I think it should have an option to select factory type when adjusting the continent.  

Standard is no autocapture, player owned only.

Autocapture does autocapture, no matter who owns it

Universal does not autocapture, but effects any player who owns the territory.

I think a per territory basis is the way to go, but you could have a global option to fill in for "default" as a per territory option, so on the rules tab you can set all "default factories" to one of the 3 choices.  Much like how territory maximums function.

With abandonment turned off, it appears that [negative] factories will not take a territory below 1.  Is this desired or a bug? 

Alpha wrote:

With abandonment turned off, it appears that [negative] factories will not take a territory below 1.  Is this desired or a bug? 

I would hope it's desired. 

That's desired I imagine... they follow the same rules as being attacked...  Another argument for territory minimums...

So attacking will not take away the last unit on a territory (i am guessing you meant an artillery border, but I don't see why negative factories would work this way)?  The non-paddle mechanics of Pong should work without abandonment turned on, but I am sure you have it on for the paddle. 

It would seem then that I need to have abandonment on for a factory to kill ownership which is too bad.  Since I want it and have uses for it, I shall request the option for negative factories to kill a territory (take the last unit on the territory) without abandonment on.  This will be useful for "standard" as well as "universal" factories

I think that it should be an option.

For a map I am working on, what i really needed control over is the loss of ownership.  I could set the whole map to allow zero on territories, but I need per-territory abandon when it gets to zero.

Alpha wrote:

So attacking will not take away the last unit on a territory (i am guessing you meant an artillery border, but I don't see why negative factories would work this way)?  The non-paddle mechanics of Pong should work without abandonment turned on, but I am sure you have it on for the paddle. 

It would seem then that I need to have abandonment on for a factory to kill ownership which is too bad.  Since I want it and have uses for it, I shall request the option for negative factories to kill a territory (take the last unit on the territory) without abandonment on.  This will be useful for "standard" as well as "universal" factories

tom wrote:

Are we going down the right direction with increasing the complexity level of the factory rules? Seems like this sort of thing will be really difficult for players to keep track of between boards.

Although I suppose this behavior could be explained in the board description.

This is a good question.  Some of the same concerns that applied to the Movement Count conversation apply here.  My argument that "putting it in the board description" didn't hold up there, though to be fair, most of the issues discuss were related to "keeping track" of MC because it is a dynamic territory attribute.

If, for instance, a combination of abandon and non-abandon territories was necessary for Pong to work, it doesn't seem that "notice" would be necessary.  The territory attributes in this case have no bearing on play or strategy.  On the other hand, I can imagine boards where knowledge of this feature greatly impacts strategy.

Once again, my position is that these types of decisions should be part of the review team's job.  They can tell the designer if the information needs to be on the board and/or in the description on a case by case basis.

tom wrote:

Alpha wrote:

So attacking will not take away the last unit on a territory (i am guessing you meant an artillery border, but I don't see why negative factories would work this way)?  The non-paddle mechanics of Pong should work without abandonment turned on, but I am sure you have it on for the paddle. 

It would seem then that I need to have abandonment on for a factory to kill ownership which is too bad.  Since I want it and have uses for it, I shall request the option for negative factories to kill a territory (take the last unit on the territory) without abandonment on.  This will be useful for "standard" as well as "universal" factories

Are we going down the right direction with increasing the complexity level of the factory rules? Seems like this sort of thing will be really difficult for players to keep track of between boards.

Although I suppose this behavior could be explained in the board description.

Maybe not, but I originally thought that a negative factory had the ability to kill ownership, that is remove the last unit of a player.  It seems strange that with abandonment on (revert immediately) a negative factory will take away the last unit on the territory and thus turn it into a neutral 0, but with abandonment off a negative factory cannot kill the last unit and thus cannot take the last unit.  I never caught in the original discussion that this addition check would be put into place and I can work around it to do what I want so it isn't really a big deal.

It's logical as the factory is not responsible for conversion to neutral - it's because of the abandonment that it reverted.

What happens to 'capturable' items (i.e. cards, reserve, etc.) if a player is eliminated due to a negative factory?

I think increasing complexity of these rules is ok, because a lot of what designers can do with them can be hidden.  I can make a 10 turn timer, and it's complicated to explain how it works... but all I need to tell you is that there's a 10 turn timer... as long as I can let you know what turn the timer is on... then you can understand the concept.

The factory system almost turns this into a very basic programming language.  A lot of the details can be hidden under the hood.  Pong is complicated, but the gameplay is simple.

Edward Nygma wrote:

I think increasing complexity of these rules is ok, because a lot of what designers can do with them can be hidden.  I can make a 10 turn timer, and it's complicated to explain how it works... but all I need to tell you is that there's a 10 turn timer... as long as I can let you know what turn the timer is on... then you can understand the concept.

The factory system almost turns this into a very basic programming language.  A lot of the details can be hidden under the hood.  Pong is complicated, but the gameplay is simple.

+1  As long as the design complexity is invisible to the user and play is simple, there's no reason that some design element can't have depth.  The caveat is that these elements might be kept out of the way for those designers who would otherwise be intimidated by them, or perhaps there should be "info" links in the designer to make it easier to quickly check what things do.  Perhaps menus for some of these should only appear when the designer checks the "Do you really want to use this feature?" box ..or some pull-down menu of expert design features, etc.

Also, many of these really should be thoroughly documented at roll-out. As it is, it's clear that even some who are familiar with the factory/barren features are not sure exactly how they work.

I agree with that.  By having more complicated options I could actually simplify the map from the players perspective, because I don't have to have some complicated work around.

Agreed.  I think that a, per-territory minimum # of units of 1 or 0, would be an incredible use of this use.  Allowing certain territories to abandon would allow for a lot of features to work while still using the "leave 1 behind" gameplay.  Since abandon changes a game so drastically, but provides a lot of cool options for the current mechanics, I think it would be easy to implement some really cool features without drastically changing the gameplay.  It would remove a lot of complicated work arounds, and it's still pretty easy to explain what's going on.

For example.  Pong uses a selector that I've been working on for a long time.  It requires abandonment of certain territories to ensure that a player only has 1 of those territories at a time.  Abandon, revert immediately, and maximum of 1 unit (or barren territories) allows you to set up multiple continent structures that are each linked to 1 specific territory.  Unforturnately, unlimited attacks, abandon revert immediately does not work for the games I would like to make that incorporate the selector.  A minimum of 0 would allow a territory to be emptied and those territories would follow the abandon rules (revert to neutral and such), and the others would have a minimum of 1, which keeps the territory following the standard rules of risk.  There should be a global option and a per territory option, which encompasses abandonment.  Default = 0 or 1 and the rest are territory specific.

Ed - could you do what with you want if the per-territory option was whether to convert to neutral or not, or would it only work if the per-territory option was minimum units?

Originally, I thought I needed per-territory minimums, but really what I need is the per-territory convert to neutral, and having a per-territory minimum was essentially a workaround for that.

I guess ideally, and for greater control, it would be great to have all of this be per-territory. 

Agreed, more options is always best.  Minimums has a wide range of use when not using factories.  I think minimums covers emptying factories, but not the other way around.  Though if you wanted to only free a player from a space through factories, and not from attacking out... then you would need differentiation between the two. 

Fair comment - it's on the list for implementation.

My heart just smiled a little.