morrow@remus.rutgers.edu:
> 1) Unstacking at Sea. If you DO allow for unstacking at sea, you don't
> need a swimming skill and the units need not AUTOMATICALLY drown.
> Remember those near-useless (in the New World, anyway) "small boat"s?
> Simply leave the unit adrift in their small life boats.
Be careful! So we do allow UNSTACKs, as long as the unstacked unit(s)
have enough inventory of small boats to sustain them at sea? So you
can maroon someone if they remembered to bring along lifeboats, but
you can't make them walk the plank if they didn't. Good thing giving
objects is a controllable parameter, else the captain would GIVE the
folks some boats, then UNSTACK them at sea...
> 2) Skill Revision.
...
> I don't really see anything wrong with the current system.
Others have voiced similar opinions. I guess the complexity of the
skill system has been bugging me, but your comments about skill systems
in other games reminded me that Olympia's really isn't that complex
compared to some of the ones out there. And, since it's already
implemented... :-) I'll turn the levels on subskills back on, and we'll
see if I can leave the damn thing alone for a week.
BTW, sneak peek: STUDY skill [days] [level]
Study skill for a number of days, or until the specified
level is reached, whichever comes first. Days defaults to 14.
My war on silly SET IDLE loops continues.
> 3) Resource Usage. No matter what you do, I feel that any replenishment
> of resources should occur THROUGHOUT the month. There should be no
> penalty for executing your command on day 20 as opposed to day 1.
Oooh. Good point. I was sort-of vaguely aware that this might be
a problem. Not really sure how to solve it for resources with small
(numerically) supply. For instance, a location with five recruits to
give up next month.
> 4) Recruit dependant on money offered. Isn't this going to be competative
> enough once the men available is limited?
Competitive, meaning? With other resource production, increasing your
skill is like adding men to the task. How do you get more men to join?
Recruit with a larger force? Maybe. Or offer a bigger hiring bonus.
> 5) Land/Structure Ownership.
Current plan is that you have to get the location itself to SWEAR to
you, after which you can stack with it. The location's attitudes decide
who is turned away at the borders.
Your tax scheme looks promising.
What are the stacking fees for? Are you distinguising between stacking
with a location and being in one? (they are different).
> The ownership system whereby the first unit stacked with the
> location OR the first structure present on the land owns it.
> Something similar is already in place for structures.
I don't want the opening rounds of the game to be a run out and stack
with as many locations as you can kind of thing. It will be reasonably
difficult to actually get control of a location. Persuading a big chunk
of people like that is not easy, especially if they aren't particularly
upset with their current rulership (or lack thereof).
-- Rich Skrenta <skrenta@rt.com> N2QAV