Transport Troops/ Transport people promotion.

[Sakura Matou]

Hey there!

I just have a small gripe about these two promotions. Why have two separate promotions for dedicated transport units? I use auto promotion on my games and saw that my auto promoted transport ships, as well as the Ai's ALWAYS upgraded with transport people instead of troops. At least for the larger or dedicated transports can they by default be able to start with both upgrades? It's a bit of a bummer I will have to take auto promote off and my nasty rival on another continent will never be able to invade me

Thanks ahead of time.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Interesting. I might have to simply put a little AI weight towards the transport troops promotion set for transport units. I would never EVER auto promote anything but that's just me. I do actually appreciate still reports like this because it does go to show what the AI is thinking in the end summary of valuation and where it may be manifesting serious issues for wierd reasons... this could be one that creates some down the line, keeping it's transport navy units from ever being able to get its troops picked up. So it's actually rather serious even if it doesn't seem so at first.

 

[Sakura Matou]

I just do Auto promote for "RP" reasons as if my field generals are deciding how to train their troops, and also because I am lazy lol.

Back to Transport promotions, adding more weight to transports too transport troops seems like an easy quick fix, or perhaps they should start with it, and use transport people for exploration type ships like Caravels and Canoes.

 

[Noriad2]

The 2 transport promotions are quite a silly distinction in my opinion. If a ship can transport troops it should realistically also be able to transport hunters and explorer units, although not necessarily the other way around; troops take up much more space.

I think it is better to have the following 2 options:
1) small transport capability: only transport "small" units (hunters, explorers, Great Persons etc.)
2) big transport capability: transport ALL types of land units.

And every ship type should have only 1 of these options available. Option 1 for small primitive ships and for example submarines, option 2 for all the other ships.
In fact, it would be better if ships come with these promotions standardly, as it would save the AI from making decisions on this subject.

 

[Thunderbrd]

The 2 transport promotions are quite a silly distinction in my opinion. If a ship can transport troops it should realistically also be able to transport hunters and explorer units, although not necessarily the other way around; troops take up much more space.

I think it is better to have the following 2 options:
1) small transport capability: only transport "small" units (hunters, explorers, Great Persons etc.)
2) big transport capability: transport ALL types of land units.

Generally speaking, this is how it works for Size Matters. But it was setup with this rather limited design in the original Vanilla architecture, making it a bit risky to try changing it too fundamentally since it could interact with the EXE somewhere.

And every ship type should have only 1 of these options available. Option 1 for small primitive ships and for example submarines, option 2 for all the other ships.

The entire point of the promos is to be able to allow you to change the configuration of what you want to be able to transport on a ship. The first one is the final dedication to that type and from there the ship is locked in and too committed. Even if this means committed to its normal default. This is because the ship itself has become permanently outfitted to allow more room for x type units.

In fact, it would be better if ships come with these promotions standardly, as it would save the AI from making decisions on this subject.

They do have a default on the unit itself, which is what I will make the AI tend to favor keeping to.

 

[Sakura Matou]

As long as it is fixed soon one way or the other I will be happy.

 

[Noriad2]

The entire point of the promos is to be able to allow you to change the configuration of what you want to be able to transport on a ship. The first one is the final dedication to that type and from there the ship is locked in and too committed. Even if this means committed to its normal default. This is because the ship itself has become permanently outfitted to allow more room for x type units.

My point is that this is a silly choice. What is this "permanent outfit"? In the real world, a ship capable of transporting troops is also capable of transporting other types of units. So why the artificial distinction? It makes no sense.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

My point is that this is a silly choice. What is this "permanent outfit"? In the real world, a ship capable of transporting troops is also capable of transporting other types of units. So why the artificial distinction? It makes no sense.

You have it the wrong way around. Some ships in vanilla can only transport people eg Spies and Great People but not troops. This promotion line is so they can carry more people but not troops. In vanilla units that can take troops can take all units.

I know it is something special about Size Matters that is in play here.

Perhaps it should be that troop transport vessels can only take the promotion line that allows more troops while the other type of ships can take both?

