Well, I have begun several games with various unit mix, investigating combined arms, unit balance, etc.

My conclusion is that naval units are way too powerful both attacking and defending.  Their cost, mobility & range is out of scale with the rest of the units. The trivial strategy of most BBs wins - without BBs most DDs wins.

Aircraft are handicapped by requiring a base to repair & and seriously lacking in mobility .  Way too expensive & too slow. Again cost, mobility & firepower are out of scale with the other units.

The ground game is dominated by HvyTnk & HvyArty in basic and Zerks & BFGs in Pro but we already knew that.  Their cost is out of balance with other units.

Hovercraft are way too strong & fast, as mentioned in another thread, and too easy to build.

The only unit mix that appears at all amusing is Hovercraft & Aircraft.  I am testing that in three games right now, both 1 v 1 & team play.

I haven't yet tested AssArt & Infantry but it's in the queue.

The only really playable unit mix seems to be Infantry, Speeders, Tanks & LtArty but to tell you the truth Medieval warfare is not one of my favorites.

Don't bother to respond with - every unit has it's use.  That is simply not true.  There are units that dominate - hence there is a dominant strategy.  Read a book on game theory before you make a fool of yourself by claiming otherwise.

If I seem surly, I am and disappointed.  Cooked games always disappoint me and make me surly.
 

I was going to post a long winded reply but I decided against it. I have only a few complaints about the game as it stands now. I think the game is pretty balanced requiring only a small handful of unit tweaking and map editing. The interface has far to go but otherwise this game is fairly complete to me.

Here is a short list of some things I'd like to see in the next patch.
Heavy Infantry: Reduce cost to 125.
Subs: Increase their range and/or reduce their cost.
Bombers: Increase their armor.
Battleships: Reduce armor.
 

These changes would be nice but I wouldn't yet consider them necessary. The game as it is now is playable and fun.

reducing subs price is a good idea. If it was easier to get lots of subs, then there would be fewer battleships.

I agree that its wrong to say every unit has it's use and everything is balanced and fair but why would we want balanced or fair anyway?

right now we can leave units out on game creation, thats good enough to adapt it to your liking. also, on maps where bases give you 50, what profit do you draw from the knowledge that zerks kick ass? thats about as usefull as a battleship in the rivermaze or a hovercraft in city sprawl
 

life is tough and unfair, deal with it!

Battleships in River Maze turned a sure loss for me into a sure win: http://weewar.com/game/32838

One turn after popping a battleship, his zerk was crippled and his DFA was dead.  Battleships would be a bargain at 3000 pts, maybe even 4000.


 

I've said my peace in many other threads, so I'll spare everyone the repetition.  A few more things I'll add, though:

I think, at the moment, weewar suffers from some relative scale problems.  There needs to be a definitive pronouncement on what each unit really represents.  The word from the devs up to this point is that the little number in the bottom left corner of every unit icon means "subunit count".  So if I see a 10 on an infantry icon, that means 10 human beings.  And if I see a 10 on a battleship icon, that means 10 battleships.

I present to you the above graphic to show you what ONE battleship looks like, firing its weaponry.  I defy you to identify a single human being in that photo.  Perhaps a few of the pixels shown on the near tip of the craft could be people.  Alright, perhaps we suppose that I am exaggerating, and we assume that weewar is taking place in a much earlier period.  Below is an image of the HMS Dreadnought, which entered service in 1906.

According to the Wikipedia article on this ship, it had a crew in excess of 700 people.  I think if I magnify the image and squint, I can make out a few of these 700 people as individual pixels -- but I'm not sure.  How about you?

Suppose we assume that each hex represents a tactical zone, an area of engagement.  That is, it does not represent some small space like a bus, where we are squishing ten soldiers as close as possible to one another.  Rather it is some large space, such as a football field, or a mountainside, or a hectare of wooded area.  In this tactical zone, ten soldiers are spread out, or operating in small clusters.

But wait!  The HMS Dreadnought was 160 meters long and 25 meters wide.  Hmm... so if we were to fit 10 battleships in as small a space as we could muster, that would have to mean a space 160 meters by 250 meters.  Okay, that's pretty close to what we can think of as a tactical zone for 10 humvees or 10 soldiers.  But, by golly, I hope these battleships know how to duck when one of them fires its guns broadside!  And I wonder, do the ships travel around shoulder to shoulder, like so many Can Can dancers?

This all might be slightly alleviated if we think of infantry units as squads of 10 human beings, and vehicle units as single, individual vehicles.

The problem is that we are trying to mix things that are too radically different in power.  The result is either that we are exaggerating the strength of the weak things, or weakening the mighty things to the point of comedy.

I've said it before, and I'll [briefly] say it again: The game needs (1) more engagement types, (2) a wholesale levelling of relative strengths.

If 1 unit = 10 men, it'd be nice to be able to make a half unit, or some other fraction of a unit for the same fraction of the cost - e.g. if you want a flood of 1 health infantry that disintegrate on contact with opposition, but get in the way - equivalent to sending a handful of guys to hold up a tank column guerilla-style.

^^ there's no one on deck since their eardrum would explode.

Would be fun to have Cruisers between DD and BB. Like Tanks/HT/Zerk - we'd have DD/CC/BB

BB should be very weak vs land units, like most sea units. So you could use your BB as supporting fire, but not as a total land unit-killer. Also why 2 attacks? right now BB is 12 vs Soft and 16 vs Hard - should be reduced to 8 and 6 like Assault Art. BB should specialize in killing Sea Units. Right now I use it as land Units killer, and secondly to kill other sea units.

to extrapolate on π's point: if light infantry = 7.5 clams per man, then BB = 10 units x 700 men each = 7000 men at a cost of 3.5 clams per man with like 1,000 times the killing power. Is that historically accurate? Is my math ridiculous?

As an aside, The History Channel informs me (in conjunction with Ken Burns and Steven Spielberg) that all throughout World War 2, naval bombardments of land troops did minimal damage; shells rarely penetrate earth and reinforced concrete defenses.
 

On the button, P.  The major problem is scale both in movement & cost.

Kinda Real World:

1 infantry man - 60 km/day - 10^4 kindaDollars - 1 shoulder arm/100 rnds + 2 grenades: 130 m.

1 medium tank - 300 km/day - 10^5 kindaDollars - 30 AP + 15 HE: 1100 m

1 big tank - 160 km/day -  7*10^5 kindaDollars - 25 AP + 10 HE: 1800 m

1 Assault gun - 180 km/day - 5*10^4 kindaDollars - 35 HE: 600 m

1 Artillery piece - 40 km/day - 3*10^4 kindaDollars - 40 HE: 20,000 m

1 DD - 200 km/day - 10^7 kindaDollars - 100 AP + 100 HE: 20,000 m

1 BB - 160 km/day - 5*10^8 kindaDollars - 250 AP/HE: 35,000 m

1 WW2 Fighter - 750 km/day - 2*10^5 kindaDollars - 200 AP/I + 4 HE: 500 m

1 WW2 Bomber -  1,200 km/day - 8*10^5 kindaDollars - 800 AP/I + 30 HE: 1000 m

There is no convenient way to scale all of these to maps in WeeWee.  What the Devs have attempted is to create "kinda-like" units.  They have done this by scaling some attributes linearly and others non-linearly.  The result has been units that behave reasonably (in many cases) against similar units but unreasonably against dissimilar units.

