[Freeciv-Dev] Re: (PR#2293) Paratroopers jumping into an empty city

["Anthony J. Stuckey via RT" <rt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sun, Nov 17, 2002 at 10:01:56AM -0800, Davide Pagnin via RT wrote:
> Ok, I found that allowing this is wrong.
> 
> If you paradrop in an empty city of someone you are not in contact to,
> the paratrooper is successful but the city isn't conquered.
> 
> This will crash the server, at the end of turn, because of sanity
> checks, and moreover it should not be allowed to have not-allied unit
> inside a city.

        Right.

> Which should be the correct fix for this problem?
[...] 
> 1) We can let people declare war automatically if they paradrop in a
> not_known no_contact empty city (fixing the problem that the paratrooper
> enter a city to which we are not in *real* WAR).
> I have to say that this should be the correct answer if we agree that
> the pplayer_at_war() function do return TRUE if we are in NO_CONTACT...
> 
> 2) We can instead kill the paratrooper if he paradrop in a not_known
> no_contact empty city (as we do for neutral, peace or cease-fire).
> This is perhaps easy, but then we need to make_contact() happen before
> the paradrop.
> 
> 3) What should happen if we paradrop on a stack of unit that contain
> units of a nation we are in no_contact status, should we need to
> make_contact()?
> 
> Let me know your thoughts, this fix (partial or complete) need to find
> its way before 1.14.0.

        The whole idea of randomly killing paratroopers irks me for a reason I
haven't figured out yet.  Maybe IMHO, units should only die in battle or
disband.
        I'd go with option 1, and document it in the Paratrooper description.
Then people could avoid that behavior if they don't like unexpectedly
declaring war.

        If we paradrop onto a stack of units, why don't we immediately engage
in battle?  Because we don't want to special case having to wipe every
non-allied unit if the paratrooper wins?