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Topic: Destroying a military site which is under attack

teppo

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Posted at: 2020-01-25, 07:36

stonerl wrote:

Regarding whether an attacked building should be allowed to be destroyed or dismantle by the defender, I'll set up a poll after the current one is closed.

What are the options? I personally have mixed feelings about this, and would have hard time choosing between yes and no. On one hand, it is rather unrealistic. On the other hand, Attacker already has many advantages over defender, which is bad.

If dismantle/destroy is allowed, then it would be nice if it could be autotriggered: The player does not have to watch "hot" military buildings, but can concentrate in fixing economy and let the last soldier handle the detonation. However, in some cases it would be better to let the enemy conquer a building: It can be retaken faster. This can be rather important in some situations: Few building spots, hard to establish visual contact to next military building; if one disappears, problems amplify.

A choice where military sites are destroyed/dismantled automatically by default, and player could override that, separately for each building could be an option. Currently, also military site upgrade near defeat is used to achieve same result. A bit messy. Should it be possible to trigger the site to auto-upgrade instead of dismantle/destroy, if the military site is upgradeable?

"always destoy automatically" should be an option in the poll, in addition to "prohibit" and "already perfect".

Changing subject: If we go to the direction of prohibited dismantles/destroys, then should there be other constraints? I think that it should be possible to capture gamekeepers / fish breeders, which of course means that dismantling/destroying them should not be possible in some situations.


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WorldSavior
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Posted at: 2020-02-05, 18:53

Another strong argument against forbidding dismantling: If you want to play such a may currently, you can just agree with your opponents about it. Especially if they are AIs face-grin.png

If it gets forbidden, there is no way to play the real Widelands just by agreement face-wink.png

And what would be the point of deciding it by a poll? Any spammer could vote there. And democracy is not always good, just take a look at the USA face-wink.png


Wanted to save the world, then I got widetracked

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Nordfriese
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Posted at: 2020-02-05, 19:30

IMHO whether dismantling and/or destroying a building under attack is allowed is another candidate for a game-setup-screen option. We could have a dropdown with hgame modes:

  • Default

  • Peaceful

  • Destroy conquered milsites instead of conquering

  • Forbid dismantling milsites under attack

But please don't define what the "real Widelands" (strategy vs fairness) is, and please don't get political here either.


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stonerl
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Posted at: 2020-02-05, 19:48

Nordfriese wrote:

IMHO whether dismantling and/or destroying a building under attack is allowed is another candidate for a game-setup-screen option. We could have a dropdown with hgame modes:

  • Default

  • Peaceful

  • Destroy conquered milsites instead of conquering

  • Forbid dismantling milsites under attack

+1


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Solstice_s_Return
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Posted at: 2020-02-05, 21:16

I wouldn't change anything regarding mil site conquering. It so much depends from the situation if the best option is to let enemy conquer it or to burn it down. However, dismantling is so unrealistic that I never choose it when under attack.

I think that military should be more proactive in rearranging itself for protection of the land. This could mean that when there's enemy border discovered, more trained soldiers take places of less trained one by one, thus sending the less trained to periphery areas. Then there could be a single controls bar for how deep this rearrangement zone is and if it is set to a maximum and there's threats on all edges, it might some times mean that no rearrangement happens. Of course it could also be much more complicated with for example defense strength priority order and/or response according to a potential threat level. First of these is a set of colors corresponding to enemy lands from which a player can klick to set them in protection priority order from one to as high as there's opponents. The second version is partially the same, but instead it focuses to known enemy military sites and their combined potential threat level. The latter would make scouts more important too.


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niektory
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Posted at: 2020-03-27, 21:56

After playing some multiplayer matches I'm starting to like the idea of automatic destruction of buildings. It feels like too much hinges on whether you can click the dismantle/destroy button fast enough.


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kaputtnik
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Posted at: 2020-03-28, 10:57

Nordfriese wrote:

IMHO whether dismantling and/or destroying a building under attack is allowed is another candidate for a game-setup-screen option. We could have a dropdown with hgame modes:

  • Default

  • Peaceful

  • Destroy conquered milsites instead of conquering

  • Forbid dismantling milsites under attack

I am not a fan of options that may have effect on playing:

  • First of all this means a player has to know about the idea behind the option. I have played widelands for years without knowing that dismantling/destroying is possible at all. I didn't came to this idea because it feels unrealistic to me i guess. So for new players it may lead into confusion if such options are available.
  • A good game is good because of the idea of the game, not because it has many options.

