A cap on units?

[turin]

Dave:
By special units, i mean this:

once-only campaign units like the Yeti or Cockatrice

these are fine, as long as there are very few of them. having a bunch of different ones is a bad idea, IMHO, since eventually they end up either being too powerful or too similar. and i don't think its good having units that are different in name only.

turin wrote:

I think 200 units (including upgrades) is a reasonable limit. Anything over that is too much.


I don't think we should let the number of units get out of hand, but I also don't think we should set ourselves arbitrary limits. If we were having this discussion when there were 70 units in the game instead of 140, someone would have probably said that there should be a limit of 100 units in the game.

Since there are a number of different campaigns, and multiplayer eras, that can use units, to me setting an across-the-board limit makes no sense. It would only squash potetially creative campaign ideas if we went around telling people "your campaign will not get included with the official version of the game because it includes more units and we don't want anymore units."

I said 200, but there can be more. the point is, there shouldn't be so many they are duplicates. i agree, it would have been bad if earlier there was a limit of 100.

I don't agree with your second point, though. I don't consider it 'creative' to use a bunch of special units in a campaign (delfador... ). its fine to have a new campaign with, say, drakonians/dragarians/whatever, but its not fine to have a special unit used on every other level. there needs to be a (reasonable) limit...like 'you can't expect us to add 100 more units that are in your campaign... you should replace some of them with normal units."

i especially dislike the idea someone posted earlier (not in this thread) about Delfador's Apprentice in Blackwater port being a special unit... the only special units should be your leaders. Having Konrad be a special unit is fine, but the enemy leader should rarely, if ever, be a special unit.

[Dave]

Dave:
By special units, i mean this:

once-only campaign units like the Yeti or Cockatrice

these are fine, as long as there are very few of them. having a bunch of different ones is a bad idea, IMHO, since eventually they end up either being too powerful or too similar. and i don't think its good having units that are different in name only.

I don't think that it's good to have units that are different in name only that are mainstream units, but for once-only campaign units, I don't see the problem. In fact, if we have the resources, I tend to think it makes the game look more polished if we have unique instead of reused special units for different situations.

If someone else wants to make a mountain giant which is similiar to a yeti for a special scenario in their campaign, I really don't have too many problems with it.

I think the problem with too many units arises if a player ends up having 20 different units they can recruit, 10 of which one would never actually want to recruit.

I don't agree with your second point, though. I don't consider it 'creative' to use a bunch of special units in a campaign (delfador... ). its fine to have a new campaign with, say, drakonians/dragarians/whatever, but its not fine to have a special unit used on every other level. there needs to be a (reasonable) limit...like 'you can't expect us to add 100 more units that are in your campaign... you should replace some of them with normal units."

I agree with not having special units just for the sake of having special units, but if a campaign designer comes up with a good reason for having special units, making the campaign more interesting, that's fine with me.

Also FYI, Delfador was originally going to be a Great Mage. But...Great Mages got teleport, and I didn't want the player having a teleporting unit from the beginning. So, he was changed to an Elder Mage. If we go with my idea of removing teleportation from the Arch/Great Mage and making another line that can teleport, we may delete the Elder Mage, and make Delfador a Great Mage instead.

i especially dislike the idea someone posted earlier (not in this thread) about Delfador's Apprentice in Blackwater port being a special unit... the only special units should be your leaders. Having Konrad be a special unit is fine, but the enemy leader should rarely, if ever, be a special unit.

I concur. I see no reason for such a minor character to be a special unit.

David

[turin]

If someone else wants to make a mountain giant which is similiar to a yeti for a special scenario in their campaign, I really don't have too many problems with it.

This is why we are arguing. I have a problem with it.

In this situation, what should be done is this: make a unit 'giant'. have the yeti be unit 'giant' with description 'Yeti'. have the scenario designer's unit be 'giant' with description 'Giant Person' or whatever.

I'm not opposed to the idea of special units (i have used them in one or two scenarios myself), i'm opposed to what i see as the overuse of special units. Anyway, i doubt this debate will go anywhere. So lets just agree to disagree.

[Dacyn]

BTW why aren't [unit] tags toplevel? Is the [units] tag supposed to do anything?

'Skirmish' meanwhile, is nice and simple -- it can be specified completely in a single sentence. "The unit ignores enemy zones of control."

This is the simplest possible type of ability, since it actually decreases the number of rules in a version of Wesnoth with only these units.

Poisoning and Slow are slightly more complicated, but not so bad.

the abilitities themselves are very simple. What are complicated are the associated statuses.

There should not be special units in Wesnoth, IMO. One idea would be to have data for special units in the scenario files of the scenarios the units are in, but this might get too complicated.
Of course, if a special unit is different enough to deserve new stats and not just a new graphic, IMO it should be made into a normal unit.

[Insinuator]

"Special units", by their very definition are difficult to characterize. So is BFW. Getting rid of them would decrease the RPGness of the game and make it almost totally TBS. If that was all it was, then I would still be playing Call to Power 2, a far superior TBS. Special units add flavor and uniqueness, so keep them. Perhaps in the future there may be too many of them, but right now, their numbers are fine.

[Dacyn]

"Special units", by their very definition are difficult to characterize. So is BFW. Getting rid of them would decrease the RPGness of the game and make it almost totally TBS. If that was all it was, then I would still be playing Call to Power 2, a far superior TBS. Special units add flavor and uniqueness, so keep them. Perhaps in the future there may be too many of them, but right now, their numbers are fine.

I agree that special units should have different graphics. Would it seem too much like a TBS if Konrad had the same stats as some other unit? Currently his stats don't seem too unique; the main difference is that he has leadership. He seems basically like a non-elvish Elvish Marshal.

[Darth Fool]

How about having all special units placed in subdirectories of the campaign they are in. This has many advantages, especially if this was generalized to allow cfg files in the campaign to overwrite the default values. Once a special unit starts getting used in more then one campaign or people decide they reallly want it in multiplayer, then it can be migrated to the standard units and image directories. This provides a natural way to add new units and races. If you want to get a unit/race added, you need to find support in someone's campaign for it, or get someone or yourself to write a campaign about the new unit/race... It would also make non-official campaigns easy to distribute...

[cobretti]

How about having all special units placed in subdirectories of the campaign they are in. This has many advantages, especially if this was generalized to allow cfg files in the campaign to overwrite the default values. Once a special unit starts getting used in more then one campaign or people decide they reallly want it in multiplayer, then it can be migrated to the standard units and image directories. This provides a natural way to add new units and races. If you want to get a unit/race added, you need to find support in someone's campaign for it, or get someone or yourself to write a campaign about the new unit/race... It would also make non-official campaigns easy to distribute...

I like this proposal, but as far as I can remember something similar was proposed before, and Dave argued he wasn't to make such a change unless very needed. Is it very needed now? I don't know, maybe Dave does...
Also, making a coherent mechanism to allow unofficial campaigns would ease developing those, since a lot of them are appearing, at least as an intention.