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Re: Wrecking as a result of starvation


On Fri, 28 May 2004, Lincoln Peters wrote:
> 1. wrecked-type should be changed into a table, so that what a unit

> 2. Similarly, a game designer might want to set up a game so that what
> happens when a unit starves depends on what material it runs out of.

Those ideas sound like they could open up fun possibilities, and I can
think of interesting things I'd do with them, but I'm concerned that once
we start down this road, I don't know where we'll end up.  It could easily
become a lot more complicated than you describe.  For instance, these
proposals also sound cool:

3. Maybe I want there to be more than one possible wrecked-type.  If a
human is killed by a vampire, *maybe* he rises as a new vampire but maybe
he just remains dead.  So all the entries in your new tables and
properties should be weighted probability lists of unit types instead of
just unit types.

4. Why should the consequences of death be only vanishing or conversion to
a single unit of a new type?  Some vampires can turn themselves into
flocks of bats, so maybe when you "kill" one of those he should be
replaced by several new units representing individual bats.  Other
vampires defend themselves by turning into a cloud of smoke, so the death
of one of those should add a dice-spec controlled amount of the smoke
coating terrain type to the current cell.  Instead of just weighted
probability lists of unit types, the table entries all have to be weighted
lists of death consequence specifiers, which have a yet-to-be-designed and
highly expressive syntax...

If we're going to add something complicated that expresses a lot of
detail, I would rather see new scorekeeping options before more
complicated wrecking.  Implementing more scorekeeping would raise issues
for the AI, but it would also improve the realism of simulations a whole
lot, and I think it's something that many already-existing games are
eagerly waiting for.  The goal in a conflict is seldom actually "destroy
all of the other side", but the present scorekeeping doesn't allow game
designers to specify much beyond that.  Some more sophisticated goals can
be faked with last-side-wins and carefully chosen point values, but
generally not.
-- 
Matthew Skala
mskala@ansuz.sooke.bc.ca                    Embrace and defend.
http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/


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