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Topic: Suggestion about Soldiers Part1

Astuur
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Joined: 2009-02-28, 10:08
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Location: Frankfurt / Germany
Posted at: 2011-03-26, 12:04

Hi everyone!
I am spliiting this posting into some parts, as it has become very long.
The parts are somewhat each a topic if its own, but really belong together.
As always, your comments are very welcome

The profession "soldier" should be split into categories.

All wares and all professions are uniform. One trunk is as good as any other trunk.
Where professions differ in skill level, we have created categories. (We have miner, chief miner and master miner etc.).
Soldiers are the only exception.
We finally should categorize our soldiers as well and give names to the categories.
This would not only enable us to reference them clearly, but also later on to selectively address the forces we have in each warehouse or per economy.

Given the possibility of hundreds of soldiers in stock, I think the individual listing that we do in the military buildings is not possible.

Assigning categories that would cover all possible or existing skill combinations would be most impractical.

Using standard military ranks seems inappropriate, since they usually imply the command over a number of lesser ranks,
whereas in WL you would want all your soldiers to be of the highest rank possible.

So, I'd like to suggest a ranking with 4 categories along these lines:

_Typically_ means, that you will be seeing this combination, if you do not interrupt any training.

All tribes use two different training facilities, so there will be soldiers that have passed through one, but not the other.
Because the assignment of training programs to the training facilities is different across the three tribes, the so trained soldiers have different property combinations.

Recruit 0 or 1 level trained (typically no evade, or only partly (Empire Arena), rest untrained)
Barbarians: has 130 health points, 97% damage taken, inflict 12 -16 points damage per hit, has a 25% chance to evade.
Empire: has 130 health points, 95% damage taken, inflict 13 -15 points damage per hit, has a 25 or 40% (trained in Arena) chance to evade.
Atlantean: has 135 Health points, 94% damage taken, inflict 12 -16 points damage per hit, has a 30% chance to evade.

Soldier 2 - 4 levels trained (typically full evade training (Empire or Barbarian) Atlantean with full Attack training.
Barbarian: has 130 health points, 97% damage taken, inflict 12 -16 points damage per hit, has a 55% chance to evade.
Empire: has 130 Health points, 95% damage taken, inflicts 13 -15 points damage per hit, has a 62% chance to evade.
Atlantean: has 135 Health points, 94% damage taken, inflicts 44 - 48 points damage per hit, has a 30% chance to evade.

Warrior: 5-8 levels trained (typically Barbarians or Empire with Trainingscamp completed, but not Battlearena/Colosseum), Atlantean with Labyrinth completed, but not dungeon.
Barbarian: has 214 health points, 97% damage taken, inflicts 47 - 51 points damage per hit, has a 25 % chance to evade.
Empire: has 214 health points, 95% damage taken, inflicts 45 - 47 points damage per hit, has a 30% chance to evade.
Atlantean: has 175 health points, 78% damage taken, inflicts 12-16 points damage per hit, has a 64% chance to evade.

Hero: 9-10 levels trained (typically fully trained)
Barbarian: has 214 health points, 97% damage taken, inflicts 47-51 points damage per hit, has a 55 % chance to evade.
Empire: has 214 health points, 95% damage taken, inflicts 45-47 points damage per hit, has a 62% chance to evade.
Atlantean: has 175 health points, 78% damage taken, inflicts 44-48 points damage per hit, has a 64% chance to evade.


Being no programmer, I apologize for all my suggestions that imply undue workload and for other misjudgements due to lack of expertise or relevant skills.
I am on Win32, have no means to compile, and rely on prefabricated distributions (Thanks to Tino).

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ixprefect

Joined: 2009-02-27, 14:28
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Posted at: 2011-03-27, 14:05

Why don't we list soldiers by sum of their levels? The 11 slots necessary should be fine. It would be very transparent what is going on, and it should still give a clear view to players what's going on. For example, players would soon learn that a large stock of level 2 soldiers means that their evade-training is running quite quickly, while the more expensive attack/defense training is going slow.

P.S.: It would have been nice to give slightly more meaningful titles to each of the threads, but good thinking on splitting this up.


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Astuur
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Posted at: 2011-03-28, 08:03

ixprefect wrote: Why don't we list soldiers by sum of their levels? The 11 slots necessary should be fine...

The main reason not to suggest this, was that I already had "Part2" (telling soldiers apart by their appearance) in mind.
I don't think 11 "ranks" could be represented as differences in uniforms, armour or weapon and still be easily recognizable. Also, for atmospheric reasons, I do want a language term for the ranks - not just "level3 soldiers" and could not come up with so many of these.
Another reason was that I have been starting out with the idea to simplify exactly this trainig level business (for the average player).
After having realized that, due to the two different training facilities, we will predominantly see those four schemes (untrained, completed A but not B, completed B but not A, fully trained), four ranks, seemed all right.

P.S.: It would have been nice to give slightly more meaningful titles to each of the threads, but good thinking on splitting this up.

True of course. Something always slips


Being no programmer, I apologize for all my suggestions that imply undue workload and for other misjudgements due to lack of expertise or relevant skills.
I am on Win32, have no means to compile, and rely on prefabricated distributions (Thanks to Tino).

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teaki

Joined: 2010-09-25, 20:53
Posts: 28
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Pry about Widelands
Posted at: 2011-04-04, 04:58

The developers of Wideland would rather see the game as a build farm fun instead of a fighting game. I don't know why but that's what I have been told several times when I asked about improvements to the military system. Sad but you aint gonna change it.