So -1 from my side to the idea of an option.

  • If dismantling/upgrading/destroying a militarysite which is under attack is the only way to give the defender an advantage, i feel dismantling/upgrading/destroying is more like a workaround. But i have to admit that i have no other idea to give the defender some bonus.

Overall i am totally unsure about the topic... maybe teach the player about the strategy of dismantling within a tutorial?


Fight simulator for Widelands:
https://wide-fighter.netlify.app/

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the-x
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Posted at: 2020-03-28, 12:58

WorldSavior wrote:

Another strong argument against forbidding dismantling: If you want to play such a may currently, you can just agree with your opponents about it. Especially if they are AIs face-grin.png

If it gets forbidden, there is no way to play the real Widelands just by agreement face-wink.png

And what would be the point of deciding it by a poll? Any spammer could vote there. And democracy is not always good, just take a look at the USA face-wink.png

These are strong arguments - i would suppose that we make 2 Versions, one of the original widelands were you keep playing it and one of the balanced widelands where we also balance the fighting system that a hero is not 30 times as strong and if used right not to defeat - which leads to strange multiplayer constellations where world plays against 15 AIs or 1vs 7 player multiplayer games


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the-x
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Posted at: 2020-03-28, 13:08

Yes, 2 versions is a very intelligent solution for both sides, cause the main point is if you play widelands and you see your opponent dismantling it looks very strange and when i saw it the first time i felt same like Nordfriede or kaputtnik described it perfectly. The same thing comes when you trained your 70 soldiers witch passion some upgrade here, one there, have maybe tried to build a perfectly economy - all that doesnt work anymore cause world comes with 3 heros and the game is over. Indeed the economic part, the production part is only 5% importance in the game and 95% is op healing and attacking with your one superhero who defeats all


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Nordfriese
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Posted at: 2020-03-28, 14:16

kaputtnik wrote:

Nordfriese wrote:

IMHO whether dismantling and/or destroying a building under attack is allowed is another candidate for a game-setup-screen option. We could have a dropdown with hgame modes:

  • Default

  • Peaceful

  • Destroy conquered milsites instead of conquering

  • Forbid dismantling milsites under attack

I am not a fan of options that may have effect on playing:

  • First of all this means a player has to know about the idea behind the option. I have played widelands for years without knowing that dismantling/destroying is possible at all. I didn't came to this idea because it feels unrealistic to me i guess. So for new players it may lead into confusion if such options are available.
  • A good game is good because of the idea of the game, not because it has many options.

So -1 from my side to the idea of an option.

  • If dismantling/upgrading/destroying a militarysite which is under attack is the only way to give the defender an advantage, i feel dismantling/upgrading/destroying is more like a workaround. But i have to admit that i have no other idea to give the defender some bonus.

I am also not happy with a dedicated option for such game mechanics, but I don't see a better way to handle this. I am strongly against automatically destroying milsites under attack, or destroying them instead of conquering (which is basically the same thing). I feel like dismantling sites under attack is cheating, but destroying them oneself should be allowed, which leads to the race condition problem niektory mentioned. There are just so many irreconcilable aspects regarding this game mechanic that there just is no solution everyone will be happy with, that's why I consider an option the lesser evil here.

Overall i am totally unsure about the topic... maybe teach the player about the strategy of dismantling within a tutorial?

+1
This would be good for the warfare tutorial. It currently lets you fight against rookies with a bunch of supersoldiers which makes fights look way easier than they really are IMHO. It should really also explain some basic defensive strategies and this one could also go there.

the-x wrote:

These are strong arguments - i would suppose that we make 2 Versions, one of the original widelands were you keep playing it and one of the balanced widelands where we also balance the fighting system that a hero is not 30 times as strong and if used right not to defeat - which leads to strange multiplayer constellations where world plays against 15 AIs or 1vs 7 player multiplayer games

Two versions? Like, forks? Really? Bit overkill, isn't it face-wink.png Realistically this boils down again to having two options regarding the fighting system, though in your suggestion the non-default one would have further consequences regarding fighting strengths. But making heroes much weaker without making them worthless is a) off-topic and b) again the balance problem that was already discussed at large without any solution ideas whatsoever yet in multiple threads so far…


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