Requirements, containership and battalions

[snowblizz]

Been busy, still am in fact, damn PhD bothering me again with a bunch "oh you should really be done by now", but saw there were some new requirement stuff added, are those finished or just part frameworks?

Saw the "parent unit context" thing, that work?

Been reading through Warlord Games Pike&Shotte rules and was thinking to do armylists for that, seemed simpler than some of the Warhammer stuff. It's also a lot less strict in defining what you can take, armylists in the back are provided "because most people seem to insist on them, but these are just guidelines".
It relies heavily on "battalias" basically a unit container for organizing units of pike, shotte, artillery and cavalry.

Each "battalia" requires one commander and contain any mix of units (which makes it a bit tricky) although it's probably not a good idea to make the mix too eclectic. I'm trying to figure out a smart way of doing this. There are 3 types of units: Horse, Foot, artillery and corresponding commanders, that part is "easy" since I can make each battalia require a commander and make them nominally battalias of foot, horse etc.
So far I'm making a battalia for each type of unit foot/horse/artillery and requiring them to have a commander of appropriate type. Also a "general's" battalia in the commander section for generals and named characters. So far so good.
The way to emulate "belonging", seems to be that all battalias will have to have all units as "contained units", since even a "foot battalia" needs to support mixing in regimental pieces or supporting cavalry, and eg a Swedish Horse battalia would come with commanded musketeers and regimental piecees.
Problem of course pops up quite quickly when it turns out Tudor artillery is "max one per each battalia", that would require the "parent requirement". I actually tried a "RequiresNoMoreThanNUnits" version that worked for artillery units, but trying to expand that by adding another battalia doesn't work. And also I suspect trying to expand this to include 3 types of cannon and one instance of mortar will not work. Part of it could be solved with combining the various cannon into one "cannon" unit where you buy the "type" instead as an equipment choice. That'd make it easier as only one unit type needs to be blocked.

Something going forwards with the files I'm unsure about is the "small" and "large" units. Ie basically the rules allow for understrength and overstrength units which means cheaper/more expensive and increased/degreased stats. Where it becomes complicated is where there is a number of units to take say 6 units of Irish Musketeers where any number may be "small", but still only a total of 6 "Irish" musketeers. The way I first figured to solve "small" and "large" units would be to put in them as separate units. But that might not allow me to properly validate it?

Some random thoughts as usual. Need to cut this short as I have to hit the grocery store before the next rainshower.

[IBBoard]

I think parenting works, but the requirements aren't in yet. I'll work on them now. There was a bit of work to get some of the required info consistently available, but nothing to make use of it yet.

The "Pike and Shotte" rules sound...flexible! Hopefully that won't just make it harder to handle, though. The use of "containing" for batallia sounds right - "contains" isn't always the best choice of word, but it means "any form of enforced hierarchical structure (such as batallions with sub-units) or other parts within a larger whole (e.g. Big Guys in a unit of Little Guys)".

Big and Small units sounds like a slightly more awkward situation - and possibly similar in concept to a campaign system (which is what it represents in that game, I guess - units that have been heavily reinforced or under strength from battle wounds). I'm not sure what the best option is for that yet. It may even be some kind of modifier (a bit like a purchasable skill or ability) that modifies the sstat line or does whatever else it needs to.

[snowblizz]

Strangely enough the freedom doesn't make it that much easier, though the lack of too many extra things certainly helps. The problem is mainly how free you are to mix units of different types together, every battallia must parent every other unit in the army list! Luckily the number of units is limited. 15-20 at most, but still.

"Big" and "Small" in Pike&Shotte is really "upgrades" to units, so treating them as such would be an option. When equipment modifies stats then that would perhaps be the most sensible option. Since Small and Large actually does exactly the same thing for any unit even!
Problem right now is that negative points modifiers don't exist. I was playing around with the code a bit but even though changing some variables to "double" it won't count negative values. Somewhere it's zeroed out anyway.
There's also a "Mercenary" ability which makes units cheaper, as they are less relaible and thus less valuable.
Stuff I see as problematic right now include:
Max 2 Commanded Muskets
One can be upgraded to Large @ 8p (maybe it's possible to make a requirements combination to allow only 1 Commanded musket if you have a Commanded musket (Large))
Part of the issue I think is that the requirements "require", whereas "allows" might be what's needed, not sure.
Archers/Cheveaulegres (presumably 2 different units but have one stat line)
Max 3 in total combined, archers may replace pistol with longbow or crossbows. (I think the idea is that Chevauelegres are armed with lance and pistol, archers with lance and bow
Another is a variation of "up to half may swap for NNN". Quite a few "half of arquebus units can be musketeers"
Up to a quarter of Landsknecht Pike can be Landknecht Halberdiers instead, no ide ahow to do that.
And where I got stuck with the Tudor army,
arquebuses
max 1 per Pike block (not a problem, NforM 1:1)
up to half can replace arquebus with crossbows @ 2p
any number can be made Small at -7p

