[Freeciv-Dev] Re: Wanting to help

[Per Inge Mathisen <per@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, 15 Nov 2005, Jason Dorje Short wrote:
> Per Inge Mathisen wrote:
> >> - allowing stack moves and stack combat (as in CTP),
> >
> > I see no reason for this. I cannot think of any sane way to implement
> > stack combat. Some kind of bodyguard stack moves might be of interest,
> > though.
>
> I think we should have a starcraft-like movement system rather than a
> CTP/MoM-like one. The battlegroups patch works toward this.

I am not sure I like either approach.

The Starcraft model is working because the player does not see tiles, but
a continuous map, and this map has huge uniform areas through which units
can move as groups. Terrain is unimportant, only elevation is important.
The only place in *civ where this would somewhat apply is for oceans. I
cannot see how it would be useful for controlling units on land, where
terrain and where you end the turn matters often a great deal.

Characteristic of the Starcraft model is that while the origin coordinates
are varied, the destination is a single point. In Starcraft, this is not
much of a problem (except for air units, who become vulnerable to area of
effect weapons), but in Freeciv, the loss of one units would destroy the
whole battlegroup once it has assembled on its target tile.

(In C&C Generals, the problem is solved by a moving in formation command.
Again, this would only work on a map characterised by huge open areas
through which formations could move and where exact resulting tile
position do not matter much, ie units do not have to be adjacent to
attack.)

I have a feeling that both models are ways to solve a low-level design
problem by means of adding more design. That is always a bad idea. If
there are too many identical units to move around for a tile-based map,
then we should reduce the number of units a player can and needs to build
to achieve the same result.

Can someone give me some user stories of how battlegroups would be useful?

  - Per