Oluseyi: Silvermyst''s idea is not so out of whack with reality, unless you consider the cost of units over a long period of time.

Say you are picking your forces to fight on a particular map, and you want to take a lot of Super Heavy Invincible Tanks (SHITs). However, there are currently only X number of SHITs available, and they have to be distributed among many other campaigns. Your commander is not very likely to give you the whole lot is he? The cost of getting a SHIT increases with each SHIT you buy (I am not talking monetary cost, I am talking about cost in terms of how much ''stuff'' you can get out of your superior. Now maybe if there is a high demand for SHITs, your superior might phone up the SHIT manufacturers and say "We need more SHITs, here is a commission for another 2000 SHITs", but they aren''t all going to be ready for your current situation, are they? It may be several campaigns before you can take advantage of the new tanks.

Your choice of example is astonishing.

Never forget rule number 1: Realism should never come before fun.

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Sandman: the term "cost" will need to be defined more accurately for future discussion. I don''t consider what you described a "cost" but rather a probability - the probability that your commander will give you the tanks you asked for; and that ties in with the "influence" parameter I discussed in an earlier post.

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Thanks to Kylotan for the idea!

I define 'cost' as the 'amount of expenditure of a resource required to buy something'. That resource does not have to be a material resource - it could be time, or something more abstract.

The way I see it, the points system doesn't represent the unit's material cost, but the willingness of your commander to give it to you. Now the more Super tanks you ask for, naturally the less willing he is to give you more (he has other uses for them, he doesn't want to give them all to you) so the 'cost' in terms of points could (and should) increase with demand.

It is also possible to tie this in with the reputation idea you suggested earlier. If you are an efficient player, perhaps the cost of extra units of a given type increases at a slower rate with each purchase. So instead of your second Supertank costing 2 points instead of 1, it only costs 1.5 points. This could be unbalancing though - have to think about it carefully.



Edited by - Sandman on January 17, 2002 11:50:11 AM

I think I''ve posted this before in some older thread about balancing, but I''m not too keen on the idea of creating "points armies".

Where I used to live, there was a huge Games Workshop fan base, not to mention other tabletop miniatures games like VOR and a few others. Now, I had a serious problem with how these people played. What they would do is create these point armies...say 2000points per side, and then they would battle each other. I see two huge problems with that.

1) Points are not a good reflection of the real value of combined forces army. In other words, the value or effectiveness of a group can not be simplistically determined by the summation of all its parts. How a unit comes to a certain "point cost", is an incredibly subjective determination. Rather, I should say that the worth of a unit can not be implied by its cost. I mentioned an earlier example of creating a unit that had a superb long range weapon...who''s advantage would be negated if playing in a jungle. Then you can also create units that cover each others flaws, so that they become more valuable by putting them together.

In other words, lets say I have unit a= 10pts, b=20pts, and c= 40pts. It may be entirely possible that 2xA units, and 1xB unit is more effective than 1xC unit. The simple summation of points leads to a misjudgement as to the true worth of an army, and leads to the "rules lawyer". These are the guys that will play out every variety to find the most effective combination of units. Trouble is, like I mentioned before...the worth of a unit is very contextually based. Not to mention that unit building to some degree must be dynamic. So instead of dynamically coming up with your strategy, you do so statically, assuming a fixed environment and context.

2) It leads to very boring scenarios. I''m personally not a huge fan of "balance". I think the very concept is flawed. Battles and wars are not balanced. Indeed, it is overcoming the odss that makes things heroic. I can hear the argument that things need only SEEM uneven, and that to let the player feel truly heroic, then he needs to be able to have a reasonable chance of victory. Afterall, no one likes losing a mission over and over. So my counterargument goes like this....just because you lost the battle doesn''t mean you lose the war. Just as in chess, sometimes you have to sacrifice a piece to win the game. But how many games encourage this way of thinking? How many games will allow you to even lose a mission to continue on? I think there is something fundamentally wrong there. I think that games do not teach several key virtues...one of them being sacrifice. I think that for the people that simply can''t get past not winning all the time, there is a more subjective rating system. For example, if you are outnumbered 3-1, perhaps your only real goal is to hold a piece of territory for a certain amount of time. Maybe you lose 90% of your forces, but if you hold that bridge...then you''ve won.

