Regarding Unit design and what to do about missing equipment

from Elemental Forums

Goodmorning all

I was reading https://forums.elementalgame.com/365950  and set my mind a-thinking.

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In Brief: 
Make a Unit, Declare some of the equipment required, if the equipment is not present the unit will not be avalible to build. 
Declare bonus equipment that unit will auto try to equip, if avalible.

When a unit is called to be made, it is build with all the extra bits it can get, as bonuses and has a defult 1 or 2 pre-titles to warn you if it is missing any bonus equipment. these defaults could be changed, if desired, but the Main idea is that you name a minimal number of truely differnt units, with different functions, who's names stay the same but who's pre-titles change to indicate completeness.
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One thing i hope to avoid is having TOO many differnt units avalible to build, or haveing to go and manually 'obsolete' units. In GC I always end up making hundreds of nearly identical ships with 3 guns, then 4 guns, then 4 guns and 2 armour then..... most of which are, functionally, the same ship, just stronger. and managing them all, keeping unique names for them all. . . becames a headache.  I agree with Frogboy's reasons for leaving out options 1 and 2, but i would like to suggest a mixed method.

A unit should be defined as having two types of equipment and two types of training.
Manditory equipment and training, and extra equipment and training.

Consider a Knight.  A Knight is a solder on a horse, with a hand held weapon capable of striking ground troops.

so i would want to be able to define a unit 'Knight' which has a Manditoy "Horse", "Equestrain Training" ,"Long sword 1"

Now it can have additional supplies /training, 'armour', 'horse armour', 'jousting training' and sword up to long sword 4 (after which i have a new unit 'Charger' with manditry equipment long sword 5), whatever.

So if you are building a Knight, and loose your horse pasture. . . you stop building the knight.  if however you loose your only horse armoury  you still get the knight, as FrogBoy susggested.

Now you need a naming convention for displaying how much equipment /training this Knight has.

I would suggest a 2 word naming convention, one for optional equipment and one for optional training.
If unit has ALL training and ALL equipment  have a one word pre-title,  'Elite?'  otherwise
if NO bonus material then you have a 'Minimal'  _____
if you have only one                        'standard'  _____
if your only missing one             'well supplied'  _____

if you have all the equipment no pre-title

simularly for bonus traning

'Bumbling' - no bonus training
'ill-trained' - only one
'trained' - all but one
''   again if all.


Without some level of 'Minimal equiment' and 'minimal training' all units are just a guy or girl, with stuff. and you can build the "uber elite extra strong death knights" template on turn one, and get a guy/girl with a stick. [not to mention having avalible every templated unit from any game you've played visible on turn one and having to search for them all.]

Lastly the UI would benifit from the consept of a 'direct decendent'  A death knight is an upgrade of the knight. so once you have all the equipment to build a 'Death Knight' the 'Knight' option would nolonger show,  perhaps you could click to build a Death Knight, then press a minus icon and it would change back to Knight.  These upgrades would not be exlucive so you could have a 'Death Knight' and a 'Mage Knight'  and an 'Jousting Knight' all of whom are direct decendents of 'Knight' units.

Just a thought,

Take care

5,377 views 6 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

well ... since they are all unit designs, there is no particular upgrade evolution.

Although yes, it would be nice to take units and retrain/re-equip them. It would be a good use of recycling veteran soldiers to fulfill future rolls. The military does this sort of thing all the time, although it is usually just field job -> office/desk job :D

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

One thing that would be nice is if once a unit is completed and it is missing some resources and equipment, it still sits in the city, unusable, until you get the resources OR until you tell the city to send the unit out without them. Of course, the UI should have a popup that tells you the unit is waiting the turn it is put on hold.

Sins of a Solar Empire II
Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

Scoutdog do you mean completed as in basic requirements completed or compleated as in all avalible requirements?

To clarify,

I envision having 10 or 15 types of units i want to use, A scout unit, a sabatage unit, a few types of tank units, 2 or 3 different styles of archery(long short, magic, other),  a calvery type unit,....
At every stage of the game i'll need each . . . but i don't want to have a uniquely named unit for each tech.

scout, scout with well shoed horse, scout with shoed horse and telescope, scout with shoed horse and telescope and flee scroll, scout with only flee scrole .... 

