A Ship that Refuels?

OzzyKP · November 18, 2003, 16:56

A question to the SL gurus. Can a ship be created that needs to stop in at a port like a plane needs to land? It would be fantastic I think, and very realistic. Much of the 19th and early 20th centuries was about acquiring refueling stops in obscure places around the world.

Possible?

Case · November 18, 2003, 17:09

I've thought about this myself, and I don't think that it's possible in a normal game. However, in a naval oriented game it can be done - make the ships air units, and line the coastlines with invincible units. This way the ships both stay at sea and have to put into port regularly.

Exile · November 18, 2003, 18:29

I thought about that too, Case. The problem I had was that if a "ship" ran out of fuel, it would "sink." Not very realistic. A ship out of fuel would just tend to drift, not dive for the bottom.

I thought about somehow using the helicopter slot/properties somehow, but gave up. Especially if you actually want air units in the game.

Boco · November 18, 2003, 19:40

I once monkeyed around with a helicopter-as-ship theme, too. In that case, it wasn't so much having air units that was a problem, but rather working out tricks to have coexisting land campaigns. That led to a lot of 'coastal' units - most neutral, some enemy, and only a few friendly. Also toyed with 'Colliers', naval settlers, that could refuel naval units when they formed a 'refueling rendezvous' (it created a city graphic challenge). Anyway, it became a mess that quickly defeated me. The idea can work in a strictly limited setting, but it's tough to pull off when you want a lot of land stuff and submarine-air-units, too.

If you can work something out, let us know. It'll earn you everlasting fame and gratitude!

Case · November 19, 2003, 03:09

You could have a bit of fun by reversing land and ocean. You could use roads to represent sea lanes, and different terrain types to represent different sea states/ocean depths/prevailing winds. But it doesn't solve the whole ships running out of fuel problem.

Quote:

Originally posted by Exile
I thought about that too, Case. The problem I had was that if a "ship" ran out of fuel, it would "sink." Not very realistic. A ship out of fuel would just tend to drift, not dive for the bottom.

Yeah, but it's a lot more realistic then ships that can stay at sea indefinetly

N35t0r · November 19, 2003, 10:23

T be a little more clear than te people above, you can add a number in the range section of the units' attributes of Rules.txt to limit their range. They will work the same way air units do (with them 'crashing' (dissappearing) if they don't reach a friendly port by the end of their range.) and you will have to modify the appropiate message in game.txt..

Same thing can be used for land units, btw.

OzzyKP · November 19, 2003, 10:51

Well hell thats easy. Why didn't anyone think of that earlier?

You can edit air units to have them carry cargo too.

Hell this is pretty damn nice. It'll no doubt have some amazing uses for scenarios. I intend to introduce the diplogame world to the idea.

N35t0r · November 19, 2003, 11:06

But they feel that it's not real to have the ships just 'sink'....

and cargo for planes = not good. It doesn't work, as the units don't stay on the plane when it leaves the city.

There are several other combinations that won't work, or that only work partially. (for example, land carrier units can be used by air units to stop and refuel, but the air units don't move with the carrier when it does.)

OzzyKP · November 19, 2003, 11:23

Hmm, I'm not getting it to work anyways.

I put range on a frigate, and it lists the max number of moves left, just like a bomber, and they go down as I move the ship, but when I move it next turn they reset back to the max.

Also, when I tried adding a cargo number to a helicopter it wasn't able to move over land, just water. Basically it was turned into a boat.

Damn, I knew it was too easy. But there has to be a way!

Elok · November 19, 2003, 12:01

Could you give them incredible range coupled with the trireme flag and a loss chance denominator of one (plus no seafaring, Lighthouse or navigation)? You'd have very rapid sea transport that has to be close enough to land to refuel at the end of each turn or it goes derelict. It's limited, but if you're simulating an age where naval travel had an enormous speed advantage over land the movement rate would simulate different fuel capacities in equally fast ships...sorta. Little patrol boats can only travel across small seas, but battleships have enough steam to cross the Pacific. This has the same defects as other methods mentioned but I thought I'd offer my alternative.

Henrik · November 19, 2003, 12:33

Quote:

Originally posted by OzzyKP
Also, when I tried adding a cargo number to a helicopter it wasn't able to move over land, just water. Basically it was turned into a boat.

Does it still lose HP over time?

If so that'd be great for some of us...

Mercator · November 20, 2003, 12:14

Quote:

Originally posted by OzzyKP
Also, when I tried adding a cargo number to a helicopter it wasn't able to move over land, just water. Basically it was turned into a boat.

I just tried this in ToT, but I didn't get the same result. It didn't do anything special at all.

The carrier flag and submarine flag didn't make any difference either, except that the submarine flag prevents the heli from attacking land units (but that's nothing new).

Are you sure you changed the right number?

Stefan Härtel · November 20, 2003, 12:49

You could utilize the trireme flag by forcing ships to trevel off the shoreline by creating impassable units at the coast.

OzzyKP · November 21, 2003, 22:08

"Does it still lose HP over time? "

Nope. It was no different from a boat.

And nothing with the trireme tag is gonna help, we certainly don't want to use any impassable units. I was just hoping there'd be some way to mix the plane attributes with the ship ones so we could have a bomber type craft that traveled only in the water. I don't want to affect the rest of the game.

Though I guess we could just make them planes and tell players not to move them over land. Rely on the honor system.. but thats pretty lame..

Frank Johnson · November 22, 2003, 00:50

Well as far as diplo games are concearned. and civ2 as a whole, there's alot of symbolizism and rationalizing involved with all military units.

