I took some time to model a few of my favorite factory structures.  Explanation follows.

Premise:

1v1 game with 2 small grids and limited attacks.  Each player has 2 units on each grid.  If a unit dies, it will respawn in a location that can attack back onto the grid.  If both units die on a grid, they will respawn one turn at a time back up to 2 units.  If at any point, a player has no units on the grid, that player loses the game.

Structure:

Tracking:

The top left section tracks how many units are alive in each grid. 

First, your Capital (T1) automatically 1 unit in T2, and +2 units in T3. 

If the player has 2 T4 territories, each will give -1 to T2 and T3 twice each, and both territories remain neutral (+1 -2 <= 0 in T2 and +2 -2 = 0 in T3). 

If the player has 1 T4 territory, T3 will be captured (+2 -1 >= 1) and T2 will remain neutral (+1 -1 <= 0).

If the player has 0 T4 territories, both territories will be captured (+1 -0 >= 0 in T2 and +2 -0 >=1).

Spawning:

If T2 is occupied, then the player lost at least one unit.  Since a unit has been lost, it's time to respawn by granting +1 to T8.  This causes a 1 turn delay on spawning units. 

To remove this delay, have the T4 + T1 continents target T8 directly, and have T1 give +2 to T8 every turn.

You do not need to replicate the T2 > T8 for T3, since T8 has a maximum of 1 unit, and will only spawn one unit per turn regardless.

This structure is repeated for the second grid, and for each player.

Victory:

If the player has T2, T3, T6, and T7 on the same turn, that means that player began this turn with 0 units on the board, and loses the game with a -1 to the T1, the player's capital.

Other Stuff:

This system counts territories, not units, so in this version T4/5 must be max 1, but in other games of the same variety, they could potentially have more units.

Once you finish the continent structure for one player, you can go into the XML, copy paste it all, Find/Replace the territory ID for Player 1's T1, and replace it with "T2, which saves a ton of time if you plan ahead for it.

This all can be used a lot of ways, and some versions work better than others for whatever you're trying to do, but this explains the core structure. 

All the -1 to itself bonuses are to reset the territory back to 0 after it functions, so all this +1/-1 binary stuff doesn't get all math wonky.

It sounded fun... so I made it:

http://www.wargear.net/games/join/700184

Looks like fun.

So, the object is not so much 'winning', but 'keeping from losing'?

Yeah, for the most part.  There are a few things going on.  One is survival, but another is being aggressive enough to eliminate a single color from all 4 boards.  I figured this might require temporary alliances, that might bite you in the end.

Honestly, the design was more a result of trying to show off factories I was modeling, and redesigning the concept to match the system I modeled.

*The version I made has 4 players instead of 2.  2 might be a little stale, and have pretty significant turn advantage I think, so I made it 4 players only.

IMO, the 2 player version would be a lot more interesting.

The 4 player version ( at least with fog) pretty much boils down to pure luck, the way I see it.

Yes, the first player would have an advantage. But it could be limited, but

A) Having slightly different starting positions.

B) (If possible withing the WG engine) have less attacks allowed for the very first turn.

Then, IMO,  the 2 player version has the potential to be a great strategy duelling board.

Less attacks isn't so easy, but forcing some wasted attacks is a little more doable, albeit potentially confusing.

I like Pratik’s idea of random starting positions. Can’t that be done with random on, neutrals on, and neutral count 0?

Not really.  I tried to do something like that, but the likelihood that you start with more or less than 2 units on each grid is way too high.

I could maybe combine the ideas... so you have to waste attacks on your first turn attacking to each grid... but it still gets a little wonky.

(If possible) You could add an extra unit for Player 2 which doesn't respawn. Possibly pre-specified location.

For example, assume Player 1 is yellow and Player 2 Green (let's say colours are fixed, to make everything easier). Now, let's say Player 2 gets an extra unit in A15 (this one does not respawn), just in front of the big blue square.

Now,  Player 1 can't take out Player 2 entirely from that square. So, he has an option:

Either take Player 2 out entirely from another square (and let him have the 3 units here) , or try to make the 3 units to 1.

The more I think about it, I more I feel that this would make a good 1v1 and 2v2 board.

May take a little trial and error to figure out how to remove the going first advantage.

I can definitely have an extra unit on the board to start.  That wouldn't ruin any of the continent structures.  Would player 2 get an extra unit on just one grid?

Edward, you should put those up on the Wiki with some of the others ..preferably with a slightly more detailed description of what they do ;)

Sounds like a plan.

Please let me know how I can improve it, or make anything more clear:

http://www.wargear.net/wiki/doku.php?id=designer_tutorials:tutorials:factories:territory_tracking_and_respawn

Wasn't there also a thread called "Advanced_Factories".  I just finished reading and understanding it, and now it's gone?

I had some stuff up there years back that seems to be gone, but I think Advanced Factories is just the name of the page that contains this thread and a few others:

http://www.wargear.net/wiki/doku.php?id=designer_tutorials:tutorials:factories:advanced

Edward Nygma wrote:

I can definitely have an extra unit on the board to start.  That wouldn't ruin any of the continent structures.  Would player 2 get an extra unit on just one grid?

I believe so, yes. But a predefined grid. And not on the standard route. i.e. Player 1 should not be able to get all 3 units in 7 moves.

So, going back to the blue and green example on the top left square, the extra unit should be on one of: A6, A11, A16, A10, A15, A20.

Of course, we would have to experiment a bit to make sure that this really is neutral.

I'll make this variation after the game progresses a bit.  I think there's a bug, but I'm not positive yet.  I'd like to catch it before I replicate the bug into new versions.