Suggestion for unit design

I imagine a typical game goes something like this:

  1. Player designs some units
  2. Plays a scenario.
  3. If they fail, go back to unit design and tweak / create units.
  4. Try again

What if while the battle is paused, the player could jump into the unit design to create and edit units on the fly? It would allow for less restarts for a given scenario. You could even explain it away in game terms as the player having sophisticated warfare analysis software and ultra just in time manufacturing. Just an idea, not sure if it is feasible or if players would find this more entertaining. It would allow a player to be more reactive.

I had implemented this, but actually took it out of the game, because I thought that it both gave the player too much of an advantage over the AI, in terms of being able to build perfect defensive units for every instance, and also because I thought the to-and-fro between design and battle might make the game feel a bit disjointed, but I’m happy to be argued round :smiley:

Feels superfluous, and would also break the ‘Division deployment’ concept being discussed in the deployment bar thread.

Unless… you basically allowed on-the-fly unit design within a battle but without permitting the battle to be paused during design. That way the player gets the flexibility but at cost to their broader operations.

On the flipside, if it’s coded already, why not make it toggleable within the options? I don’t want/need it but others clearly do; it doesn’t impact balance* in any way so the other possible downside is that some online challenges may be beaten 1-2 attempts quicker.

  • within a battle, yes, of course. Taking into account the ability to retry a battle, nope.

When I made the suggestion, I guess I was mainly thinking about the scripted AI. Since the AI is going to use the same units each play through anyway, allowing on the fly designs wouldn’t really give the player an unfair advantage. Against the adaptive AI, well that may be a different story. The prior poster has an interesting idea of allowing the redesign at the cost of the battle raging on. I guess perhaps my idea wasn’t really a good one, but like the prior poster said if it is already built (and tested?) it doesn’t hurt to make it an option.

On the flip side, since there isn’t a restriction on how many units a player can design before the battle, does it really harm anything if they can do it within the battle? They could just make a large variety of units before the battle starts and essentially get much of the same advantage. Maybe scenarios should be able to define a maximum number of unit designs allowed cap. Scenario designers can already specify a list of valid unit designs, right?

the feature was in and working, but that was quite a few months back, so it’s sadly not a case of just re-enabling it, there would need to be a whole ton of testing, and fixing and checking to make sure it still worke, because other code has chanegd so much around it.
There is always so much to do. In the back of my mind, if I can afford to take some time off, I plan to put user-control mid-battle into GSB as an option, one day…

Putting user control into GSB would be great!! Actually I have become rather attached to the Tower Defense aspect of GTB and think that GSB might benefit from it. Using perhaps invisible lanes, hot-key visible to route the ships, and using perhaps space guns, much like artillery and cannons to get at the attacking ships. Or as you have done here, play the attacking side and have the ai play as defender. It would certainly make GSB more interactive.

Though i don’t suppose it would work as simply as changing out the art assets in GTB with those of GSB, but it is a wonderful thought. :slight_smile: I would love to play it.

Just some ideas, don’t know if they will strike you as worth it, but it could be interesting and perhaps another expansion for GSB and new sales, but that is just an idea. You could ask around and see if other players are warm to the idea.

Take care,
-Teal