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Re: Game Design Questions



   From: Leonid I Korogodsky <leokor@IAS.EDU>
   Date: Sun, 13 Jul 1997 12:39:19 -0400

   I've been thinking of creating a number of scenarios, each covering 
   from 2 to 6 years of the 1st Punic War.

Cool!

   Provided, of course, that I 
   find time for that :), largely due to the tedious task fo creating 
   the "proper" maps (the fighting being mostly in Sicily, besides the 
   modern Tunisia, Sardinia, and Corsica, the scale would have to be 
   around 5 km per hex; so I hope I can avoid putting on the map the 
   Carthaginian colonies on the Atlantic coats :).

Map painting can go pretty fast if you set up some "key points" on
graph paper, paint large areas, then tweak edges with an eye to good
game play.

   Question: I want the troops aboard a ship to be able to capture the 
   enemy ships. But I do NOT want the troops on a shore to be able to 
   capture a ship when it comes close. Is it at all doable? And if so, how?

That's what "bridge" is supposed to be for, although it might be hard
to get it to do exactly the right thing in this case.  You could have
the ships themselves be able to capture other ships, assume that the
ships have some number of "builtin" troops.

   Question: Is there a way to assign an initial cxp on building a unit?
   Or does it always have to be built with cxp of zero?

Since it sounds more like you want to have units of differing ability,
you should just create a group of unit types that are generally
similar, but have different combat capabilities.  Xconq's limit is
currently 126 unit types, which should be plenty (even the monster
board wargames only have 70-80 types).

   (3) Introduction: This question is very similar to the above one.

   Question: I haven't found any acp-cxp-effect or anything that would
   effect the unit's acp depending on its combat experience. Or should
   I just define two types of units, Roman quinquereme and Carthaginian
   quinquereme, to reflect the differences? (The triremes might be spared;
   they are too small and there were very few of them in the fleets of 
   the time.)

Side-specific types are a good idea.  Look at panzer.g or ww2-div-eur.g
for examples,

   (4) Question: Does the protection table also apply to the capture
   attempts? Or only to the attack actions? For I want the occupants
   of a ship or city to resist the attempts to capture their transport.

Protection affects capture.

   (5) Question: I'm defining the winds, but I haven't figured it out
   yet how to -view- the layer of the wind forces and directions on the
   game screen. There are buttons to push for names, elevations, features,
   and other stuff. But never did the winds appear. How can it be done?

It's in the Mac interface, but not in the X11 interface yet, sorry.

   Question: Is there any way to define lines of supply emanating from
   terrain rather than from units? 

The latest snapshots have an adjacent cell production effect, but it
doesn't go any further than that.  One cheesy way to simulate would be
to have devoted production units in the appropriate terrain types;
that also lets the other side capture them so as to deny resources.

   (7) Question: Even if we define the lines of supply as above, is it
   possible to forbid the supplies to be piped up them through the cells
   occupied by the enemy units, or across the sea?

That's a yet-to-be-implemented project.  I think about it from time to
time, but the algorithms seem horrendous...

   (8) Question: Even if we simulate the effects of starvation, so that 
   the hp of the city and its defenders go down with time, what effect
   would it cause on their defence? I haven't found any reference to
   attack-damage-effect or defend-damage-effect etc. or anything that
   affects combat abilities depending on the damage caused. Or is it
   done automatically? Otherwise, what is the point in starving a city
   or reducing its hp with, say, siege engines?

That's a good point, I can't think of a good way to emulate, except by
not allowing a damaged city to build defending units.

   Question: Is there any way to affect the unit's combat abilities
   depending on the occupant, at least?

Not presently, but I'm open to suggestions.  Change of acp can be
made to affect combat ability, because units with more acp can make
more attacks.

   (10) Question: In your opinion, would it be a good idea to place
   historical info on each type of unit in the "notes" field? As well
   as the preambule on how the initial scenario's setup happened to
   occur historically, and what happened in it historically, in the
   "notes" field for the game?

Sure, since it's displayed in help.  The instructions should focus
on what it takes to get started playing a game, and the notes can
be more expansive.  (It occurs to me that the current notes and
instructions don't work well for really lengthy descriptions...)

							Stan




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