[Freeciv-Dev] Re: (PR#7276) Wishlist

["Morgan Jones" <morgan.jones@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

<URL: http://rt.freeciv.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=7276 >

> Hello there,
> 
> at the moment I am managing more than 200 cities and about 1000
> units. I don't use CMA for there is no need to. Almost everything is
> ok. A few things I miss more or less terribly though:
> 
> 1. I'd like to see an option to destroy old units.  To find the last
> warrior within about 100 cities isn't that funny.

All we need to do this is to add a 'Disband All' button to the
Units/Military report.  Perhaps with an 'Are you sure?' type
requestor in case of accidents.

> 3. I'd like to establish some kind of automatic ferry transfer
> between islands. So I'd like to tell my carriers to go one single
> route forth and back, all the time, if there are units to carry or
> not.

I think this could be quite useful.  Perhaps as a variant of Patrol?

> 4. To get the units offboard one has to stop one field before the
> city, wake up all units and then carry them into the city. That is
> very annoying if it's 30 or more units every single turn. I don't
> know how to improve this.

Isn't there a 'Unload all' order for ships or something similar to
this already?  If not it would be a good option to have, especially
if unloading uses up all of a unit's movement points (which is an
idea that I like btw).
 
> 5. I'd like to use air carriers and trains to carry units on large
> distances. While the air transporter would be used to temprarily
> handle terrain like mountains, swamps or ocean, the trains should be
> able to carry rockets (maybe also be able to launch from there) but
> more important large amounts of units at one time from one city to
> another one far away. It's boring to have a dozen of units to
> shuffle around all the same way.

You should be able to implement this by creating new units in the
units.ruleset.  IIRC Longturn freeciv has something along these lines
already.  You might want to have a look at that for ideas.
 
> 6. I'd like to build bridges and tunnels. Terraforming is a nice
> thing but to connect two islands that way just to build a railway
> isn't the best thing.

This could be nice but should be limited to small channels (probably
no more than 2 ocean tiles).  It should also be very expensive. 
Maybe it could be done by loading engineers onto a transport and
using the build road command, when a suitable technology has been
discovered (Steel?).

I also quite like the idea of building canals.

> 7. I'd like to build some kind of radar or buoys to extend sight. At
> the moment I have chains of ships to keep an eye on bigger gaps
> between islands.

There's some ideas floating around somewhere for balloons, zeppelins,
and satellites which can be used for this purpose.  Essentially
they're air units with lots of fuel (alive for many turns) and a high
vision range.  I think these are what you're after.

> And while we are at it:
> 
> 8. I'd like to see resources change with time. A coalmine becomes
> empty and before the necessary level of science I can't find
> uranium. And the units should depend more on the ressources one has.

Civ3 has this and I would also like to see something like this
eventually put into Freeciv, though not to the extremity that Civ3
goes with units units requiring resources present to be able to build
them.
 
> 9. I'd like to have animals and game be more "active". It should
> walk around, push the city fields earnings for a while and
> afterwards one has to rebuild irrigation. Wild animals should be
> hunted and carried to cities, on the other side make exploration
> more dangerous.

I think this is a bit much.  IMO the animals don't represent actual
animals, just that this tile is a good one for supporting livestock
or suitable for hunting.

> 10. It's a small step towards refugees which walk around and maybe
> build up a new nation.

This has been brought up before and IIRC everyone was quite divided on
the issue.  Essentially it adds realism but creates micromanagement. 
Similar in some ways to the Migratiom debate we had earlier.

Personally I think both ideas had some merit but would need a lot of
balancing to get right.  They would need to be able to be switched on
or off though.

And of course someone actually needs to code it and to be prepared to
have their code heavily criticized and modified :)

> 11. I'd like to have oil wells on the ocean. First to only be able
> to build oil rigs in cities where oil effectively is in reach and
> second to have special units to exploit oil fields far from any
> city.
> 
Theoretically the first idea  is handled already by the offshore
platform improvement.  The secind idea might be possible once general
effects is finished.

     -Morgan