Ships and movement/boarding

[Gary Thomas]

I have a question about rivers, is the current plan to allow units to cross rivers ala Civ-series?

We still haven't decided whether to have rivers in squares on on edges, though I naively though I had won that argument. If they are in squares, they cannot be barriers. As the main proponent of on edge rivers, I feel that as boundaries (that is, political boundaries) and barriers are a very important factor.

Cheers

[Mark_Everson]

I'm now leaning toward square-edge rivers. It seems they on balance will allow a more rich environment visually, and for game effects. How about others of the old in-square group? Can you look over this thread and the rivers one again, and see if you're persuaded that square-edge is at least as viable as in-square rivers.

[Gary Thomas]

5 days since that post, and no objections yet...

Cheers

[Plutarck]

I've thrown my 31,000 Turkish Lira into the river thread, and since I'm taking a break from my civ3 LWC Mod work, I figured I'd try commenting here too.


For one thing, why would ships moving into land squares be more sensible than land units moving into water squares? If nothing else it seems like a wash, though I would argue that while people can swim, ships can't walk.

The main problem is obviously the "man, where do you store this gangplank when you aren't using it" problem, but when troops wish to board a ship would not the ship move as close to land as possible to receive them, or (for the big ships) send out row-boats to pick the men off the land?

One question though: Will coasts just be water squares where land units cannot move, as in Civ3, or will coasts somehow be half-and-half, allowing both naval and land units to be in the square? Or would it just be land terrain that looks different, and that's it?

I'll assume the former, as that's how I'd propose it be handled anyway (a sepperate issue, to be sure).


There would be 2 kind of ship units here. One would be a transport unit, and can only drop off/load troops at suitable port facilitys. The other kind would be a landing craft, capable of delivoring troops directly to the shores. Each LC couldn't carry near as many troops as a transport/cargo ship could, of course, but they'd be neccessary for landing an assault force on land you don't have a foothold in.

There could also be a land Army Engineer unit which can go a shore without using an LC (as could perhaps Marines, or any unit classified as "amphibious"). Not strong fighters, but they could establish a make-shift dock/port/establish a beachead so that you can land your heavier troops. In the modern era this would not be as required because of the level of advancement of LC and Amphibious Assault Vehicles, but before that tanks can't just be stuck on a raft and floated towards shore - you have to have some way to get them off the ship without running aground.

Landing craft could be allowed to move onto land/shore/coast (whatever), but if they move it must be directly out to sea.

[Gary Thomas]

Now that the question of edge rivers has been settled, I am more comfortable in addressing the question of boarding ships.

Ships will be able to move onto land squares, but can only move off them onto the square they came from. The way Civ uses cities as canals should not be allowed. When canals are implemented, they will be real canals.

Ships on land squares represent ships in port (if there is a city present) or on or by the beach.

The question of whether land units can move onto ships in a sea square needs to be resolved. I am against it - the ships are, on average, 50km out at sea. This is particularly valid since the beach or port are actually on the land square.

The movement of the ship onto the land square will represent the loading time, in a sense.

Cheers

[LDiCesare]

OK Gary, you will have the last square info for units in the next code I send you. The board methods haven't changed since last time I explained, if you can't find it I'll tell it again.

[Richard Bruns]

I'd like to chip my 2 cents in about movement:

If a river is by a populated square within your borders, it should be assumed that there is a bridge there for your troops to use. If a TF is in the wilderness or enemy territory, the river should be impassible unless the TF has an "engineer" element.

I think the assumption of improvements should hold for all your territory. If you have your people living in a tile, there will be roads and supplies, so units should move a bit faster and have better supplies than they would in the wilderness. The roads that the player orders build are equivalent to big Roman-style roads and wold of course give a bigger movement bonus.

The ships on land tiles should work fine. What confused me was the ship being on the edge of a tile, but now that they don't sail rivers we don't have that problem. In the future, maybe we should make it a rule that ships can only land at ports unless there is an engineer element aboard. Even if we don't go that far, there should be a big advantage to using ports.

[Mark_Everson]

Gary:

Yeah, I think the ships entering the land square will work better overall. Although I would show them graphically near the tile edge just for aesthetic purposes. Could be if we show them Just inside the edge from which they entered the square it would look good, and also let the player know from where they came.

Richard:

I have had in mind for a long time the sort of things you are talking about. I'd pictured them as being represented by something like the value in "transportation infrastructure" or perhaps "commercial" infra if we want to keep the number of infra classes down. If two squares have high enough value you might automatically get a bridge between them if the river is bridgeable with current technology at some cost threshold.

Indeed I think there should be much faster strategic movement within established areas of one's own civ. The origin of the advantage would be from knowing the terrain better, local roads if they exist, not needing pickets and scouting, etc. Details TBD.

[Gary Thomas]

Mark:
I sort of thought of having them at the edge of the sea square, but near the land. Should look quite good.

Richard:
There are ships and ships. Greek galleys were pulled up on the beach as were longboats. The vessels that really needed ports were actually the merchantmen which will not be represented by units.

Remember that the rivers in Clash are BIG rivers. I would expect that they are in the 10km across category. No bridges in ancient times. Ferries though.

Cheers

[Gary Thomas]

Since I have started coding the boarding gui, this is how it works:

Ships can enter land squares, but only from a sea square. If there are transports in the land square, "Board" will appear on the task force menu.

Land units can enter sea squares, but only if there are transports there to receive them.

In both cases, if there is a choice of transports, a menu will appear for each unit (not taskforce), allowing selection of the transport it is to go to.

If the selected unit is a loaded transport, it will have an option on its orders menu "Unload". If this option is selected there follow various options depending on the number of units loaded, and whether the transport is in a sea or land square.

In all cases, loading or unloading takes 2 ticks (that is, six days).

How does this sound?

Cheers.

[LDiCesare]

Sounds good Gary.
About trireme as carrier ships: There is a BoardSpace tag in the military xml file. Triremes should have 0, and another ship (roundboat, you suggested) 1. What we miss is graphics for that ship.

[Gary Thomas]

What we miss is graphics for that ship

I know, but there is a really encouraging comment by Stian in the map graphics thread.

Incidentally, the system I described is pretty much identical to Civ3.

Cheers

[Mark_Everson]

It all sounds good. My one question is:

Is there an option for "just load all the units on the ships, and I don't care how." ? Or does the board order automatically do that?

[Gary Thomas]

I certainly think that should be an option, but you have to be able to hand manage it as well, because the transported units may have different destinations.

Cheers