.
Don't let anyone talk you into running HOST before the players have sent in their current TRN files.
HOST needs all the TRN files all the players who are going to be in on the current game turn, because all the action and interaction between players TAKES PLACE AT ONCE, when HOST is run.
Stale File: A RST or TRN from a previous game turn. The HOST program rejects all stale TRN files. The player with the stale file will miss a turn. If you unpack a stale RST file, all your data files will be stale and you will end up producing a stale TRN file when you run MAKETURN.
Fresh File: A RST or TRN from the current game turn.
When a person misses a game turn, they MUST get a fresh RST file from the host computer. Or they will end up making a stale TRN file.