Unit equipment combinations and modifying stat lines

[snowblizz]

My take on it has always been that special weapon still leave the standard weapon (e.g. bolter) in place and are just an additional weapon. If that isn't the case then it could get messy and I'll have to look at it again, but I always worked that way because it was simple maths (unit size * trooper cost + extra equipment cost)

Forgot to mention this. In this case at least the special weapon replaces the bolter. How important, in the grand scheme of things is debatable, after all one would hope the player knows their army.

Another practical example is found in the Terminator squad. For every 5 models one model can replace the stormbolter with an assault cannon or heavy flamer, alternatively buy a cyclone launcher in addition to the stormbolter.

Brings up another "interesting" problem. (Because I remembered it)

Assault Terminators have a pair of lightning claws, but any can swap them out for thunderhammers and storm shields. That's 2 separate items. That ideally would modify the stat line. The hammer increasing strength and the shield giving a better invulnerable save.

[IBBoard]

I guess it does say "replace". In general you're replacing a free item with something, though, so it doesn't make a difference whether you remove it or not.

As for the Terminators, the problem I can see there (and part of the reason I wasn't planning on putting stat modifying equipment in) is that a mix of equipment would give you a mix of stat lines, but the unit itself only has one stat line. I could look at duplicating stat lines in situations like that, but what if someone gets the Sword of Extra Strength and the Armour of Additional Toughness? In that case then you're likely to just want the one stat line still. Ditto for taking the Armour of Additional Toughness with the Mark of a Tough God (which gives you additional toughness).

I'll have to investigate what "the other app" does about it and see how we can handle it. There's definitely a lot of subtle variations that we would need to handle, and I think it all needs plotting out very carefully.

[snowblizz]

I think the key difference there is probably that most of these are on characters where the modifiers would go on the same statline. So maybe it could be tied to the unitcount. I'm not going to say it's foolproof but off the cuff seems like a possible way to delineate it. Could possibly be leveraged with a contained unit?

Seems the other app simply combines all modifications to the single statline. And you get to sort out what is what. An opportunity for "us" to be better there.

It is not a too common occurrence though.

[IBBoard]

Uncommon occurrences are always the most difficult to handle as they don't follow the rules!

Multiple items affecting a single stat line probably are for single character units, but I can still see there being some exceptions. We could go with "if there is a unit size of one then show one stat line with everything, else show a stat line per addition", but if Strength and Toughness were increased then that'd show two stat lines when it could show one. That assumes that the same person has the strength and toughness increasing items, though - what if one member has a strength increasing item and another has a toughness increasing item and the rest don't have either?

Do we need to stop complicating the basic case with assumptions and add a "unit member equipment selector" that lets Nobz Mobz and other mixed equipment units be handled without "contained" units by letting the user say "I have a unit of five with three of weapon X and three of weapon Y" as normal and then go more detailed to say "Of my unit of five, three have weapon X and Y and the other two have neither"? It'd need a bit of an API rebuild and some thought on a usable UI, plus it'd have to wait until later, but it might work.

[snowblizz]

Uncommon occurrences are always the most difficult to handle as they don't follow the rules!

Unfortunately.

Do we need to stop complicating the basic case with assumptions and add a "unit member equipment selector" that lets Nobz Mobz and other mixed equipment units be handled without "contained" units by letting the user say "I have a unit of five with three of weapon X and three of weapon Y" as normal and then go more detailed to say "Of my unit of five, three have weapon X and Y and the other two have neither"? It'd need a bit of an API rebuild and some thought on a usable UI, plus it'd have to wait until later, but it might work.

That's sounds pretty interesting. I'm not gonna attempt to second guess how it could be done, I'll leave that up to you. I'll just come up with incredibly complicated stuff I'd like to do.

[IBBoard]

That's sounds pretty interesting. I'm not gonna attempt to second guess how it could be done, I'll leave that up to you. I'll just come up with incredibly complicated stuff I'd like to do.

I won't go into it too much here (time to break out another topic!) but I'd probably work it that each Unit object had a collection of UnitTrooper objects or similar and that each one had his own equipment. The default would be some default auto-population based on best guesses. It might be that they're actually groups to save on objects, but it'd be something like that i.e. a unit of 20 identical troopers actually just has one "UnitTrooper" with a size of 20, but the Tactical Marines might have four - one of size 7 with bolters, and one of size one with each of the custom weapons (sergeant, special and heavy).

As with all of this, I can think of the API and basic ideas, but a combination of not gaming and being the developer means that I need input on what works best for users.

[snowblizz]

Some of this sounds like what I had plans to attempt with containedUnits such as the Killa Kans I was working on months ago e.g., where you have 1-3 kans where each may or may not have different weapons and other options.

I'm not certain how you-know-who does it technically. But at least e.g. Ork Nobz (which probably remains the most complicated multi-option type unit) has the "add new nob" option which you can use to add different types of nobs to the unit, automatically decreasing the default nob number.

At least some of what you suggest there sound really good. In general if it modified stats you'll want to see it, but if not it's not such a big deal. IMHO at least.

Much of this would of course be hidden for the gamer-user, only the datafile-developer user needs to know how to define the options in the background. I mean it would look the same to add a non-stat option vs a stat-modifying option, but the second would show the user an extra statline for the "modified" trooper. For extra credits, have the name altered as well.