To some degree these are equipment requirements, on the other hand they are not as the equipment change will greatly impact how the unit fights and could do with a separate entry for the special rules. Mainly the Pike vs Halberd thing (quite a few of those swaps in the early lists), where Halberds lose the pike Hedgehog rules but gain another rule which makes them good against pikes (well most infantry) incidentally. So while it's "just" and equipment swap a separate unit entry most often makes sense.

And I figured it'd be fairly easy as with quick scan most units where "Max 2-3 in army" and there where only a limited number of units. But then I started noticing all the fine print.

[IBBoard]

I think we assume everything is positive or zero (e.g. if a unit comes with an expensive Broadsword, but can swap it for a cheaper Sword and Shield for a saving in cost, then the Broadsword will have include that difference in its price, even if it is default equipment). Unfortunately, a change to allowing negative points values wouldn't be forwards compatible (so old versions wouldn't load new files correctly), but fortunately I don't suppose it'll affect many armies and it won't prevent the race loading, just give bad values in places.

The "Mercenary" ability could be a modifier, rather than equipment (although we'd have to be careful about the UI). I already had the idea that we might need price modifiers at some point in the future (e.g. campaign rules that rebalance the points values to emphasise certain scenarios).

If I'm reading the "Commanded Musket" bit properly then that'd be an army-wide requirement on the Large upgrade. Again, we don't have it but it is something I expected to have.

Requirements can allow as well as requiring (e.g. "allows up to N per M" rather than "requires no more than N"). For some of them then it depends how you look at them.

Archers/Cheveaulegres can probably take advantage of the common unit stat/unit member section of the Race files.

"Half of Arquebus units can be musketeers" sounds more like alternate units with a "up to N Musketeers per Arquebus" requirement to cap the 50% and another requirement to cap the total number of units in the army (I think we have a requirement that should handle it, but I can't think which it is off the top of my head).

With the equipment changes and loss/addition of rules, would it be best if equipment added notes to the main notes? Currently I think we only put in the Unit's notes, but combining it all wouldn't be a problem.

Things are never as easy as you expect them to be

[snowblizz]

Would it be right that the following isn't possible to define? Can't figure it out anyway.

Number of Units X + Z <= N +M

essentially my example would be:

"no more than 25% of Pike units may be 'Mercenary'" units can also be upgraded to "Large". "Mercenary" is a discount on price. Large a + to the base price.
So I end up with Pikemen, Pikemen (Mercenary), Pikemen (Large), Pikemen (Large Mercenary) to be able to get all the different point values I need. I can put a "4 for 1" on the Mercenary units, but it will only monitor

Similarly the Archers/Cheveaulegres is a
X+Z <= 3 in the whole army.
It's one unit type with two different weapon options, but making it 2 distinct unit types would make it clearer, but then it seems I can't properly restrict it. It's rather ironic that the simple solution would be if I just did the "combined unit", because I could simply do a MaxNum=3, and gave it the weapon swap option. It just looks less nice then in the list.

The commanded muskets is a MaxNum=2, and one unit can be "Large". It would mean one unit of the can be upgraded. If "Large" is a unit upgrade it's not global to the army, but specific to the specific unit.
Again if it was possible to say this army can only have 2 of unit X and unit Y combined.

If it said something like "up to half of all units can be X" or "up to 33% of cavalry can be unit Y" I don't think we can handle it right now? Or maybe if you put all units affected listed as a NforM?

[IBBoard]

Yeah, you're right. We can currently do "Number of units of type X is less than #" (MaxNum) or "Number of units of type X is less than # times the number of units of type A, B and C" (N for M), but not "Number of units of types X and Y is less than # times the number of units of type A, B and C". In terms of where we define that, I guess it would be a Race-level requirement (since you wouldn't want to duplicate it on both X and Y, and defining it on one would be inconsistent and potentially messy).

Another one to add to the list, I guess. Simplicity is obviously very complex