Proposed: The ability to define a set of territories that become randomly "Allocated" to a specific player color. Random Allocation would mean that if it is not allocated it becomes neutral.

For example, in a two player 'global' type game, "A" receives a randomized set-up north of 20^o N. latitude, and "B" gets the same treatment south of  20^o S. latitude. The implications for fogged games should be obvious. I'm not a Simulgear player but I can imagine that depending on it's flexibility, a feature like this would be huge for A&A type maps, where players typically start in pre-determined positions. I can't speak for others, but if tom could add this feature, I can guarantee I'd be creating additional scenarios for most if not all of my maps.

I can think of a few ways to implement this, but I have no idea what would be best, most flexible, efficient, etc.

Considerations/Possible Additional Features:

• The ability to overlap Restricted Assignments.
• Currently neutral placement is either High, Medium, or Low.  Selectable percentages would be much more preferable.
• A per-territory unit count (which is what we have now) or range limit.  Territory E = 4 units Territory F  = 4-8 units.

I've thought about something like this before.  Some way to have random (but controlled) initial placement.  The way I envisioned it was some test that could be applied after the random placement, that would allow an automatic 'do-over' of the setup.

It's not quite the same as what M57 is thinking, but maybe there is a way to get the best of everything.

An example of what I was thinking.  Picture the standard risk map.  Somehow the designer could set the reset condition as follows:

* One player holds all of Australia

* One player holds all of South America.

If either of those conditions is true at the start of the game, the computer re-rolls the initial placement.

The idea here is more to be able to prevent unfair starting conditions, than to fine tune control of the setup. Could you do something like that with M57s idea? 

I think something like this would be very valuable for the 'deterministic' type boards, where starting setup is now the only luck factor, so if you could eliminate that it would go a long way to having a 'fair' game.

Also, a workaround (as always with restrictions and limitations), is to have some territories 'off board' get assigned randomly, then use factories to copy those initial assignments onto the main board in some way.  An example of this is the 'random bits' scenarios for my Finite State Machine board.  I wanted random starting bits, but I wanted to make sure that a player did not start with any bits in the opponents state table.   For each territory in the state table, I created an additional 'off board' territory which is assigned randomly when the game starts.  Then on the first turn factories assign bits in the state table to a player if they have the corresponding off-board territory.

In this way I can get randomly assigned bits, but have a bit of control over where they are placed.

@Ozyman

You're idea is to restrict certain combinations from the set of all combinations, while mine is to define the set of acceptable combinations.

I'm want to tell the engine what to do, and you want to tell it what NOT to do.  Different paradigms to achieve the same thing, right?

BTW, your workaround has possibilities, but they are restricted as you say.  I'm not a huge fan of factory programming because it's difficult and cumbersome to put them on the board.  Of course, I did have an idea that would make things easier on that end..

http://www.wargear.net/forum/showthread/1443p16/Enhancement_Requests

post #320

@Ozyman, I've been trying to make your idea work, and I've come across a stumbling block.

Let's say I want Player A to only get half of territories 1-10 and B to get half of 11-20.  Let's say High Neutral makes 50% neutrals?  (I can't remember, but that sounds about right)

Create off-board territories 1' through 20' and let them random assign.

Create off-board territories A and B and allocate them to each player.

Create Auto Capture factories with (members -> factory)

• (A, 1' -> 1) (A, 2' -> 2)..
• (B, 11' -> 11) (B, 12' -> 12)..
• Two Kill-switch factories that eliminate A and B at the end of each player's first turn.

This should "assign" 50% random allocated territories, with only A's on 1-10 and B's on 11-20.

Ideally something like 2, 4, 5, 8, 9 will go to A; and 10, 13, 14, 16, 20, will go to B,  but the problem is that it could create all A's on 1-10 and NO B's on 11-20.

Your idea works great for creating specified random set-up for one player, but once it involves more than one player, you run the risk of inequalities occurring.

Any ideas?

That's a really good point.   In my case it didn't matter too much if territories were unequal.  Maybe there is a way around this - I'll keep thinking.

By tying factories together it's possible to make pseudo-quantum random assignations.

• (A, 1' -> 1) (A, 2' -> 2)..
• (B, 1' -> 11) (B, 2' -> 12)..

..so as A gets assigned 6, B gets 16 - with guaranteed equality no matter where they are in the universe.

Now if we could just put some spin on them..

Edit: - no wait .. this doesn't work -- they have to auto assign to one player only.. so if one factory works, the other doesn't.

OK -Use the idea above, but with tied Universal factories. I'm not even sure that you would need to make territories A and B, because all territories will be established by the beginning of A's turn.

"Allocate" 1-20 on the board to A and B as desired with NO units. (does the designer let you do this?)  Then, with Universal Factories..

• (1' -> 1) (2' -> 2)..
• (1' -> 11) ( 2' -> 12)..

With abandon OFF, at the end of A's turn all territories that have no units on them will revert to neutral (albeit still with no units).