lexxie9952 lexxie9952 15-month Bump. What are the thoughts or problems on this issue? The majority of what's needed has already been done I think.
Bombard is already Fake generalized to four actions. At this point we can easily reuse slots freed by Clean actions merge as Fake generalization of Attack and Suicide Attack. Patch attached.
As for adding more meaning to these fake generalized actions, that likely needs to wait for more *Proper* generalized actions. Which I start to think will happen not before 3.4 - getting things refactored in 3.3 cycle alone does not seem likely.
This will allow a whole new superior level of ruleset control over special unit abilities that Civ3, Civ4, etc., have. It will allow units to auto-engage in combat with other units under ruleset specified conditions!
Currently, rulesets have an attack_actions list to specifiy priority order for autoattack. e.g., in sandbox ruleset: attack_actions = "Capture Units", "Bombard", "Attack", "Suicide Attack"
With autoattack server setting on, it will ALWAYS do these actions if the action_enabler makes it legal. This creates the known problem why most people don't use autoattack setting: the "AI" for autoattack can be exploited for its "Artificial Dumbness". Your enemy deliberately provokes your units to autoattack in "dumb situations" to use up the moves of offensive units and weaken the health of key defensive units. Hence why most people don't use that server setting. However, the evolution to nirvana that solves all issues, is the "human specified autoattack" -- telling key units in key tactical positions to autoattack, but not all units. This will be ruleset specifiable by the UnitState of the new ruleset specifiable user activity (see: https://www.hostedredmine.com/issues/919331).
The final step after #919331 is done, is to have fake generalized actions for "Attack", "Bombard", "Bombard2", "Bombard3", and "Suicide Attack". The fake generalized actions can then be put into the attack_actions list instead of the standard variant. What will this allow? Rulesets to emulate civ3, civ4, and so on, for putting units into human-selected states for when to autoattack, without the autoattack setting taking control over everything. It will allow the ruleset to specify special abilities/features for some unit types and not others: e.g., Fighters can intercept when they are in the user activity state the ruleset has defined as "interception patrol", etc. A howitzer will auto-bombard when put into this user state, but the ruleset has specified it can only do it from hills or mountains where it sees farther, etc. The possibilities become limitless for giving units special distinctive features in how they may autoattack, to increase the relative strength of some units over others and fine tune the balance of the ruleset and the realism and tactical richness of the game.