Ramblings of a pre-olympia (waitlisted) player.
I have followed the discussion on stacking heirarchy with
interest. Just out of curiousity, why are stacking and defense
necessarily linked? I could imagine that one would want to defend
other entities without stacking with them, and stack with other
entities without defending them. How about a different command,
DEFEND, to allow this distinction.
Examples:
DEFEND 0
Defend any non-independent stacks in your current region
(currently a pretty big area, but presumably it will become smaller
as regions subdivide) against any attack from entities not in your
faction. This would mostly be the command of a regional militia or
town guard, but could also be used by people to form a defensive
league without stacking together.
DEFEND DEFAULT
Defend any entity within any stacks of which you are part.
Basically the current situation as I understand it, however all
entities in your faction will now go to the defense of all others in
the same faction even if they are not stacked together.
DEFEND STACK
The current situation.
DEFEND SELF
Obvious enough.
DEFEND 510 515 535 550
Allow explicit definition of which entities will be defended
by a given unit. Allows greatest flexibility. Also allows things
like town guards who only defend those who have paid their dues/taxes.
Other odd possibilities
DEFEND ATTITUDE <attitude>
Defend entities towards whom your attitude is >= <attitude>.
e.g. DEFEND ATTITUDE 2 would defend those towards whom your stacks are
cooperative or friendly.
DEFEND GUILD <guild>
Allows guild members to defend their associates.
I'm not sure if any of this makes sense, but it seems like this
would allow greater flexibility than the current situation. Of
course, it may be impractical to implement, however who ever said that
suggestions had to be practical?
--
David Resnick dresnick@athena.mit.edu