No retreat penalty?

[Cuyo Quiz]

Erm. If you say so... But how does that allow someone to walk away from said engagement without suffering the consequences of turning their back on their enemy?

Have you ever ran away from something you tried to stop/fight?. Most of the time, unless he is considerably faster than you, you can escape. Specially when he still thinks you are fighting and is distracted in his own attacks.

Realism is in enough dose there, i think, just enough to make it fun. Although i may be able to live with the 1mp penalty for retreating... damn swift Dwarves.

Even then, Wesnoth is not the traditional TBS or wargame, as too much rules or too complicated things to be coded are brushed off.

[enigmoo]

blah blah blah

Whatever. You sound set in your ways, gramps. Far be it from me to scoop the wax out from btw your ears.

Anyway, I never said I didn't like the game. It's just a suggestion which quite franky I see is DOA. I have no doubt though that someday you guys will come to your senses and implement it or be playing someone else's game that does.

[Cuyo Quiz]

It's funny and ironic how post 15 calls turin gramps.

Oh lord, i am enjoying life right now.

[Tomsik]

I have no doubt though that someday you guys will come to your senses and implement it or be playing someone else's game that does.

I don't think it will be implemented and i don't think you can play one game for whole life...

[Dacyn]

http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki/FrequentlyProposedIdeas

[turin]

blah blah blah

Whatever. You sound set in your ways, gramps. Far be it from me to scoop the wax out from btw your ears.

Cuyo Quiz is right, this is rather funny.

(I"m 15, in case you were wondering why it was ironic.)

Anyway, I never said I didn't like the game. It's just a suggestion which quite franky I see is DOA. I have no doubt though that someday you guys will come to your senses and implement it or be playing someone else's game that does.

Heh.

I think it is extremely... amusing that you persist in your belief that your idea is the One True Way of Good Game Design, and you call me set in my ways. Do you not realize that you have not had a single decent argument to back up your idea?

And, do you not realize that Wesnoth has become as popular as it has by adhering to its game design principles (which include, WINR), instead of implementing every single half-thought-out idea someone comes along and suggests?

[Ranger M]

Also if you want to be even more realistic then the current system is better.

Each turn in wesnoth is a third of a day, and in that time there is plenty of time in the space of a couple of hours to organise a retreat, even for a wounded unit, remember these are all well trained millitary units so they know how to 'tactically withdraw' even when seriously wounded.

[shevegen]

I believe a penalty can only be realized if a unit has a morale index. A simple count from 0 - 100, and it would affect game play.

But then again this could be against KISS, the core concept is very simple, and it could be that devs are reluctant to make it anymore complex.

[Dave]

If we are talking about 'realism', well, this would be pretty low down on the list of things that aren't realistic.

Fair enough. I realize there are priorities and encourage you stick to them. Care to share what is on the top of the list? Or is making Wesnoth more realistic just a silly idea?

I'm not going to get into the seemingly endless debate on whether it's "good" to be "realistic" or not. However I will say that the developers are fairly happy with the current "realism" of the game, and we are planning to stick to it.

If we wanted things to be more "realistic" we would have made them so from the beginning, rather than spending 30 months of development with "unrealistic" rules and then start making them realistic.

Wesnoth is definitely not a "wargame". It's a simple board-like game with many roleplaying characteristics. Wargames typically have rules involving things like stacking, and flanking, and line-of-sight, and morale, and weather, and supply lines, and long range artillery "bombardment", and yes, retreating. Wesnoth has none of these (a few of them it has in very simple incarnations), and this is very intentional.

This isn't a "bad" idea. It's just not an idea that the Wesnoth developers are likely to use, because we don't want to turn Wesnoth into a wargame. There's nothing wrong with wargames, they are just not Wesnoth, and not what we want Wesnoth to be. For a wargame, it's a perfectly fine idea though. And anyone is of course welcome to try to use any resources Wesnoth provides to make a GPLed wargame.

David

[guest]

Retreating units do get a penalty. They get the penalty of having their enemy have the last attack on the enemy's turn, when the enemy could choose conditions of the fight, especially which weapon to use.

Also, if they cannot get away fast enough, and don't have anyone to screen them off, they may pay the additional penalty of having their enemy able to follow them and once again attack, having the advantage of choosing conditions of engagement again.

David

Thank you, Dave, for settings things straight. This articulates why I felt that the suggestion would unnecessarily have complicated the game, even though in principle I thought it made sense. (As I said, I liked the idea, just not in Wesnoth.) The penalty already exists.

