[Freeciv-Dev] Re: A bunch of patches

["Per I. Mathisen" <Per.Inge.Mathisen@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, 4 Jan 2002, andi payn wrote:
> [calendar]
> Tony:
> >Sub-year advancement should also be possible here.
>
> On my local tree, I have this, but it displays like "Year: 1944.25,"
> which clearly sucks. The question is, how should it work? Should we
> just assume Gregorian calendaring? Or should we come up with something
> flexible? If so, how flexible? Real-world flexibility would be a
> nightmare (imagine each player changing from a nation-specific
> "native" calendar to Gregorian at different times; imagine handling
> lunar calendars with cycles that don't match the year; imagine
> handling early calendars like the pre-Julian Roman system or the
> pre-reform Hebrew calendar; etc.).

I can't imagine a modpack writer would actually want to use
nation-specific calendars, or lunar calendars for that matter. (But I
might be wrong.) I think it would suffice to determine a starting year and
an array list of "months". The year has as many months as found in this
array, and each month is by default equal to one turn.

(Both veteran level and retreat stuff sounds very nice.)

> Second, you might not need infinite move to handle this. Maybe the
> ballistic flight could be implemented as an infinite paradrop followed
> by a normal move. So a nuclear ICBM is a nuclear missile that can
> paradrop at the start of its turn, then move 6 more spaces. Voila, no
> more need for infinite move.

Why not just paradrop-attack? Unit has zero movement, infinite paradrop &
can attack on drop.

> Do we need everyone to agree that this is a perfect solution, or do we
> just need to make sure it answers all substantial objections?

Generally the latter, I think, as long as the patch provides some
immediate usefulness.

[obsolesence]
> First, your solution is much better than mine. Thank you!

Glad to be of help :)

> As for the usefulness, in addition to the Engineers->Formers example I
> gave and Greg's SMAC examples, you could have multiple upgrade path
> for horse units (do you want 5/1/2 or 4/2/2?).

Convinced. It would actually be neat with a unit flag that makes the unit
unproducable. Eg "Dark Sorcery advance: Enables you to upgrade your
useless Wizard's Apprentice units to kick-ass Dark Sorceror units" and
"Wizardry advance: Enables you to upgrade your highly esteemed Wizard's
Apprentice units to even more esteemed Wizard units"...

> I think I'm going to put off any further work on this until I see
> where the progress is on SMAC-style "partial unit types" in
> freeciv-ac, because that will obviously change everything
> radically. I'll continue to use my existing patch locally (I like the
> ruleset I've created with Engineers upgrading to Formers), but it may
> be that nobody else wants it.

No, please don't wait for freeciv-ac. I don't follow that project but I
suppose that could take a while.

> I added two new unit types, actually. But some types of satellites
> might be better handled by not being units at all. For example, the
> SMAC satellites may be more appropriately handled as improvements.

They could populate space along with the spaceship...? Just an idea.

> (And ultimately, I'd like full SMAC functionality to be
> part of the main FreeCiv tree, so I could play Civ3, SMAC, or my own
> game just by using different tiles and rulesets.)

I too hope we can achieve that.

Yours,
Per

Action expresses priorities.
 -- Mohandas Gandhi