[Freeciv-Dev] (PR#6174) Loading transports

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

The current system:

You press 'sentry' to place a unit in 'sentried' mode. This has the dual
purpose of remaining dormant until an enemy is spotted and to be picked up
by a passing transport.

When a transport moves from one tile to another, all units that are
'transported' are dropped then new cargo is reassigned to the transport.
This has the unfortunate effect that you do not know for sure that
whatever you transported before the move is still with you into the next
tile. You could have swapped the entire contents of the cargo hold with
sentried units on the tile of origin. This system is also slow and
unreliable.

It is hard to implement the 'hide transported units in stacks' reliably
with this system.

My suggestion for a new system:

A new key, 'load', is used to load units into a transport. (You can still
walk a ground unit from land to sea and become automatically transported.)
Units on a tile are sorted: Unassigned units come first and transports are
always followed by their cargo. When you press 'load' your unit is put
into the next transport with reserve capacity.

Sentried units are not automatically transported when a transport moves
over them.

A transported unit stays transported when a transporter moves.

  - Per