Follow-up Comment #2, bug #16305 (project freeciv): Well spotted.
I suspect the difference in success probability between Diplomats and Spies is unintentional. I think it's been there at least since this area was last substantially modified in r9000, RT#11058 <http://bugs.freeciv.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=11058>, in 2004. There's no indication in that ticket that it was an intentional change. Also, the help for the server option "diplchance" says "Base chance for diplomats and spies to succeed." And all the other actions using diplchance don't (obviously) favour the Spy. On the other hand, the current help for the Spy does say "She can perform all the functions of the Diplomat, but with a higher rate of success." This text came in in r13997, RT#39541 <http://bugs.freeciv.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=39541>. No indication in RT of where that notion came from. (Daniel, if you're listening, do you happen to remember?) If this is fixed, I don't think the statement in the help will really be true any more -- the only way spies have a higher rate of success is that they're relatively stronger when in contention with other diplomatic units, I think. Fixing this will make diplomats more effective at sabotaging improvements, which could affect the balance of the early game. However, we don't seem to have shrunk from rectifying similar unintentional but long-standing gameplay issues in the past -- see for instance bug #14181 and bug #16080. So, on balance, I think we should restore equality for diplomats and spies. I don't think we should fix S2_2 clients to send B_LAST, as that'll give new clients on old servers an unfair advantage. We could do so on trunk (but in general sending foo_LAST over the network is a bit unpleasant -- see for example bug #15743). _______________________________________________________ Reply to this item at: <http://gna.org/bugs/?16305> _______________________________________________ Message sent via/by Gna! http://gna.org/ _______________________________________________ Freeciv-dev mailing list Freeciv-dev@gna.org https://mail.gna.org/listinfo/freeciv-dev
