[freeciv-ai] Re: (PR#8992) Patch: Building ferries]

["Benedict Adamson" <badamson@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

<URL: http://rt.freeciv.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=8992 >

Gregory Berkolaiko wrote:
...
> This formula is dimensionnally incorrect: the left part is in boats, the
> right part is in passengers/boats.
...
> +    psngrs = psngrs * DENOM + MAX(0, future_psngrs - boats * DENOM);

If passengers and boats are considered different units (I was treating
them as pure numbers -- what is the SI unit of boats?), then
future_psngrs - boats is also dimensionally incorrect. But your example
of the 4 boats & passengers is good.

> I think building more than one new boat at a time is needed very rarely
> and is quite risky because we react too much to a potentially
> short-lived surge in the demand.

Not in my observations of auto games where I have allowed it. When the
AI has built many boats using published versions of my patches, the boat
utilisation has usually remained high--- the extra boats did not become
surplus to requirements. Building several boats is useful to a
successful AI in later stages of the game, when it is on the offensive
and needs to ferry many attackers.

...
> Another thing we need to do is to influence technology.  If we don't know
> Map Making, the ferry code should ask for it.
...

Which is what you coded in your original patch, but left as a TO-DO
item. However, I subsequently examined the code and discovered that the
AI never requests ferries if it does not have ferry technology, so I
removed that section. The centralised ferry building code handles the
_supply_ of ferries rather than the _demand_, so it makes some sense (to
me) that it does not handle the demand for technology. *However*, the
current military adviser currently does not generate demand for ferry
technology either.

P.S.
On the subject of boats, passengers and units, the boat building demand
generated by one passengers is presumably about one milliHelen :)