[Freeciv-Dev] Re: (PR#4645) Silent Hunter and Sonar code.

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

On Tue, 22 Jul 2003, Rafa³ Bursig wrote:
> 1) SILENT_HUNTER
> basicaly it is submartine functionaliy and work like Partial_Invis (
> replace it ) with differences that sub is not detected until any unit
> enter on tile with sub. When this happend and unit onwer is in war with
> sub owner then sub automaticaly attack first (if can) if not then unit
> stop.
> In both cases sub is dettected and visilbe untill end of turn.
...
> 2) SONAR
> abbility to detect SILENT_HUNTER units (added to Destroyers and Heli)
> all cities have this functionality too.

I'll just point out that this one big disadvantage: Right now we have
relied all over the codebase on the assumption that we see all units
adjacent to us. Breaking this assumption is going to cause all kinds of
problems.

You will also have all kinds of strange problem cases. For example, what
will happen if you try to move into a tile with one allied unit and one
at_peace silent hunter unit. For that matter, what to do if you try to
move into an at_peace silent hunter.

The "defender attacks" idea also has problems. For example, ground units
cannot attack air units. What if an air unit attacks your silent hunter
unit?

Finally, the AI will have to see these units with its omniscience.
Otherwise a lot of AI code must be rewritten. But that removes much of the
point of adding them in the first place, since they cannot be used for
single-player. (The same is already the case for F_PARTIAL_INVIS, BTW, but
I plan to fix that one day. That won't be hard.)

The concepts are interesting, but I do not think we should be introducing
them at this time. We have enough code-breaking patches queued up for the
next release as it is.

  - Per