Maybe something like this

Code: Select all

                     WS   BS   S   T   W   I   A   Ld   Sv   
Nob                   4   0   4   4   2   2   2   8   6+   
Nob, with Powerclaw   4   0   4/8   4   2   2   2   8   6+   


                                       WS  BS   S   T   W   I   A   Ld  Sv   
Terminator, Pair of lightning claws    4   4   4   4   1   4   2/3   9   2+/5+i   
Terminator, Thunderhamemr, Stormshield 4   4  4/8  4   1   4   2   9   2+/3+i   
Terminator                             4   4   4   4   1   4   2   9   2+/5+i   
Equipment:
Powerfists(x4), Stormbolter(x4)
Powerfists(x1), Assault cannon(x1)
Thunderhammer(x3), Stormshield (x3)
Pair of lightnignclaws(x2)

One benefit of this, at least in 40k would be that it helps delineate the "casualty groups". Each of the 4 groups (different equipment would save separately from the others) but of course fantasy would again not want or need such a breakdown. Hmmm. "Information overload" is a serious issue.
And how this impacts equipment... well I'll leave that for you
But I guess it'd be tied to the unit still and it would just throw out unitTroopers as needed.

[IBBoard]

Contained units was the way I was going to go, but I'm starting to think that we need something a little simpler and more "light-weight". A contained unit should be a fully-blown unit that can potentially be taken on its own, but also covering champions who are distinct entities but have to be with a unit. "Unit members", on the other hand, would be a special construct purely for the handling of equipment combinations, probably related to the unit type and the unit member type.

The little ASCII tables of stats seem to make sense as a reasonable way of doing things and should provide all the info you need in one go. The Saves for the terminators complicate matters a little, as it means we can't just go for "#" as a number for the save and render it as "X+". That'll leave calculating Warhammer-style armour saves as something a bit more difficult. The only other minor complexity would be the occasions when you want to render a "+1" on a stat versus a fixed "(#)" after it. It might be that the "stat modifier" just includes those as-is, but I'm not sure yet.

[snowblizz]

TBH, with regards to the save I've actually been thinking that I should split the stat line into regular and invulnerable save.
After all I do so for fantasy. It's really only because 40k actually acknowledges save as a stat that I haven't so far. But since I realised I'll be needing to modify this I started thinking that a split is probably the way to go. So on that account you can stop worrying.

As you explain contained vs "unit memeber" types is sort of how I envisioned it working.
Something that has to have equipment at different costs compared to the "majority" unitmembers would need to be a contained unit but the other cases should be possible to handle with unitmembers.

I'm not going to say we won't at some point need more complex stat operations tough. FWIW though, on the whole GW's games and similar stuff like PP are the most compel systems. Most historical systems seem in general more abstract. There's less need for changes as everything is "human". And while they do have mixed units a lot, common enough it seems historically, mostly it will come with diffrent untitypes. Spearmen + bowmen in a mixed formation and stuff like that.

[IBBoard]

But since I realised I'll be needing to modify this I started thinking that a split is probably the way to go. So on that account you can stop worrying.

That depends. If we want the save to increment based on armour then it'd have to be specially handled and couldn't just be a stat, since they're just strings. I guess 40K doesn't have the same "increase your armour save based on equipment" thing as Warhammer, though.

FWIW though, on the whole GW's games and similar stuff like PP are the most compel systems. Most historical systems seem in general more abstract.

I sure hope that they're the most complex! There were some odd requirements that I'd seen in the Starship Troopers sample rules, but requirements will hopefully be quite powerful and flexible once they're made and extensible. I think the stat lines were generally fairly simple, or only as bad as Warhammer. There were more dice roll stats than GW use, but that's the reason I went for a string as a stat line value rather than the cryptic and limited "106 = 1D6" that Rollcall had bodged in.

Other than that then I can imagine that historical games (and most games in general) probably aren't going to be quite so awkward with their stat lines!

[snowblizz]

Just got back from organising a weekend tournament.
Now back to bugging you.

In general no, 40k does not have increased armour saves. Right now I can only think of 3 or 4 such situations and I'm pretty certain at least 2 of them are no longer current. Though I guess someone might want to make rules for old editions. Some do play 'em still.

In principle in 40k you'd be swapping out armour. So a character that has power armour and wants a better save buys terminator or artifice armour, which could just replace the text string with another one. The trickiest part are the invulnerables which are in addition to. Basically I think a character can buy stormshields which would increase or replace the inv save part only, or add it. I guess nowadays a space marine captain comes with a 3+/4+i save standard. Can buy artificer armour and go to 2+/4+i, buy terminator armour giving a 2+/5+i & a 4+i (effectively it'd be a 2+/4+i, always using best save) and then optionally a stormshield for a 2+/3+i save. And that's it. Phew!

But if we support modifications as required in fantasy, splitting the save stat, which tends to list only regular armour anyway, 40k should be covered as well.

[IBBoard]

Gah, I thought I posted to this last night and it lost the post. Must have got distracted and not hit Submit.

Hopefully the tournament went well. I was busy have a 2nd birthday party for my son with my family visiting, so I wasn't around anyway

I think the invulnerable saves were normally put as notes on the equipment in Rollcall. We should be able to support that without a problem (and it'd work for a 40K-style roster with an "equipment" box at the bottom), but I'm not sure if we do it or not yet. I think I put it in the HTML output.

Other than that then it looks like we need a few things to handle this:

• Stat modifiers on equipment that append a fixed string
• Stat modifiers on equipment that a variable value based on what the stat is now
• Stat modifiers that replace a value
• Some way to handle Warhammer-style combination saves where we do a little maths (but in a generic way that can handle other game systems)
• Some metric or rule of thumb that tells us when to do multiple stat lines and when to put it all on one stat line (before I implement some "unit member" thing)

[snowblizz]

Sounds like all I can think of now.
Of course eventually I'll run into some other odd situation.

[IBBoard]

I'll try to put it all in tickets at the weekend. I think WarFoundry after v0.1 needs replanning as to what the most important features are. I'm almost inclined to do a more rolling update instead of the dozen betas that v0.1 got, but that'd make milestoning quite difficult.

Ho-hum, decisions, decisions...