j-bomb's suggestion got me to thinking.. It's one thing if continents could obtain cards, (which simply put armies in hand), but why not go the distance and make it so that cards can actually be continents and/or factories?

With the feature Enabled - cards become decoupled so they can be cashed individually, and are registered in the continent/factory list - so they can be factories (per j-bombs suggestion), but much more powerfully, they could be members.

Uses would be innumerable..

• Admiral cards put units on ships or at sea; Generals put 'em on land, Food in the granary, Artillery in cannons, Zombies in the kitchen, etc. - I.e., the obvious - put units in specific places.
• Used in conjunction with other 'members', Cards could be used to create hidden objectives, like the territories depicted on regular risk cards encourage players to capture certain territories.
• Cards could be used to open and close doors - transport armies from one place to another - and any number of creative things that manipulators of factories can think of.
• Currently cards can only be played at the beginning of your turn, which is great for a start, but with a 'back to cash' feature enabled, they could be cashed in the middle of a turn, making them Real Time Factories.
• As implied with some of the above uses, multiple cards could be members of the same factory so they wouldn't have to necessarily be cashed in individually.
• There's no reason that there couldn't be an unlimited number of different cards if a designer wanted to make them (Individual cards or multiples of the same).
• Hmm.. cards hidden in your hand that can be 'played' to the 'table' on the board - sound like any type of games we're familiar with?  
• Oh yeah, and with "Factory" set to disabled, they become ... uhh ... regular old cards that put territories in hand. In fact, the feature could be permanently Enabled, converting all existing card setups including the current default to comply with the new standard.

This would be a major game changer and there's a lot of infrastructure already in place to support it. 

I just can't stop thinking of the possibilities..

Spies grant visibility-Counter Spies take it away, Traitors convert ownership, Harvests increase, Certificates pay out dividends.

Plagues reduce populations, Bombs destroy, Thieves steal, Vampires suck blood, 'Divine Intervention' throws lightning bolts at the player of your choice. (negative factories, autocapture, etc.).

I was considering the current card system with its increasing count capabilities - which complicates things quite a bit, especially if Tom had to tie it in with the capabilities of the factory cards - but if that's too difficult - he could instead make a separate custom card tab. I suppose there's no reason you couldn't mix cards from the two tabs.. But I'm getting way ahead here.. 

So actually, I'm realizing this isn't really an extension of j-bomb's idea - but it was inspired by it.  You can't designate cards as factories because cards don't accept units.  j-bomb's idea still stands, factories could create cards, but cards can never be factories.

What is so compelling to me about this idea is that it leverages the snot out of what is arguably the most powerful and unique feature that WarGear already has - the factory. Existing designers will intuitively know how to use it. Adding Cards to 'Continent Member'ship is going right to the top of my wish-list, although per territory minimum/abandon is a feature that is close up there because it opens up so many possibilities for factories, which in turn will open up more for cards.

Other possibilities using cards as members..

Make a deck of cards (it doesn't have to have suits - just numbers -- and by creating factories that cover straights - pairs , and trips, you've got Poker ..add a board and dice and you've got Triple-Cranko on steroids. Create games that have the feel of Cribbage, or make it such that certain cards combinations are more powerful than others ..e.g., the Wizard card triples the effect of any Spell card, OR if you are the Grand Wizard (on the board), the effect of the Spell card is tripled.

i was thinking a little more simple.

say a select amount of territories if held till the next turn would grant that person a card.

that would make cards harder to obtain, and much more valuable to have and or hold on to.

i would limit it to one card even if you hold more than one card territory.

My biggest thing right now, aside from cleaning up the thousands, is:

Factories that effect other players.  AutoCapture, with the resulting factory belonging to a specific player.  AutoCaptureSelf, AutoCaptureP1, AutoCaptureP2, AutoCaptureNeutral.  

This would keep my satisfied for quite some time.

Edward Nygma wrote:

My biggest thing right now, aside from cleaning up the thousands, is:

Factories that effect other players.  AutoCapture, with the resulting factory belonging to a specific player.  AutoCaptureSelf, AutoCaptureP1, AutoCaptureP2, AutoCaptureNeutral.  

This would keep my satisfied for quite some time.

If I understand what you're asking for, I've run into a need for AutoCaptureNeutral many times.   I consider it a key component for re-building neutral walls, and it is high on my wish list as well.  But I may be misunderstanding - what's the difference between AutoCapture and AutoCaptureSelf?

AutoCaptureNeutral would turn the territory Neutral, right?

j-bomb wrote:

i was thinking a little more simple. Say a select amount of territories if held till the next turn would grant that person a card. That would make cards harder to obtain, and much more valuable to have and or hold on to. I would limit it to one card even if you hold more than one card territory.

'Card Membership' will realize most any function that you could ask for from cards ..and they are not simple. Indeed, they are powerful and sophisticated - yet the feature is effectively 95% built - its guts have already been conceptualized, developed and implemented - the cards just need to be attached.

