[crossfire] Transports

[Lalo Martins]

And so says Mark Wedel on 01/02/06 14:44...
> 4) Scale is always an issue.  Arguably, players are too big for most stuff in 
> the bigworld map (or all buildings must use magic to be bigger on the inside 
> than they appear).   For that matter, right now, things like the longships and 
> the like would appear out of scale - a longship could apparantly only hold 2 
> people based on size, which obviously isn't correct.  But I'd say it is 
> something that is hard to really get right given we still have varying scales in 
> the game.

Me, I'm sticking with Brendan's "indoors square is 1 fathom, outdoors is
1 chain" scale.  It makes the best sense, even if it makes the
"continent" ridiculously small.

BTW, I keep referring back to that message, and every time I have to
search for it again, so I posted it here:
http://wiki.metalforge.net/doku.php/map_scale

>   Also, thinking about this, probably necessary to have some flag to denote if 
> items can in fact be loaded into the transport.  You can't necessarily pile 
> stuff onto a horse, but could on a wagon.

Just a capacity, as already described in the proposal.  You *can* pile
some amount of stuff on a horse, after all.

Which leads to another idea - some transports could be set up to behave
as pets when unpiloted (behave as pets, not count as pets - killpets
shouldn't kill them), so that you have 2 horses, you put your stuff on
one, mount the other, and the "cargo" horse follows you.  If on another
adventure you have an ally, he can borrow your second horse and mount it
normally.

> 6) Damage - damaging transport requires a whole new set of code and 
> complication.  Do transports now have resistances and the like?  Do they heal, 
> etc?  I'd say this could perhaps be done later, but not sure how compelling it 
> is to do it - may just really create more bother and complications.

I think that would have to make a distinction between living and
nonliving transports.  Being able to fix nonliving transports would make
skills (smithery) even more interesting.  Living transports heal
normally, and consequently can be healed.

Nonliving transports, when damaged beyond their HP, break - you can use
a skill to fix them, but you can't use them like that.  Living
transports die.  Which suggests things like horse armor.

But then, let's leave these ideas for the future.  I agree initially
they can just not take damage.

best,
                                               Lalo Martins
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