Concept: Understanding unit production

This diagram seems very simple yet effective. I do wonder however will there only be four areas of customization (weapons, armor, helmets, and training) or will the player later on have the ability to add boots, magic rings, amulets, and pendants? Can we assume equipment creation is a similar process? Either way I really like how simple and straightforward the process seems to be from your diagram although I would hope for more options later in the game. This answers some of the questions i've had in my Super Weapons & Units thread, thanks for the info Brad . 

Will this be like in GalCiv2 where the default ships are really pathetic compared to what the player can build?  Or will the default ships be able to hold their own?

I was wondering, how many components can each unit be made up of? Weapon/Armour/Helmet doesn't leave much room for customization, especially if body armour all comes in one complete set. The real fun of body armour is to mix and match components of complementing strength.

I think it would be totally awesome if the unit build screen looked just like that!

Ok, Frogboy. I know that there has been some people around "complaining" about the game's art/graphics but come on, you are totally heading into the very wrong direction with those. Nothing against old school art/graphics but i think you should have stayed with what you had. Or maybe that's how the game is seen in lower end machines...

In any case, i like the idea altough about that "quick build"... not sure. Could we have "quick build" for weapons and armors too? So if i need some weapons asap, i could pay extra (even you could add some penalty to that batch of weapons because of being rushed).

The picture implies that training will give extra hp, which is a simple and effective way to show combat training.  But can training do anything else, like supplying special attacks/qualities?  Could I train archers to be able to hide in woods and make ambushes to make a "rangers" unit?

Wintersong,

My thoughts exactly about the graphics  

The concept seems reasonable enough, except that one hopes for a slightly more interesting combat model than just ATT / DEF / HP.

What about the effect of ranged missiles? Shields are MUCH more effective against ranged missiles (from the front) than armor. Experience is important in combat, but not as a target of ranged missiles. The good and the great get hit just as easily by arrows as the untrained.

What about formations? Macedonian Pikemen were not that well armored, but had an excellent formation (for some purposes). 

Unless there is sufficient complexity in the combat model, the battles are likely to be not too interesting.

Hunter

Don't forget the mounts also.  Where would you assign a unit a horse, etc thus creating a mounted unit?

I assume mounts is one of the things that would be in colomn 3 with 'sword' and such.  (wintersong's joke about low-end machines seeing the game as pen-on-graph paper is funny to me.  +1 karma for joke)

I like how each piece has its own production time, so if it is easy for you to pump out swords, bam you have swords.  If it is easy for you to train bears, you can have a lot of bears.

This is really awesome.   I think it makes a lot more sense now that I've seen a concept sketch of it.  Certainly it has room for improvement like how to pick what goes in colomn 3.   I can see just a list showing of all the things you can make, but that would quickly get to be an overwelming wall of text you'd have to sort through to find the items you want.  So if there is going to be a list of things to include, there should be a good filter system and the ability to have it sorted certain ways (by default as well as on the fly).

I would hope that the game comes with a laundry list of saved generic units that were created by stardock so that players can jump right into the action without having to design units on 1st go (you know, your generic 'archer with leather armor' and 'knight on horse' should be pretty standard and should be there when the game is 1st installed)

I can honestly imagine UI that would be related to what is scetched appearing in MoM or Civilization.

I only show 3 items to equip your units as an example, it's not meant to represent the entirety of how one builds units. 

I don't think any of us want me trying to draw a horse.  

oh I beg to differ.    I'd love to see you try to draw a horse.

I made an edit to my earlier post about the column 3 idea... I thought I could sneak it in before anybody would respond.   So if you didn't catch the mention of a filtering system, you might want to glance again.

Like GalCiv, we will have templates. Like GalCiv: Twilight of the Arnor, those templates will automatically update as your tech and such gets better.

The tech trees are differnet in Elemental than in GalCiv. They're a lot more like MOO 1 actually (a lot of parts of the game are more like MOO 1 (not 2) than GalCiv so it's not about researching "Super swords" or something but rather investing in a type of sword and it gets better and better over time which is automatically inherited by the units.

To use a GalCiv analogy:

Imagine if ship weapons were missiles, phasers, and photons.  Those are the only 3 weapon techs.  You then put your research into those 3 weapon techs and over time, they get better and better and thus your ships get better and better automatically. You don't have to redesign your units nearly as often as a result.  We might throw in flavor text on the latest tech names but they won't be different components like they are in GalCiv II.

So while you may have a Cutlass versus a Long sword versus a bastard sword (for instance) you won't have Super Cutlas, Super Duper Cutlas, etc. That you have to research and then equip all your units with.  You'll simply research Cutlass and over time the Cutlass will get better.

The reason for this is because we want players to customize their units and there's a lot more opportunity in Elemental to do some cool stuff in this area than there was in GalCiv in some ways.

