Captured Technology

[Panzer Cmdr]

Has this topic been braoched? What if the game allowed a chance of capturing technology either by conquering a city or destroying a higher tech unit. What if those pesky British commandoes take out that V2 site in occupied France there could be a chance that they get their hands on the blueprints and hand them over to old Monty.

Aircraft units should not be allowed to 'steal technology' but perhaps if airunits take damage over land there is a chance that the bomber with that new bomb site landed in Rommels own garden!

This would definetly futher reduce technology advances. It would be more risky to know that you spent all that time/money on you research and it could be stolen by the enemy. This idea would be best if units were not automatically upgraded. Thus a commander may not upgrade those Panzers in Africa as there is a high chance that they could get 'defeated/captured' and their technology looted by those Desert Rats.

[Canuck_para]

At first glance I was against this idea. Then I thought about the T-34/Panther thing. I realized that countries improved their equipment faster when confronted by better enemy equipment. I can't imagine the Germans having lvl 5 tanks while the Brits still have lvl 1.

I am not sure if this should be able to be stolen/captured, but it could help prevent people from winning by pure tech alone while not canceling out the advantage of being the first one with new tech.

[JallaTryne]

The Germany tanktechnology had nothing to do with british or american technology. Rather it was the feared russian tanks (t-34) which induced a need for german heavy tank, solidified in the Tiger and King Tiger. The british and american tanks were no match for these.

[Randell Daigre]

I like this idea, but I think the percentages should be *very* low. Nations tend to guard military technology very closely. Soldiers in war are very conscientious about destroying sensitive items to avoid their capture. Of course, battle damage does a lot of this work for them.

This discussion brings up another idea, however. I don't know how it could be implemented, but: How about an option to "invest" MPPs into espionage? You could have the results either directed or random. Break the current Enigma code, and the German's U-boats are visible for one or two turns. Steal the schematics for an advanced sonar system, and get a free advance or even just a free (and non-transferrable) research chit in that catagory.

Come to think of it, I think the research chit is a better idea than an automatic tech advance for the original idea on this thread, as well. Just having a piece of hardware in your possesion dosen't automatically mean that you can use it. You still have to figure out what the damn thing is, how it works, what it's made of, and/or how to build more of them.

[pzgndr]

The randomness of research in SC abstractly accounts for all sorts of variables. These include genuine research discoveries, prototype development and testing, retooling industry to manufacture the latest models, and updating training and doctrine to integrate new equipment into the force structure. Espionage and captured equipment, as well as advances made by allies, all contribute somehow to these variables, but how?

If we attempt to quantify all these variables and work them into the game somehow, we may end up with a very complicated mess that won't produce significantly different results than what we already get. You can argue that a rapid tech advance now is already the result of some unknown event such as captured equipment or espionage. Slower advances represent very real problems encountered in the R&D process or perhaps sabatoge by enemy agents. Whatever. These are things beyond our control at the grand strategy level. We do get to emphasize how much effort to put into research and where, and then wait for results - good or bad.

An interesting variant to the game would be to provide sides with a virtual research point in some random tech area. Related to this could be some chance (1%) during the game that a virtual research point appears in a random tech area to represent some unknown event such as captured equipment or espionage. :cool:

[Desert Dave]

As originally posted by Bill Macon:

An interesting variant to the game would be to provide sides with a virtual research point in some random tech area.

Good idea. And here, I would like to revive another suggestion I made in a thread topic way back when:

Let's have many Variants for SC2, yes? Many of the newer board-games have added random card selection in addition to dice & tables/charts (as Monopoly has always had Community Chest & Chance).

And John Prados' recent (and new) Third Reich game (the first edition beyond A3R) also makes great use of variants. :cool:

So, you could have random research, as well as interesting occurrences in many other areas, which could be grouped into historical AND a few reasonable "what-if" events. They would be time bound in that some of them won't happen beyond a certain date (as, German Z-plan).

These could cover everything from diplomatic outcomes (ie, General Franco leans toward Axis, steadily increasing possibility of entry -- will provide 1 armor unit to Germany) to tactical problems due to weather (ie, on winter turns, a chance that all offensive operations east of Poland will have some minor penalty for the attacker... assuming we don't get detailed weather effects in SC2).

These variants would include some research boons and boondoggles and they would surely make the game much more exciting and re-playable.

[DevilDog]

I originally suggested this right after the demo was released. Hubert said he would put it on the list for consideration for future versions of SC.

[Desert Dave]

As originally posted by DevilDog:

I originally suggested this right after the demo was released. Hubert said he would put it on the list for consideration for future versions of SC.

OK, but it never hurts to keep a favorite element of game-play at the forefront of the designer's mind, true?

Especially if you are convinced (as I surely am) that the Variants would boost the Strange & Mysterious

(... psychological research has consistently demonstrated that humans are especially intrigued with anything NEW -- just ask Madison Avenue, and in fact there is a small area of the brain -- hard-coded since cave-days, to ACTIVELY search out and rejoice! in new stimuli -- this insures that we are very ready to adapt and evolve, and co-incidentally, this is why it is so very difficult to get "substance-", or any kind of abusers out of their "ever-new-making" and extremely blissfully received "habit")

and provide infinite replyability! :cool:

A long way to go, and not just Nuts & Bolts, sorry.

I said "reply-ability," and meant to say "rePLAYability," which only goes to show, sometimes we somehow say what we sort of mean, when we intend to say what we actually mean, etc.

Though, infinite reply-ability is surely a desired outcome for any discussion forum...

[ October 02, 2002, 02:15 PM: Message edited by: Immer Etwas ]