Units of variable strength?

[mightyduk]

How do you know what a good idea is if it doesn't bear criticism? How does a good but flawed idea get better? Through criticism. Nobody here is being nasty, they're offering their opinions on an idea.

[mjparrett]

I didn't say anyone was being nasty. But essentially his comment could be boiled down to "don't bother, we don't need other variants". Which isn't criticism in the slightest. There have been plenty of variants and suggestions on this site for games I wouldn't play. Is the discussion on said variant enriched by me chipping in with "sounds rubbish, where is the diplomacy?" etc? No, it would be a pointless comment.

In addition to this, I think the post missed the point as it "criticised" the lack of diplomacy but the original post never said half strength units would be in a game without communication. It was an added extra to make a fun new variant. So in my opinion I thought it wasn't a particularly helpful post. That is all.

Cheers

[jay65536]

The thing that jumped out at me is, as others have said, you need to really tighten the screws around the rules when it comes to changing the strength of units.

One thing it's possible you have not considered: what is supposed to happen to a unit that has a sequence of dislodgements, both of itself and others? For example, say a unit gets dislodged, so it is at 0.5 strength. By the rule in your OP, if it then dislodges another unit (say in a 1.5 vs. 1 scenario) it gains 50% and is back to .75 strength. Is that what you intended--that it is still weaker than a single-strength unit? How about if it dislodges two units in a row? Is it up to 2.25 strength? That's a lot!

Just something extra to think through.

[Perygl]

Just for info we already have some cases of variable strength moves on site. In the 1900 variant, if you move or attack 'around the cape' you do so at half strength, so we had to handle things like does a half strength attack cut support, what happens in a bounce etc. Also in Stuff Happens units can go berserk. So the support for handling variable strength is in the software.

The Stuff Happens berserker was what gave me the idea!

Edited to add: So... in 1900, does a half-strength attack cut support? What happens in a bounce?

[Perygl]

How do you know what a good idea is if it doesn't bear criticism? How does a good but flawed idea get better? Through criticism. Nobody here is being nasty, they're offering their opinions on an idea.

Absolutely, I'm grateful for all feedback. This idea might not be the greatest ever, or even ultimately a very good one, but reading why it could be better may help me come up with something interesting some day!

[Perygl]

The thing that jumped out at me is, as others have said, you need to really tighten the screws around the rules when it comes to changing the strength of units.

One thing it's possible you have not considered: what is supposed to happen to a unit that has a sequence of dislodgements, both of itself and others? For example, say a unit gets dislodged, so it is at 0.5 strength. By the rule in your OP, if it then dislodges another unit (say in a 1.5 vs. 1 scenario) it gains 50% and is back to .75 strength. Is that what you intended--that it is still weaker than a single-strength unit? How about if it dislodges two units in a row? Is it up to 2.25 strength? That's a lot!

Just something extra to think through.

I considered that -- I just didn't articulate it well. "A lesser unit can regain normal strength by successfully attacking and destroying another unit, and a hyped-up unit can be forced back to normal strength if it’s dislodged. If we really wanted to be cruel, we could say that a lesser unit that’s dislodged would be forced to disband, even if retreat would otherwise have been an option." So there would be three strengths and three strengths only: normal (1.0), lesser (0.5), and hyped-up (1.5). A hyped-up unit can't get more hyped, and a lesser one can't become even lesser (well, except for being destroyed altogether, that is). Anything more complex would be too hard to represent graphically and/or keep track of mentally.