One possible solution is to abstract the dissimilar units when appropriate.  When playing a land engagement abstract the effects of air & naval power. When playing anaval engagement abstract land & air.
 

and shooting down planes

Honestly I dont get what the problem is. lets imagine for a second that the devs come in tomorrow and make an official staement  declaring that for BB and DD the little number indicated its strength or completeness, or whatever but of 1 single unit, and for all other units the little number means their number. if all this happened, would you then be happy? I mean whats the big difference? the number starts at 10, and the more damage is dealt the higher the probability that the number goes down, and if it reaches 0 the unit disapears, thats all. a tank, a battleship, they are all tools that all, tools that I use to erradicate my opponents tools. If it represents a big ship or a small duck, not important to me. If I can get ducks that shoot twice, hah, reach em over, I take em.

suppose weewar plais in an alternate reality, in a reality where they make battleships that are only as big as a large truck and they give soldiers an armor that as big as ... idunno, an elephant.

as for damage to land units, screw that. If I walk along the beach and see This:

then I crap my pants no matter what.

as for another rant: why are the ships abreviated BB and DD around here. should be BS & DE or DS?

btw: Pistos, the first picture you posted is exaclty how I imagined my weewar battleships in action In fact, I googled it and those beasts are really impressive indeed. thats cities on the sea.

I like the cruiser idea. make them 2000 and the BS oh, I mean BB 4000.

The naval designation for a battleship is BB, for a destroyer DD or DE, for a cruiser CL or CA, aircraft carrier CV.

ww1/2 lethality requested, yada yada yada.

I pulled those number out of my nether regions, Ho to give a sense of scale.  They are sort of generalized composite values, back of a napkin calculations.

If you want me to research actual values you gotta pay me.

Streen: You're right, I think if the units were just renamed, I wouldn't have my knickers in such a knot.  Maybe call them "little weeship", "big weeship", "weesub".  Then I won't think of them as real life naval craft, but little cartoony caricatures.

But really, the main point is an imbalance in relative cost and strength.  Because you have the uberunits like DFA, and BB, the game degenerates into an arms race for these.  The costs and strengths need some updating in order to make our real weebattles exhibit a more balanced or distributed unit mix.  If the game's specs and design is making people spam only a few units because using those units a lot wins wars, then I think the game design is flawed.  Every unit's gotta have a use, a specialty, and every unit should also have an achilles heel.

I'm not say every unit is supposed to be found in every army in exactly equal proportions before I find things satisfactory.  But... well, I've said my peace about the naval craft and aircraft, etc.
 

ditto that. someone can do the math proper on this, but if a DFA can do 500x the damage of light infantry, shouldn't its price reflect that?

I think most of the arguments in here about relative price and power of units is overly simplistic. For instance, Tally argues that the price of DFA should reflect the scale of damage that it inflicts but ignores the fact that DFA can only move or attack which significantly limits its usefulness, can't move through mountainous terrain,  plus the fact that DFA can't cap bases. Also if I have 8 inf charging you, that DFA can only attack one target at time. I agree that some balancing of price and power for some units could be a good thing, but most of the arguments I see for pricing of specific units focuses on just one or two aspects of the units being compared.

While I agree that Hvy Artillerys need some tweeking, I disagree that Hvy Tanks and Zerkers are unbalanced...I find them too easily destroyed.

I feel for 600 credits, a Hvy Tank is a pretty good deal considering Hvy Artilleries can tear into them and with the multi attack rule, a few raiders and tanks can  gank them for decent damage...I think that Hvy Tanks are good as is.

I disagree that the game is dominated by them also. Too many times Hvy Tanks can simply be tied up by a few infantry and just ignored. With the ZoC rules, I believe it is infantry that dominate the game. Infantry....and of course....all our favorite unit...the Hvy Artillery and DFA.

Even a DFA for 1200 credits is a good cost...after all...1200 credits is ALOT of credits. But Hvy Artilleries need to be toned down a bit. They need to lower the attack of Hvy. Artilleries and DFA's against hard units by 1. Just this small tweek in attack i think is worth playtesting. This small tweek could shift the emphasis more toward assault units and away from Artillery shootouts that turn into 20 turn stalemates.

Either this or give certain of the heavy assault units like tanks and heavy tanks the ability to ignore ZoC. I think this would make these units (especially tanks) much more useful. And as an player that always plays alot of Tanks and Hvy. Tanks, it would also benefit my playstyle.

I agree about Hovercraft though...their attack against vehicles should be lowered...I think this would balance them out nicely.


 

yeah.. I think ZOC has reinstated the "spam infantry and put artillery behind it" strategy as king of the hill - even zerkers can go down fairly easy when they're inching through an amorphous blob of infantry while under heavy artillery fire

Though real world arguments are fun to debate over I don't think it's any reason to change units. For what heavy infantry do in game they are over priced not because in real life one elite soldier if trained properly and smart enough could go Rambo and kill off hundreds of infantry and tanks alone. Real world arguments are fun to think about and debate over but none can actually be used as justification for balance changes which is why I ignore them when browsing the forum for balancing issues.

The battleship was originally 2400c and was reduced to 2000c. Now you want battleships to be 4000c? I will always disagree with price increases. Rather than increase the unit's price and make them more difficult to get simply reduce their stats. I feel giving battleships a minimum range of 2 and reduce it's armor by 2 would be a good change and worth some testing. Units should be balanced based on in game performance with other units. We do not want a near impossible to acquire unit that guarantees victory when you get one. That's a terrible balancing methodology.

yeah, making it damn hard to get doesn't justify it being the ubermegadeath unit - that's just going to help tip the scales in favour of whoever can grab a couple of extra bases for long enough even more.

It seems to me as if, as soon as one player gains a reasonable income-advantage, you may as well stop struggling and surrender because the outcome is more or less decided by that. Maybe I'm just not playing well enough but it seems very hard to come back from a position with fewer bases if the difference in income lasts for long enough.
 

Druhim, you've attacked my reasoning nicely, but allow me to refer you to my many other posts where I critique weewar's gameplay, mechanics, and most of the map designs One of more repeated requests is for bigger maps, as most of the terrain on the current maps creates bottlenecks (largely because they are much too small), and DFAs become king of the mountain. If maps were more spacious, DFA's relative strength would be greatly reduced. More often than not, one DFA can protect the center and both flanks

Sluggy often beats the drum about Logistics being the key in battle. This is never more true than with DFAs and Battleships. If a DFA gets in range of a base, the base is done if the DFA is protected. 1200 spent eliminates a point of production, creating distance between the enemy and his/her support. This is usually the end.

Returning to my point about bombardments on fortified positions, they are less effective in the military history I know than they are as simulated here.  Soldiers in fortified positions do not get annihilated by a single bombardment.  For more on this, check out the thread HB started entitled "Heavy Art Too Cheap." This thread isn't just a conversation about cost, and it cannot be read exclusive of the other posts and threads.

Hard to follow, but it is what it is.
 

