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Civ III Units Workshop
I'm almost sure we will have some form of "unit workshop" in CIV III cloned from SMAC. That will let us build up unit with special features, not limited by few historically predefined units.
That's idea has been already discussed, but now I'm refreshing the argument on a different perspective, because I don't want to vote or rate pro or against Unit Workshop in Civ III.
I will take for granted (for this post sake, that is) that some Unit Workshop (U.W. for short) will exists.
I only would like to imagine which attribute we will manage for every unit.
If anyone doesn't know how U.W. work in SMAC, I briefly descibe it:
You don't have predefined, "closed" units. Yu have Units as "objects" with few slots where you put properties available at the Discovery Tree level you already know.
You have:
Chassis slot: by foot, by wheels, ship, plane, missile, etc.
It defines turn movement, movement place (ground, sea, air), some limits to other available feature (e.g. only missiles can have nuclear attack weapon).
Attack weapon: in SMAC it can be occupied by something else for non combat units, e.g. by colony pod to make a "settler", by former tools to make an "engineer", by cargo hold for cargo units, etc.
Defense armour: how strong is the shield against enemy attack, but for a silly SMAC formula is in effect the number that define how much damage the defense units affect to attacking unit.
Engine: with lot of collateral effects, ranging from lowering unit producing expense to turn movement to defense multiplyier.
Special equipment or ability: two slot (the second only available later in game) where you can put special as SAM ability, Nerve gas available on attack, free unit support, morale enhancer, deep skull to make submarine units, etc.
You can mix any legal group of combo, then the system will suggest a (composed) name for unit type that the player can modify.
Back to the main point, how would you like to define the list of available feature for every "unit slot" in CIV III?
Just for example:
Chassis list:
by foot (make infantry type unit)
mounted (make knights, elephants, camels type units)
by wheels (make charriot, cannon, mechanized infantry units)
air (make dirigible, plane and helicopters like units)
sea (make trireme, galeons etc.)
We can have the system able to "suggest" predefined, historically accurate units (legions, pikeman, knights, etc.) but usually we can chose to build them by ourselves:
put a pike as attack weapon of an infantry chassis and you have a pikeman, put it on a horse chassis and you will end with a lancer.
More flexible, more interesting.
Main drawback of SMAC U.W. was the limited graphics available (they kept units graphics too much generalized, but that make it difficult to remember and distinguish different units on the field) and messy interface of U.W. (but we can make lot of hints to Firaxis designer about the latter, if they really want
).
Do anyone wants to suggest about the list definition to use to fill the unit slots, keeping an eye on SMAC model and another on history and CIV style?
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Admiral Naismith AKA mcostant
That's idea has been already discussed, but now I'm refreshing the argument on a different perspective, because I don't want to vote or rate pro or against Unit Workshop in Civ III.
I will take for granted (for this post sake, that is) that some Unit Workshop (U.W. for short) will exists.
I only would like to imagine which attribute we will manage for every unit.
If anyone doesn't know how U.W. work in SMAC, I briefly descibe it:
You don't have predefined, "closed" units. Yu have Units as "objects" with few slots where you put properties available at the Discovery Tree level you already know.
You have:
Chassis slot: by foot, by wheels, ship, plane, missile, etc.
It defines turn movement, movement place (ground, sea, air), some limits to other available feature (e.g. only missiles can have nuclear attack weapon).
Attack weapon: in SMAC it can be occupied by something else for non combat units, e.g. by colony pod to make a "settler", by former tools to make an "engineer", by cargo hold for cargo units, etc.
Defense armour: how strong is the shield against enemy attack, but for a silly SMAC formula is in effect the number that define how much damage the defense units affect to attacking unit.
Engine: with lot of collateral effects, ranging from lowering unit producing expense to turn movement to defense multiplyier.
Special equipment or ability: two slot (the second only available later in game) where you can put special as SAM ability, Nerve gas available on attack, free unit support, morale enhancer, deep skull to make submarine units, etc.
You can mix any legal group of combo, then the system will suggest a (composed) name for unit type that the player can modify.
Back to the main point, how would you like to define the list of available feature for every "unit slot" in CIV III?
Just for example:
Chassis list:
by foot (make infantry type unit)
mounted (make knights, elephants, camels type units)
by wheels (make charriot, cannon, mechanized infantry units)
air (make dirigible, plane and helicopters like units)
sea (make trireme, galeons etc.)
We can have the system able to "suggest" predefined, historically accurate units (legions, pikeman, knights, etc.) but usually we can chose to build them by ourselves:
put a pike as attack weapon of an infantry chassis and you have a pikeman, put it on a horse chassis and you will end with a lancer.
More flexible, more interesting.
Main drawback of SMAC U.W. was the limited graphics available (they kept units graphics too much generalized, but that make it difficult to remember and distinguish different units on the field) and messy interface of U.W. (but we can make lot of hints to Firaxis designer about the latter, if they really want
).Do anyone wants to suggest about the list definition to use to fill the unit slots, keeping an eye on SMAC model and another on history and CIV style?
------------------
Admiral Naismith AKA mcostant
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