[Freeciv-Dev] (PR#8853) design for generalized specialists

["Jason Short" <jdorje@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

<URL: http://rt.freeciv.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=8853 >

SMAC has varied specialists.  This was a slick feature.  Although 
implementing this may not be a priority it's also easy to do and 
shouldn't overlap with other work.  So there's no real reason to delay it.

My proposal is that we move the existing specialist information into the 
rulesets - equivalent to removing any reference to "elvis", "scientist", 
"taxman" in the code - without specifically adding any new features. 
Once this is done we can add new flags and effects that give us the 
extended behavior we want.

This is done in three (possibly overlapping) steps.

In the first step, the hard-coded variables (like ppl_elvis) are removed 
and replaced with arrays (like ppl[SP_ELVIS]).  This is simple, and has 
already been done for some variables.

In the second step the references to the enumeration are removed and 
replaced with loops or data loaded from the ruleset.  For instance 
instead of

   luxury += ppl[SP_ELVIS] * 2;
   science += ppl[SP_SCIENTIST] * 2;
   taxman += ppl[SP_TAXMAN] * 2;

we would have

   for (i = 0; i < SP_COUNT; i++) {
     luxury += ppl[i] * bonus_lux[i];
     science += ppl[i] * bonus_sci[i];
     taxman += ppl[i] * bonus_tax[i];
   }

This step will take more work but is mostly localized.

In the final step the enumeration is removed and the data is now taken 
directly from the ruleset.

jason