[Freeciv-Dev] Re: Compound & S-Land

[Ben Webb <ben@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sat, Nov 22, 2003 at 12:56:04PM +0000, Per I. Mathisen wrote:
> On Sat, 22 Nov 2003, Ben Webb wrote:
> > On Sat, Nov 22, 2003 at 07:27:13AM +0000, Per I. Mathisen wrote:
> > > On Fri, 21 Nov 2003, Ben Webb wrote:
> > > > FreecivAC at http://freecivac.sourceforge.net/, which embeds S-Lang into
> > > > the server in a limited fashion (part of the newcompounds patch).
> > > Why did you start using S-Lang? IMHO, the previous approach was much
> > > nicer.
> > It was easier to embed than Python.
> By previous approach, I did not mean Python, but the ruleset-only version
> of compound units.

The scripts are all still in the ruleset, but without scripting there
wasn't enough flexibility to support the full range of SMAC compound
units. For example, the base cost of building a unit is
Weapon * (Armor + Speed) * 10 / (2 ^ (Reactor + 1))

...but there are plenty of special cases... for example, the cost is
halved for sea units, special abilities add extra cost, etc. To add all
this stuff to the ruleset in a general way would essentially end up
implementing a scripting language in Freeciv... and there seemed little
point in doing that when S-Lang and Python were available.

        Ben
-- 
ben@xxxxxxxxxxx                      http://salilab.org/~ben/
"Ice formed on the butler's upper slopes."
        - 'Pigs Have Wings (1952), ch. 5, pt. i', P.G. Wodehouse