Slug has a good point about unit balance.  When units are strictly better than others, you see the kind of degenerate buying pattern that's being discussed.  There should be a hard counter to every unit or family of units in the game.  I'll keep using Advance Wars as an example since the parallels with Weewar are obvious.  There were three primary sea units: battleships, destroyers, and submarines.  Battleships were basically floating artillery and could do tremendous damage to ground units and sea units.  However, they had no defense against air, nor could they fire on submerged submarines.  Destroyers were dedicated anti-air and anti-sub units, capable of decimating a stack in a single round.  They were also highly resistant to counter-attack from these units.  Submarines could submerge to avoid detection, and if they got a shot off against a battleship, it was probably game over for that ship. They were very weak against destroyers though, and had no defense against air.

This trinity resulted in a rock-paper-scissors effect where battleship beats destroyer, destroyer beats submarine, and submarine beats battleship.  A fleet comprised of only one sea unit was vulnerable to the corresponding anti-unit.  You were forced to build a balanced fleet lest you lose all of your units to a proper counter attack.  Thus, all units were valuable dependent upon circumstance, with no single unit emerging as dominant.  Many extended rock-paper-scissors-like arrangements existed in the game, and any attempt to mass a single class of units would be swiftly punished with a cost-effective counter.  This is not to say that specializing in one strategy or another was impossible; rather the commander constantly needed to evaluate his own unit construction capabilities, the current composition of his opponent's forces, and the overall combat situation when making purchasing decisions.  Stockpiling cash to buy the biggest tank or the biggest artillery or the biggest ship or the biggest plane was foolish if you didn't have the units to support your shiny new toy and fend off the counter units.

It's not enough to just have units whose power scales semi-linearly with cost.  Every unit in the game needs to have something that it excels at, a common situation for which it is the optimal unit for the job regardless of the amount of cash a player has on hand.  Otherwise, why include the unit at all?

one aspect that we seem to have missed out so far is that when you pay more for a unit you want more as well. For example if one unit is exactly twice as strong as another and in turn costs twice as much, then you make a bad deal going for the expencive one. quite the opposite, you have all your power combined, can only attack one unit and also the opponent only has one unit to destroy. If I have to save up for the bigger unit, I want my moneys worth as well. if a unit that costs 27 times what an Inf costs I want it to be more than just 27 times better than the Inf. know what I mean? If I comitt to pay a lot, I want a better deal, a discount. But maybe I've already been in the UK too long. The brits are absolutely crazy about buy two, get one free deals...

Fatmouse: I can follow and understand your reasonning, but I would not like weewar as much if it were that rock-paper-scisor balanced. I like building armies of one unit. I dont wanna have to build an army that has every single unit in it in order not to be completely vulnerable against some other unit. For example, I currently dont build subs at all. I protect my BBs with DDs, and I am quite happy that I can get away with not building subs. If we had it your way, that would not be possible. Or someone just specializes on sinking my subs, and it would mean that the whole rest of my army gets destroyed because the one unit vulnerable by subs can just go ahead and sink everything without resistance? whats the fun in that?

I dont think DFAs are that good. Ive never seen one kicking a lot of ass. two HArt on the other hand...

about hovercrafts, for all I care, they dont have to dop any damage to vehicles. they kill Inf and capture, thats enough for me. but I dont want them to be more expencive.

btw: spamming infantry is fun! lots of little dots that seem unpenetrable. Thats a legitime strategy!

ZoC to stop invaders is cool too. Kick it like the spartans:in a small corridor, numbers count for nothing!

Pistos: "little weeship", "big weeship", "weesub" ... hehe sounds funny. sounds less intimidating, but funny
 

haha Streen, your strat of not building any subs at all to protect your battleships would get you screwed in the battles I've been in, and I'm not just talking about myself. I've learned from experience that a good player is going to realize he can shield his battleships with subs that your battleships can't attack, while your destroyers can't get in range of his subs without getting decimated by the battleship it's guarding. If I have the resources, I build subs, destroyers, and battleships together so they can all protect each other.

at the risk of being repetitive...

This touches on thoughts I have had since playing the game the past few weeks. That is certain strong units influence the game too much - here I talk of H arts, DFA's, Battleships and to some degree Destroyers. Zerks could make that group if the H Arts didnt take them down so quickly.

My problem is that these games quickly become a race to gain the "big units" whatever they may be for that particular map. Whoever gets there first has a decided advantage.

Winning becomes a formula to some degree. When a formula wins in these maps I find the game much less interesting. For me the fun in the game is developing strategy and tactics based on terrain, available units and reacting to the moves of your opponents. That should be a fluid and dynamic state. The strategy should not be a linear, predictable march to the end of the game.

As I am new to the game, I have not played in most of the maps yet, so do not know the winning route  to take in these maps. Though it is clear that those who have played the maps before almost play the early moves  automatically. Such predictability lessens the suspense, strategy, and for me fun of the game.

amendum to above post: we are playing a 3 on 3 on map (insert name here) without the heavy stuff. The game so far is one of the more interesting I have played.

http://weewar.com/game/30921

It's left v right.

that's the perfect example for the chat window taking too long to load...

games amongst friends.

 

Baba, nothing personal but I have to say from my experience that's a load of bull. I've seen inexperienced players field the most expensive unit they could early on and end up losing because they didn't have enough units on the field. I maintain that players who rush to build the most powerful units, and even moreso those that are defeated by them, are generally poor strategists.

*scratching head*

And all this while I thought the numbers were an indication of life/strength

Is this why I keep losing?

druhim , yes of course if you build expensive units without support you will get wiped out. Arts especially. This is not what i was talking about.

I'm talking more about the 2 lines of Inf's , 1 lines of H arts formula.

In water maps i have seen the side that builds the first bb's dominate, but I should say that I have no experience on those maps, with those units or with the strategy to develop them and counter them. My experience with subs was abysmal , but that probably reflects my use of them. I found them overpriced and underperforming. More of a threat one holds than a weapon one actually has a chance to use.

Tally, re: http://weewar.com/game/30921  correction, its wrong vs right

For the record: I don't have any big pricing or strength issues at the moment with the classic units, including zerks and DFA -- with the exception that I'd rather see more modes of engagement rather than just multiple degrees of strength for only hard and soft types.  My pricing and strength issues are mostly with the naval and air craft.

moJoe: I agree that it's more important to actually balance the stats, and to use empirical game results to aid in analysis and decision making.  More important, that is, than to try to approach or approximate real world mechanics.  At the same time, I don't think we should ignore severe cognitive dissonance with respect to the real world.  If 10 battleships won't fit in a combat hex, then don't call them battleships.  Call them something else -- I don't know, maybe just "warships".

And, as I've said before, I'd rather see a levelling of relative unit strengths, and I've also always been against providing expensive mega units.  I was already apprehensive about berserkers and DFA when I saw them.  Personally, I derive fun out of games like this from the intricacy and (dare I say it) complexity of tactics, strategy and management of a copious inventory of available units.  If, as you say, you make available a "nuke" unit which can totally dominate, that reduces the strategy to the acquisition and usage of that unit.  That reduction is bad, because it makes the game too simple to be satisfactory to the keen mind that wants a mental challenge.

Perhaps something that could be playtested is the idea that the current existing base terrains can act as they are, namely for income and for creation of units.  At the same time, the real, or full "base" would be a multi-hex area.  Call the new (non-income, non-productive) terrain "fortifications" or "walls" or whatever.  That way, we can situate many units in our bigger "base", and this would perhaps simulate real life a bit better.  As well, give nearly all units a nice defensive bonus in these fortified hexen.  Something like +2 for vehicles, +3 for infantry.

