worm rider mechanics

[Deliverator]

I think it would be misleading to draw this transport unit as one foot unit stacked with several other foot units, when it is on land. So I will discard the idea of unit art swapping.

I can see if there's a good way to represent a troop of Fremen without it looking like a stack of Fremen.

 

[Maniac]

Why don't you try asking the FFH people how they got double moves in terrain X to work differently from how it does in vanilla?

Thats the mechanic you want really; something that travels faster in the ocean than on land.

That's how the dropship works in Planetfall. It requires SDK changes in cvplot::movementcost or cvunit::movementcost or something.

 

[davidlallen]

You could make worms capturable. See FfH animals and Planetfall native life.

Please read earlier in the thread to catch up on the discussion for this. The AI would never use capturable transport for amphibious assault.

That's how the dropship works in Planetfall. It requires SDK changes in cvplot::movementcost or cvunit::movementcost or something.

It is a spaceship. It moves faster over one kind of land, than another?

 

[Maniac]

Please read earlier in the thread to catch up on the discussion for this. The AI would never use capturable transport for amphibious assault.

Can't find the exact post about this, but if the reason is that captured worms don't have UNITAI_ASSAULT_SEA, you can always change the AI upon capture.

 

[davidlallen]

The AI looks to build up an amphibious assault force all together in its coastal city, and then launch it. If the transport is a capturable animal, the AI will not realize this. A human would put together a bunch of ground forces, walk them to the "coast", capture the transport, and go along. But the AI will never plan that way.

So capturable transport, without an extensive AI change, seems to give the human player an unfair advantage.

 

[Ahriman]

I agree with David that captureable barbarian units aren't the right way to go.

 

[koma13]

As far as I know AI will retreat empty transports back to a city.

 

[davidlallen]

That's good. But still the AI would need to know that it can create a transport via capture, so if it needs transport it should send a capturing unit. Without that piece of AI, the AI player will never use this type of transport.

 

[davidlallen]

Thats the mechanic you want really; something that travels faster in the ocean than on land.

Thanks for the push. In this post and associated thread I have at least understood why the "double move in deep desert" promotion does not work. With an sdk change, it should be possible to make a deep desert double move promotion work. Then we can take a much simpler approach and give all the Fremen foot units this promotion by default, perhaps instead of the existing stillsuit promotion which gives +1 move.

 

[Ahriman]

I would strongly support this as an optimal solution.

 

[davidlallen]

OK, that is working. Thanks to code borrowed from Maniac, and a new sdk built by keldath, I now have a promotion to grant double move on desert waste and deep desert. I will add this into the stillsuit promotion and give Fremen a UU set for scout, settler, soldier, worker. These UU are same as the standard units except for they get the double move for free. Moving on desert waste requires exploration tech, moving on deep desert requires stillsuit tech.

Also, I can modify the worm AI to ignore stacks containing only units with this promotion, same as they ignore thopter/hornet unitcombats.

This will make the Fremen early game raiders. I think this is enough for now. If we get a worm rider graphic, I can put the unit art swapping on; it won't affect the unit abilities, only the art.

If somebody wants to put a sandworm transport unit, that is fine too.

(EDIT: added considerably afterwards: Adding a set of UU for this seems redundant. Instead, I will add a few lines of python for onUnitBuilt which adds the promotion to any unit of the appropriate unitcombat for either Fremen civ. So, no more UU for that.)

 

[keldath]

hey david,
happy to know the code works

 

[AstralDream]

You can make a worm resource visible/usable only for fremen and allow them to bulid improvement like worm rider camp or worm rider training ground, then bulid wormriders in a city but make something that they will appear on improvement...

 

[davidlallen]

This is now working in version 1.4.2 at this link. All the Fremen related units have a Sandrider promotion, double move in desert. See also around post 190 in the art thread for a prototype sandworm rider unit.

 

[Deliverator]

Here's a link to the art prototype.