And that''s what these "point armies" simply don''t introduce. I think it leads to a lack of imagination. I''ve had this idea burning in my head now for awhile where the only way to win....is to lose. Sort of a Kobayshi Maru test if you will. But I wonder how many people will understand this concept? Oh well...just my quarter thrown in for good measure

I''ve been trying to think of a way to evaluate the "cost" of a unit. The only thing I can think of is not to think of the "worth" of a unit (i.e. its battle effectiveness) but rather think of the components required to build the unit.

Mainly, these are the raw materials to produce the unit (how expensive is it to make), the technological requirements (how many factories/technological requirements does it have?), the human interface (does it take highly trained personnel to use the unit?) and maybe a few more I can''t think of.

Basically, "cost" the unit by determining how hard it is to make the unit, not by any subjective measurement of how effective the unit should be. The trick here may be in determining special abilities. In this case, I think all units will be defined by several attributes (the list is not definitive by any means)

Offense- attack capabilities
Defense- defensive capabilities, both passive and active
Mobility- how fast the unit, and what type of locomotion
Durability- how tough is the unit if damage goes past defenses
Endurance- how long can it fight/travel before needing resupply?
Perception- how far can the unit "see"?
Silhouette- how big is the target(bonus to hit)? Hard to hide?

There are also external attributes which will be factored in by the quality of the crew:

Discipline- How well unit will follw orders
Quality- how good the unit is
Intelligence- How well will the unit react?
Independence- How well unit can fight when outside chain of command

SO, basically you look at each attribute, and you factor in what it would cost for a certain value, based on the country''s physical, technological, and skilled resources. I think what would need to be done is make a matrix that indexes the country''s resources against the value that an attribute has. Obviously, the higher the value, the more resource intensive it will be. Also, certain attribute value levels may only be reached if the country has a high enough tech or resource level.

Admittedly, this may get exceedingly complex, but I''m trying to work out the ideas now. The way I see it, each of the attributes above will be classes. These classes will have member variables and functions. Specific instances of these objects will have varying capabilities (for example, a rifled cannon will be more accurate than a smoothbore cannon)

Dauntless: I totally understand your problem with 'points' systems - a single value can never describe the worth of a unit under all circumstances. A howitzer is worth far more in a desert than in a jungle for example.

This is one of the reasons I like SilverMysts idea. The value of a unit simply depends on how much value you place on it.

While I think your approach of using the production cost of the unit as a best guess to its worth may be more realistic, this can easily lead to dominant units. (e.g English Longbowmen - pretty much dominated warfare at the time)

This is fine for realism, but it screws up gameplay.

Edited by - Sandman on January 18, 2002 6:33:39 AM

Reading the past few replies, and thinking about Dauntless' criticisms of WH40K (which was also my initial example), I've got a few more thoughts:

1. I agree that an "effectiveness" points value is pretty unattainable, so trying to base a points system around this is doomed to fail when faced with highly varied situations. This in itself is a pretty big admission for me, since I hated the idea of "cost" points values.

However, onto:
2. The "cost" points value system.
A few quick ideas:
- take Risk, possibly the simplest war game ever made. It has varying amounts of "resources" for different lands. We can apply this! Say every player starts in one particular land, with a certain amount of resources (this could be a particular race as well). Which resources could be useful?
I think mainly "Production Capacity" and "Technology Level". The higher your production capacity, the more of any single unit you can produce in a given time span. The higher your technology level, the cheaper it is to build any single unit. Money is a resource, but everyone gets the same amount to start with.

Start of the game: you get your amount of money and you're allowed one production run, for which the quantity is based on your "Production Capacity". You may be limited in the kinds of units you produce by your "Technology Level", since for really expensive units, a land/race with high "Production Capacity" might not have enough money to fill that capacity, while a high "Technology Level" land could fill its capacity.

