[Freeciv-Dev] (PR#4701) autoattack oddities esp. with cruise missiles

["Andy Smith" <andy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Apologies if this is the wrong way to report a bug; I'm new here.
If I'm going about this the wrong way please do tell me what to do
instead.

I've noticed some oddities with auto-attack especially with regards
to cruise missiles.

Firstly and most show-stoppingly, cruise missiles on auto-attack in
a city that has the auto-attack air units option will leave the city
to engage air units.  They will then of course end up next to the
air unit unable to attack it and likely with no move left.  This
pretty much makes the auto-attack order useless for cruise missiles,
which is a shame since gut feelings suggest they'd be great for
coastal cities vs. sea units.

The next thing is, auto-attacking units are able to attack enemies
that the player cannot see.  For most units this isn't usually
apparent since their moves are quite low, however this makes for real
fun with cruise missiles for example.

Imagine two fairly late-stage civs on different but close continents
separated by perhaps 5 or 6 sea squares.  Cities on the coasts will
not be aware of each other.  But if those two civs should decide to
put cruise missiles in those cities on auto-attack then you can end
up seeing your missiles zip off 12 squares into the heart of a
continent you didn't know existed to kill an engineer or something.
This seems both unfair (a circle of radius 12 around a city is quite
a lot of land that auto-attacking missiles now keep clear for you)
and unrealistic.

So I suggest:

1. auto-attack should make sure that your own unit can engage the enemy
   unit at all, as a big fix.

2. As a game option, auto-attack should only operate on enemy units
   that can currently be seen by the player.  I say as an option
   because I can see how this greatly reduces the power of
   auto-attack and maybe some people desire the previous behaviour?

As I said, I'm new here, but these patches seem fairly trivial.  I'm
happy (and would find it instructive) to provide them if they would
be likely to be included.  What do you think?

Regards,
Andy