Re: Occupant Combat, Redux

[Elijah Meeks <elijahmeeks at yahoo dot com>]

> You can set protection to 0, i.e. full protection,
> and the occs will never
> be hit when you hit the transport. Furthermore, if 
> you leave
> occupant-escape-chance at its default 0 they will be
> killed when the
> transport is killed (but remain intact until then).

Yes, but with full protection, a place can have no
capture chance (As my fortresses are set up in
Specula).  Otherwise, if they can be captured, then
the units within the cities, which are supposed to
defend it, instead are wiped out or captured.

> With respect to the city, bombarding it should
> damage the occupants, so I
> see nothing wrong in principle with this.
> 

Most units aren't bombarding a city in the sense you
describe (Artillery or strategic bombing), they fight
the units within they city, and when they do the way
the current system is set up, their fire is multiplied
by the number of occupants.  Even with bombarding
units, this is only realistic if you're trying to
simulate some kind of troop density in a hex, so that
a more heavily occupied hex is vulnerable to strategic
weaponry.  That's situational, and should be handled
as an exception and not a rule.

> What I find strange in this code is rather what
> happens if you miss the
> transport. You must all have seen the frequent
> message: "Your unit a misses
> enemy unit b and hits its occupants c, d and e". But
> this is how things
> work. If we change this scheme we would also have to
> change every game that
> uses the standard combat model. Which I doubt would
> be a good idea right
> now.

You could add it separately, so that xconq still
recognizes and handles "occupant" and "transport"
relationship as it does now, while we can add a
"resident" and "dwelling" relationship which would be
subject to the revised system.  This way we can keep
the old occupant-transport rules, which are suitable
in many cases, and utilize a more realistic system for
units in a place.


__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month!
http://sbc.yahoo.com