What custom features would YOU like in a freeciv client?

IllvilJa · Post by **IllvilJa** » Fri Mar 23, 2012 1:36 pm

Given the discussion on scripted clients, I think it makes sense to discuss what features people think are missing in the freeciv client.

Note, the features you bring up must be features you would consider add value if they are available for everyone, BOTH you + your allies AND your enemies.

I have a few wishes myself already:

As Lord_P suggested, an conomical history database for all players being observed. That way, you can see how a certain player's funds, income/turn or research rate varies over time.
An event database which keeps all old messages but also allows for timegraphs describing when things happened, like: What techs have country A recieved and when? What techs have it given to another country?
A 'viewless' client or client mode. That is, a client which don't deal with the map data, units (and perhaps not even cities) but only with strategic stuff like research, diplomacy and chat etc.
A 'country locator' which highlights cities belonging to a country. Useful when map sharing has revealed a large portion of the world and you wonder if a certain country is on that map.
An event indicator that tells if other players have been moving within your vision and a high level view of where that happened.

More suggestions anyone?

Remember, we talk about features that would be available for all LT participants, not just you and your allies

.

/IllvilJa

pekka · Post by **pekka** » Fri Mar 23, 2012 5:37 pm

I want units with *jamming* capabilities. I want explorers to be able to jam other players vision, either for a limited time, or just suppressing vision range of enemy units. Of course, this will also need server side modifications.

Edit: Destroyers, AWACS and AEGIS should also have jamming properties with different range. Jamming capabilities should also be enhanced by gaining techs, like e.g electricity, radio, stealth.

This will solve both the problems with *active & passive* scripts debated in an other post here in this forum.

pekka

keysersoze · Post by **keysersoze** » Sat Mar 24, 2012 2:24 am

I'd like to be possible to build "observation towers" in cities, which would expand the visibility radius of the city to 2 or 3 tiles more.

pekka · Post by **pekka** » Sat Mar 24, 2012 10:45 am

Yeah, observation towers, why didnt I think of that..

I have heard rumers of implementing database functionality in freeciv-client. I think this is a excellent ide. I would like to have a database containing 1-liners purely for diplomatic purposes, to spice up the negotiations. I have already used all John Wayne punch-lines I can remember in this game, and Im half way through my Clint Eastwood repertoire. And I havent seen any quotable movie after "Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man". What do you say?

"It's better to be dead and cool, than alive and uncool.."

pekka

pekka · Post by **pekka** » Sat Mar 24, 2012 11:33 am

Im totally boiling over with creativity today.
What if we implement statistics too in client. If we collect statistics over which 1-liner that has the highest success-rate in diplomacy, we can deduct a heurisic from it. If you enable heusistic based solver generation for diplomacy, then ultimately we can outscource the whole diplomacy to a computer algorithm, sorry I meant heuristic, so we dont waste time on interacting with other humans in diplomacy.

And, since we are talking about it. We should device more and smarter data-collections and data-mining, so we dont have to rely on uncertanty-prone heuristics. Algrorithms are the thing for the future. If we get all information available, then we can make perfect rules for all aspect of this game. We can device algorithms for war, movements, building, thinking and even logging on freeciv-client. This way we dont have to play the game ourself. We can let our computer-governed algorithms and (God forbid) heuristics play against eachothers. Then we can sit and monitor our computers play, while we play a similar looking close-scourced game?

Come on boys, I know you are able to implement at least this 1-liner database.

"A man got to do what a man got to do"

Pekka

keysersoze · Post by **keysersoze** » Sat Mar 24, 2012 12:06 pm

Diplomacy must be adjested to reflect real life. Regarding that, there should be a way to remove foreign embassy from your country.
Well, as the other player had a big cost to establishing embassy, the cost to remove them should be extremely high too, but there should be a way to do that.

pekka · Post by **pekka** » Sat Mar 24, 2012 12:21 pm

If we are reflecting real life, we should be able to decide which information is available to whom. In real life policy they have *top sercret* and *confidential* information. Players should have the ability to grade information the same way. In real life, only spyes are able to tap into *top sercret* and *confidential* information pools. If we are reflecting *real life* this should apply in freeciv too. Similarly, this should be taken into consideration for vision too. We need to (re-)introduce uncertanty into the game. If there is no uncertainty, then freeciv is not a strategy game where the most powerful weapon is your brain.

