I could be confusing terms but I seem to remember that dragoon can also mean a soldier who rides a horse to battle but dismounts before fighting.

According to the word of the Frog basic units will probably not see this kind of complexity. As a whole the system is very cool but the effort required to make it is such that it would not be practical. At least not yet.

I would however be perfectly happy if hero mounts were seperate entities.

I would still like to have mounts as seperate entities but it probably won't be possible, at least to begin with. Minefields in SoaSE were thought to be too much trouble but a modder managed to do it and now we have mines in Entrenchment.

A good intermediate step would be to have horses as equipment. Instead of welding a rider to his horse you could swap riders and use the horse for something else when the situation demands it. In fact all "accessory" equipment should be like this. Tower shields are great but they come with drawbacks and it would be cool if I could choose to send my troops into battle without them, especially if the enemy has no missile troops. Horses would be the same way.

That is taking things in entirely the wrong direction. If simple tactics somehow break your system of strategy or your system of strategy does not allow simple tactics then you need a new one.

Hard counters are hard because they are locked into to any pros and cons that are assigned to them. Firebats will slaughter zerglings at rates of 20-1 and you will only win by sending 40-1 zerglings and expecting to lose half. A better known example is the RPS system. Pikemen > Cavalry > Archers > Pikemen. Send archers out onto a flat plain to fight cavalry and they will lose every single time under a system of hard counters.

With soft counters things are a bit more loose. Instead of pikemen beating cavalry every time, reach weapons will have a significant advantage over mounted enemies. Whether or not the weapon can be called a pike is irrelevant, a spear or a halberd will have the same advantage. Heck I could rip a stop sign out of the ground and use that. Once you tie the advantages to the weapon and not the soldier you soften up the system and allow for varied tactics. Mounted swordsmen are of little use against a wall of pikes. But then a wall of pikemen are equally useless against mounted archers.

Instead of A > B > C > A we would instead have a continuous system of balances that looks like Counter > Counter > Counter > Counter > Counter > Counter > Counter > Counter > and so on. This chain would only stop once you reach the limit of your tactical options and your own strategic ability.

Again, with less lingo.

Under a hard counter system you deploy cavalry units to defeat the archer units deployed by your enemy. Your A to beat his B.

Under a soft counter system you deploy mounted soldiers to defeat the longbow armed soldiers deployed by your enemy. Your strategy to beat his strategy.

The difference between the two is that the equipment you give your soldiers is what determines the role they can play on the battlefield. If you have the ability to change this equipment, then your soldiers will have the ability to change roles depending on the situation.

Soldiers mounted on horses can also dismount if the situation required it. Under a hard counter system a unit of cavalry can never become or do anything else. If Starcraft used a soft counter system there would be no seperate Firebat unit. Instead you would have one button to produce a marine unit and a toggle switch that allows you to arm the unit with a rifle or a flamethrower.

Whups, I suppose I forgot to explain the second half but it belongs in its own thread. See, even if your soldiers are able to use every bit of equipment at any time. No one ever said they knew how. Experience is what counters this whole system.

Think of it this way. You have 3 playing cards in your hand and a pair of scissors in the other. The first card you cut into a triangle, the second card you cut into a circle, and the third card you leave alone. When you hold these in your hand you have a balanced set of shapes. The enemy you are fighting slaps down a circle, to counter that you put down your triangle. He then puts down a square, and you counter with your uncut rectangle card. Then he puts down an oval. This results in a problem, an oval is countered by a diamond, but the only card you have left is a circle.

Under a system of hard counters you just lost this game. You don't have an A to beat his B. However a soft counter system works out a bit differently. See you still have the scissors in your other hand. You take the circle and cut it into a diamond shape and use it to counter the oval set down by your enemy. At this point you have a 50/50 chance of victory. Why? See when you cut that circle into a diamond, the shape you end up with is smaller than the one you would have gotten had you used the uncut card to make the diamond instead. Even thought "diamond beats oval", your diamond is only half of its regular size. This is enough to counter the enemy oval 1-1 but not enough to give it the usual advantage.

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The size of the cards represent experience. You can only know so much at one time. It is not possible to know everything. Skills that are not used will degrade, become rusty and eventually will be lost. You CAN toggle a bunch of switches and turn your units into the "perfect" counter to your enemy. But when you do this you end up with inexperienced troops facing off against experienced specialized soldiers.

If you had 20 swordsmen facing off against 20 archers. You can put them on horses none of them have ridden before and send them to attack. But they will still lose against the archers because the archers took the time to dig hidden pit traps. More experienced cavalry would *never* fall for such a simple trick.

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Using the starcraft example again. The toggle switch when you build the unit controls what weapon they will have when they leave the barracks. When a unit is new or "green" it will have a 50/50 split in terms of skills between the rifle and flamethrower. These are marines after all and they would know how to use the entire armoury at their disposal. When you send marine riflemen into combat they would build up experience. The longer they survive and use a rifle the higher thier rifle skill will get. This comes at the detriment of thier flamethrower skills. In this case the skills would cap out at 75% rifle and 25% Flame.

Suddenly a horde of zerglings appear on the horizon. At this point you have the option of returning to base and rearming all of your riflemen with flamethrowers instead. But that would be a bad idea because thier flamethrower skills are lacking and they will start to lose the high degree of skill they built up with rifles.

So as you can see, even if you can change your soldiers to fit every single situation. It is still very important to start with and maintain a proper balance between the soldiers under your command. It is possible to give soldiers a completetly unfamiliar weapon or send them into situations they are not trained for. But these instances should be considered desperate measures, completetly viable yes but your strategy should not be based solely upon them.