Instant Builds

[blackbellamy]

It seems unrealistic to be able to hoard MPP's and then plunk em all down to buy either 4 Battleships or several Air Fleets, depending on need. I understand this might work for simple infantry units, but naval expansion is usually a long process, with resources comitted way ahead of time.

I understand the need for simplicity in a game like this, but are there any plans to implement building delays for at least certain units?

[DevilDog]

The building delay is represented by the time that it took you to save the MPPs.

[Holyman]

Yeees.. but how do they dismount that battleship i was going to build in 1 sec and then in another sec manage to build tanks out of the rubble?

[DevilDog]

????? You can't disband fleets.

[John DiFool]

Originally posted by DevilDog:

????? You can't disband fleets.

You misunderstood him. He meant that, if hoarding

MPPs is designed to represent building the unit

all along, well it isn't like you had a 3/4

completed battleship and then right before you

were to launch it you dismantle it and melt all

the steel down to make tanks instead, instantaneously

and at the last minute. Except in SC it DDES

work exactly like that.

It's probably the biggest beef I have with the

game, actually. That or how subs are implemented.

John DiFool

[ June 13, 2002, 11:52 PM: Message edited by: John DiFool ]

[MrWinterbottom]

In that case, just imagine that you with your brilliant leadership foresaw the needs of today and didn't intend to build the battleship in the first place.

[vonManstein39]

This is a good point, but this is meant to be a 'simple' WWII strategy game, with a low level of complexity. It's certainly not Gary Grigsby's War in Europe. In some ways it's even less complex than Clash of Steel (COS), from which it borrows some ideas. Production is one of those ways.

In COS you could see in advance what your enemy was building, as units took several turns to produce and the list could be viewed. That way, you could counter the enemy's production priorities by adjusting your own. So there was no way to catch a human opponent by surprise with a new unit appearing unexpectedly on the map.

In Strategic Command (with Fog Of War on) you have no idea what units your enemy is going to build, and you can't see them until they enter combat. So if production of units took several turns, and you couldn't scrap them to make different ones, you might be building ships only to be caught out and defeated by the enemy building lots of air units (for example). Having instant unit productions compensates for FOW, because you can immediately counter a surprise production by the enemy.

Otherwise, with delayed production, you would be basically playing a rock/paper/scissors type guessing game with production, hoping that what you're producing counters what the enemy is producing. This would make the game interesting, but harder to win and more daunting for new players. Losing a game after a 'fair fight' is one thing, losing mainly because the enemy outsmarted you with his production priorities is something else.

I think the Strategic Command production method is fine for the level of complexity that this game aims at. For a more complex game it wouldn't be sufficient, but for this game it is.

[pzgndr]

Having instant unit productions compensates for FOW

This is a good point. I don't mind the instant builds as much as the instant MPPs from plunder. That one continues to bug me.

Instant reinforcements is another matter, where 1-factor units are back up to 10 in one turn. I'd wouldn't mind seeing a limit of 5/turn or something. I'd also like to see some combination of limited reinforcements (say 2/turn) and action, which would allow units to move and fight, or just get out of the way.