>A suggestion someone made, and I've been thinking about, is to give
>newbies "faction construction points" (FCPs) to start. FCPs can be
>converted into units, men, cash, skills, and inventory. An important
>step would be to determine proper conversion rates. What do you think?
How about extending the registration sheet ?
e.g.
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Q. How many men/skills do you want to start with ?
You are allowed an initial 20 man/skills to get your faction rolling
(where skill level 0 (no skills) = 1/2)
Each skill taken is specific from the following list, and combinations are
allowed.
This can be 40 men with no skills, an untrained workforce
or 20 persons at skill level 1
up to 5 persons at skill level 4 (the best available at the start)
or any combination of these to add to 20 skill levels.
e.g 1 man with combat level 1 and mining level 4 = 5 skill levels used
Please list how many people you wish to have at each level and specify which
of the following skills they are to have :-
combat, archery, mining, military leadership etc....
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This way, there is no command syntax required, but it DOES make the initial
character generation more complex for the person loading the character
(sorry Rich !) Anyone who doesn't take the men, can have the money at 500
gold per skill level not taken. (no skills taken at the start = 10,000 gold,
all 20 skill levels taken = 0 gold left)
This may not fully reflect the normal study time required for each of the
levels, but I doubt that this is relevant for a beginning character.
Placing a level limit allows them to immediately have effective workgroups,
without unbalancing anything too much. I don't think I want too many new
characters suddenly arriving with a force of combat 10 guards, or
5 mage 10 characters to cause trouble. The higher levels should still
require full training.
>A useful feature would be the ability to keep part of the intial FCP
>allotment back for later, if you decide that you're not sure if you
>want your 10 man unit to be expert swordsmen or to be horse trainers.
I suspect that to try to leave extra credits lying around will just be more
trouble. If they decide they would rather cash them in, or trade them with
someone else then they become tradeable entities. Can we beat up all the
newbies and steal their FCPs ?
The other problem is, if you are waiting for someone, they are a newbie and
arrived 2 weeks ago but doesn't have a large faction yet. You lurk in
hiding and leap out on him as he saunters past. Suddenly, out of nowhere,
appear a 10 man hitsquad of fully trained combat 3 people he just decided
to spend his FCPs on. Ouch !! (not that I would consider doing anything
like this, it's just an example ! Honest ! :-) )
If the requirement is to use them at startup and take the remaining balance
in gold, it allows new players to make some initial decisions, but they can
retain some cash as well in case of bad starting decisions.
Those who know how they want to develop will start with a ready formed
faction, those who haven't really decided, can still get to work their way up.
Just some thoughts
Rob McNeur
Rob@ccc.govt.nz