Unit bloat

scott · Post by **scott** » October 20th, 2004, 3:55 am

The core of wesnoth needs to be defined. You can't say a unit is for campaign use so it's ok because the Chocobone and Death Knight appear in HTTT. The mainline campaigns have a lot of the fringe units, but they are heroes or otherwise part of the story. In all cases, the campaign designers have penultimate say on adding these units either way, and they are under no obligation to add any new units.

Unofficial campaigns are (as far as I can tell) anything goes, so this can be safely excluded. If artists want to spend time developing units for this purpose, then more power to them.

That leaves unit upgrades and multiplayer. Unit upgrades are another matter because you can't say "no" without writing another config file. On the other hand Jetryl (for one) appears to clear his unit additions with higher ups. There's not much you can do here without just saying no to the upgrade because it will affect all campaigns and eras (right? I'm not sure).

I think some eras should be set aside as part of the core (classic, default, maybe age of heroes) and the rest are open for contribution. I'm not really clear on where the mermen and naga lines are going to fit in, but I assume it would be here somewhere. Again, someone in charge can make the call if they want to freeze an era, and then other eras would be free for unit development.

miyo · Post by **miyo** » October 20th, 2004, 8:34 am

IRC talking, part 2 - http://irclog.wesnoth.org/wesnoth-dev and the 20041020 log starting from 07:22

- Miyo

blackjack · Post by **blackjack** » October 20th, 2004, 4:15 pm

I propose the following questions:

1. Why must every race/faction be "full-featured"?
2. What's wrong with less units and greater differentiation?
3. Why do the units being added have so many abilities/weapon specials? Is it because that is the only way to differentiate them? If so, it might be a symptom of an underlying problem...

Elvish_Pillager · Post by **Elvish_Pillager** » October 20th, 2004, 7:00 pm

Shadowfury333 wrote:
Elvish Pillager wrote:[axe_units]
type=Drake Fighter,Drake Clasher,Drake Glider,Drake Burner,Saurian Skirmisher,Saurian Tribalist
Last I checked, this is the entire Drake faction. What do you have against Drakes?

They don't have any real purpose beyond 'existing', and they could easily be axed...

Fencer, no, Loyalists need a good defensive unit.

The Heavy Infantry perhaps?

Wose, definitely not, Rebels need a good melee unit,

The Elvish Fighter perhaps?

The rest, no, they are fine.

There's a problem with having many hundreds of 'fine' units... that's what this thread is about.

AT wrote:No current unit will be axed because people don't like them.

On the other hand, there should be a cool-down on new core units.

Why the prejudice against non-in-game units?

AT · Post by AT » October 20th, 2004, 8:15 pm

Elvish Pillager wrote: Why the prejudice against non-in-game units?

Because they're not in game yet

Post by **turin** » October 20th, 2004, 10:25 pm

AT wrote:
Elvish Pillager wrote: Why the prejudice against non-in-game units?
Because they're not in game yet

so bad in-game units stay in, while good not-in-game units get out? that makes no sense.

oh, and for the record...

Code: Select all

~/wesnoth/wesnoth/data/units$ grep level\=0 * | wc -l
9
~/wesnoth/wesnoth/data/units$ grep level\=1 * | wc -l
 65
~/wesnoth/wesnoth/data/units$ grep level\=2 * | wc -l
76
~/wesnoth/wesnoth/data/units$ grep level\=3 * | wc -l
57
~/wesnoth/wesnoth/data/units$ grep level\=4 * | wc -l
8

which, in my mind, raises the following questions:

why so many 2nd level units? (compared to 1st and 3rd)
why so few 3rds? (compared to 1st and 2nd)
why so many 4ths? (only a few months ago there were only 2).

Shadowfury333 · Post by **Shadowfury333** » October 20th, 2004, 10:38 pm

turin wrote:which, in my mind, raises the following questions:

why so many 2nd level units? (compared to 1st and 3rd)

Because many L1 units have multiple upgrades, but not many L2 units have multiple upgrades.

turin wrote:why so few 3rds? (compared to 1st and 2nd)

Because very few L2s have multiple upgrades, and some don't upgrade at all.

turin wrote:why so many 4ths? (only a few months ago there were only 2).