<Fatmouse> "There should be a hard counter to every unit or family of units in the game."  "rock-paper-scissors effect"  Just what I've been tooting about for a long time.

Streen: You are right in that one unit of double the strength of two lesser units is disadvantaged by its singleness.  As such, the price should be less than double the price of two of those lesser units.  Unfortunately, I disagree with you on the RPS issue. 

<Streen> "Or someone just specializes on sinking my subs, and it would mean that the whole rest of my army gets destroyed because the one unit vulnerable by subs can just go ahead and sink everything without resistance? whats the fun in that?"  You pretty much missed our point.  Your opponent would not be able to freely "just go ahead and sink everything", because you would have the opportunity to build anti-sub units.

I agree that hovercraft vs. tank needs to favour tanks more than it does right now.

Around when ZOC was foisted on the unsuspecting Weewar populace, I mentioned that not every unit should exert ZOC on every other unit.  The current game release has this to some extent (notice that artillery exert no ZOC).  It was also mentioned that ZOC could perhaps have degrees of effect, instead of all or nothing.  Maybe introduce a simple ZOC factor, which multiplies movement costs, based on the pairing of ZOCking and ZOCked unit.

<Baba> "Winning becomes a formula to some degree. When a formula wins in these maps I find the game much less interesting. For me the fun in the game is developing strategy and tactics based on terrain, available units and reacting to the moves of your opponents. That should be a fluid and dynamic state. The strategy should not be a linear, predictable march to the end of the game."  Amen, brother!  Now, as Druhim says, whether or not building the mega units first _is_ the formula -- well that's something up for debate.   But if there are just a few formulas to winning on a map, I agree that that is a bad thing for the game in general.

Phew!  This is getting to be a beefy thread.   I think that many players are disgruntled with various aspects of the game (though some seem to be content, as well).  Let's all hope Weewar improves for the better. 

 

one thing is for sure, they can never make all of us happy 

Too true Streen!

With enough options and configurability, they can get pretty darn close, I say! 

Aye I remember relatively primitive games with tons of options checkboxes and good editors. Civ2 comes to mind, and also who remembers Empire Master?

::addendum:: woot found the link for Empire Master. This is a 1.8 MB file... An ancestor of weewar!

http://www.d1024318.mydomainwebhost.com/empire/homePage.php

Larger base areas would require larger maps overall to remain in proportion, which is no bad thing - maps are kinda small as they are which limits what you can do on them and the level of detail in positioning you can achieve (single units can block a whole passageway and then can only be attacked by a single unit at a time (in melee - obviously artillery can weigh in too)

It's not enough to just have units whose power scales semi-linearly with cost.  Every unit in the game needs to have something that it excels at, a common situation for which it is the optimal unit for the job regardless of the amount of cash a player has on hand.  Otherwise, why include the unit at all?

Very well said, FatMouse.

The tank, biggerTank, biggestTank paradigm does not make for an amusing game. OTOH, tank, tankKiller, tankkillerKiller does.

+1 (see: myth, primo example of what unit balance can do).

<slugthog> "The tank, biggerTank, biggestTank paradigm does not make for an amusing game. OTOH, tank, tankKiller, tankkillerKiller does."  Amen!   Preach it, brothers!

<Streen> "I like building armies of one unit. I dont wanna have to build an army that has every single unit in it in order not to be completely vulnerable against some other unit."

I'm not sure I understand this statement.  If you like building armies of all one unit, basically you're saying the strategy behind proper unit purchase holds little interest for you.  I can accept this, it implies to me that the tactics of unit position and maneuvering is where the fun's at for you.  You do seem to accept though that building nothing but battleships is a weak strategy and vulnerable to counter (hence, you build destroyers for support).

As for not wanting to to build every single unit to be safe from counterattack, you're once again implying that you don't want to suffer defeat based on the purchasing decisions of your opponent.  How then would someone defeat your force?  I've already suggested superior tactics/maneuvering.  Beyond that, there's really just 'build a bigger force', which doesn't really leave a lot of room for strategic thought.

My point in all this is, a dominant purchasing strategy that emphasizes minimal unit diversity eliminates a layer of strategic depth from the game. Removing purchasing altogether would result in a game that focuses on tactical gameplay, a wholly worthwhile endeavor (the Myth series is fantastic).  But providing a broken unit set makes the game needlessly more complicated with no benefit for the novice or advanced player.

Fog Of War would add to the tactic/maneuvering aspect of the game. Right now it's more a 'material war' i.e. the person with most income usually win and can easily counteract any move made by a cunning enemy by simply outbuilding him. With some Fog of War (option) a player could keep a strategic reserve and others would guess what he's building in his home bases. Units would reach a fontline qand potentially create some serious surprise.

I'm thinking of a view range of 3-4... And we could even do 'blind bombing' with artillery.

FOW has been requested.  FWIW, +1 here again.  I'd love to have it as a per-game option.

View range in most games is a function of movement range.  You could probably start with a 1:1 ratio (e.g. raiders can see 4), and the make some other common sense adjustments, like aircraft seeing much further.
 

redundant +1

 

Fatmouse: All i am saying is that I dont want to be forced to build every single unit to survive thats all. I like to be able to do my thing without absolutely having to buy subs. I want the choice to be mine, and not just a forced reaction to whatever my opponent is buying.

hogo: said it before, and say will it again (hell, I will print in on a Tshirt if I have to): Screw fog of war! this is a chess/risk like game, and its all about knowing the state of the whole game. fog of war removes all that and turns the game into something different altogether.

@Hugo:

Empire Master.  I still have the original version with all my mods.

I downloaded the OSX version last even.  Little has changed.  We need to eMail Chris.

      .
 

<Pistos><slugthog> "The tank, biggerTank, biggestTank paradigm does not make for an amusing game. OTOH, tank, tankKiller, tankkillerKiller does."  Amen!   Preach it, brothers!

Afraid I'll have to disagree.

First off, though their are linear degrees of strength of the same type of unit (tank, hvy Tank, Zerker), each of these units have their own unique strengths and uses.

For example: a tank is much more of a heavy skirmisher...great for taking out raiders. A hvy Tank with its high defense and heal rate are ideal for holding positions and spearheading a slow advance. A Zerker, while very powerful, is almost useless in smaller maps due to its high cost. This unit is more suited for huge maps and large armies.

As stated earlier, this game resembles Chess is many ways. Each piece has it's own abilities, and some units (like the Queen are stronger than the rest). Still in Chess there is no Anti-Queen unit. Pieces are given generic abilities and strength and the player decides how best to use them.

On the paper-rock-scissors note: I am really tired of these types of strategy games. WW does have subtle paper-rock-scissors combinations,  such as Raiders kill Artillery, Artillery kills slow tanks, slow tanks kill raiders. But in reality, a few  raiders can gank a larger unit to death. So it is not as pronounced as in other games.

If you love paper-rock-scissors so much, go play Starcraft or one of the MILLIONS of games just like it.

Got to get back to work...but I will finish this rant later on.






 

Piffle!  On small maps Zerks are game breakers.  First Zerk wins.

Question 1)  Why have three different tanks that vary primarily in power and cost?

Question 2)  Why have three different artillery that vary primarily in power and cost?

