Hello everyone,

I've been trying to wrap my brain around how to create a random effect.  So, where to start... First, the most logical way to create a random effect, which even the board designer wouldn't fully know, would be to have the randomness triggered by off-screen territories which would be chosen randomly at the beginning of the game during the initial setup and placement.  Then, when players trigger timing loops then each step of the loop would create different effects depending on which off-screen territories were randomly assigned to each player.  Sounds simple enough, but, not so quick.  The problem arises when you consider that the placement needs to be fair in its distribution between on screen and off screen territories, and if you have x number of on-screen territories and y number of off-screen territories all being assigned randomly from the same pool that it becomes possible for one player to be assigned more then their fair share of on-screen territories at the expense of another player who would be assigned too many off-screen territories... not good.

So, the way I see it is the solution requires two independent pools to be assigned randomly to all the players, which I don't think is possible.  Or, if the two pools could be mirrored such that the random assignment of one will reflect and create the same random assignment of the other.  For instance, if one autocaptured the other, but, because the autocapture couldn't be removed after the initial mirroring, this is effectively a useless solution as well.

Another way would be to have the randomness created by utilizing the on-screen board territories which would be random at the beginning of the game due to the initial random placement, but, as the players sorted out the territories into their normal distribution for mid and late game the randomness would completely erode and become predictable.

So, I'm opening up a public dialogue on this to see if any of these clever minds of our fantastic designers can see a way to cross the finish line here.

Thanks a lot!

Erick

Make a bunch of one time firing only first turn factories from the initial placement territories on the board, that trigger your timing loops off board. 

Your mechanic is then is selected based on the random territories selected from the board. But designer doesn't have to place territories out there. 

Only issue is if the first player takes a bunch of territories then the subsequent players will be underrepresented in off board mechanics.

How do you make a one-time-firing factory? Elaborate please.

Something that fills a token, then fills it's antitoken forever.  Or something like that.

So you have all the territories on the board.  each one, or a combination of them would trigger an off board token (territory for the purpose of factory mechanics - not included in play)

That token would then do what it was designed to do (start some kind of board mechanic - timing loops in berickf's scenario above)

after the token started it's mechanic, it triggers another token, which is it's "antitoken" (just another territory that while occupied empties the token) which is a -1 factory to original token. 

The key is to get antitoken to fire before token performs the loop initiation. Then it will be +1 from board territory owning, but zeroed when it comes time to fire board mechanic. 

Ok, here's the idea then.  Every board territory will auto capture an off-screen token.  That off-screen token would then autocapture a secondary token.  Both of these tokens would auto-neutral the first token so that the first is perpetually neutral and the second is assigned the territoriality of the original possessor of the on-board mirror territory.  That sounds like it could work.

This leads to the next problem of whomever goes earlier in the game, if aggressive, being able to get more then their fair share of off-screen tokens by removing subsequent players from their territories before they can auto-capture the ones that they were originally randomly awarded.  How can we make everyone miss their first turn so that the first round auto-captures unhindered?

You got me there. I don't know.... You could design it into the board, give everyone 1 unit to start on the initial draw, and then no bonus for the first round. Can we do negative starting bonuses? Maybe you could give em a min. 3 units and starting bonus of -3?

Maybe have all the territories start with 1 and somehow kill the first turn placement bonus.  Then, somehow have an offscreen factory autocaptured in the first round which will then auto deploy the initial troops onto all the board territories in the second round, as well as auto capture a subsequent territory which will autoneutral it for the rest of the game? Does that make sense and sound plausible?

My brain is grappling with the first part and I think it is possible. In the first round one player will hold the key-stone territory which will auto capture a special offscreen territory.  In the second round this special territory would auto deploy troops onto all the intended starting positions so that the board units are placed, and then take a secondary territory as well as autoneural itself.  The secondary territory would keep it neutral for the rest of the game such that's it's a one-off occurrence... except if the occupier of that territory is eliminated.  Is there a way to make sure that the eliminator is guaranteed to take the neutralizing token as part of the spoils of elimination (100% absorption is the only way, even if not preferable, yes?)

The next part, to make a player have no placement bonus in the first round, but to not have this mechanism effect the players in subsequent rounds.  How can we manage that?

Also, rather then a key-stone territory, which is the best I have come up with so far, it would be preferable to think of how I could instead assure that it is captured by the player with first turn, ONLY, to make sure that the troops are autodeployed in the first turn of round two.  Is there a way to assign a territory to whomever has first turn? That way it would not need to be autocaptured.  it would just be assigned and go from there.

Most of the ideas you all are describing sound very do-able to me.  Initializing events can happen any number of ways.  Ratsy's suggestions below works just fine, but I'm thinking a way to make the events even more random would be to have a combination of on-board AND off-board holdings affect events.  I.e., create a number of off-board territories that are randomly assigned to players at the beginning of the game. From here, combinations of members (possibly including on-board holdings) initiate events, including the (re)-capture of some of the same off-board territories.  Some off-board randomizers could be put on delayed timers, while others could be triggered by counters.

In addition to having straight anti-tokens (which could also be on timers), some randomizers can be the anti-token for others; also randomizers can auto-neutralize themselves.

I once suggested a feature that randomly controlled the perceived unit count of territories. It could be globally assigned, or an individual territory attribute. 

http://www.wargear.net/wiki/doku.php?id=designer_workshop:proposed:intel_reliability

So this thread got me to thinking the same concept could be applied to factory efficiency. This would be a designer feature that doesn't seem "too"hard to implement.  It would entail a pull down menu for each factory - where the designer would specify an efficiency percentage for each factory.  15% means the factory fills only 15% of the time.  Default is 100%.

Not Necessary, but convenient would be to have a global efficiency setting, which would be trumped by individual settings.

If you like it - add it to this page of the wiki..

http://www.wargear.net/wiki/doku.php?id=designer_workshop:proposed_designer_features

there it is...

Player color screen in the designer: set the player starting bonuses to 0

ratsy wrote:

there it is...

Player color screen in the designer: set the player starting bonuses to 0

..that was random.

Fair Enough. 

berickf wrote:

The next part, to make a player have no placement bonus in the first round, but to not have this mechanism effect the players in subsequent rounds.  How can we manage that?

In the player color settings, you can set the first round bonus to 0 for each of the colors. 

Thanks. It actually looks like this could actually be a workable thing, randomness, with all the existing tools at my disposal!  Players might be a bit confused why they're being forced to skip their first turns though. 

Even M57's idea could create randomness too, by setting a whole bunch of off screen continents at certain percentages then it would be very easy to create randomness without a need for all the "tricks".

I'll try this out once I'm done photoshopping my current board that is being designed for it.

This sounds like it would work. Don't forget that it would be possible for a player to see what effect would happen the following turn based on the continents menu. To make it impossible to know for sure, each player would need to randomly autoneutral territories in the other players loops.