I remember the good old days of MOO. A lot of the fun was in designing you ships. You ahd to balance between defense and offense, missiles or guns, etc... MOO2 was even better in that regard.. Anyways, I was thinking about fantasy strategy games, and how they have you generic Macemen, Pikemen, Swordsmen, etc... Can you see where I am going with this? IRL Middle Ages, for the most part a soldiers armor was whatever he could get in the case of the infantry, and for knights it was whatever they wanted, however, outside of this periods, for example the Roman Legions and 16th - 17th century lines of pikemen had basically a standard set of equipment that was provided by their states. What I was thinking of was designing the layouts for the troops. Basically, there are 4 layers of armor for a soldier: the gambeson, which was padding under the armor, Chain which was the first layer of protection, the plate which generally encompassed more and more of the wearer, and the tunic, which was the cloth over the plate. In my scheme, you would set up what the armor was, trading off protection for mobility and endurance, etc. Then there would be weapons, and you would set these in the same way, basically primary, secondary, and side. Since there is not as much possiblity of differences in the weapons, for example, there are maybe 10 different sorts of swords but they are generally pretty much alike, the weapons would have different makers. Say you could import swords from Toledo, costing a crap load a piece, or you could use locally made swords which arent as good, or have a system set up where you enchant each sword which a soldier uses... This is pretty legnthy, so what do you think?

If you want to go the customization route, why not add magic into the mix? It gives you a huge amounts more customization (esp. for the otherwise static weapons) and additional, interesting chances for interaction. (eg, one type of magic gambeson interacting with a different type of magic chain causing a side effect which would force you to evaluate the risk/reward of such a combination)

(heh, I just noticed you briefly mentioned enchanting the sword - well, consider this an expansion to that idea... )

Thats an awesome Idea, sort of like the whole Diablo thing with item sets.

I think it would probably be good to be able to individually customize as well, sort of like MOO2, since then you could give you general upgraded weapons, and maybe set up something to test new technology as it comes out (eg, you send an expedition west and come back with splint armor, and change a few guys'' armor to splint to see how it works)

Its just occured to me that I have never seen a discussion of "wargames" in these forums. RTS games yes, turnbased tactical/strategy no. Hmmm.... Interesting...

There is one thing that is in danger of happening with your idea. That is, when magic is used enchant many swords (shields, armor etc...) in an assembly line process, doesn''t magic lose some of its "Magic"? I guess what i''m saying is, if you use magic to replace technology (ie your armies use scrying glasses to communicate like a magical radio) then its not really magic at all? Actually thats not a problem, that could be really cool!

Also, i''m sure you know what a dramatic impact even the smallest improvement in technology has had on warfare. The simplest thing like the stirrup revolutionized everything! Why didn''t they have Knights before the middleages? Because thats when the Stirrup was invented! (I can hear it now; "But in that Gladiator movie, those roman legionaires had stirrups...." Can anyone say "anachronism"?)

In a bunch of games, in the MM games in particular, you see item descriptions such as "The sword of Swoixcnlks" The arcandium kingdom equipped its inner guard of soldiers with these weapons.

Something like that. Why is it that whenever you play an RPG, the kingdom you are in aklways uses standard cold steel weapons, but other races equip their weapons with spells and enchantments.

But these things dont need to be just spells. One instance in the middle ages had a knight disqualified from a tournement because his tunic or gameson or something like that had spells stitched into it.

Perhaps gemstones would also be cool, say the elven nation right next door to your own kingdom exports elfstones to you, and you use them (you can use them any which way) to stick in the hilts for your warrior class, amulets for your Assassin''s group, for invisibility, etc.

There is anothet thing, while you are designing the arms, why not even design the class, and stats..

Hmm, this doesnt need to apply to generic classes,
maybe something like
choose the race and class
and name the order
ex:
Human knight
Order of Nerkara

Elf Scout
School of Terisis

etc

So did the concept of the slashing sword
I think the whole tech tree in most XXX games (eXplore, etc)
needs to be scrapped.
It has the exact problem which you are talking about.

Tactics Ogre for the SNES and PSX had a nice system.

You could equip different weapons and armor, but the heavier it was the less frequently that character''s turns would come.

Most games suffer from the problem that there is ONE "best" set of items to equip as long as you can find or afford them. But in Tactics Ogre the equipment that protected you the best wasn''t always the best to equip. For example I would never equip ANY armor on archers at all. I figured if someone got close to them they were doomed no matter what, so I left off equipment so they could have a higher rate of fire.

Any idea where to get the english translation for tatics ogre? I''ve scoured the net but didn''t think it existed...

You can get it for the PS1. I highly recommend it.

why does everyone insist on initials so much?
Could someone please tell me what game MOO is?