Both of these favor the player with the greater income, who is usually the first to purchase the larger unit.

The Rock, Paper Scissors analogy is being used broadly.  What many of us are saying is that "Each and every unit should have both a best use and a weakness."  If a unit does not have a best use it is redundant, unnecessary to the game.  If a unit does not have a weakness it cooks the game.

If HCraft can eliminate tanks why have tanks?  HCs cost the same, are more mobile and have greater range.

If UBoats  are blocked by ZoCs and enemy units and take damage from BBs (their only real target)  why bother with UBoats.

If aircraft are blocked by enemy units & ZoCs, take hits from nearly everything and have one strike every three to five turns and cost as much a two HC why buy them?

If HvyInf are just slightly harder hitting & slower LtInf why build them?

The two specialized units in the game are U-Boats & Ack-Ack but other units do their job just as well and more cheaply.

Let the players who are unable to manage the logistics create games using only their favorite single unit.  That will take all the logistic decision making out of the game for them.

For those others of us, filling the game with redundant or useless units to give the illusion that logistical decisions matter  is just plain insulting and makes the investment of $24 bucks a year feel a lot like theft.

+3.

I don't get all the complaining about how the player with the higher income is favored. This utterly baffles me. Having a higher income absolutely should confer a big advantage. Yes, you can still win if you have fewer bases but you have to be really smart with your strategy and you have to be sure to exploit weaknesses in your opponents strategy. It's not easy, but I've done it before against less experienced foes. I've also had opponents do the same to me when I made a mistake. So I would say there's a very clear and reasonable rationale for having 3 different strengths of tank. Hovercraft are only on pro maps, so they have every right to keep that unit pro as an incentive to get people to pay for pro accounts. Of course on regular maps it's not an issue at all. As far as AA, tell me which land unit does the job of AA in that it has the same attack range and power against air as well as the same movement range? This point from you is deeply flawed in my opinion. And naval units that can attack air don't count as comparable units for reasons that should be too obvious to require mentioning.

 

Also, one advantage of tanks that you neglected is that they can move through woods. I've said it before and I'll say it again, most of the arguments I see for unit balancing are overly simplistic and only look at certain aspects of the units instead really considering all the differences between them.

I think your premise there about the "higher income advantage" greatly misconstrues the arguments in the posts above yours, particularly sluggy's.

Also, I build hvy inf all the bloody time because they're actually reasonably effective at attacking mech units up to heavy tanks and are a good value for the cost. I usually only build regular inf if I'm moving them to a base for capture and they will be unopposed.

I use troopers for relatively unopposed invasion, under cover of artillery or in conjunction with vehicles because they move faster, heavy troopers are more a defensive unit - stick a couple in forests or mountains near your base and they make a fairly effective block against vehicles, or they can ward off incoming troopers.

The heavies are also useful in games where the front line is really only inching back or forward very slowly - then they have time to move up, and can keep up with the forward movement of everything else.

Should regular inf move 2 hexes too? At 3 hexes mp for $75 they're powerful.

Streen: Hence the optional nature of FOW.  i.e. a checkbox for the game creator.

<slugthog> "If a unit does not have a best use it is redundant, unnecessary to the game.  If a unit does not have a weakness it cooks the game."  Exactly.   Hear hear.

I think subs can zip past all ZOC except that of other subs.  I could be wrong, though -- but that's what my memory tells me.  And other units can also go past subs, no ZOC.

Druhim: Obviously, you should have some advantage when enjoying a higher turn income.  But I think it should not be the or a major deciding factor in the game.  But I feel that, even for players of slightly differing skill (one greater than the other), something like a 500/turn vs. 400/turn income would be a game breaker.

What some of us are trying to argue (well, let me only speak for myself) is that a good (well, let's say: interesting, fun) game will have sufficient complexity so as to require some study and time to master, even if learning the basics is fairly easy.  Such as with chess: Easy to learn the rules, but it takes years to really get good.  If the [lack of] complexity and the game design are such that the avenues to victory are few, that makes for a dull game.  Some of us are getting the sense that weewar is reduced to an arms race for a sufficient number of certain choice units, coupled with adequate support for defense, fodderwalls, etc.  If that's the case, I'd say that's a problem that needs to be addressed.

hugo: Lawdamursy, please don't slow our units down even more.   We've been working hard for a while now to get the devs to INCREASE the movement of units. 
 

<sorry - sarcasm deleted by sluggy>

I am just about through with this game.

There is an expensive unit called a bomber that cannot move far enough in one turn to escape a BB.  Why not just call it 1200 bucks worth of fodder.  It takes damage from everything it attacks with the exception of artillery. If damaged it must return to an air base and repairs at the rate of 3 points per turn.  So what is it's purpose in the game.  To make me waste income?  Do you want to know what bombers really do to battleships?  Take a look at Gen Billy Mitchell's demonstration after WubWubOne.  Or the effect of aerial bombardment on the Japanese behemoth, Yamato, in WubWubTwo.  Look up water-hammer effect in a convenient encyclopedia.

There is another unit called a submarine which is expensive, not stealthy and is vulnerable to attacks from it's only real target the BB.  The BB is a game breaker.  The submarine, allegedly, its nemesis is overpriced and toothless.

I just took out an opponent's full strength tank with two less than full strength hovercraft.  Gimme a freaking break.  Do you know what a hovercraft is?  It is an expensive short ranged, very lightly armored and lightly armed vehicle used to transport assault parties from shipboard to the beach. A single hit from a 3 in. gun reduces a hovercraft to a sinker-craft.  BTW, the three in. or 75 mm gun was a common weapon in the Second World War - long before the introduction of combat hovercraft.

Do you know what happens when armor unprotected by infantry meets infantry on the battle field?  The armor dies.  Infantry's job is to protect armor.  Armor's job is to support infantry.  Except in WeeWee.

I am not making an argument that WeeWee needs to simulate real warfare.

I am making the argument that if a game provides units that have certain labels their should be an intuitive mapping between the behavior of those units and the behavior of their real counterparts.

I am making an even stronger statement with regard to WeeWee:  It is my conclusion drawn from half a century of war gaming. a long study of military technology and over thirty-five years  as programmer & analyst  that WeeWar is broken in ways that it needn't be.  There are dominate units and there are units that are nearly useless.  There is no advantage in combined arms strategies - the foundation of modern warfare.  A small early economic disadvantage can seldom be overcome.  Important mathematical relationships in the game have not been well thought out.

Anyone but an utter fool or naif will concur that many units are not worth the resources to produce them,  that a preponderance of the maps have a dominate winning strategy and that an early small resource advantage is enormously difficult to overcome.  This last is the result of the interrelationship of the disparity between unit cost vs unit effect and resource value.  Which hearkens back to inadequate analysis prior to implementation.

And no HUGE - fog of war won't help.  it will just make your blitzkrieg tactic more difficult to counter; particularly due to the difficulty in undermining an opponent's logistic train.

And no, neither larger maps nor greater unit mobility will help.  Larger maps & increased mobility will emphasize not reduce the effect of a poorly balanced unit mix.

What will help is the Devs taking to heart our complaints about the lack of balance in the game, unit redundancy and maps with cooked strategies.  (Oh and my all time favorite, a rational combat result function)

500/400 income is not a game breaker, and I can say that from experience

oh, and slug if you don't like bombers there's a very simple solution

can you guess what it is?
 