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Astuur
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Posted at: 2011-04-04, 08:29

Teaki,
I don't see WL as a fighting game myself and I am happy with the decision to keep the focus of development elsewhere (i.e. on economics)- and that's not trivial.
I think everybody here is aware that Widelands culminates to a battle in the end,
but the challenge should be to have provided enough resources by then to have numerous and well trained soldiers,
not so much on tactical questions about how to use them.
The question is really where the players should spend most of their time playing the game; perfecting their economy
or (micro)managing soldiers and warfare.

That does not mean, that changes in the way soldiers are organized, or changes in their graphical representation,
like I have suggested here, will not be considered.
In fact a very detailed soldier by soldier managing option at the building level has been introduced not too long ago.
The problem with this is, that you can only kick out soldiers and have no way of influencing what you get as replacement.
So this is very time consuming and annoying to use in order to cumulate your forces.
I can think of two ways to solve this:

a) Allow storage of soldiers according to their abilities into specified warehouses.

 By doing so your replacement would always be sent from the nearest warehouse, the content of which you could control.

b) Allow the specification of soldiers to be stationed at the military building level.

 I keep up my standpoint that minding the properties (AT, DE, HP, EV)is unnessesary.

To the opposite: a new player could be lead the thinking that soldiers with a hight "DE" value would defend his building better, which of course is not true.
So a simple filter like "no soldiers allowed in here with less than X training levels completed" should be good enough. If that seems to be too much micro-managing already,
you could still stick to a Settlers type global setting according to the vicinity of the border.
I don't particularly like that, because the border to one enemy may be calm and another one hot.

Solution b would still need a solution for the warehouses and the headquarters, since without one, the replacement of soldiers could take too much time.
It could take minutes before the trained soldiers that the building demands actually are found economywide and arrive.
So IMO concentrating soldiers of selectable skill level is mandatory and simply has not been done yet, because it is still unclear in what way it can be done best.
Although my suggestion would set the precondition for stationing soldiers in an intelligent way (recruites near trainingsites, heros near the border)
by allowing or disallowing the storage of certain categories in the selected warehouses, this really is a logistic question,
not a one of warfare and so fully in compliance with the developing aims.
Besides, it also simplyfies and facilitates soldiers' management and would make the game prettier. face-smile.png

Edited: 2011-04-04, 08:33

Being no programmer, I apologize for all my suggestions that imply undue workload and for other misjudgements due to lack of expertise or relevant skills.
I am on Win32, have no means to compile, and rely on prefabricated distributions (Thanks to Tino).

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ixprefect

Joined: 2009-02-27, 14:28
Posts: 367
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Posted at: 2011-04-04, 10:04

I think a simple button in military sites' windows that toggles between "Station highest cumulative level soldiers available" and "Station lowest cumulative level soldiers available" should do the job nicely.

As for warehouses... yes, if you have a very large territory already, that could perhaps become a problem. I must say that I haven't really thought about that yet.


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Astuur
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Posted at: 2011-04-04, 18:43

ixprefect wrote: I think a simple button in military sites' windows that toggles between "Station highest cumulative level soldiers available" and "Station lowest cumulative level soldiers available" should do the job nicely.

What exactly would "highest available" mean in this context, Ixprefect?
Would it fetch the best trained soldier in any warehouse economywide, or at the nearest warehouse?
How would that switch influence the automatic replacement of soldoers that do not come back from a battle,
because they stay at conquered buildings or have fallen?


Being no programmer, I apologize for all my suggestions that imply undue workload and for other misjudgements due to lack of expertise or relevant skills.
I am on Win32, have no means to compile, and rely on prefabricated distributions (Thanks to Tino).

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ixprefect

Joined: 2009-02-27, 14:28
Posts: 367
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Posted at: 2011-04-05, 12:23

It would go for the best trained soldier economy-wide, and among them choose the closest ones. I realize that this may be problematic in very large games. If you have good and simple ideas, please do tell.

There is no difference between getting new soldiers after you increase the building capacity and after soldiers have fallen or stay at conquered buildings, and I don't think there should be any difference between those cases.


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Astuur
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Posted at: 2011-04-06, 07:48

ixprefect wrote: It would go for the best trained soldier economy-wide, and among them choose the closest ones. I realize that this may be problematic in very large games. If you have good and simple ideas, please do tell.

I cannot think of anything better, and think it is fine this way. It's okay to lay the responsablilty for not letting the distance get too long into the player's hands, if we can provide a reliable way to send soldiers with a certain training level to selected warehouses, but not without that option.
So, I think both things should be done.
Setting the storage policy to "store preferred" for a warehouse near a battle zone for an advanced soldier category should then do the trick.
Therefore we need categories and icons for those, which could be identical to the cumulativ training levels, as a first step.
Time will tell, whether many players actually need the unusual levels (those derived from interrupted training) or we can reduce them to the 4 levels I initially suggested.
On the other hand we could summarize the 11 traininglevel right away and have a chance for a representation of four levels later by uniform, armor or weapons, if and when the artwork department can find the time to work on this.
I personally prefer the latter approach.


Being no programmer, I apologize for all my suggestions that imply undue workload and for other misjudgements due to lack of expertise or relevant skills.
I am on Win32, have no means to compile, and rely on prefabricated distributions (Thanks to Tino).

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