Topic: setting the level of training at which soldiers leave training sites
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tosz Topic Opener
Joined: 2012-09-03, 12:39
Posts: 22  Pry about Widelands Location: Gdynia, Poland |
Posted at: 2012-09-15, 00:33
I often find myself in a situation when I want soldiers who have reached a certain level of training to leave the labyrinth to make room for fresh recruits (instead of staying there and waiting until he's fully trained). This is especially troublesome when there are no wares needed for certain kinds of training and the whole process of training soldiers requires strange manual handling. E.g. at early stages of the game you don't have iron and want soldiers to train evasion (which requires only food) and then you want soldiers to leave the labyrinth so that fresh recruits will come. At present to achieve constant training it is necessary to manually order soldiers who went through some training to leave, but this is often ineffective, besides, it feels wrong that this isn't automatised. A possibility to set a level of training at which soldiers are dismissed would solve this problem. This would make more military production strategies viable, like, for example, using all iron for production of basic weapons to train as many soldiers as possible, while existing soldiers are automatically trained in those things that don't require wares made of iron (in the case of the Atlanteans these would be evasion and health). I don't know which is better, but either seems an improvement to me:
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Alazair
Joined: 2012-10-10, 13:22
Posts: 12 Pry about Widelands |
Posted at: 2012-10-13, 18:04
I agree with this completely. I feel that training should be more automated, and either cheaper or faster (but not both), but the latter point is for another thread... A more elegant solution to this problem though, could be tied to the wares allowed in the building. If the player sets that building to store a maximum of 0 of any (non food) ware in the training buildings, that building should then train to the maximum available with the wares allowed. For example, if you set the Labyrinth to be able to store a maximum of 0 Advanced Shields and 0 Steel Shields, it would train all soldiers as much as possible given the wares allowed, using the Golden Tabard to train health and food to train evasion, but then kick them out because you do not allow shields in that building. If, later, you allow Steel Shields, it would then not kick them out until they are fully trained in health and evasion, and up to level 1 defense. If the ware is allowed in the building (in any quantity), it will attempt to train soldiers to the maximum capable with what is allowed, even if the item required is not available, much like it is now if you have no Steel Shields: the soldiers would sit in the Labyrinth forever, happily wasting all your time. This is acceptable because it is up to the player to manage their economy and set the buildings to what is needed to function optimally but this would remove the needless (and tedious) micromanagement of kicking soldiers out manually simply because there is no setting to use. This would also solve the problem that other tribes have with the more advanced weapons and armor training without requiring any new buildings or rearranging of upgrades. (Though I believe they should be rearranged... I find it ridiculous that the "Evade building" only has 2 upgrades and the "Everything else building" has 8-9 upgrades. There is absolutely no time balance and there really should be.) In the case that a (new) player were to set Steel Shields to 0 but leave Advanced Shields at max, the building would look at the highest training capable with the items allowed. Since Defense lvl 1 is not capable without Steel Shields, it would kick the soldiers out without even trying, regardless of the setting of Advanced Shields. Granted, this last point is simply optimal behaviour, but if that would be too hard to code (I know nothing about coding), it's obviously not required.
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tosz Topic Opener
Joined: 2012-09-03, 12:39
Posts: 22 Pry about Widelands Location: Gdynia, Poland |
Posted at: 2012-10-15, 11:05
Equipment and food stored in a training facility uniquely determine the maximum level of training available there and, reversely, to each level of training corresponds an amount and types of goods that are needed to achieve this level, so both solutions are equivalent with respect to setting the maximum level of training. The command expressed is the same in the case of your solution and the one I presented. However, your method requires forbidding storage of some goods in a training facility and this seems a drawback to me: the labyrinth should be able to store tabards and shields, despite training soldiers only in the evasion skill and then kicking them out. Why not? But this is a minor issue, and I am very glad to not be the only person who thinks that the ability to set the level of training would be an important improvement.
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Alazair
Joined: 2012-10-10, 13:22
Posts: 12 Pry about Widelands |
Posted at: 2012-10-15, 12:21
I guess my reasoning was that I got the impression that SirVer doesn't like adding new things to the UI (whether that impression is correct or not, I still got it), so my option offers the ability to select the maximum training levels without adding a new UI element. Besides, the only tribe that could really be hindered much by preventing storage in the training sites is Atlanteans. The others only store two of each item anyway, so it's not really a huge loss for them. Barring that, there's really no major difference and either method would be good as long as there is some way to get the soldiers automatically kicked out of the training sites before fully trained at a player-defined level.
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Personal_Joke
Joined: 2011-08-10, 13:39
Posts: 29 Pry about Widelands Location: New Zealand |
Posted at: 2012-10-16, 01:15
I was thinking about this the other day and thought either the chance to dodge for each evasion upgrade should be reduced, the cost of training evasion increased, the training time increased or the number of evasion upgrades (with the same maximum dodge chance) should be increased.
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SirVer
Joined: 2009-02-19, 14:18
Posts: 1445  One Elder of Players Location: Germany - Munich |
Posted at: 2012-10-16, 05:50
Just wanted to clarify: I am not against changes in the UI. I try to be wary of feature creep and sideways motion - this creeps into software very often and I am aggressive against new feautres because noone else is. Please keep the ideas coming!
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Felix_Atagong
Joined: 2010-04-17, 12:56
Posts: 42 Pry about Widelands Location: Louvain, Belgium |
Posted at: 2012-10-16, 12:25
I would just put in a time-scheduler, regardless of the wares in the training centres. A soldier could stay one, three, six months in the training centre (whatever that is in Widelands time-units) and then kicked out for a new trainee to come. The ideal situation would be that soldiers in military buildings would be kicked out every now to have a training (except for those buildings with only one soldier). Alternatively, every military building could have some kind of replacement factor, up till 50% of the building, because when a soldier leaves a building, another one has to replace him from the nearest warehouse, and that can take some time as well.
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