I'd also add slug that you really like to insult people that don't agree with you. Anyone that doesn't arrive at the same conclusion as you is a fool or a naif? I do state that I'm puzzled by some people's arguments, but that's a statement about me and not nearly as insulting. I appreciate that you have a different opinion. I would expect people to disagree with me and the range of voices and perspectives is a good thing, which is precisely why I share my point of view. I maintain that just because some units aren't useful in most situations, it doesn't hurt to have them available and there are certain situations in which I will potentially build a copter or a bomber.

<slugthog> "Do you know what happens when armor unprotected by infantry meets infantry on the battle field?  The armor dies.  Infantry's job is to protect armor.  Armor's job is to support infantry.  Except in WeeWee."  I am by far not a military expert, but this statement confuses me.  My understanding is that tanks usually have secondary armaments (say, at least one machine gun) in addition to the main turret.  Why would a tank be so vulnerable without an infantry escort?  Is it because the enemy infantry deploy certain anti-tank measures (e.g. rockets, C4 after stealthy approach, etc.)?

<slugthog> "What will help is the Devs taking to heart our complaints about..."  I feel a bit negatively that the devs have had extremely little to say in response to inquiries, commentary and criticism about the game's design -- but I guess they're busy. 

Druhim: A prolonged 500/400 (in your opponent's favour) is a serious setback for you, wouldn't you agree?  Given two equally skilled opponents, it's nearly a done deal, IMO.  The guy with +100 credits can choose to craft a unit mix that the poorer player cannot keep up with, or he can beat out the poorer player in arms races for whatever choice unit type.

As I've already said: I don't think we need to make all units have equally prevalent "conditions for effective use", but I do think it's a problem if a unit's "condition for appropriate use" is so rare as to make the purchase not worth the credit expenditure, especially when that unit is rather vulnerable to several other basic units.
 

If a unit is too easily countered, there need to be spec tweaks on some units to change that.  It would be like having an Attack Blimp that carried the payload of 5 Bombers -- except was filled with methane.  Yes, it would have a really powerful attack -- if only you could get close enough to your opponents who cannot shoot at you.  Oh but wait, all of them can shoot at you.  Ergo: flawed game design to have a Methane Attack Blimp.

Pistos, assuming opponents are "equally skilled" then sure, the difference will be the income. That's just simple logic. But people are unpredictable and even people that seem to be of equal skill (however you quantify something as complicated as skill at a game in a meaningful way that's not just opinion), they make mistakes, they can be unpredictable. You still have to make a choice on every turn and try to anticipate what your foe will do. Do you play it safe this round or do you take a bold and risky move? All I'm saying is that in a game with two players earning 500/400, the outcome is hardly certain. As it should be, the player with the higher income does have an advantage, but if the player with the lower income makes the right decisions they may still win the game. I'm merely pointing this out and asserting that in my opinion, that's exactly how it should be.

Well yeah, if the player with 400 plays like an idiot, he'll lose, but most of the time if the disparity is prolonged then it decides the game.

Druhim, the problem is that slug is addressing flaws in the game. With regard to your post, not addressing the flaws is not a way to solve them. IF - as slug says - the flawed units were discarded (or disregarded by the player), a healthy percentage of the units would suddenly be missing. Slug presents evidence for his views, and you reply with a rejection based solely on opinion. If you dislike what he is saying, provide counter-examples. If you find his claims flawed, explain how so. For example, his reference to the Battleship Era ending - courtesy of flight - is the truth.  A pack of bombers dropping bombs over battleships ends the battleships — end of story. So why is this reality ignored within the WeeWar?

<pistos> my war knowledge comes mostly from cinema, tragically, but in most ww2 war movies, infantry lead the way for the heavy stuff. Tanks have no vision.
 

I'm no expert either, but I love military history. In the last month I re-read Manstein memoirs and a bio on Rommel. Scary to say but I concur with Sluggy in his observation on Inf/Tank and HC an Bomber, especially in regard to WW2 era.

Tanks were a no-no in cities. They exceled in open terrains. The last thing a tank commander wanted was to be surrounded by infantry, especially toward the end (44-45) when AT weapons were widely available to INF (PanzerFaust. Bazooka/Piat, and the feared Magnetic Mine).

An example amonst many is in the design of the german tank destroyers Elephant/Ferdinand, quick read there: http://www.wargamer.com/Hosted/Panzer/tankdestroy2.htm  These could be considered HT or even Berserkers, yet they had no chance whatsoever vs INF at close range.

Another more recent example is the Heavy Infantry (i.e. INF with AT capability) doctrine adopted by Egypt before the Yom Kippur war - which seriously blunter Israeli armor. In short, in RL INF kick tank ass at short range.

But then maybe Weewar is a fantasy game. I think of it as a game with 1960's units, re. helicopter, HC, Bomber and Jet Fighter, etc.

---

Lastly, did anyone (including devs) gave a quick  look at Empire Master above? For a 1.8mb game, hell, you can design your own rule set and assign whatever value you want to whatever units you want (attack, def, movement). You can even design your icon. That's a really clever game.

Tally, I did clearly state my logic for leaving in the units he doesn't like. If he doesn't like a unit, he simply doesn't have to build it. If someone else feels the unit does have a potential role, even if that role doesn't come up that often, then having the unit gives them that option. I am clearly stating that I disagree with his opinion that several of the specialist units in the game are "broken" and need to be removed. My opinion that the game is not flawed in that way does not make my opinion less valid than his. So you assert that I'm not addressing these flaws when in fact you're failing to see that I am addressing them as not being flaws. I also think that the references to military history has little place in a game like this. You're certainly entitled to disagree with me but from my perspective what matters is if the game is fun to play, and balanced. So I would agree that many of the maps are unbalanced because of how they're laid out. However I don't see how anyone can say the units are unbalanced when all players in a game have access to exactly the same selection of units. You may not like some of those units, but you and all of your opponents have the same to choose from. It's like none of you have played Advance Wars, the game that many people can't help comparing this to because it looks so similar. Advance Wars and the sequels are great games that are a hell of a lot of fun to play, but one could hardly argue that the units in the game are historically accurate. But who cares? It's fun.
 

Druhim: Perhaps the 500 player _may_ make mistakes, but if the player is of sufficient skill level and understands certain aspects of the game, based on my experience with Weewar, he has good chances of shutting the door on any comeback opportunities for the 400 player.  That's my point: the avenues to victory for the 400 player become rather few and narrow indeed, mostly relying on some mental lapse on the part of the 500 player.  If there is no mental lapse, and the 500 player just "plays through" one of the safe vectors to victory, I don't think the 400 player has much of a chance.  And if that is truly the case, then I think that makes Weewar a flawed or crippled game in need of repair.  I expect such "certain" outcomes to come from something more like a 700/200 advantage, but not 500/400.

A contributing factor to this "game-deciding" effect is that transference of base ownership is (in my experience) quite rare.  As a result, we see the "front lines" of base ownership moving like molasses, rather than the waves water at a seashore.  I contrast this to my experience in games like Wesnoth, or even those RTS wargames, where ownership of income or unit-generation terrain can fluctuate quite a bit.

