River boats/ships

What would you like to see in Freeciv? Do you have a good idea what should be improved or how?
Wahazar
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River boats/ships

Post by Wahazar »

I understand very well, that civ is a game based on rather high abstraction level, however rule, that units move 3x faster across rivers, always bug me out.
Rivers always were important mean of transport, and it is depicted well as additional trade points.
But from the other side, rivers were also obstacle for any giant army, you need to arrange boats/bridge, horses can swim across but slowly, etc.
It is rather weird, that every unit gain triple speed, when going along river.
In my opinion, rivers should add movement penalty instead of dividing it, but additional boats/ships, which can go on rivers or along coast, could be available.

Here are proposals of river ships/boats and attempt to gather some graphics:
  • Trireme - already existing in game, universal unit, a=1, d=1, c=2, can't carry catapults.
  • Galley (or quinquereme), universal unit, a=1, d=2, c=3, image:
    Image author ?
  • Steam barge - freight, a=0, d=1, c=5, image:
    author: andynorth, GPL
    author: andynorth, GPL
    steam_barge.png (1.64 KiB) Viewed 6937 times
  • Steam Monitor - a=3, d=3 (weak version of ironclad), image:
    Image, author Vladimir Slavik
  • Diesel barge - freight, a=0, d=1, c=10, image:
    author: andynorth, GPL
    author: andynorth, GPL
    diesel_barge.png (1.53 KiB) Viewed 6937 times
  • Patrol boat - a=3, d=3, high movement points, image:
    Image, author Vladimir Slavik
Maybe additional unit would fit into this idea: Bridging Vehicle. Speed 2, capacity 1, can be placed on the river, thus other units can use it like a bridge. Not sure if it is possible to obey unloading penalty, otherwise there is no positive gain from such unit.
Augmented2 ruleset/modpack for freeciv2.6: http://forum.freeciv.org/f/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=91047
XYZ
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Re: River boats/ships

Post by XYZ »

Let me break it down to you. No unit will happen unless you do it yourself. Asking for graphics is like pie in the sky. Believe me, I have done it over the years. Good news: making your own units isnt that difficult. But the bar is high since you need 3 different graphics. Trident, Amplio and Cimpletoon (blender). Meanwhile Trident and Amplio need one image Cimpletoon needs 8 per unit from each perspective (N-NW-NE...). After that you can try to submit it but I have no experience to what happens afterward...

I pushed the graphics issue by creating a ton of new units specially for trident and will be done hopefully this month with them (trident only). If you want to experiment I can give you some advices that spare you the initial frustration I went through...

http://forum.freeciv.org/f/viewtopic.ph ... 813#p98813 here the status of my trident graphics.

http://forum.freeciv.org/f/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=90253 my own unit wishlist.
XYZ
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Re: River boats/ships

Post by XYZ »

Here for example I recycled a destroyer and made him to a multipurpose ship or in my case a minesweeper. With toying around and little modification you can do a lot. Your ship example (pixel art) helped.

Edit: and another ship you can use...
Attachments
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Minesweeper5.png
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nef
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Re: River boats/ships

Post by nef »

1. Perhaps I am being a little picky here but a trireme is a galley.

2. A real annoyance I have with some of the new rulesets is the denial of IRL. According to the wikipedia entry on triremes -
"Artillery in the form of ballistas and catapults was widespread, especially in later centuries, but its inherent technical limitations meant that it could not play a decisive role in combat."
I think this clearly indicates that (some) 'bigland' units could be (and were) carried on triremes. I do not understand the point of denial.

I am not sufficiently familiar with Civilization II, so I don't know where the limitation of non-marines comes into freeciv; the same wikipedia entry on triremes refers to the boarding troops as "marines". This issue seems to put freeciv ruleset devs at sixes and sevens. Personally I would like to see freeciv special rulesets (classic, civ2civ3, experimental) offer a musket marine with a suitable graphic (upright soldier in high vis uniform), and to provide the marine attribute to at least one unit in the pre gunpowder era such that it could be used at any time a player can build a galley. This would fix the one tile island problem once and for all.
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Re: River boats/ships

Post by XYZ »

Personally I would like to see freeciv special rulesets (classic, civ2civ3, experimental) offer a musket marine
Attached ;)
and to provide the marine attribute to at least one unit in the pre gunpowder era such that it could be used at any time a player can build a galley.
At longturn.org we designated often the legion/swordman that role.
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Marineinfantry2.png
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Wahazar
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Re: River boats/ships

Post by Wahazar »

