[Freeciv] RFE: auto relocation

[Sam Steingold <sds@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Master of Orion had an interesting and useful feature:
       "auto-relocating a newly created unit".
Suppose I am building ships on planet X that I need on a planet Y.
I set "auto relocation" on X to Y so that the ships are automatically
sent from X to Y when they are finished [actually, they are send on the
previous turn, so that if the ship takes N turns to complete and the
travel time from X to Y is M turns, then using the manual relocation I
will get the ship on Y at turn M+N, but with auto-relocation the ship
will arrive at Y at turn M+N-1 and at turn M I see the ship already left
X in the direction of Y].

Proposal: each city has an "auto-relocation" setting:
either void, or another city.
If the auto-relocation is set, then as soon as a unit is built it is
sent to the destination (with or without the bonus turn saving).
The unit it sent "by foot" (using (rail)roads) if the destination is on
the same continent as the city, and using air lift if they are on
different continents.  If either continent lacks a city with an airport,
one should not be able to set relocation to that city.  So, the newly
created unit is sent to the nearest city with an airport, then airlifted
to the airport nearest to the destination, and then sent to the
destination via (rail)roads.

Auto-relocation should require an "advanced logistical planning"
technological advance, which should require economics and enable
industrialization.

Since auto-relocation constitutes a truly advanced logistical planning,
it should not interfere with manual airport usage, i.e., it should
ignore airport clogging (only one unit per airport per turn) and do not
cause airport clogging.  This should also simplify implementation.


-- 
Sam Steingold (http://www.podval.org/~sds) on Fedora Core release 5 (Bordeaux)
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