IRoll11s wrote:

Allow reinforcements: Y/N
Spawn X units per turn. (Where X is a drop down and can be negative)


Lock start positions: Y/N

Would mean that only the player who started with a birthplace territory could use it for reinforcements. I don't like the term birthplace, but then again I'm not sure if that's what was originally meant by that term.

Very nice!  It looks like you've come up with a template for a very simple set of developer tools that achieve pretty much everything that's been discussed.

As much as we love the sound of the word spawn, I wonder that a more universally understood term, like "auto-fortify" might be clearer.

Just to make sure, if a territory spawns/auto fortifies x units per turn, and its starting position is locked, does the fortifying stop until the original owner gets it back?

If a start position is locked and also auto-fortifies, would it continue to auto-fortify if captured ..even though reinforcements wouldn't be allowed?

If a start position is locked, but is designated as a neutral, does the first player who takes it become the "original" owner?  Conversely, if locked and designated as neutral, does it simply act as if Allow Reinforcements was off?

I think this is very close to what we all want. ..I'm just trying to think of ways to break it.

Aye, those are the rubs. (If you'll bardon my expression...)

Answers are "I have no idea." Asking the questions is more important though, it's kind of like edge testing. I hereby assign you the task of discovering every conceivable way that these new settings would impact the settings already in place, then start a new thread dedicated to answering them. Then we can submit a proposal to tom =]

This way we can avoid or at least answer them before they become an issue, like the previous issue of whether an artillery attack in an attack limited heavy fog game counts as an attack if there are 0 units there, or whether abandon on and capitols means you can eliminate yourself by accidentally abandoning your last capitol (you can't abandon capitols with abandon on, shame).

I think spawn is a pretty commonly understood gaming term. I vote for:

Spawn (positive/negative)
Placement enabled (to match the player button terminology)

K, I'll stew on it a bit..

May I be allowed to be curmudgeonly for a moment?

You guys are dreaming up all kinds of crazy #### when in fact the majority of boards that exist on this site right NOW are essentially direct ports of boards created for another site entirely that didn't have nearly as many options as we've already got here. Really? Can't we take some time to get creative with what there is before going completely off the reservation?

For a more moderate take on the subject: Can we at least implement Kjeld's idea about board categorization/rating before we start trying to make things this much more complicated? I just started a game on the new Bowling map with a guy who's completely given up after having played one turn because he can't figure the map out - and this is a board thats only claim to complication is in that it's not Risk. Until we have a way to steer new players away from wacky stuff like this, I think we should cool it a bit.

Unless of course this is all just fantasy talk and there's no real intention of putting any of these things into play on the site, in which case, carry on.

asm wrote: May I be allowed to be curmudgeonly for a moment?

You guys are dreaming up all kinds of crazy #### when in fact the majority of boards that exist on this site right NOW are essentially direct ports of boards created for another site entirely that didn't have nearly as many options as we've already got here. Really? Can't we take some time to get creative with what there is before going completely off the reservation?

For a more moderate take on the subject: Can we at least implement Kjeld's idea about board categorization/rating before we start trying to make things this much more complicated? I just started a game on the new Bowling map with a guy who's completely given up after having played one turn because he can't figure the map out - and this is a board thats only claim to complication is in that it's not Risk. Until we have a way to steer new players away from wacky stuff like this, I think we should cool it a bit.

Unless of course this is all just fantasy talk and there's no real intention of putting any of these things into play on the site, in which case, carry on.

Hold on to your hat asm - We're talking the 10-year plan here.  Although if these suggestions make sense and Tom gets to them before that (..say, by October of 2010) all the better.

Really, they're just optional developer tools.  If they are not to difficult to implement, they open up a world of design possibilities that I have always dreamt about.

BTW, I would submit that the very reason that games like Bowling are so hard to understand (and don't really play that well in the first place) is that the rules and restrictions of the game as they currently stand make it that way.  The basic rules of Risk are just a foundation for what this site could become, and they don't work very well at all for most games on this or ToS.

So let's take a look at what's going on here that isn't on ToS.  GREAT graphical features, forums ..and a few play features like view, artillery, and capitals, where the last of these is the only one that I would consider a game-changer.  There's room for SO much more.

The features that we're talking about in this thread are actually meant to make things like reenactments intuitive ..not convoluted.  For instance, spawning (both negative and positive) just happens. The play of the game doesn't change one bit. Units just appear and/or disappear.  And even if you don't read the about, it shouldn't be that much of a surprise when you find that you aren't able to place your armies on that path of hot coals, ..or that if you leave them there, they don't all make it through to your next turn.

The kinds of boards I want to design and play on require these features.  If they're too complicated for some then put them in the advanced section (board categorization is inevitable IMO, and I think it will be here sooner than later).

I know what asm is getting at. Quiet frankly the site would be better off if every map developer stopped what they were doing and created a standard rules geographical map and made it public. Texas, Indonesian Isles, suburban Philadelphia, who the hell cares as long as it's geographical and doesn't have a single odd rule in it.

asm wrote:
Can't we take some time to get creative with what there is before going completely off the reservation?