In a campaign scenario, whatever lands you gain/lose could have an effect on your technology level, production capacity, AND your income. Between missions, you have a "build" stage to create new units.

Using a production system based on the actual material cost of a unit, you could now have a pretty balanced, yet varied game.

[edit: I've just noted the "longbowman" example above... to avoid problems like this, generally a more expensive unit should also be more effective. It doesn't need to hold true in all circumstances though, for the aforementioned reason of certain troops having more value in certain settings: you can't take your tanks into the heart of the jungle, and all of a sudden your basic grunt troops become valuable]


People might not remember what you said, or what you did, but they will always remember how you made them feel.

Edited by - MadKeithV on January 18, 2002 8:12:59 AM

DAUNTLESS:

I haven''t had the pleasure of actually playing a tabletop game of Warhammer (even though I''ve bought some boxes... have had to play against myself, which is actually quite possible, as long as you are completely honest and let the dice decide who wins) but yes, the numbercrunchers will simply try to find the best, most powerful unit. They will endlessly try to design the ultimate army. And this is why I keep moving away from games like this: in the end, once the ''best'' units are discovered, everyone will start using them. Even Magic The Gathering became boring to me once I discovered that something similar happened there: once players discovered the great combo''s, everybody started using them. The only thing that brought some new flavor to this game was the new cards that would be created every now and then.

Another solution to this problem (players always trying to find the best units) is to give the player a somewhat random selection of units before the game starts.

The player could find an opponent, decide how long they want to play, size map, type of geography etc.

Then the computer assigns them both with a few choices of armies.

For example, each player might get to pick from 5 pre-designed armies. The design of the army would be somewhat like:
5-10% unit A
10-15% unit B
5-10% unit C
20-25% unit D
etc.
The armies will be somewhat balanced, but the player will still be able to pick the army that suits him best. If a player likes unit D, he''d pick the above described army. If he likes unit B, he''d look for an army that had a high number of those units.
The armies could be designed with the geography and size of the map in mind. Bigger map, more units.

Players could quickly start a game and would always get a different type of gameplay, as they cannot completely control the units they get. (this I think simulates somewhat the sealed deck tournaments that still make Magic interesting to me, even though I haven''t player it in years)

Another option would be to have a draft.
Two players get one big pool of units to pick from. A coin toss could decide who gets to pick first. (player 1 picks first, then player 2 picks the second and third round, the player 1 the fourth and fifth and so on). This would give both players a chance to pick their favorite units, but also lets them look at what the other player picks. This system would take some time though, as each unit would have to be picked individually. Maybe instead of single units, squads of units could be picked. Still, I like this system, because once the game starts you know what units your opponent has. You could know his weaknesses and strengths and base your tactics on that. But you also know that he knows your weaknesses and strengths. So you''ll have to prepare for that.

---------------

The automated feedback system also takes care of the ''I want only the best units'' syndrome. Take the Warhammer example. Just when players think they''ve found the most effective combination of units, their plans are completely ruined as the units in that combination have their cost increased (because other players eventually copied their idea, and the units in the combination became commonly used). I think you get the best of two worlds with a feedback system. You still get to discover ultimate combinations, but as soon as they become known to the other players, you would have to go and find another combination as the cost will just increase too much (while previously unused units'' point costs go down, making them more viable for combinations). This will create an eternal cycle. Look for combination, use combination in battle, win a few battles, other players start using it, point cost increases, look for new combination. I really do think it''s the ultimate solution to the problem.

Still, I think it also all depends on the type of gameplay. Is it a fast, short game. Or can a game last very long. Do you use a campaign style where players get to build up their armies? Do resources play a factor? All these elements I think would demand their own system of unit cost.

Another method used in GW games and presumably in other table top games is unit dependency. e.g you need to have X number of llamatanks in order to get Y number of ultratanks. So you can have a whole crateload of ultratanks, but if you can''t think of anything useful to do with your llamatanks then you are making poor use of the units at your disposal - while an efficient player will find a use for them and expoit it.