forum.freeciv.org

When ship is carrying units, you are attacking ship, not unit loaded, right?

Not in case triremes, if they can go along river. Your unit still see only trireme (and odds calculations are 99%), but when you are trying to attack, you must fight with units inside.
What is worse, you can fortify unit and carry it fortified EDIT: I mean, that loaded unit can be fortified.
It is a bug in my opinion. Trireme class on land is already overpowered (can unload units without unload penalty), but carrying fortified units and making false success odds is just an exploit.

Yes, really, we should not allow transported units to be fortified at all. In fc3.0 we have UnitState Transported and can put it into negative of Fortify action enabler; maybe we should give all transported units the same regeneration bonus, or maybe not (it's difficult to repair tanks on a ship in the middle of the storming sea). And in all versions auto-unload of a unit should not keep it fortified; it unfortifies when unloads manually, but likely needs to fortify again only if the ship did not move this turn, I'll study the code and file a bug. The oddity of attacking a ship that visually transporting something that can go out if disturbed is a part of the game though.

I've studied what happens in editor for civ2civ3 at 2.6. Fortifiability depends on not loaded state but terrain. And it is lost if your transporter moves. (Within it, the loaded unit is considered not moved for normal HP regeneration, even if unloaded/reloaded in process). So, fortifying your phalanx in a trireme on river is just a shortcut for fortifying it on a tile and then if needed loading back for travel; the exploit is just that the enemy can't see the fortified phalanx that will actually defend.

Fortified or not, the main exploit is, that you don't see what is inside but must fight with it, while middle mouse button fools you showing odds for trireme.
In case of ship on sea, you fight with ship itself. There should be the same situation in both cases.
Option to choose 'fight with ship' or 'fight with strongest unit in ship stack' would be welcome.

Wahazar wrote:Fortified or not, the main exploit is, that you don't see what is inside but must fight with it, while middle mouse button fools you showing odds for trireme.
In case of ship on sea, you fight with ship itself. There should be the same situation in both cases.
Option to choose 'fight with ship' or 'fight with strongest unit in ship stack' would be welcome.

The middle mouse button fools you A LOT (e.g. if tired attack is on and your unit stays apart... and let's not even start about how it shows surviving enemy attack chances).
If a unit can unload and defend on a tile and has advantages in it, it will do, why it should not, if unload on the same tile is considered an action consuming no points? That's the logic behind the current behaviour. Just it's probably wrong to use invisibility and fortifying advantages simultaneously. Maybe we should on some conditions make transport content visible (early river boats hardly have holds where one can hide a bunch of armed men).
There is currently no sniper attacks in Freeciv - it's always defender who (automatically) selects who defends. But it actually would be nice if the ruleset can control chances of auto-unloading units from a ship (flocks of rockets in the sky which fly home after you sink AI submarine are also just silly), and also allowed desk fight.

Ignatus wrote: If a unit can unload and defend on a tile and has advantages in it, it will do, why it should not, if unload on the same tile is considered an action consuming no points? That's the logic behind the current behaviour.

I see no logic now.
Solution is simply - if you want to defend your trireme, unload unit, maybe fortify it to move forward, load again.
It is not logical, that unit loaded on sea ship can't fight, while same unit loaded on river barge can. It breaks game consistency.
Moreover, you don't know what is in stack. You see it in fortress, even city can be checked by diplomat.

Of course trireme itself is weak small capacity unit obsoleted later, thus it is not a huge problem, but consider ruleset with trireme successors. And what about Trains - would be overpowered with such exploit.

Where is a code responsible for that? server/unithand?

Ignatus wrote: But it actually would be nice if the ruleset can control chances of auto-unloading units from a ship (flocks of rockets in the sky which fly home after you sink AI submarine are also just silly), and also allowed desk fight.

Indeed, I can kill submarine, but missiles inside would be alive. Or can sunk carrier, and all airplanes survive?
It is clearly a bug, and deserve to be fixed.
Where is a code responsible for that? server/unithandle?
I suspect, that !can_unit_survive_at_tile is checked, and it is a cause of this bug/exploit/feature whatever you call it.
The best solution would be, as you said, ruleset definition, which unit can defend carrier, or which unit can attack loaded units instead of carrier.
It would allow to provide elegant way to define turrets or pirates.

Wahazar wrote:I see no logic now.
Solution is simply - if you want to defend your trireme, unload unit, maybe fortify it to move forward, load again.

So you would want the behavior of unloading defenders after every trireme move, and loading them before each move, to exist as micro-management task for the user, instead of the equivalent behavior happening automatically?

Wahazar wrote:It is not logical, that unit loaded on sea ship can't fight, while same unit loaded on river barge can. It breaks game consistency.

It's quite consistent and logical that land unit cannot be outside ship at sea, to fight or otherwise, while it can be at land tile with river on it.

cazfi wrote:

Wahazar wrote:I see no logic now.
Solution is simply - if you want to defend your trireme, unload unit, maybe fortify it to move forward, load again.

So you would want the behavior of unloading defenders after every trireme move, and loading them before each move, to exist as micro-management task for the user, instead of the equivalent behavior happening automatically?

I think his main problem is that a loaded unit is invisible to enemy, not that he wants to de-automate the process.

There's case, where you guys, should provide ranged flag. Only ranged units could protect trimere.