Simple and straightforward - the ability to combine weakened units!!

-1.  you'd have to be a necromancer to combine troopers, and you'd need some sort of shop to combine vehicles.  definitely not something you'd expect on a battlefield.

Unless a "unit" of troopers = 10 men, then there'd be no issue with merging two together

Not sure whether tank units are supposed to be a squadron of 10.. and the idea doesn't really translate well to any other unit type (jet squadron? small naval fleet? 10 little artillery things?)

Maybe just be able to merge infantry, it would give them something over vehicles

i thought that each individually selectable unit represented ten of something. the dialog that pops up with the results of an attack suggests this as well - it refers to numbers of units lost and remaining, not amounts of health.  it's also the AW way of doing things.

i think that most of the things that distinguish wee from AW are good, but combining damaged units would be an improvement, IMO. it would keep the map from getting clogged with mostly-dead units, which can happen when the front line falls back and repairs while fresh units push forward.

I suggested this in my very post here, so I have to give this a +2

Beside making damaged units useful, it would clear up board space. yay, board space.

Yes, I meant combine only LIKE units.  If a unit moves onto a friendly unit  of the same type and their combine combined health is less than or equal to ten offer MERGE THESE UNITS

-2 weewar is not AW.

@MadMike:  Totally specious comment.  It's also WeeWar not Diablo, and WeeWar not IceWars, and WeeWar not WarCraft or StarCraft.

i don't think "AW does it" is a very good reason to leave a feature out. there are lots of good reasons to allow this, and it's not like anybody's asking for CO powers, etc (at least, i hope not).

Unit merging has been bandied about in the past.  No bite from the devs as yet.  I'd support it, at least on a test first basis.

It does add another tactical choice - and tactical choice is generally a good thing.

"Unit merging has been bandied about in the past.  No bite from the devs as yet.  I'd support it, at least on a test first basis." - Pistos

@madmike: this game is blatantly influenced by Advance Wars...

visually, maybe. otherwise, turn-based strategy goes waaaaay back before AW, and most of the elements have been around since the beginning.

AW is a great TBS, but it was given birth after a similar game was made by the same creators back in the days of retro pixel games. Anyway, what i'm saying is, AW is a huge mile-stone when it comes to TBS type games. It took all the good stuff from that old game and built onto it and around it. Because AW has merged unit capabilities doesn't mean WeeWar can't.

Personally, i think the idea is average. There are many pros and cons, and with pro-units needing a tweak here-and-there and many other things needing a slight knock on the head, implementing this currently would make the game highly irregular.

My thoughts on 'unit / person + vechile number' for basic account units are as follows:

L/H.Infantry - 10 troops (within a unit)

Raider, L/H.Tank, L/H.Artilery - 5 vechiles (within a unit)

This makes more sense in terms of damage, movement, realism, etc. Merging is also possible if thought of like this.

I am confused ^^;;

@slickhare: No offense but you must be young. AW is much newer then most games. AW was good for the gameboy, and I will leave it at that. I've played almost all hex-TBS games. Including board and miniature games. So Demonicy is correct in his statements.

^_^ Thanks

On another note, there are 2 types of units for all TBS games: The ones that have a "squad" and the ones that have a lone but "specific person" or whatever. (Think AW for "squad" and Fire Emblem for "specific person"). WeeWar is built in a squad manner in my opinion as it makes more sense when putting it along side the main components of damage taken, damage dealt, movement, terrain effects, etc. Also, squad units tend to have a larger map scale, while specific persons have a smaller area of play. Again, reference being AW and Fire Emblem. AW has mountains as 1 part of terrain, woods for another and whole cities as another; giving a scale of vast distance and area. Fire Emblem has sections like a tree for 1 part of terrain, or a wall stretched over severall spaces; giving a scale of something smaller like a village battle.

My point in all of that past post is to declare this: AW is not the same as WeeWar, but they are both similar in the main aspects and so unit-merging could work very well if implemented right. If WeeWar was similar to Fire Emblem, it would probably never work.

