Opinions on r-p-s have been duly noted(good thread). I have no name for this system, you might see it as a type of r-p-s, you might not, that''s why we have forums. Anyway, let''s say we have a setup where all the whatnots are one of four things, Air, Earth, Water, and Fire. So now we have four possibilities and not three(rock-paper- scissors). I remember this from Jade Coccoon(and I''ll probably get the sequel on the PS2 when I get the money). Air blows away Earth. Earth repels Water. Water extinguishes Fire. Fire burns Air. Now, for each element, there is something it is strong against, weak against, and neutral against. Is this worse, is this better, has it been mentioned(I''ve read the threads and I don''t think I saw it)?

Roland,

Sounds to me like a version of the concept Dauntless was ranting against: the nemesis system, where for every move there is a perfect countermove. I won''t presume to speak for him, but I think he was speaking about any such nemesis system / countering circle, no matter the number of elements. While this isn''t RPS, it''s still a countering circle.

Now I personally think there''s nothing wrong with RPS or countering circles as a game mechanic... but it is a tad overused, and I would like to see game designers stretching their brains a bit. Dauntless calls for more realism, as I recall; I just want a new game mechanic.

---------------------------------------------------
-SpittingTrashcan

You can''t have "civilization" without "civil".

hehe, I had to laugh when I saw my nick in a post thread

Hmm, well to answer your question, as Spitting said, I''m not keen on the idea of having a nemesis system whereby one unit is perfectly suited to counter another. However, in RL, there are situations where this is the case....but in these specialized units, for the most part all they can do is that one specialty.

For example, SAM were developed to blow airplanes out of the sky. That''s it. Finito. Rocket Artillery is longe range only...no close assault allowed (regular artillery can fire beehive rounds though). There are however what I guess you could call semi-specialized units that I gave as examples to PlasmaDog, such as the Germans infamous 88 guns. While they 88AA was designed to be an anti-aircraft gun, it was found to be perfectly suited as an anti-armor gun too. As another example, Phalanx guns on Aegis cruisers were designed to swap fighers and missles out of the sky, but there''s no reason it couldn''t rake the decks of a PT boat that got to close either.

I think I gave an example where you have three modes of fighting:

Specialist vs. Specialist
Specialist vs. Generalist
Generalist vs. Generalist

So in a way, your units are both specialists and generalists depending on whom they fight against, but they still fall in a certain category. What I''m against is a situation where, in your example, Air will with 100% certainty blow away Earth. What happens if you Combine an Air/Water Team vs an Earth/Fire team? With some exceptions, I think that there are situations where the generalist can beat the specialist, but he has to be very careful and somewhat lucky.

Also, herein lies what I think lies at the crux of problems with most strategy games. They don''t think about teams, they think about the individual units. In my example above, what would happen if Air/Water met Earth/Fire teams? What happens if 2xAir/Water/Fire team goes up against a 2xEarth/Fire/Air team? When you start looking at the combined arms approach, and see unit specialties as the characteristic of a group rather than as belonging to an individual unit, then things get more interesting.

In a previous thread, I mentioned how Anti Aircraft teams aren''t created individually and sent out alone to dispatch an aircraft. Rather, they are an integral part of a team....some militaries may have them available at the battalion level, some maybe not till the regimental level. And yet what games do is make you create the speciality units individually, and send them out individually.

So as for your concept, it depends on how you work out what happens when you combine units together and send them out as teams. At least in your situation you have a case where one unit is at no advantage or disadvantage in fighting the other two units, and I think this models the real world more closely than RPS.