In one fell swoop the feature has the potential to turn the cards from the design afterthought that they are now into a central and deeply integrated design element. Card Membership will give designers the option of fundamentally shifting the focus of game-play from board to cards and anywhere in between. For instance, and I’m not advocating this, but you could conceivably build a game where all players do is play cards, rarely/barely moving pieces on the board. It’s easy for me to imagine players asking for the cards to play from an optional pop-up window.  I can't resist..

"Card Membership - You won't design without it"

M57 wrote:

From original concept present, the capabilities and actual uses of factories here have definitely exceeded (at least my) expectations, [...] factories offer designers a relatively simple yet powerful tool that makes WarGear so much more dimensional than the other ‘Risk-like’ gaming sites.  [...] Factories are fast becoming part of the backbone of this site, and I see their growth as an important aspect of where WG is heading.

Just sharing my perspective as a board designer where the ‘what’s next?’ question is concerned.

I love this perspective and agree completely.  But I personally would rather Tom do a little work to finish up the native player before any more major features are added. The history is pretty broken, and the board explorer is missing some functionality that the flash player has.  Plus I have some maps that don't seem to work right on the native player.  Also the card bug (where you have to refresh)... I'm not sure there may be others.  When Tom decides to work on this, we'll probably need a separate thread to discuss it all and try to find test cases, etc.

Ozyman wrote:

 ..But I personally would rather Tom do a little work to finish up the native player before any more major features are added..

No doubt, he is doing just this right now.  I had a board in Review that has Native player issues, which Tom suggested I terminate whilst he works on fixing the underling problems. And I agree, fixing stuff should be his top priority.  For all of my suggestions and "lobbying" for things I would like to see, ultimately, I realize these things take time. I'm pretty patient (partly because I have no choice ;}

Edward Nygma wrote:

I also think that AutoNeutral factories would be nice.

+1 

This is all I ask for... For now ;-)

I'm a bit tired of playing risk.  I think we should quit wasting our time on that and turn this into a Cards Against Humanity site.

Madness.

Can we get an update from Tom on what he's currently working on?

AttilaTheHun wrote:

Can we get an update from Tom on what he's currently working on?

I'm working on Win Conditions. It's unfortunately taken forever to get them implemented. I'm now in the testing phase so most of the heavy lifting is done.

Here are some Continent/Factory attributes I just thought of that I think go a long way toward solving the "Combinations" issue. They could apply to all continent types.

Minimum Unit Count -

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

Minimum Member Count -

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

Some of the code Tom is writing for Win Conditions may apply to these proposed features -- perhaps they could be leveraged.  Factories are where the power and versatility is.

Hey Tom,

I don't know which features are a real headache for you to implement and which ones are a cinch.  I also don't want to be greedy or anything.  But, I am working on a board that could really use "token territories" to nullify off-board factories from counting towards a player's elimination (or lack-there-of), as well as their calculation into the territory count bonus.  Is the implementation of such something you would consider difficult or easy?  If it's difficult then forget I ever wrote this and I'll continue waiting.  But, if you think it'd be a bit easier then some other things and it could be rattled off without taking up too much of your time, any chance it could be done sooner rather then later?

Again, I don't want to seem presumptuous, so feel free to tell me to take a hike and my feelings won't be hurt.

Regards,

Erick

Now Win Condition are finally implemented... what's the consensus on the next feature to implement?

I've got one non-gameplay feature on my list I'd like to do next which shouldn't take long and that's changing the way vacations work. Instead of the 30 days running from the start of your premium membership, every time you renew your membership, you immediately get 10 / 30 non-expiring days added to your vacation credit (10 days for 3 months membership and 30 days for 1 year). This will give everyone more flexibility with vacations without disadvantaging anyone.

I'd also like to add a feature to buy more vacation days for those who really need it.

Win Conditions look great!  Thanks again for yet another great designer feature set.

tom wrote:

Now Win Condition are finally implemented... what's the consensus on the next feature to implement?

My sense is that AutoCaptureNeutral and per/territory Abandon ON/OFF (or per/territory minimums) are the most commonly asked for.

Of these two, latter looks to have the edge, and even though it is not directly a Factory type of feature, it would doubtless be an important part of the foundation that Factories sit on.

I would be thrilled to see either of these implemented.

Edit: Though it is not as high on my personal list, I would note that Token Territories is also popular, and I will concede that it also has strong foundational qualities.

P.S. For the record, I made my edit before seeing Cram's post below ;)

I would tip the nod towards being able to set abandon on a per territory basis, though, my ultimate preference is for the "Tokens" concept.

Cramchakle wrote:

I would tip the nod towards being able to set abandon on a per territory basis, though, my ultimate preference is for the "Tokens" concept.

The more I think about this the more I realize that with the ultimate goal of making Factories as powerful as possible, the emphasis should probably still be on building as strong a foundation for them as possible (as opposed to expanding on the capabilities of the factories themselves). 

With this in mind, I would suggest that as much as many of us want/need AutoCaptureNeutral (myself included), it probably makes the most sense at this point to push the "foundationals," i.e. Tokens and Per/Territory Abandon to the top of the list.