-1  I don't see the US Government trying to push together two damaged blackhawks into a single unit.  (Unless they both went back to an airbase and they were salvaging parts.)    I wouldn't mind seeing a troop carrier but it wouldn't be stronger by having more people in it, right?

tvjames: the issue here is that many players consider it to be clear that the in-game units represent more than one physical unit. the infantry units are not just one person, the vehicle units are not just one vehicle, etc. this is exactly how it works in AW, and why unit combining makes sense there, and i feel that the same reasoning applies to Weewar as well.

Thank you, MU.  You saved me from calling TVJ a moron.

For example, I could accept two 5's merging into an 8 or a 9, skimming from the top a reformulation penalty of some sort. My experience so far is that an 8 is more than twice as useful as a 4, except for obstruction purposes. I would not be opposed to the merge feature being limited to infantry units.

If a unit represents several entities there is no reason to limit what types of units can be merged.

From appearances some units do represent multiple entities  though others may not.  WeeWee is an abstraction - a tactical simulation.  If we use an economic measure and assume, just for funsies, that a LtInf represents an Infantry Brigade and  each health point corresponds to a Battallion and use its cost of 125 as a basis then a Battleship (assuming it actually represents a naval battle group of ten ships. since it's silly to assume it represents ten battleships) at a cost of 2000 is waa.....aaaay too cheap by a couple factors of ten.

So by that measure the ability to merge like units does little beyond simplify bookkeeping, reduce map clutter and reduce the amount of diddly unit movement.

HO appears to believe there should be some cost to merging units, ignoring that the action of merging the units is itself a cost - neither unit may perform any other action if merging.

WW is a simple tactical simulation with the units representing nothing more than their interaction on a tactical level with clever icons attached to make unit identification easier.  As such its only measure is how well it meets our expectation of such a simulation and how enjoyable it is to play.

What we have been discussing is precisely how well it meets our expectation as a tactical simulation, particularly with regard to combat results.

I am of the opinion that combat results are counter-intuitive, at least partly because the function employed is overly complex.  I am a long standing member of the KISS school of combat functions, Keep It Simple Stupid.  From the knowledge we have been permitted I believe that the combat function violates KISS, hence is a haven for unintended results.

Pistos appears to believe that we can understand the combat function by analysis of the outcomes of several many battles.  I agree that this is laudable but have doubts as to its efficacy in returning results that are of much use to us.

I, on the other hand, believe we should pressure the DEVs to increase the level of importance of improving the combat results function (which if it is not simple, should be if the application and data structures are well designed) so that it better meets our intuition of real world tactical interactions.

I like this idea. Seen it in tons of games/boardgames. It would be like a command: 'Merge'. So you'd click say your infantry (level 2), then click on another infantry (level 7) within moving range, then click 'Merge' in the menu, and... voila!

The drawback of the merger is that you lose the 'unit HQ' so to speak... Myself I'd rather have 2 wounded units than 1 in good healh! =) But I like the option and it's simple enough. There should also be movement limitation, so that you could only combine with a unit that has not yet moved... You would merge with a static unit that would then forfeit its turn (no mov/attack/repair). woot!

In my first duel (which was today) I was told that the number on a unit was its HP, but on the battle screen, it seemed more like quantity.  I really cannot tell which one it is.

My opinion depends on which one the number really is; +1 if it's quantity, -1 if it's HP.

it is quantity. welcome aboard!

/me shudders at the thought of 10 battleships cruising towards him...

And it's also cute how a squadron of 10 jets have to fly in tight formation, and can't break off into two or three groups.

(or even go solo)

yar troublemaker

Off-Topic Replay Suggestion:
When FULL REPLAY is selected, only show the end of turn position for each player, not the move of each individual unit. To phrase in a different way, show us a single frame of what a player just did for his/her entire turn instead every click and the movement of every unit. End Result: Reduce server load! More relevant information, like the game's ebb and flow. Less irrelevant exformation, like repairs! Less underlining!

if this really decreases server load, than sure, if not, this is a bad idea. I sometimes like to see what an opponent does, and in what order. thats important information!

I can see this as being useful, Tally, if REPLAY paused between turns and allowed the player to toggle between the then current and previous turn.  Much better than scanning the map to find which units have just moved.  The d/b could still store entire moves for debugging purposes but would display position at the end of each player's turn.