[Freeciv-Dev] The space race

[Andreas Røsdal <andrearo@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi everyone

Are there any plans on improving the space race part of the game?
It seems to have been unchanged for a very long time, and this strategy 
doesn't
seem to be used at all in the games I've played so far. Here are some 
suggestions.
First of all, space race should be made a more viable way to win the game.
In my experience, the few times spaceships are used the game is already 
decided,
because it's always the strongest player launching a spaceship.
So something could be done to introduce space race earlier in the game,
possibly by reducing the number of technology requirements for it.

To make the space race more exciting, more could be done for players to 
have competing
spaceships at the same time. Perhaps once the Apollo program has been 
built, all
players can have a more even competition for building a spaceship. Such 
as giving all players
access to researching spaceflight, plastics and superconductors once the 
Apollo program has
been built. Or make it easier for spies to steal the space technologies.

There is also some usability issues with the space race dialog. First of 
all, the spaceship
dialog should give all information needed to build a spaceship, guiding 
the user to
building and launching the spaceship. Make it more intuitive to build 
the actual spaceship,
and provide more (and better/more graphical) information about the 
progress during construction
of the spaceship, and the progress after launching the spaceship until 
it arrives.
Perhaps the spaceship could also be shown somewhere on the main map near 
the capital during
construction. It would also be nice with some 3d rendered graphics of 
something looking like a spaceship.
This is a screenshot of the current dialog:  
http://www.freeciv.org/index.php/Image:Spaceship.png
I hope this can be a start for improving the space race in Freeciv...

Andreas Røsdal