Are the swords going to get better in a material sense versus a percentage sense? Because being able to make stronger sharper swords allows you to do other things versus "just more damage". The more flexible you can make your blade the more it can bend before it breaks. The harder you can make the sword the better it will hold an edge (but it will be hard to sharpen). Stuff like that.

Also, draw the horse! We promise not to laugh.

Much.

yeah, and you can/should put your horse into the 'draw your mount' thread started by flyguy.   I mean we have a scribble that I think is a bear, and I cannot imagine that your horse is not at least of that quality.

I don't think we're going to get into that kind of detail with regards to units. Remember, these are just units. These aren't your heroes. 

A weapon does X damage in Y time is likely as complex as it would get.

Frogboy: How are you going to deal with "equipment" combinations that simply don't work, either with the unit or with other pieces of equipement? To pick an example to demonstrate my question, what if a player wants to pick a summoned demon for a paladin to ride. A Paladin wouldn't necessarily be compatible with every type of mount the game might offer out of the box or indeed player created mounts.

Or what if the player wants to give a magic item or book a golum or a tamed beast? A tamed beast could not wear a magic ring, a golum cannot read a spell. You get the picture (I hope).

To chose a less unlikely combo, what if a player wants to equip his paladin with a two handed sword and a shield. Unless you find and buy off a friendly settlement of 3 armed men, that ain't going to work. Are there going to be very specific classes of "equipment" that you can use and any player customised items must be designated with a certain classification?

Another question, that kinda ties in: How are you going to deal with animations of customised units? Will each piece of equipment have to adhere to a size constrant to prevent swords clipping through shoulders or shields chomping into the neck of the riders mount?

I love the sound of this system, it just seems like alot of conflicts could occur with so many probable variables in play.

Thanks!

What about magic? Will we be able to use magic in unit creation?

And to second SpoonGod's question, will we be able to use training (or magic, or enchanted equipment, even) to give units special abilities? Like ambushing, night-fighting, some sort of special attack, formations, etc? That would make training much more interesting. Also, even if the answer is no (please don't say the answer is no ), it seems like training would add attack/defense more than HP.

I should have asked here before I posted in the mount section.

Are mounts going to just be extensions of the unit, a horse adds speed and some attack bonus, maybe a charge bonus with lance...   bear adds extra maul attack and massive toughness and damage bonus....  sky shark adds a tone of speed and an extra high damage attack.  Add barding to mount for + defense to the unit

or are mounts going to opperate as their own sub-unit:  they have their own hit points, attack, and defense, + defence if you add barding, + attack if you ... uh... coat their teeth in chrome?, extra HP if you breed them with special hormones.   They can be killed their own.

pigeonx2:    Spells?   I imagine that you could add spell training to a unit pretty easily.   

(I can see 'healing spells' being an area I train almost all my units)

Wow! I love that unit creator screen! It matches the hand drawn look of the zoomed out map

"Another question, that kinda ties in: How are you going to deal with animations of customised units? Will each piece of equipment have to adhere to a size constrant to prevent swords clipping through shoulders or shields chomping into the neck of the riders mount?"
Here is how it will be handled: https://forums.elementalgame.com/332712

And please let there be more stats to units than hp defense and attack... If those are the only stats we would be sad

A couple of thoughts:

- The diagram is kind of wrong, isn't it?  Training takes 5 turns, but those 5 turns seem to be able to occur sequentially with the equipment acquisition.  So, essentially all of those boxes should be on the same vertical line, and the max is what determines the time to create the unit.

- I fear this system is not going to create interesting combinations.  It is never in your interest to create a highly trained unit with little equipment, for example, or a highly equiped unit with little training.  Since equipment creation is done sequentially to training.  Unless the gold cost of the equipment is the issue, maybe.  Not sure whether the same comparison applies between swords/helmets as well.  There, I would assume that different cities would be making the different items.

- This system is actually VERY similar to what was done with military units in Settlers.  Strategic choices could be created by locating your resource creating nodes (blacksmiths who create the swords) closer to your resource using nodes (unit creators).  But is it too fiddly to have the player move those resources himself?  I think having each city have a storehouse, and having AI controlled trader units to move those resources between cities that need them.  Could be very interesting.  

- Look at the CivRev model for road creation.  One unique road between cities built without workers.  This road would provide unique trade route for trader caravans.  I would propose that you should consider being able to fortify/attack those roads just as you would your cities.

- Why are we requesting 10 units?  Are we then waiting until all 10 are complete to get any?  Can we request 1 unit at a time?

- Perhaps all "Beasts" can be mounts?

Yeah, you're right. Either the training should be on the same vertical column as the equipment, or the total time required should be 14 turns, not 9. 14 would kind of make sense really (would be odd to complete training without having all the equipment ready until after training is over). 

