[Freeciv-Dev] Re: Ruleset Development - improvements

[Andrew Sutton <ansutton@xxxxxxx>]

On Tuesday 04 December 2001 03:35 pm, Ben Webb wrote:
> On Tue, 4 Dec 2001, Petr Baudis wrote:
> > Dear diary, on Tue, Dec 04, 2001 at 08:11:41PM CET, I got a letter,
> > where Ben Webb <ben@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> told me, that...
> >
> > >   The difference is that WoWs can only be built by one civ, and they
> > > show up in the various report dialogs.
> >
> > Well, if building's effect is global, what's the point of having it built
> > multiple times?
>
>       Er, to get the effect of it multiple times. For instance, in SMAC
> you can build various orbital facilities once you discover Advanced
> Spaceflight. These are "owned" by the city that built them, but affect all
> of a civ's cities. IIRC, each Orbital Power Transmitter, for example,
> increases the energy output (SMAC equivalent of trade) by 1 for _every_
> city. Building multiple OPTs just keeps increasing this bonus until it
> starts getting silly (although I believe there is a maximum somewhere).

i'm not suggesting anything, i'm just trying to clarify it for my own benefit 
(or maybe somebody elses).

for a general improvement framework, it seems like there's a couple different 
things that should be taken into account.
        1) actual effect
        2) uniqueness
        3) obsoletion effect
        4) redundancy effect

the actual effect determines what the building/wonder actually does. if it 
increases production, then that's its actual feature. if it increases the 
total civ energy output, that's fine too. if it gives barracks to all cities 
on a continent... there you go.

the uniqueness specifies how unique the building is. possible values: city 
unique, civ unique , globally unique. this covers small wonders from civ3 
(civ unique).

the obsoletion effect will obsolete the effects of certain technologies, 
units and buildings.

the redundancy effect... well, that might not even be worthwhile anymore. it 
seems to me that the uniqueness could cover that.

does that sound about right?

something interesting to consider: each of these buildings adds an effect to 
a city, civ, continent, world. anyway, i don't know if the current 
implementation does this, but it might be worthwhile to consider 
encapsulating these effects in some code structure and maintaining the within 
the relative structures they affect. for example, a city's just a city. 
however, it has current effects on it (granary, etc.). each affect can resond 
to certain input from game. a city grows - the granary cuts the food 
depletion in half.

hmmm...

andy