I currently have this in GC each time i get a new wepaon or new armour, or slightly bigger ship, it's back the the design board and remake everything, rename it, and flag as obsoleat older models.  then go to all my towns and manual upgrade everybody (or in the new releace go to the fleet controle and upgrade everybody of type A to Type A.01)...


Instead I want one unit, scout, which will become trained when training and money is avalible (and permission is given explicitly or implicitly), will grab a telescope when i finnally get the tech (because he's been templated with a telescope from last game)..
I define a scout and what bonus supplies a scout could use.

Now maybe i want a unit that has everything a scout has (all the minimums requirments and more) , but who also has raider training, + some basic fighting supplies, This unit is nolonger JUST a scout, so i would give the unit a new name, 'Raider' perhaps.  and this Raider would have a list of Nessisary supplies and training and bonus ones.   

All i'm suggesting is that the game be able to identify or at least be told, that one unit is a direct expantion of a previous unit, so that if i ever opt to upgrade my scout it lists at the top the most likely upgrades like scout -> raider  or scout -> calvary   rather then scout -> mage.


And I probably will want to know reasonably well what all my units are, So i'll probably limit myself to 3 or 4 peaces of bonus equipment, and one or two trainings before i define a new unit name with higher Minimum prerequisites.   And again i don't want to explicately have to tell the game each and every time, I'm nolonger wanted to build scouts,  I want to discontiue that line and start making ScoutMarKTwo's  If it tell the game thart ScoutMarkTwo is a direct decendent of Scout, and i have all the tech and supplies for MarkTwos it should know to display MarkTwo's in the build menu rather then jsut scouts, (but i should still have the option to hit a 'minus' or 'earlier model' button to build a scout if that's all i want right then).

The same goes for all other classes of units. be they various types of Knights or differnt swordbearers (maybe all swordsmen between Sword 1 and sword 3.0 have one title and basic equipment but 3.1 sword users and up I decide are imprortant enough they should have a stronger minimum armour.. whatever)


The ultimate goal is to have a template list of hundreds or nearly thousands of units and unit varieties for every mix and match of supplies and tech,  but have to only search a list of 10 - 15 to find the one i want right now, to have that list of 10- 15 always up to date, and to have an automatic (but controlable) nameing convention so that at a glance i can still tell the stenght and equipment of a unit or at least make a VERY good guess without checking.

Best wishes all

   Rpbbie Price

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

oh ... i'll have several types of units alright.

Light Cavalry, Heavy Cavalry, Cavalry Archers, Magical Cavalry, Mounted Heroes, Mounted Royalty (with Bodyguards), and mounted Priests/Fanatics/worshippers of some sort (Dragon Core).

In addition, I will have an untrained mob of foot-men with spears to distract them ... when necessary.

And, of course, if/when I ever get my hands on a dragon, I will have no more need for footmen (other than defense/garrison) and my true blitzkreig shall begin. (with flying monsters raining death upon mine enemies ... and such)

namely the Dragon, and hopefully a few magical archangels from the planes ... or caves ... or something.

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

Goodmorning all,


Right,  but the question is when you get sadle 2.0,  or 'advanced Equestrain Training' do you want to have

(Light Cavalry, Heavy Cavalry, Cavalry Archers, Magical Cavalry) + sadle 2

(Light Cavalry, Heavy Cavalry, Cavalry Archers, Magical Cavalry) + 'advanced Equestrain Training'

(Light Cavalry, Heavy Cavalry, Cavalry Archers, Magical Cavalry) + 'advanced Equestrain Training' + sadle 2.

That's 12 differnt units, with 12 distinct names, which have to be designed then turned off when they are nolonger top of the line. and that's only just your 4 basic calvalry.

I'm suggesting a system where you would have only 4 units to name and remember who each have a list of min and bonus equipment so all of them would have

(various min equipment) + Optional {sadle 2, 'advanced Equestrain Training'}.

The goal being you only define a new name, when you get a new 'Function' or behavour, a unit you want to Treat differently. and then all you need is a pre-title convention to indicate where between only min and all bonuses a unit is. As long as the user doesn't have 'too many' bonus options on a unit they should not have 'too difficult' a time guessing what a unit has.

Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top

Scoutdog do you mean completed as in basic requirements completed or compleated as in all avalible requirements?
End of quote
Basic requirements to start the indefinate hold, all available requirements to end it.