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

["Jason Short" <jdorje@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Per I. Mathisen wrote:
> 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.

As discussed on IRC, I think we need to clean up the current system 
(including removal of assign_units_to_transporter) before we can get 
into new behavior.

But, I basically agree with all of the above.

jason