[Freeciv-Dev] Re: (PR#4387) The Return of the Rand() Moves

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

On Thu, 12 Jun 2003, Raimar Falke wrote:
> >- It is wrong in principle to have randomness in movement. Very frequent
> > atomic actions should be reliable.
>
> The same could be said about combats.

Combat is less frequent by some order of magnitude. Also, AFAIK, combat is
usually less random than rand() moves.

> >- You can reliably show in the client the number of turns a goto will
> > take.
>
> You can reliably show the minimum number of turns a goto will take.
                            ^^^^^^^
Yes, my point exactly.

> >- If you move a "stack" of units, say a charge and a bodyguard, you may
> > end up with one of them being allowed to move while the other won't, thus
> > splitting the "stack".
>
> So you start moving with the slowest unit and only if this unit moved
> you move the other unit. This are 5 lines of code.

You assume there is a faster unit, whose moves_left > tile's move_cost.

Usually freeciv units have 1 MP (3 move_rate).

> You have to cope with such things anyway. Say you move through a
> fogged tile with a road and the enemy has destroyed the road.

True, there are several such rare cases.

> If you want a deterministic pf you get it with TM_WORST_TIME. You may
> now argue that this will be produce non-optimal results i.e. you may
> be able to move your units faster.

TM_WORST_TIME is not deterministic. Some units may get there faster than
worst time. We may throttle them, however.

Raimar, is it okay with you that rand() moves is made a server option, and
that it defaults to off in the default ruleset?

  - Per