TallyHo: Thanks for the explanation.  BTW, the <nick> syntax is for quoting, not for addressing.   On the other hand, based on reading some Wikipedia articles on modern tanks, the weaponry on these things have rather far range?

Druhim: I agree that fun and game balance are more important than faithfulness to history or reality.  Nevertheless, I have some ways I'd like the units to be tweaked, and I also think that they need to be named carefully to hedge against unnecessary cognitive dissonance (as I've said).
 

@Hugo:

I actually downloaded Empire Master - and paid the shareware fee.  I think that's the third time I've paid Chris for the game.

The game looks and plays much the same as it did when I had it on my long retired CI.  Sadly the editor still runs under OS 9 so it won't work on the new Intel Macs. Luckliy this damned remodeling has kept me from upgrading my G5.

EM is a straight forward and rather well thought out game.  Its direct antecedent is Empire, which I first encountered on a Dec PDP- SomeSmallNumber back in the mid Seventies.

The economics of EM are a bit simpler than WeeWee. Each city can build one unit at a time, units take different numbers of turns to complete, production can be queued.

Game play can be a trifle more sophisticated.  Units can be given standing orders:  go to this location, patrol this area, congregate here, etc.  Sid Meier incorporated much of the mechanics of Empire & perhaps Empire Master into Civilization.  For all intents and purposes Civ was just a sexier version of Empire Master with prettier icons.

Empire Master's Rules Editor as an excellent addition to the game.  It permits the player to modify the rules set and alter unit interaction.

WeeWee's Devs might take a clue from Chris Eliot and provide a rules editor with Pro subscription or for an extra ten bucks to the interested.  They would be astounded at how quickly a few knowledgeable players could hack the dross out of WeeWee and the complaints out of the player community. To say nothing of creating new pathways to game growth and an increased gamer base.

If the Devs haven't the time or energy to fix the parts of WeeWee that are broken then open it up to the community.  Provide a third subscription level Free, Pro and Hacker.  Provide a small corner of the WeeWee universe for hacked games and steal the best results for incorporation into WeeWee proper.
 

A contributing factor to this "game-deciding" effect is that transference of base ownership is (in my experience) quite rare.

Same - once a base is finally taken in an invasion effort, it's rarely taken back unless the defender has a significant force ready to punch back with that just hasn't been able to mobilise quickly enough.

Might be interesting to see what happens if you could instant-capture any base you can land a capturing unit on.. although that could well just result in front line bases changing hands almost every turn and never adding to your income or build-capabilities until you'd won the front-line fight
 

I guess I'm not being clear, but onward. I think no less that more time needs to be spent on the gameplay of weewar, less on the packaging. Whether one thinks its "balanced" overall or not is fine and subjective, but when historical precedents and logical deduction say one thing and the game says another, the player is no longer able to safely apply any intuition at all — many moves become a manual-reading exercise (e.g.: why can't my HI crush that sub I just caught in the enemy port?).

@Pistos: Woop!

I sure would dig getting my grubby paws on even just part of the Weewar source code.  I understand that that may not be a good business decision, though. 

Suggestion: Rename all units and change the theme to weewar to a space battle motif. No more balance issues and arguments based on their real life counter parts. Can't we all just get along?

We all get along fine.  It really is the love of a game that bring people to post here about it.

Hmm... user-designed themes!  *rubs chin*

How about a food theme?  Turnip Tanks and Artichoke Artillery... Gummy Bear infantry and Animal Cracker Raiders!

Or a Transformers theme!  Autobots land vehicles and Decepticon air units...

Or... G.I. Joe!!  hehe  /me stops here.

Nothing wrong with the above. If it's well done and if you find players... However 'intuitive' movement will be hard... Should I send my Turnip Tank against Tomato Inf or Corn Raider

Lux comes with an editor and has now 496 maps, most except for a handful designed by users. http://sillysoft.net/lux/maps/  Some maps pushed the simple game much much further.

Myth is a bigger game, but a player designed a WW2 theme and created an entire genre, hugely popular.

To allow map editing and ruleset editing is a great way to engage your community and encourage loyalty.

People love to have some way to contribute, give back, adjust, alter, improve, control.  As a business, though, it seems you have to draw some lines so as not to throw away potential profit.  e.g. if they open sourced the game, then it wouldn't necessarily be worth it to pay for the game or pro accounts, unless you wanted to support development by way of donation.

this is all symptomatic of the disgruntlement above. do not surrender.

I'm not asking for Open Source, just Map Editor and Ruleset (or Value Set) editor. IMO more option = more incentive to buy.

da. i will not pay until there is a map-maker.

In addition to map-making, I'm sure people could go for the ability to present or upload (or even use) user-designed unit and terrain graphics.

True, Hugo.  We don't need the source.   All we need is the units D/B.  Again refer to Empire Master.

@ slugthog:

Ok I'll let me take this one point at a time:

"Piffle!  On small maps Zerks are game breakers.  First Zerk wins. "

-Sorry you are wrong...I had an opponent build a Zerk on Aruba and I tore him apart...I just tied up the Zerk the entire game with infantry and worn him down. No single unit can win the game, perhaps you need to play a bit more to see this. People who depend on the big unit are not a threat. I'm much more afraid of a combination of many units. People who learn to use a combination of many units turn out to be the best players.
 

"Question 1)  Why have three different tanks that vary primarily in power and cost? "

I already explained this in my previous post...I showed how each of the three tanks had their uses.
 

"Question 2)  Why have three different artillery that vary primarily in power and cost?"

Here we may agree...I feel the light artillery is for the most part not worth it's points...I've built a few only as counters for Hvy Artilleries. Artillries are the only part of this game that I feel need serious tweeking....I concede this point to you.

"Both of these favor the player with the greater income, who is usually the first to purchase the larger unit."

Ok I'm not sure what you are trying to say...of course the player with more bases is at an advantage, but this does not mean he will win. I've beaten many players when they have had more income than me. No matter what people say, this game is not about income, but unit management. Once a player learns how to keep his units alive to pull them back and heal them while destroying his enemies units, he learns how to win. Income is part of the equation, but I've seen many players squander their income and waste units. Unit management is the key, not income.

I simply think you should invest more time in developing your tactics than blaming game mechanics.
.

If HCraft can eliminate tanks why have tanks?  HCs cost the same, are more mobile and have greater range."

Why build a tank? As a tank-heavy player, I feel more than qualified to point out the uses of tanks.

     1. Tanks have a higher defense than HC. And trust me, that extra defense makes all the difference.

      2. Tanks can take out Raiders. HC are actually at a disadvantage against Raiders.

      3. In a straight out fight, a Tank will beat a HC.

While I feel tanks are a bit under-powered, I still use lots of them in many of my games. They have a nice balance of maneuverability, toughness, and attack strength. This coupled with their high heal rate, makes them a useful unit, especially in squadrons.

If you don't believe me, you are welcome to challenge me to a game.

If HvyInf are just slightly harder hitting & slower LtInf why build them?

Ok, Hvy Inf are a little over priced, but still very useful...In the right terrain, a Hvy Infantry can really hurt a unit, 3 to 4 times it's cost. It may take alot of damage, but it will deal a good bit of damage itself. I've had them deal 4 damage to Hvy Tanks. They are much more of a defensive unit than their lighter counterparts.

I don't play alot of naval and air battles, so I cannot say too much about the flaws of Ships and planes.

