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Re: Transportation of units

On Wed, 6 Apr 2005, Jens Granseuer wrote:
On 06.04.2005 11:50, Matthias Grimm wrote: 
On Wed, 6 Apr 2005 04:15:26 -0500 (CDT)
Jonathan Koren <jkoren@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

you may move it into the other transport. But this can't be done with
tanks on sea.


Yeah I know.  It forced me to add barrier islands.  I don't exactly like
it, but probably on the whole the "you can't both unload and load on the
same turn" rule is probably pretty good one.


Yeah, and I'm sticking to that rule. Firmly. Those barrier islands are no
longer needed with the new changes either (hovercraft can enter troopships,
can't they? if not, that's something we could change).

Wait a miniute. I'm confused here. What change are you talking about? There's been several things proposed, and I think we need to get everything cleared up.

1.  Unload and load on the same turn

	You're against this.

	Matthew liked it.

	I'm ambivelent.  There's definatly been times I've wanted it, bu
	I'm also afraid that it will allow some sort of blitzkreig that
	will break the balance of the game.

2.  Load inner containers from outer containers  (This includes
    both cities and troopships.)

	Everyone seems to be for this.  However if you unload and
	load on the same turn, you may not need this.

3.  Nesting of containers  (i.e. infantry in apc in hovercraft in troopship)

	Everyone is against this idea because of the UI mess it will lead
	to.


Assuming I've got all the ideas listed and everyone's position correct, you're saying amphibous assaults without barrier islands for staging can be accomplished by loading the hovercraft from inside the troopship and then moving the loaded hovercraft out. Correct?


I think that if loading from inside containers is going to be supported, then we need to consider the semantics for this a bit more.

1. What happens when the user loads a transport from inside another
   transport?

Consider a troopship-hovercraft-apc-infantry scenario. The user clicks on the troopship and sees it contains a hovercraft, an apc, and an infantry. The user selects the apc and clicks "load". He moves the infantry into the apc. He clicks "done", and he's back in the dialog showing the contents of the troopship. The troopship now contains an apc and a hovercraft. The user selects the hovercraft, clicks "load", and places the apc into the hovercraft. The user is back in the troopship contents dialog. The troopship now appears to contain only a hovercraft.

Now if the user selects the hovercraft, clicks "load" he should see that it contains a hovercraft and an apc. Correct?

While displaying the contents of the hovercraft that is still within the troopship, the user selects the infantry and tries to move him out of the hovercraft like how unloading normally works, what happens? Does the infantry unload normally as if it was never inside the hovercraft, or does the user get an error saying the infantry needs to be unloaded from the hovercraft first?


2.  What happens if the user loads a container from inside another
    container and then ends his turn?  Do inner transports unload into
    outer transports at the end of every turn?  This would make things
    simpler, but that conflicts with the behavior of loading crystals onto
    a transport.  Right now you can load an apc up with crystals and the
    crystals stay inside the transport from turn to turn.


These three questions bring up two more questions about transports. First, do crystals take up space within the transport or not? I don't think they do, but should a transport plane containing the maximum load of 100 crystals still be able to carry 5 tanks?

Second, do different type units take up the same amount of space inside transports? For example, should a transport loaded with only infantry carry more units, than the same transport that is loaded with only medium tanks. (i.e. do tanks weigh more than infantry?)

Third, should there be an icon indicating whether or not a transport is loaded. Right now, the user needs to keep track of that in his own head. Should a little flag, similar to the "the unit has reached the end of its movement" flag be added to distinguish full transports from empty transports? And if certain units do weigh more than other units, should this flag actually be a vertical bar to side of the transport's icon to indicate capacity? I don't want the icons to get cluttered with status bars anymore than the next guy. I just think this is something that should be considered.


--
Jonathan Koren World domination? I'll leave that to the jkoren@xxxxxxxxxx religious nuts and Republicans, thank you.
http://www.cs.siu.edu/~jkoren/ -- The Monarch, "Venture Brothers"