"and you know what Im talking about"

Pekka

keysersoze · Post by **keysersoze** » Sat Mar 24, 2012 12:45 pm

Pekka, it is a matter of how good is the model, and how much we can add to the model without increasing its complexity.
Although I agree with you, in that we should be able to select each piece of information that we'd like to show, that may increase complexity of game for the player, and that is not good.
By the other hand, giving him a way of getting rid of unwanted embassy, even at high cost, increase complexity of model very little.

pekka · Post by **pekka** » Sat Mar 24, 2012 1:10 pm

True. But the problem is that with these sql-boys, once they get an embassy, then they harvets all infromation and add it to their databases. If you expel diplomats (disolve embassy) they can just make a new one. A diplomat cost only 30 shields, and the information he provide can be worth a lot more than the value of 1 diplomat. Information is the asset. If some information is graded *top secret* and require a spy to perform actions on a city, every turn, to update their databases, then the effort is comparable to the gain. Then they cant update their database with all information for the cost of only 1 diplomat by making a new embassy. If we also restrict spy-capasity to 1 spy pr city pr turn, then this data-harvesting get sufficiently expencive, and hopefully reintroduce some uncertainty. Then the sql-boys need one spy and one city for every piece of information.

"shoot first, ask second"

Pekka

Master · Post by **Master** » Sat Apr 14, 2012 2:24 pm

Features:

1.- The interface game looks old (from 90's), It must be improved example the rectangles buttons may be changed for a soft curly rectangles on corners, add some shadows etc (it needs a graphic make-up).

2.- In the same order of ideas one easy improving of the interface must be the timeout clock, it can be changed for a new nice clock images (animated), for example a sun clock when you are in ancient ages, sand clock on medieval, mechanic clock, etc... which they move with the change of time.

3.- To analyze games more efficient there should be added a score graphic as ALL CIVILIZATIONS GAMES Indeed at game (Not Script) , which shows a graph for number of cities, population, production, tiles, number of units, etc.

4.- Trade-route calculator as in warclient must be enabled to make game faster, better and more efficient (to find traderoutes which give more trade and are shorter etc, if you played WC you will know what i am talking about).

5.- Autocaravan moving like in warclient (This feature moves your caravans for you... why waste your time on it?).

6.- A new USER FRIENDLY save and Load system for games in the server (you can see the saved games and load any).

7.- A new setting in the Server Setting dialog (to Multiply traderoutes value) so you can make games faster.

Master · Post by **Master** » Sun Apr 15, 2012 2:15 pm

Epic Fail.

mrsynical · Post by **mrsynical** » Mon Apr 16, 2012 1:30 am

Also - most people don't really care about the interface (most people even use the 2d map view rather than the 3d perspective view for simplicity). I think a non-digital clock is not worth the hassle.

Features I would think are nice:
1. improved calculations of attack/success, like HP left, or number of the same units potentially required for victory (e.g., the war calculator).
2. guesses bribe costs for units/cities (would depend on if you had an embassy and knew where the capital was, what govt the unit was in)
3. improved caching of messages as they are buggy (and who/what unsentried a unit)?
4. most importantly ... smarter "allies chat". e.g., trim and spaces at the start of a line, or space before the colon.

IllvilJa · Post by **IllvilJa** » Mon Apr 16, 2012 7:03 pm

More features:

Easily toggle a global display of food/prod/trade for tiles, taking into account current goverment but also what-if scenarious like resource delta for all tiles if changing to other govt, adding certain improvemt like road, irrigation, mine or railroad.

Clearer display when selecting a worker what effects it's work will have on tiles. E.g: display the deltaprod for all sectors the worker may be set to work to see which tiles will have the highes increase in prod due to railroad being built.

Settlers-ified country working: just specify "I want a road on these 5 tiles" and then the client automagically moves and organizes the workers/engineers to accomplish it. Similarly when specifying "Irrigate these tiles, potentially irrigate others first to provide water".

Then a client+server side suggestion that would be potentially awesome: Diplomats/Spies can, among other shenanigans, also rename another player's city upon arrival. NO tactical value (I think at least, but swapping city names wildly might actually have a hypothetical tactical advantage) but great as psychological warfare! (Grafitti bombers!)

/IllvilJa

elrik · Post by **elrik** » Tue Apr 17, 2012 6:22 am

akfaew wrote: My patch for guessing bribe costs is in 2.4 now. Well, at least a stripped down version of it.

So 2.4 is not even on board and there are equall and more equall already?:)
All sort of addons and scripts are the real cancer of this game and it looks like it will still exist:(

KG · Post by KG » Tue Apr 17, 2012 7:51 pm

This is a cancer of every online game (unfortunately). Name one game which does not have that.

bluemoth · Post by **bluemoth** » Tue May 01, 2012 7:16 am

I thought I'd throw this idea out there. MrSynical and I briefly talked about this so it certainly hasn't had much thought but maybe this is where it might get more.

The idea is to have a login time limit per turn of, for example, 30 minutes. This might increase during the game. This might balance the game a bit more between those who can login from work and those who can't, those who spend 20 hours online and those who don't, those who don't sleep and those who do, those who have kids (and wife, generally they come together) and those who don't. I think you get the idea.

If you don't like the idea, MrSynical came up with it, otherwise, I did.

The other idea is to binding workers to the city governer. For example, if your governer is max food, it'll irrigate the tiles that maximise the amount of food produced by the next turn, max production it'll build mines, etc....