Lastily it's a great game...it has it's flaws, but I think alot of you are barking up the wrong tree. The unit selection is pretty solid IMO.


 

fwiw, im starting to come around on HI, but it's a slow turn.

@dpache:

Anecdotal arguments do carry a lot of weight.  Your ability to defeat a weaker player who misplayed a powerful piece is not a counter-argument to it being a game breaker for equally skilled players.

If the big, bigger, biggest argument is valid for artillery there is a strong argument that it is also true for any other unit.

I made an argument in favor of Heavy Infantry some time ago.  Check the Heavy Infantry thread.

The problems I have with the game are the counter-intuitive nature of the units - they don't behave like what they are labeled, discrepancy of scale prevents combined arms tactics - naval too cheap/powerful  & air too weak/expensive, an overly complex combat results function- I've gone into this often and cost-effect ratios are not well well realized.

WeeWee is an okay game with some serious flaws.  That some players have learned to use those flaws to their advantage does not mean they are not flaws.
 

Argh, Tangler lost my post.   /me considers retyping...


 

Argh, it did it again!!

did you do the command/left arrow death stroke? im a fan of it.

+3 slug's last post. give me intuitive, or give me ... map editor.
 

TallyHo: No.  See Tangler Feedback Group for what happened to me.  I think I'll try one last time to post my thoughts again. 

The problem is not so much that people don't _know_ the vectors to victory, but more that the vectors are too few, and that they have relatively few counter strategies.  As a result, players only have to master those few vectors, and the game devolves into their usage.  Sort of like a fighting game, where you have 15 characters, each with 50 moves.  Except, by flawed game design, you can win most of the time by picking a certain character and "cheesing" with only 3 or 4 moves.  The game needs to be designed so that people cannot do that, but rather, should have good chances of winning with most of the characters, and must make good use of at least half of the character's move vocabulary in order to succeed.

As I've said, I believe that even a modest income difference makes all the difference between players of comparable skill level (I don't mean point rating).  Something that would be worth experimenting with is having more bases, and smaller per-base income.  (This has been suggested elsewhere and is not novel.)  This way, income differentials would be more subtle and not so stark.  Imagine double or more the bases, and 20-50 credits per base.  Something might help this system along would be having three terrain types: (1) create units and provide income (i.e. bases in the existing ruleset), (2) create units, but provide no income, (3) provide income, but can't build units.  Again, this has already been suggested.

City Sprawl is fun in that respect, with its $50 income base. It makes every unit count. It takes forever to save for some good units. Zerk on City Sprawl? Yes, you want it to kick booty, since it's the income of 18 cities, i.e. 2-3 full turn on income (depending on your game).

However when your income is huge, the $75 INF become a near-meaningless flood of units sent forward to die in heaps.

I don't think thet units are THAT counter-intuitive. They could use some mini-tweaking, but it's not crippling for me. Once I figured out a few things, I adjusted my play style in consequence. It's not like and INF can kill a Berzerker in one shot, no?

I like what you said Pistos about ''cheesing with only 3 or 4 moves''. Street Fighters, etc. come to mind. I don't see it as clearcut here, and feel that part of the aparent limitations of the game engine is based on the restricted map choice to date.

I think the bigest untapped potential of this game is into map design. We (Tally Ho, Slugthog) come from a game (ThinkTanks) which initially had only 12 maps, and 8 really playable ones, which we played to death. Then players started to do map editing on their own. When I left there were well over 500 user-design maps - and some FANTASTIC designs. I see the same for Weewar. Imagine a map with $10 income (and several cities). That $75 INF looks really good on it. etc.

If the number of cities proliferates to make a difference of a few bases less noticeable then it might be an idea to undo the thing where infantry disappear on capture - going to get expensive to capture all those bases at $75 a throw, if base income is very low especially if you start out with only 1 base..

I was about to suggest that we get this thread back on track, but I'm not sure it ever really had a track to begin with.

These general state-of-the-game threads pop up pretty frequently and are always hotzones for what I think are good discussions.  After a while though, it starts to feel like we're arguing in circles.  It would be really helpful if the devs could pop in here from time to time to say this or that is a good idea, or here's why we don't do this, or this is our general design philosophy for the game.
 

Problem is, unless they're already doing that, they won't see your suggestion that they should do.

superking, what does that mean?

It would be really helpful if the devs could pop in here from time to time to say this or that is a good idea, or here's why we don't do this, or this is our general design philosophy for the game

If they aren't already popping in here, they won't see that he thinks they should pop in here in future.

FWIW, they said they'd be at a game convention in Germany for "a few days".  Nevertheless, I still think that their participation in threads is a bit infrequent.  Whenever they say something, it is always welcome to hear what they have to say.  I wish they'd do it more!

@Super-King

If they're not already checking the forums, then conversations like this one are pointless.  What I'm saying is that unless we see evidence of developers hearing our feedback (either directly by posting within these threads or indirectly by suggestions making it into the game), then we're just arguing for no reason.  Personally, I have little incentive to bring up gameplay issues if no one with influence over the game hears them.
 

Indeed.  We need feedback, if not actual implementation.

I'm always in favor of arguing. I like to think that eventually wisdom/experience/gamers' feedbacks seep through and improve a game. As to when or how, I have no idea, nor expectations. It's a bit like believing in God - that there's someone, something out there, that cares.

The devs have always been good with keeping track of stuff going on in here (from what i see)

They have gone a bit quiet, but that just tells me that they must be going thru a busy period... Plus as has been mentioned, one or more of them are at a conference or something.

They'll be back.
 

dek: Even their pre-conference activity started falling a bit low.  There needs to be a good balance between devving and keeping in touch with your users.  Let's see how they behave as they return from the conference.  alex told us [in an in-game chat] that they were still on the road as of yesterday.

(Or was that today)

If I remember correctly, he said he'd be without connection for 15 days. But don't quote me on that.... I have a bad memory

I have to say that as a player, I find it hard to keep up with and follow a lot of the discussions in here. Maybe we should have a dedicated topic where we only put in concrete suggestions after they've been discussed
 

Hi guys - we are alway reading and we are listening, too. Occasionally we fall behind - but seldomly for more than a day or 2. You guys have ramped up a few 100 posts in this thread alone.. So just catching up takes ages

I am back  at my regular desk in by the end of the week but here is an overview of what we are doing: We are once more hardening our infrastructure so that we can get rid of the slow downs altogether. Once that is done we should be able quickly respond to any load as it occurs. Other things on our current to do list: Map editor (and by implication: new and improved maps), support for Team battles, Balancing (for which we will collate your feedback and which we will share before we do anything).

Anyway.. I will fill you in in more detail soon.. Right now I need to get back to my birthday

Happy Birthday Alex!!
 

He Spoketh! Zappy Birthday!

alex: Thank you very much for getting in touch.  It helps a lot.   And I eagerly anticipate the changes, especially in the spec-adjustment area!

And happy birthday. 
 

Happy Birthday!  And I am very much looking forward to the map editor!

woot. that's all i got.

Yep, I rather miss the map editor, and now that I know we can specify unit repertoire, I will be designing maps with specific unit sets in mind.  I'd love to be able to edit my old maps, as well, BTW.

happy bday alex! Don't celebrate too much we need more weewar.

Ask and ye shall receive, I guess. 

Happy birthday!