A better word than "infrastructure"
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TripleA (since 1.2.6) has an option called "isInfrastructure", that traditionally applies only to "factory" and "aaGun" units (though from v5 onwards not anymore to aaGun).
Clearly, the term "infrastructure" was taylored for the "factory" case, and well adapts to other things like ports, rails, etc., but it is really not good in general to describe the actual matter. It was not even already good when it was firstly introduced, as an "aaGun" unit is by no means an infrastructure, in reality.
What the infrastructure name captures, as an option, is the case in which a unit cannot be taken as casualty and it is lost after all other units on its same side have been destroyed.
Examples of "infrastructure" units are:
The "factory" of any World War II games.
The "aaGun" of older World War II games.
The "airfield" of World War II Global 1940 2nd Edition
The "Horse" of Feudal Japan.
The "gas" of Domination 1914 No Man's Land.
The "Wild-Mammoth" of Age of Tribes: Primeval
The "fort" of Rome Total War
The "leader" of Greyhawk Wars
The "General" of Napoleonic Empires
The "train" of Red Sun Over China
The "Material" of Total World War: December 1941 2.8
The "zzSword" of War of the Relics
One could say to call them "capturable", as that is how these units are identified in the default tooltips ("Can be Captured"), but that tells only a quarter of the story, not really clarifying that the unit cannot be taken as casualty, unless you have a full knowledge of TripleA, on the matter, and ignoring the fact that you can have a game in which all "infrastructures" are destroyed, instead of captured.
Here I'm not asking to change any TripleA definitions (well, maybe the default tooltips, if we find a good definition), but is there a word that can be used to convey the "infrastructure" concept, that is better than calling them infrastructures?
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We may be stuck on this one. Unless we can have the map parsing to know when to expect one name vs another, we cannot update this without updating all existing maps. Even then, it's a major disruption.
I think we'd need a "map parse version" attribute to be able to support this: https://github.com/triplea-game/triplea/issues/5081
This is an example where a 'min' version is not sufficient and forces us to update all maps and upgrade the 'min' version when making such a change. Upgrading all maps is hard to execute on, and it's also difficult to coordinate to keep all engine versions working.
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@LaFayette Actually, here I'm not asking to change any TripleA definitions. I'm just asking if anyone has ideas for an alternative name to capture the "infrastructure" behaviour, to be used in tooltips and such, for example.
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I think a good example is House of Habsburg. In that one you have "castle" and "cannon", that are both "infrastructures". Once only castles or cannons remain, the enemy captures the castles and the cannons are destroyed (the automatic tooltip for the cannons say "Can be Captured", that I'm sure is going to mislead everyone not knowing the game) (it would be more realistic if cannons change to something you can upgrade back to a cannon). This makes actually sense, in that, of course, the castles don't fight on their own (and you can strip them of virtually all men, to send them somewhere), while an army of only artillery would have such a scarce standing power that making it crumble outright seems sensible (not sure on the fact that, this way, either you lose all your artillery or none of it). Clearly, you cannot say that a "cannon" is an "infrastructure", and saying the same thing for a "castle" is at least questionable, but I'm really not finding a term to define such "stuff", that has the charateristics of having no staying power of its own, while still being able to take part in battles, with other units (like the aaGun), or being completely useless for combat (like the factory). Keeping in mind that they can be living being too (like the "General" of Napoleonic Empires or the "Horse" of Feudal Japan), I really cannot find a term for them.
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How about "appurtenance"?
