[Freeciv-Dev] Re: Artillery and sea units (PR#1476)

["Ross W. Wetmore" <rwetmore@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 11:20 AM 02/05/25 -0700, Thanasis Kinias wrote:
>scripsit Ross W. Wetmore:
>> At 04:19 PM 02/05/24 -0700, Thanasis Kinias wrote:

>> Exploiting the rounds can introduce interesting effects like switching
>> the unit in a stack for the next round or other pre-programmed strategies
>> that make battles more interesting and subtle. There is a realistic
>> element to this in that battles typically were decided in phases over
>> a reasonable period of time, and not with a single blow.
>
>A QJM-like system handles modern combat on a continuum.  In other words,
>there aren't discrete rounds.  Until the situation changes (like fresh
>troops arrive, or the battle moves into different terrain) you assume
>the casualty rates and advance rates to be the same, although the
>advance will slow due to exhaustion.  You can thus model a week of
>combat with one set of calculations.
>
>In Freeciv terms, it would be unnecessary to have more than one round,
>but if more rounds were desired (for any of the reasons you listed), you
>could just reduce the casualties per round.  I would implement it with a
>`rounds' variable, which would be the number of iterations and a divisor
>for casualties in each iteration.

But it is rather boring to see the hitpoint levels smoothly falling at a
constant rate which you get if you just chop up a single fixed result
into "n" pieces.

Seeing your unit take a heavy blow, and then come back with three super
efforts before finally succumbing on the 5th round is far more interesting
from an eye-candy effect.

It should probably mean that the odds are recomputed to reflect any 
material change from the last rounds effects though, no?

But the system sounds interesting from some perspectives.

The next question will be how do you model this so that various internal
helper routines can do valid estimations of the results.

>1. <http://www.dupuyinstitute.org/tndm.htm>
>
>-- 
>Thanasis Kinias

Cheers,
RossW
=====