Economy, Supply Cap, Turtling, and Predictabiliy

[Gf!sh]

Plus, you'd need to remodel the unit costs. Perhaps a good moment to close the gap between soldier and heavies?

[TheGoldenGriffin]

(11-16-2013 07:29 AM)The Frozen One Wrote:  Plus, you'd need to remodel the unit costs. Perhaps a good moment to close the gap between soldier and heavies?

How 'bout:
1- runner and medic
2- soldier
3- sniper and heavy
7- specials

[bobolynx]

Additionally, a unit cap means that suicidal units will not be abhorred and lower levels of play will probably benefit

[brayton]

One comment on your supply cap- It can grow over time. It may i initially be 25 on a large map, but by turn 5 its gone up to 30, and continues to grow at one/2 per turn. That way it doesnt limit strategy too much(downside is allows for turtling in late game!)

One feature I thought wouldve been good since the start is an interest system. For every 10 Wits you have, you get an extra one each turn. So if i have 12, i get one extra. 34 I get 3, but 7 none. Itd give you the wit at the start of your next turn based on how many you had left over at end of turn before.

It might encourage saving wits, but 1:10 is weak enough to allow its only use pretty much when you have 10 wits. Your 10 Wits would likely be better invested in attacking, but this nicely complements the growing supply cap!

Also, does there need to be only 1 currancy in outwitters? Why not have a secondary, less substancial currancy(such as 'kills')? Outwitters obviously doesnt need research but...
unit upgrades bought with 'kills'?

For 3 Kills you can upgrade that soldier to do one extra damage or move one further. 12 Kills for Bombshell upgrade? (Assuming BS is still around) I like the idea of the 'Kills' required to buy an upgrade is "Unit cost x 1.4(Sqr Root of 2)".

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Who says we cant have any new units?
Ranged unit that deals 2 damage 2 Hexs away, with 2 health and 2 HP? Yes please!

[GreatGonzales]

Honestly I think Outwitters 1 is about as close to perfect as I can imagine. Such a fully featured game - matchmaking, league play, 2v2, replays, and extremely well balanced, elegantly simple gameplay.

But top on my wish list for a potential sequel would be more team differentiation. I don't know how they would maintain balance, but having more than one unique unit per team would be cool. Maybe teams have differing passive traits, or "special powers" which can be activated for a single turn. This would really spice things up. But again, this would have to be balanced.

[Mag!cGuy]

Something less important: add some features to the replay stuff. As in OSN, a wit count and also, if the person watching the replay wants, the ability to trigger a fow display.

[CombatEX]

I have to go somewhere so I didn't read all the replies yet, but let me address some of the potential issues I've read so far.

Some people have brought up the fact that players may have too many wits. This will never be an issue for a number of reasons.

1. Unit costs can be increased if players really do have too many wits
2. Base wits per turn could be decreased (down from 5)
3. Maps in Outwitters 2 would be constructed around new mechanics like this one if it were implemented
4. The three points above can always be utilized if this 4th point fails, but here is why I think that points 1 and 2 might not even be necessary.

I think there is an important aspect of this change some people may be overlooking. This change may not actually end up giving you more wits to spend attacking your opponent's base in the first place. Why? It's easy to look at the chart and think that (on a 1 witspace map for the sake of example) this change amounts to both players have 5+3 = 8 wits per turn instead of 6. Then jump to the conclusion that you'll be banking up so many wits because you get 2 extra wits per turn! In reality you have to consider a few things:

a. You spent 6 wits to increase your wits per turn from 6/turn to 8/turn. This means that it takes a few turns to pay off while in the mean time your opponent could decide to skip econ investment and launch an attack. Not to mention, if your opponent lands on your space even once, your space is back down to 1 wit per turn and your 6 wit investment has to be made again.

b. In current Outwitters, wit spaces are worth 1 wit per turn. This means that if you spend more than ~3 wits attacking it and it's not on the way to another target, you basically break even (I'm simplifying things of course, but this is largely the case). If this economic mechanic is implemented however, you can now justify spending more wits to attack a wit space because that wit space is worth more than 1 wit per turn (either 2 wit investment + 2 wits per turn or 6 wit investment + 3 wits per turn). As a result, whereas before you could only justify spending ~3 wits attacking out of the way wits spaces, now you can justify spending 6, 7, 8 wits+ attacking a wit space and still be cost efficient.

This means that though you may be getting more wits per turn from this economic mechanic, you also have more ways to spend your increased number of wits each turn through harassing your opponent's economy. You would have more wits overall, but also more that you could use them for. Of course this would need to be tested to see exactly what happens, but the point is, it's not so obvious that you would actually have "too many" wits.

(11-16-2013 06:37 AM)GreatGonzales Wrote:  Generally speaking Combat - I like the sound of all your ideas! Upgrading wit spaces is quite interesting. However, have to be balanced properly...and we would need to rethink maps having too many wit spaces.

Thanks! As for turtling, I agree that it isn't as much of a problem at a high level. However, that's likely at least partially due to the fact that A is more prevalent at higher levels. As cor or HisDaddy can tell you, S still can have problems with turtling at high levels especially on a few of the maps. Honestly though I believe basically all problems with turtling could be addressed with good map design. Mostly I suggest these changes as a way of providing more viable targets for attack and responding to oneadamleft's post (the part I quoted).

[Flarp55]

I think the wit space upgrading would favor adorables (take wit space and run)

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Or veggies (thorns all the way to wit space)

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And totally destroy feedback

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scally would be okay (BS monitors wit space)

[bobolynx]

Well probably wouldn't have the same specials

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Outwitters2 not Outwitters+

[CombatEX]

Well Outwitters 2 could be Outwitters+ but that's a discussion for another thread.

Addressing bbobb's point on balance, I don't think it's as simple as that. The economic change would be a huge buff to Veggienauts (already in current Outwitters Veggienauts thrive when they have high income). Of course, thorns could be made to cost 1 or 2 supply each which could counteract the increased economy and balance this (decrease thorn spam). Adorable hit and run on witspaces could be strong too, but again, proper map design would balance this. As for Feedback, they could potentially be quite strong with defensive Scramblers. If you're Feedback you could invest in high econ which baits your opponent to attack your wit space. If they do, you've led them into your scrambler trap.

All this is just speculation though and extensive balancing would definitely be needed. However, the point is that it's not so obvious who would benefit more from this change. There are all kinds of factors we probably don't realize which will only manifest themselves after actual testing. More importantly, whether we have new teams or old teams, we can always balance them around these new mechanics.