EDIT: Also, play some games, LOVER. The majority of the people that play on this site right now - and the ones that we should be working the hardest to retain - feel that the plurality of complicated boards and complicated rules are a little overwhelming. Not everybody wants to play boards based on obscure computer games where every territory has some special ability and nobody knows all the rules but the creator.

Ah, you know what, I may have wrongly interpreted that as a personal dig (the Indonesia thing). If so, I retract the obscenity and the dis on LoGQ, which I actually think will be pretty fun once I get the hang of it. If I wasn't wrong though, then I retract those retractions.

O.o

asm... I honestly have not even the tiniest inkling of a clue what the hell you are talking about.

The best I can figure is that you thought I was being sarcastic about needing more basic maps. (I was not being at all sarcastic, not even a little).

I still have no LOVING idea about the Indonesia thing.. are you from there or something? How does wanting to make an Indonesian map in any way insulting to Indonesians!?

... and yeah, I know my LoCQ map which will be eternally in dev/review status seems really complicated.

It's odd though, I'm the first one to complain when I start a new board and I screw up my first turn mistaking a special rule/border thing. Even when I read the About first I STILL screw it up, and I think jeez the person who made this map shoulda made this a LOT clearer.

Totally different though when you've spent 10 hours making the map... then all you think is wtf is wrong with you people, this does this, this does this... what's the problem?

/popcorn

As if it should be any surprise, but I agree with asm that this does potentially sound all too complicated. I'm not against new features, and I realize this is "future" talk, but my vote would be for more simplistic stuff first and "cleaning" up the site a bit more and even have gameplay such as BAO before starting even more Rules/Settings that would all have to be reevaluated when BAO comes.

IRoll11s wrote:
These could be resolved down to two settings per territory:

Allow reinforcements: Y/N
Spawn X units per turn. (Where X is a drop down and can be negative)

11's summed up all the discussion very concisely here (and these sound fun to me), then went on to muddy the waters with the "lock start positions" talk.  (At least in my very humblest of opinions.)

That said, "Kjeld"ing the boards into easy/medium/hard would seem to have priority over this.

IRoll11s wrote: I know what asm is getting at. Quiet frankly the site would be better off if every map developer stopped what they were doing and created a standard rules geographical map and made it public. Texas, Indonesian Isles, suburban Philadelphia, who the hell cares as long as it's geographical and doesn't have a single odd rule in it.

I agree in principle, but the problem is that I get bored in the middle of making, say, a map of China and start thinking, "what if I implemented this rule instead?" Then I end up with a mess like this, which isn't particularly simple, but neither is it particularly interesting in terms of gameplay, but rather stuck somewhere in the obscure mucky middle. At least it's pretty, though =P

I am in agreement that there are still features here that haven't been used to their fullest yet and team setup and SMNT Play will totally help getting some new original ideas out there. I have a bunch that I can't do anything with until one or both is here.
All this spawning pits and Birthday Territories are fine but they should be something that gets put off til the future when, in 8 months, we log in and read the change log and suddenly our boredom for the site has been washed away and we delete our account on WarMonkey.
And I have more basic maps here than I did on ToS. RiskyVerse, Emoticons, Romanian Rumble and Count Risky are pretty standard maps.

IRoll11s wrote:

asm... I honestly have not even the tiniest inkling of a clue what the hell you are talking about.

The best I can figure is that you thought I was being sarcastic about needing more basic maps. (I was not being at all sarcastic, not even a little)

Okay, total mea culpa then. I did think you were being sarcastic, and leapt to conclusions (without even a mat) too quickly.

In that case, we agree. But Rollie, Yertle and asm all together on an issue... this is bad news. Next we'll see frogs raining or something.

And just to be super clear, the main thrust of the point I want to make is not that any of these ideas are bad, just that Kjeld-ing the board list should happen first.

And now I'm not going to post in the forums any more today except for one-liners.

asm wrote:... this is bad news. Next we'll see frogs raining or something.

This is close... Frog Horde

warmonkey.net

very disappointing.

asm wrote:

And now I'm not going to post in the forums any more today except for one-liners.

Welcome to my existence.

Yertle wrote: As if it should be any surprise, but I agree with asm that this does potentially sound all too complicated. I'm not against new features, and I realize this is "future" talk, but my vote would be for more simplistic stuff first and "cleaning" up the site a bit more and even have gameplay such as BAO before starting even more Rules/Settings that would all have to be reevaluated when BAO comes.

BAO is COMPLICATED-  You could explain it to me 3 times and I still wouldn't understand it.  If it comes here, chances are I won't play boards that use it, at least not until I understand it. "Place x units on a territory" is simple by comparison.  I don't see the problem with bringing them in.  Regardless, right off hand I can't see any way that they would adversely affect BAO.