I mean, there's not any ship that can repair its self out in the middle of the ocean simply by sitting still. No ship has enough food or supplies, or ammo to do the things we sometimes do with ships in civ2. Its just one of the failing that civ3 tried to correct and did only in a mediocre fassion.

Basicly, we've got to assume that when we build a ship (or actually any military unit) the sheild cost, and the support of that vessal or the government backing it up has the logistics in place to fuel and resupply that vessal. Its unrealistic, and not the best possible setup, but do we really need to make naval combat any harder? Ships in civ2 are already hugely slow. The best warships cost tons in either gold or production, and constantly cause unhappiness that's easier to avoid with land units. In fact in our diplo games, we go out of our ways to make naval vessals alot faster than they usualy are just to make them feasable and more important. And with what, 7 years of poking holes in the rules.tct there's still been no easy way to incorperate limited range ships into the game with out messing up alot of other stuff.

So I guess we just gotta deal. :/

:) Smiley · November 22, 2003, 00:59

You upped the ship's movement points? Dude, don't you know how fearsome a battleship that can attack 7 times is already?

Case · November 22, 2003, 01:26

Do you have a better idea to suggest?

If you get the ratio of battleship to land unit attack strenghts correct, then high movement rates don't translate into multiple attacks (have a look at the stats in Exile's Imperialism).

Furthermore, if you're a bit creative, then you can have land and naval units operating in what are effectively different worlds, using quite different stats that neatly counteract each another (This is done brilliantly in John Ellis's 'Bonaparte 2'). The sub flag is highly useful in this regards.

N35t0r · November 22, 2003, 10:58

Quote:

Originally posted by OzzyKP I was just hoping there'd be some way to mix the plane attributes with the ship ones so we could have a bomber type craft that traveled only in the water. I don't want to affect the rest of the game.

Though I guess we could just make them planes and tell players not to move them over land. Rely on the honor system.. but thats pretty lame..

If what you're looking for is a 'torpedo bomber', ie a plane that can only attack sea units, IIRC if you give an air unit the sub flag, it will only be able to attack sea units. I use this in my personal modpack for a torpedo bomber, cheaper than regular bombers but slightly stronger, yet unable to attack land targets. The AI is dumb with them, though.

OzzyKP · November 23, 2003, 11:45

Hmm, it still moves over land though, right?

That wouldn't work, because normal ships can still bombard coasts, so I wouldn't want to loose that in the game.

Thoddy · November 24, 2003, 04:33

Quote:

Originally posted by N35t0r

If what you're looking for is a 'torpedo bomber', ie a plane that can only attack sea units, IIRC if you give an air unit the sub flag, it will only be able to attack sea units. I use this in my personal modpack for a torpedo bomber, cheaper than regular bombers but slightly stronger, yet unable to attack land targets. The AI is dumb with them, though.

use the rocket flag, the AI will use this weapon in a significant better way against ships, because of "Warping" .

Elok · November 24, 2003, 09:35

Quote:

Originally posted by Thoddy
use the rocket flag, the AI will use this weapon in a significant better way against ships, because of "Warping" .

Yeah, but then doesn't your unit only get to attack once?

Then again, how about a bunch of submarines with zero attack power, coupled with cheap "shell" units? Your ships won't have to refuel, but they will have to reload regularly or they lose pretty much all of their usefulness...that's something, isn't it?

kobayashi · November 24, 2003, 10:20

Quote:

Originally posted by Elok

Then again, how about a bunch of submarines with zero attack power, coupled with cheap "shell" units? Your ships won't have to refuel, but they will have to reload regularly or they lose pretty much all of their usefulness...that's something, isn't it?

That sounds familiar. Now where have I seen that before?

Elok · November 24, 2003, 20:12

I'm not saying it's new, just that it might produce the desired results or something like them.

OzzyKP · November 25, 2003, 01:37

Eh.. that doesn't do much for me.

And I'm not asking for a scenario, but for a multiplayer Diplogame. So there is no AI, rather seven humans.

Its not looking like its possible though...

Sore Loser · November 25, 2003, 08:36

While not being fancy and certainly not practical, there is the option of making it a self-imposed rule. Manually keeping track of each unit's progress would be cumbersome, maybe the shell units above could be replaced with supply/fuel units; one must be disbanded every turn or the ship sinks. Different fuel/supply units could then be developed.

Sore Loser · November 27, 2003, 10:19

Elaborating on the above, each ship can carry a lot more units, but must disband one "Supply" unit each turn. This way, exploration will be more difficult and will likely require outposts for resupplying. Additionally, the more units you have onboard, the shorter the distance you can sail before resupplying. Supplies could cost zero production points, making outposts more useful.

This system could be used for units as well. The main problem is that one supply unit (taking at least one whole turn of production to complete) is *very* expensive for mainintaining just a single unit for one turn. And one unit every second or third turn is just messy. On the other hand, this creates more emphasis on different city types, making outposts more valuable.

Sore Loser · December 2, 2003, 08:34

I've done some testing with the supply unit concept, and it works really well. I've set the size of rows in the shield box to 4 to lower the cost of supplies. At the same time, ships can move farther to make sure they're still useful. Triremes can move 6 squares, meaning that they can explore three squares in any direction without needing supplies. If a ship starts a turn outside of a friendly port (own city, or if you docked at an ally's city last turn), you must disband a unit of supplies. If you cannot, you must disband the ship and all units it carries. I've increased the cargo hold of triremes to 8. Units take 2 spots, supplies take one.

It doesn't work well for units at all, it would just be cumbersome. But I don't think it's too much of a hassle for ships.