forum.freeciv.org

In my opinion we should reduce what player could do with homeless units. I have two ideas:
1. Workers couldn't perform any actions if they are homeless.
2. Units do not heal if they are homeless (maybe do one exception - units inside city with baracks or similar building would be heal).

Well, there is the 'killunhomed' server option that takes away a percentage of their hit points each turn (but at least 1 per turn). I think that's already a good enough solution if we get the ability to give an unhomed unit a homecity.

Just make the city with most production the new homecity.
If cities has zero prod ; tax 4 gold per homeless units per turn.

Killunhomed is too harsh, because you can't set home for these units.

That's already addressed in future versions – the Set_Homecity action is controlled by action enablers, which can be used in a way that allows unhomed units to set their home city.

The other side of the coin is that those homeless units are GOOD.
1) As they exist at the begining of a game, they don't cost anything thus saving money.
2) Workers, Explorers and Horsemen (I include them in my starts) that discovers other units are also free.
3) Homeless units have the same capacities than their home bound counterparts.

Arbogast wrote:The other side of the coin is that those homeless units are GOOD.

And this is a real problem - if they are much too good, they are overpowered.
Situation worsen if you have unhomed attack unit (from hut), which can capture other units - in such case, captured workers etc are also unhomed.
On the other side, killunhomed without possibility of prevent it by homing them is, as I said, way too harsh - they are pretty useless because they loose hp very fast.
Another idea: prevent fractional kill points, for example 0.1: 10% probability of 1hp loss each turn.

Maybe making unhomed units no costs money only if they didn't make any action in previous turn?
This works also with captured units - if they didn't any action, they didn't costs money.

Additionally unhomed units could lose hp only if they do any action in previous turn.

There's still some problem with starting unit, but we can give player some gold on start.

Wahazar said:
...if they are much too good, they are overpowered.

Huh? I don't get this part. Homed and Homeless units are exactly the same, as far as I can see. Or they are not?

In terms of combat strength, yes, they're the same, but homeless units pay no upkeep. Thus, homeless units are far more cost-effective. Unit upkeep is an element of balance, and taking that away - even just for a handful of units - might imbalance things. Especially since through huts and capturing, a player might be able to get even more homeless units, which would offset the balance further.