 

[Sakura Matou]

Well DH, I built the dedicated unit called "Transport" in the industrial age, it auto promoted to the promotion that only allows it to take non-troop units. Also I have not once seen the AI land Military troops via the sea due to their boats all having the same promotion. IMO that is a bit of a game breaker as my biggest rival is on another continent and wants to have a war of the super powers but yet will never attempt to land troops on my shore due to this issue. I also don't use Size matters.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Well DH, I built the dedicated unit called "Transport" in the industrial age, it auto promoted to the promotion that only allows it to take non-troop units. Also I have not once seen the AI land Military troops via the sea due to their boats all having the same promotion. IMO that is a bit of a game breaker as my biggest rival is on another continent and wants to have a war of the super powers but yet will never attempt to land troops on my shore due to this issue. I also don't use Size matters.

I was suggesting a solution . There are two types of transport vessel that need to be handled. I was suggesting that the Troop Transport vessels only be able to get the Troop Transport promotions as that caters for the other anyway.

 

[Sakura Matou]

I was suggesting a solution . There are two types of transport vessel that need to be handled. I was suggesting that the Troop Transport vessels only be able to get the Troop Transport promotions as that caters for the other anyway.

Oh my fault, sorry lol. I misread, and yes that seems to be an easy fix. I hope

 

[Thunderbrd]

In vanilla units that can take troops can take all units.

This was not the case in AND. Or rather it was not the case in the coding when I found it. I do recall vanilla allowing people sized units to board troop only transports though.

We should just turn off the people promotionline for those ships officially designated as UNITCOMBAT_TRANSPORT actually. The purpose of that line is to apply for ships that can't transport normally anyhow.

 

[Sakura Matou]

How easy of a fix would that be? I hope very easy because perhaps we could get a quick svn patch

 

[Thunderbrd]

As simple as a quick xml fix. I can do it later tonight. It should correct most issues there.

 

[Sakura Matou]

Wow was thinking with in a couple of weeks not hours! Thanks a lot!

 

[Thunderbrd]

Ok, it's on the SVN now.

Just to clarify, Troops and People are defined as Special Unit Types and many land units have one or the other defined. Many transport units, usually those that can transport troops, actually don't have either one specified as the type they carry but rather rely on a domain definition to define what they can carry and can thus transport both types.

However, there are also ships that define only People are what may be transported. Caravels and Subs, for example, can only transport People. For those, it's important to make the distinction, because Troops and People both mean different base transport volume when on Size Matters, as there is no difference between type there for what specialunittypes are transportable, and not on SM, you don't have these definitions on transports so much as how they apply to the volume of what the promotions add. The ability to commit the transport unit from a ship configured (with weapons and cargo holdings) from people to troops was something I wanted to enable.

However, I also wanted to enable units that weren't transports of any kind to be able to promote itself to transporting people types.

Anyhow, it's extremely complex, particularly when you factor in that now captives are a 'type' and so are missiles and HVAC hovering take off and landing vehicles. This is a large part of what should be swappable by these type changes. The configuration switch from a sub holding missiles to holding people or vice versa, for example, is an example. A Cruiser type should be able to swap from carrying missiles to carrying people or seaplanes or HVAC, but not All Air types, thus not fighters and bombers.

Again, complicated and hard to explain. You've given me cause to realize how I needed to adjust the People transport option, which exists for units that don't have a transport designation or for units that have a designation of people, missiles, or other types, except for Carrier ships.

Yes, DH and I came to the conclusion that the best answer to all of this is to make it possible for the code to accept that ships can have multiple type transport designations. So that's another future project to go back in and adjust everything to allowing. A very very big project. The only reason I did as much as I have here is because SM demanded it be done and a few simple (or so it seemed) concepts emerged along the way there. And it's still not bug clean. Something is very wrong somewhere, like I have not figured out where all units can become loaded or unloaded. I suspect it's in python that's causing unit counts to go off somehow.

 

[Sakura Matou]

TYVM works like a charm <3