I don't understand what you're saying here? Could you clarify?

Yeah I think units production should be on an individual basis. If you request 100 Paladins (and want 5 days of training), then if you have enough equipment for 24 on-hand, and the rest will slowly trickle in over the next 31 turns, then you should produce 24 Paladins in 5 days, with the rest slowly trickling in as the equipment becomes available. 

Somehow I doubt that. If you look in the concept art there are plenty of beasts that don't look like they're cut out for holding human riders... One example would be the fox-looking beast. Foxes are usually pretty small, I wouldn't dare to imagine them supporting human riders. Likewise, an alligator-rider would be awkward at best. Beasts should at least have to satisfy size requirements in order to be used as mounts. 

First off, hello everyone.

I like the fact that you can design your own units. That is a very, very good mini-game for a turn based strategy game to include, in my opinion.

I like the thought of having units cost components rather than some unified, fungible resource like gold or credits. It was certainly cool in "Lords of the Realm 2"; it would be cool here as well.

I like the concept of having local amounts of resources/components rather than a universally accessible stockpile that all of your cities tap into. That is a rarely used mechanic that would help Elemental to distinguish itself from other turn-based strategy games.

However, I am concerned about the micro-management (MM) issues that could be introduced when you combine all three game mechanics.

Most games that include combat have a "build a unit" mini-game. In fact, the build-a-unit mini-game is often one of the central mini-games in strategy games. In Homeworld you needed enough resources, time and the requisite tech to build a unit. Then, you click a button, your mothership consumes the resources, spends time building and finally the unit pops out; neither the time nor the cost element changes in regard to circumstances. In Civilization you needed the requisite building, the requisite tech and a variable amount of time to build the unit. Units didn't cost resources unless you wanted to hurry along their production by sacrificing money or city population (enslaved to rush-build). Now let's talk about Elemental...

There are three questions I need to ask when I am going to decide where to build a unit:
1) How much will that unit cost at location X?
2) How long will it take that unit to be built at location X?
3) How useful will the unit be at location X?

The answer to 1 is, as far as we know, fixed. A "paladin" (as defined in the original post) costs one sword, one set of armor, one shield and one helmet. That cost does not vary from city to city... as far as we know. This could vary but no mechanics for that have been introduced.

The answer to 3 is game-context specific and is not of concern here; I mention it only for the sake of completeness.

This game is being deliberately designed so that the answer to 2 will vary from city to city depending on, among other things, the availability of components. It looks like there are three or more stages to creating a unit: collecting the raw materials (weapons, armor, mounts, etc) into one location, assembling those raw materials into a unit and letting that unit sit around in the queue improving its stats, a.k.a. training. What is required to get all the necessary components (10 swords, sets of armor, shields and helmets) to city X so I can build ten paladins there? We don't know but I want to call attention to this because it's ambitious.

What I am worried about here is the game becoming too MM intensive. If I have to track how long it'll take to get swords, armor, shields and helmets to my city then I am essentially playing four additional mini-games just to complete the "build a unit" mini-game for one particular unit. Do I first have to manage my iron mining and iron distribution to ensure I have adequate sword production to even consider training paladins? How automated will resource management be? How many steps do I really have to consider if I want to build 10 paladins? That's a number that can quickly become too large.

Or not. Turn based games have done all sorts of stuff to streamline; keeping the strategic depth that having addition steps creates while introducing game mechanics that lessen the amount of attention required by the player.

In short, I like the ideas presented by Brad and company, I just want to express my concerns about the challenges surrounding those design decisions.

I'm not sure. It seems fiddly, like I'd have to go in an update my builds every time I researched something. That's one thing that was annoying in GalCiv II was every time I researched a better +x weapon I had to go update all my ship designs. The automated ship designer didn't work because it only focused on one strategy. I wanted the best missile ship, the best laser ship, etc as separate designs. Any time I got a better version of one of those I had to go update my designs for all any design that didn't fall under the auto-designer.

I guess I don't want to be going into the design screen every single time I get a new weapon or armor. I want to be able to have at least a few "best of class" templates, like "max armor", "max speed", "max weapon", "max magic", etc that automatically keep up with the latest technology changes. It's when I have some sort of interesting variant unit that I want to go into the design screen (hmm, I need lightly armored footmen so that pegasi can fly them around, but with strong weapons).

I would find a way to encourage people to not design units during their turn.  Like in a multiplayer game, when they have hit end turn and are waiting for other players, have it appear as some sort of 'quick link' option to the things that can be done off turn.   Other things I imagine that would be off turn includes diplomacy, building queues, and such, but designing units might take time.

also, a 'quick save' option for designing units so that you can pause your work and do your turn when its your turn again.

Brad addresses that issue in the post below. Equipment will automatically upgrade to whatever is best in it's category.