Topic: letting fishers fish over roads

The reason that it's blocked is that it uses the same function as for finding a space to plant a field etc. So, we will probably need special code for the fishers in order to fix this.

Busy indexing nil values

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ah, so it started as an accident born from hasty coding, and then it became ingrained into the game...

I think that is a bit underselling what happened. Most features in Widelands are accidental in nature - we implement one version and see how it feels and change it if needed. For the fisher it felt natural that it was not standing in the middle of a busy street, but looked for a unused space. I was mostly concerned with the visual clutter of too many bobs in one place.

I am also unsure if it should be changed - we can experiment of course and we should discuss. I like the tradeoff that you can either fish or have an efficient road network on the sea shore. The sea shore is very attractive for roads, because they never destroy your building spaces - i.e. it is dead space for all intents but fishing. But if you want to fish, you cannot use this highway anymore on the fields that you want to get fish out. It made road building definitively harder in my last tournament game.

The biggest problem with this "feature" is discoverability: users will happily build roads on the sea and then wonder why the fisher cannot find a spot to fish.

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More thinking = more fun face-smile.png

My god this comment is so german! That's just awesome, it made my day

On a more serious note, are you sure about that point? I mean, there should always exist a balance between difficulty and ease to learn the game. I think it could stay but only if there is a way for noob player to know why their fisher isn't working at all.

I'm a noob and I never knew about that, I'm just lucky I never built road blocking my fishers.

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I am also unsure if it should be changed - we can experiment of course and we should discuss. I like the tradeoff that you can either fish or have an efficient road network on the sea shore. The sea shore is very attractive for roads, because they never destroy your building spaces - i.e. it is dead space for all intents but fishing. But if you want to fish, you cannot use this highway anymore on the fields that you want to get fish out. It made road building definitively harder in my last tournament game.

The biggest problem with this "feature" is discoverability: users will happily build roads on the sea and then wonder why the fisher cannot find a spot to fish.

I was actually considering it in terms of balancing issues. Atlanteans are dependent on fish, but once they set up breeders and fishers, they only need a very small area to do the actual fishing. they can build roads freely. Barbarians don't need fish, as they already have very cheap meat. empire, however, needs to use fish or resort to expensive, slow and space-consuming piggeries. So I considered the measure as intended to help empire through the mid game in maps with limited access to water, and in general to help imperial players in their placing of roads. Yeah, doesn't sound so convincing now that I'm writing it. If I were to suggest a buff to the empire fish/meat economy, it would be by speeding up piggeries, not by prolonging fish. Still, from a flavor point of view, fisheries giving the "out of fish" message when you make a new road doesn't sound very good.

Anyway, if it is decided to leave matters as they are, I strongly suggest that we at least take No0815 suggestion and specify the thing in the help text. It takes one minute to change the text accordingly.

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