[Freeciv-Dev] Re: Railroads and AI

["Peter Schaefer" <schaefer@xxxxxx>]

>Why does the Railroad work like a Startrek teleporter? If playing on the
>earth map, rather than build an airport for fast transport from Asia to
>Africa, I waste less movement points by using the railroad. Beyond the
>obvious fact that Airports should be used a lot more in freeciv than they
>are, by removing this instant transport bonus.
>
>The way I was thinking of handling it was to hand a max_rr_square move,
>that increments by 1 every time a unit moves by railroad. You could have
>it vary during the game to reflect the changes in railroad technology(i.e
>switching from old fashioned steam to new fangled japanese bullet trains.)
>
>I suggest having a limit of 18 squares traversable by RR, and with the
>appropiate technical advance(Superconducting?), increase it to 27.
>
>This addresses the problem of having all units travel at the same speed,
>and perhaps there could be a movement penalty incorporated? For every 9
>railroad squares travelled, you lose 1/3 of the units mv. It is not really
>possible to cheat the railroad system effectively, because even if a
>player gets off after being on for only 8 squares, he cannot traverse more
>squares than if he remained on the railroad. Sounds good? Alternatively
>you can have a unit that travels on a RR square lose 1/27 of its mv for
>every square.
>


Can we have a vote on this on www.freeciv.org ?
I like it :-)
For civII compatiblity: since the AI and the goto never used this, it can be
argued it(zero cost)  wasnt there ;-)