Factories are an incredibly powerful feature available to board designers that is unique to WarGear. The concept was conceived by designers here on the site, and subsequently implemented in brilliant fashion by Tom, who runs the site. The limits and potential features of factories are relatively untapped; yet the basic concept is a simple one, and it all starts with the notion that..

A Factory is nothing more than a special type of continental bonus.

The 'Standard' continents that we are all familiar with have assigned “members” (e.g. Brazil, Peru, Venezuela, Argentina), which give bonus units to the player who owns the continent at the beginning of their turn, and let's them “place” (the factory part) those bonus units on the board.

A Factory is created by first assigning it members just like a standard continent, but instead of giving bonus units to the player to place anywhere they want, the factory places bonus units on the board at a pre-determined location. Put another way, a factory is a continental bonus that doesn't let the player decide where the bonus units go.

Key terms:

Member – The territory or territories that must be held by the player in order for the factory to be called. Members are more commonly known as “continents.”

Factory – The target of the allocated continental bonus. A factory can only be a single territory.

Normally, units would be put on the factory (the target territory) if the player already owns it (see: Standard Factory), but the WarGear Designer offers designers a powerful and versatile palette of factory types. For instance, if the designer not only wants the bonus to apply even if the player doesn't own the target territory, AND he also wants that enemy or neutral territory to be re-assigned to the player who holds the continent's members, he can use an “AutoCapture” factory.

The list and chart below show the range of different continental bonus types (factories) that can be specified by the designer.

Disabled – The standard continental bonus that we all know and love - it puts units “in-hand,” which players can place on the board anywhere they want.

Standard Factory – Specifies where the bonus goes and adds the bonus units to the territory ONLY if the player owns the territory. Standard Factories check to see if you own the factory that is linked to the continent bonus. If you own the factory, the continent bonus is automatically placed in that location. If Team Factory Production setting is ON, the units are also placed in the target territory if owned by a teammate.

AutoCapture Factory – Assigns the territory to the player and adds units. AutoCapture Factories ignore who owns the factory territory. No matter who owns it, ownership is transferred to the player who owns the continent at the beginning of their turn.

Universal Factory – Adds units to territory no matter who owns it. Ownership is retained by the original holder of the territory. All Universal Factories check to see who owns the factory, then places the continent bonus in that factory, and the player who owned the factory gets the bonus and retains ownership of that factory.

Universal-N Factory – As above, but adds units to territory ONLY if it is NOT occupied by Neutral

Universal+N Factory – As above, but adds units to territory ONLY if it is occupied by Neutral

AutoNeutral – Converts target territory to Neutral and adds further units as Neutrals

AutoNeutralReset Converts target territory to Neutral, resets to zero units and then adds further units as Neutrals

Factories that change the ownership of the target territory (AutoCapture and AutoNeutral) execute in a loop in order of alphanumeric factory name.

Factories have an optional unit cap setting. If the number of units on the factory equals or exceeds the specified cap, the factory will not produce any further units.

Not only can factories put units on a territory, but they can also take them away. Factories can be assigned negative bonus values. Negative bonuses assigned to a factory territory can reduce it to 0 in a game with abandonment on.

(click to enlarge)

In the above screen shot..

• Iceland, Scandinavia and UKraine have been selected as the members of a continent named “Trifecta.”
• Peru has been selected as the factory - the target of the bonus.
• The factory type is Universal, so it doesn't matter who occupies Peru.
• A negative bonus has been assigned. If at the beginning of any player's turn, they hold the the members of the continent Trifecta, 2 units will be taken off the factory (Peru) no matter who owns it.

To truly harness the power of factories, you first have to understand how the game engine applies auto-capture effects, eliminations, and factory bonuses. Here is a plain-text description, written by tom, of how the game engine processes factories at the start of a player turn:

1. Loop through all continents

1. For each continent check to see whether the player owns the continent.
2. If the player owns the continent, check to see whether this continent has a factory. If it does, add it to the list of factory bonuses.
3. Now check to see if the player owns the factory territory, if they don't and the factory is an auto-assign type (AutoCapture, AutoNeutral) then add this territory to the list of territories to auto-assign to the player / neutral.
4. If continent does not have a factory then add the continent bonus to the player's reserves.

2. Loop through list of territories to auto-assign to the player / neutral

1. Update ownership of territory
2. Check to see if this results in an elimination of a player by capturing their final capital, if so process capital elimination
3. Check to see whether this resulted in the player being eliminated

3. Loop through the list of factory bonuses

1. Check the bonus will not exceed territory maxes / mins and apply change to board state
2. Check for abandonment of territory (if this was a negative factory) and abandon is on
3. Check to see if this abandonment resulted in the player being eliminated
4. Check to see if this abandonment resulted in a player's last capital being destroyed