The unwish list: Difficult to code features on which precious development resources were best spent elsewhere.

[Sgt.Squarehead]

Surely you could still exit the AGs a couple of turns before the reinforcements arrive?  Providing the AGs are not a Destroy Objective there's no issue that I can see. 

Scratch that (pre-coffee comment).....Forgot that you'd have to abandon Destroy Objectives completely because of the Exit Zones. 

I guess there's no single correct way to approach such things, each concept has its merits and its drawbacks.....One thing I've discovered as a designer is that it's easy to forget just how godlike a view you have over your own scenarios, whereas the player really doesn't have a clue (other than what's given in the briefing), sometimes 'appearances' can be quite effective. 

Edited March 2, 2019 by Sgt.Squarehead

[Macisle]

23 hours ago, Sgt.Squarehead said:

Surely you could still exit the AGs a couple of turns before the reinforcements arrive?  Providing the AGs are not a Destroy Objective there's no issue that I can see. 

Scratch that (pre-coffee comment).....Forgot that you'd have to abandon Destroy Objectives completely because of the Exit Zones. 

I guess there's no single correct way to approach such things, each concept has its merits and its drawbacks.....One thing I've discovered as a designer is that it's easy to forget just how godlike a view you have over your own scenarios, whereas the player really doesn't have a clue (other than what's given in the briefing), sometimes 'appearances' can be quite effective. 

That's very true on the designer's view vs. the player's. Switching to Scenario Author Test mode from regular full FOW play modes can be like going from trembling before the mighty WOZ to snickering at the funny little man behind the curtain. Then again, having full view of every move a human opponent is making might leave you less than impressed -- even if it's a good player. After all, in real war, great effort is made to keep the enemy guessing for a reason. Many a successful historical attack or defense would have failed if the enemy had had just a bit more intel.

On the Point Neutral Exits, there is so much scenario design potential there for what looks like a very light coding job. Basically, one more option is added to the Terrain Objective type drop down menu. Just below Exit, Point Neutral Exit (or maybe "Logistical Exit") would be added. The on-map functionality of the exit would use the exact same code as now. It would just be divorced from awarding Unit Objective points.

In other words, it would work like this:

Standard Exit: Unit Objective points are awarded to the opposing player for any friendly units designated as Unit Objectives that do not exit during the scenario.

Point Neutral Exit: Player can exit his units on a friendly Point Neutral Exit at any time and no Unit Objective points are awarded to the opposing player for the exited units, whether they are designated as Unit Objectives or not.

So, I would assume you couldn't combine the two, as long as you were keeping the coding job simple. It would be one type of exit per map (though you could have multiple instances of the same type on one map). You could, of course, make it a bigger coding job by offering the ability to mix, but I don't think that is needed. Trying to do that would put it into the thread title category.

 

[MOS:96B2P]

On 2/26/2019 at 5:04 AM, RockinHarry said:

I´d vote opening up a new thread and call it "AI plan solution center" sort of, where more or less ambitious mission designers can chime in and tell of their solutions for particular AI plan problems.

there´s whole lot of stuff scattered all over the forum and having a single place on this topic appears beneficial for all. 

Good idea.  +1