Thanks also for the firm statement that "Wesnoth is not a wargame", which puts all of the above in the right context.

[irrevenant]

Thanks also for the firm statement that "Wesnoth is not a wargame", which puts all of the above in the right context.

Agreed. I think a new acronym (WINAW) may just have been born...

[scott]

Thanks also for the firm statement that "Wesnoth is not a wargame", which puts all of the above in the right context.

Agreed. I think a new acronym (WINAW) may just have been born...

I'll add it to our list for WIN_

[Zhukov]

Just looking over this whole thread from start to finish, one thing occurs to me in regards to the original 'retreat penalty' idea proposed by enigmoo. (I have recently returned from a few weeks in the bush so I got the whole thread in one concentrated dose, rather then digesting it bit-by-bit.)

If this proposal were to be accepted (highy unlikely by the look of it), I think it would drastically go against the KISS concept. In Wesnoth, when engaging, you already must take into account: terrain/CTH, abilities, weapon specials, time-of-day/alignment and the damage Vs HP estimations that govern CTK. This is in addition to the overall situation. Isn't that quite enough to be going on with?
With this 'retreat penalty' idea you would also have to think on what units are mounted or on foot, what units have ranged or melee as their primary attack (near impossible to determine, as already pointed out), whether the retreating unit is fleeing in panic or conducting an orderly withdrawal, possible movement penalty and, finally, perhaps a host of new retreat-related abilities (easy-retreat and no-retreat were both examples mentioned). And I think I may have missed a few!

IMO the amount of factors that contribute to the viability and success chances of any attack are at present nicely balanced. More such considerations could perhaps add to the game if they were well implemented. But too many are needlessly complex. (This has been already argued over, so i wont go over it again.) As an afterthought, changes to long-standing game rules tend to raise balancing issues in existing campaigns.

The inclusion of 'retreat penalty' appears highly unlikely, going by the general responses that this thread has attracted. (In fact I think the idea has already been rejected). But if it were to be included it would need to be stripped down imeasurably.

I get the feeling that each time someone offered an argument against enigmoo's idea, enigmoo changed or adapted the idea, rather then counter or accept the argument.
Don't get me wrong, this is not a critisism. But the result seems to be something that is hardly recognisable from the original idea because of the layers of complexity (not necessary IMO) that were added as this argument developed.
______________
In regard to the relevance and desirability of realism in Wesnoth, an interesting debate about this took place about a month ago. It started with an idea proposal, became nearly philosphical and ended with a list of all things unrealistic in Wesnoth. If anyone is interested this (locked) thread can be found here: http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic. ... sc&start=0

(Was this the one you were talking about turin?)

[turin]

That's exactly what I was talking about.

Amusing thread, BTW. It has many similarities with this one, actually.

[Temuchin Khan]

Stay with me on this, it eventually becomes relevant to this thread!

That's exactly what I was talking about.

Amusing thread, BTW. It has many similarities with this one, actually.

Yeah. Although both Duke Guillermo and his critics overlooked some of the difficulties with his idea. He was proposing it in the name of greater realism, yet at the same time stipulating that ranged attacks could not pass through zones of control.

However, at an important point in the Battle of Hastings, William the Conqueror's archers shot their arrows over the heads of Harold's infantry, killing Harold's brothers. So, judging by one of history's most decisive battles, Duke Guillermo's idea was no more realistic than Wesnoth's current system. Shooting over the heads of front line troops was more difficult, but by no means impossible.

Also, even games like Warcraft, which have multiple-hex ranged attacks, do not in any sense have true ranged attacks. If each hex were roughly the size of the area of ground one standing soldier would occupy (i.e., 1 square foot), which would be the most realistic approach, then even the shortest ranged attack would have to be able to cross hundreds of hexes and ignore zones of control.

Either implement true ranged attacks, which would indeed be a very different game than Wesnoth, or leave things the way they are.

Hmmm.... A similar line of criticism could essentially apply to this thread:

A true retreat penalty would be utterly impossible to implement without accounting for morale -- it is morale that makes the difference between a chotic retreat, which would leave you open to enemy retaliation, and an orderly retreat, which would not. Wesnoth does not include morale, so a true retreat penalty would alter the game significantly, and enigmoo's idea is not actually more realistic than what we have, given that it also does not account for morale.

Either implement a true retreat penalty, which would be a very different game than Wesnoth, or leave things the way they are.

Wow, I just killed two ideas in one post.