XYZ wrote:Let me break it down to you. No unit will happen unless you do it yourself. Asking for graphics is like pie in the sky.
There is a little misunderstood, I'm not asking for graphics, there is already plenty of existing graphics and there is not a problem for me to make a missing new ones, my wish-list may concern rather including these graphics in future freeciv releases, because currently it is not possible to alter server ruleset when there is no appropriate graphics on the client side - and unfortunately freeciv doesn't have any "on-fly" update features, AFAIK.
nef wrote:Perhaps I am being a little picky here but a trireme is
Formally yes, but it was an ancient galley, I was referring to medieval galleys, you know, all these Venetian stuff etc.
If talking about realism - we always need to counterbalance it with playability, if trireme can transport heavy weapons, why to invent new things or upgrade to better units? Trireme is accessible early in the game and would be overpowered if capable to transport catapults+going along rivers.
There should be following tiers:
Trireme - as it is now;
Quinquereme - improved version of Trireme, can carry Big Land units, but not Big Siege, accessible with Seafaring, but not obsoleting Trireme, because need more shield to produce;
Medieval Galleasses - no transport restriction, higher capacity and attack/defence points, available with Magnetism.
Beginning from steam era, I propose to break it into civil merchants and navy units, as described previously.

PS. "Marines" flag exist in civ2civ3 ruleset for Legion, Musketeers, Riflemen.
Augmented2 ruleset/modpack for freeciv2.6: http://forum.freeciv.org/f/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=91047
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Corbeau
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Re: River boats/ships

Post by Corbeau »

nef wrote:I think this clearly indicates that (some) 'bigland' units could be (and were) carried on triremes. I do not understand the point of denial.
The key word in the above quote is "some". Catapults used in Civ are wall-breaking heavy units that create a big advantage in the field. Not the ones that were being carried by triremes/galleons. I don't know if there ever was a battle in pre-1000AD history where naval bombardment contributed in taking a city. I'd say there was quite the opposite: all ships stayed well outside the range of missile weapons positioned on the coasts because their weapons - adjusted for light weight so that they can be installed on a ship - were no mach for the machine firmly dug into the ground.

So we could have a different kind of catapults that can be carried on triremes, but such catapults shouldn't have Attack strength more than 2.

I am not sufficiently familiar with Civilization II, so I don't know where the limitation of non-marines comes into freeciv; the same wikipedia entry on triremes refers to the boarding troops as "marines". This issue seems to put freeciv ruleset devs at sixes and sevens. Personally I would like to see freeciv special rulesets (classic, civ2civ3, experimental) offer a musket marine with a suitable graphic (upright soldier in high vis uniform), and to provide the marine attribute to at least one unit in the pre gunpowder era such that it could be used at any time a player can build a galley. This would fix the one tile island problem once and for all.
I hope you are aware that ancient battles didn't look remotely similar to the stuff we see in Hollywood movies today. There were no charges and a massive collection of individual duels. One strategy was crucial, and nothing ever came close to it: holding a line. After you hold a line, you can consider what to do with taht line, move forward, back, left or right, but unless you hold a line very firmly, you are about to be slaughtered.

Units landing from ships are not doing so in a line. They are doing it in disarray which lasts quite enough for any defences present to kill them off. There is a video on Youtube describing don't remember which battle between Macedonians and Romans, where Macedonians lost for one reason: they weren't able to set up a line quickly enough before the Roman line came to them. And they were both advancing, all in plain sight, no surprises, on an open field. And now imagine the chaos of jumping off the ships and trying to arrange your men into a square or whatever while the shield wall is about to smash into you in probably less than half a minute.

So, I'm afraid, no "marine" flag would be even remotely realistic until way after Musketeers. We can discuss playability, but then that would depend on what kind of game you want.


However, I agree very much with your comments about rivers. Yes, definitely! Something has been bugging me for a while and taht was it. Rivers should actually eat up all unit's movement when it is crossing it and have no influence when it is moving along the river. In Civ 3 (I think) rivers were redesigned so that they were flowing between the tiles, separating them. That made perfect sense. Unfortunately, we don't have that here. A second best solution would be that a river takes a lot of MPs cross (increasnig the cost instead of reducing it), but you can still have boats that are able to carry units along.
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Wahazar
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Re: River boats/ships

Post by Wahazar »

Corbeau wrote: A second best solution would be that a river takes a lot of MPs cross (increasnig the cost instead of reducing it), but you can still have boats that are able to carry units along.
It is exactly a reason, why I started this thread and proposed some river boat/ships tiers.
River battle ships, such monitor, should be slightly worse than their naval counterparts, not only because realism, but to keep game balance (strong unit entering inland from open sea could be a nightmare). Not sure how to implement it - less A/D points or less HP points?
Augmented2 ruleset/modpack for freeciv2.6: http://forum.freeciv.org/f/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=91047
cazfi
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Re: River boats/ships

Post by cazfi »

Wahazar wrote:(strong unit entering inland from open sea could be a nightmare).
For balance, you may need to add a defensive building too, or to change rules of the existing ones. City Walls would not protect against them as they are not land units, and Coastal Defense cannot be built inland.
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Corbeau
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Re: River boats/ships

Post by Corbeau »

River battle ships should actually be very weak because they are effective ONLY if defences are crappy. Put up any kind of missile defence (catapults, archers, musketeers, mortars) and the boat has no business being there. In other words, it's not justified for it to exist in Civ in the first place.
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