Public demand, it would seem. Frankly I am fine with L3 being the highest (it's hard enough to get there in the first place). besides, most of these 4ths are campaign only (Fire Dragon, Skeletal Dragon, Ancient Lich, and Yeti. Great mage, Sylph, and Grand Marshal are the only MP L4s)

Post by **turin** » October 20th, 2004, 10:47 pm

Shadowfury333 wrote:
turin wrote:which, in my mind, raises the following questions:

why so many 2nd level units? (compared to 1st and 3rd)
Because many L1 units have multiple upgrades, but not many L2 units have multiple upgrades.

turin wrote:why so few 3rds? (compared to 1st and 2nd)
Because very few L2s have multiple upgrades, and some don't upgrade at all.

my point is, why should there be more 2nd level units than 3rd level units? there is about a 4:3 ratio there. my point is not there should be less 2nds, its there should be more 3rds. (crypt guardian would be a good start.

Shadowfury333 wrote:
turin wrote:why so many 4ths? (only a few months ago there were only 2).
Public demand, it would seem. Frankly I am fine with L3 being the highest (it's hard enough to get there in the first place). besides, most of these 4ths are campaign only (Fire Dragon, Skeletal Dragon, Ancient Lich, and Yeti. Great mage, Sylph, and Grand Marshal are the only MP L4s)

Fire dragon is used once. Skeletal dragon is used once. I would be fine with taking those two out. (although skeletal dragon is used in my campaign, and it would mean redoing that scenario).

Shadowfury333 · Post by **Shadowfury333** » October 20th, 2004, 10:59 pm

turin wrote:
Shadowfury333 wrote: Because many L1 units have multiple upgrades, but not many L2 units have multiple upgrades.
Because very few L2s have multiple upgrades, and some don't upgrade at all.
my point is, why should there be more 2nd level units than 3rd level units? there is about a 4:3 ratio there. my point is not there should be less 2nds, its there should be more 3rds. (crypt guardian would be a good start.

I agree, I am just answering the question as best as I can. I think that there should be more multiple upgrades for L2s (but not too many, that would get confusing)

turin wrote:
Shadowfury333 wrote: Public demand, it would seem. Frankly I am fine with L3 being the highest (it's hard enough to get there in the first place). besides, most of these 4ths are campaign only (Fire Dragon, Skeletal Dragon, Ancient Lich, and Yeti. Great mage, Sylph, and Grand Marshal are the only MP L4s)
Fire dragon is used once. Skeletal dragon is used once. I would be fine with taking those two out. (although skeletal dragon is used in my campaign, and it would mean redoing that scenario).

go ahead, take them out. I play MP, usually with drakes, I won't notice.

BTW EP, I am somewhat biased towards Drakes, in case you were wondering.

Post by **Neoriceisgood** » October 21st, 2004, 10:45 am

Viva Le Drakes!

Perhaps another thing is units "ment" only for a campaign; Konrad, Deflator, Li'Sar, Haldric; units like these were only made for the purpose of the campaign; while units like fire dragon, skeletal dragon; etcetera were made in case scenario's needed some kind of "Boss" unit that can survive being swarmed by an army of level 3 heroes (I know this because I made them

)
So perhaps units not even supposed to appear anywhere else should only be included in the campaign they were ment for; and other units could come in a unit-pack or with the official version if they are used by multiple campaigns; also I think that units appearing in the official campaigns should stay in the official release; as I think adjusting these would just be unnecessary trouble.

miq · Post by **miq** » October 22nd, 2004, 9:49 pm

My opinion on the unit bloat is that we should just be careful about adding new units. As long as they are thought out well, implemented well, and add something new and interesting I am very ok with that.

The "unique" units like the yeti or other campaign units imho do not increase the complexity to learn the game because you just meet them on one or two maps and would look at the help/info anyways.

A good alternative to adding new level1 units is to produce some nice advances and branches to existing units and complete them. I find it quite fun to decides for e.g. mages or elfs in which direction they should develop.

My opinion on modpacks and the like is that most stuff that meets the high standards of "core" wesnoth should eventually make it into the game. A few megabytes do not hurt sooo much nowadays and I like it to be able to choose different campaigns/fractions to play with without needing to fetch additional packages all the time.

Modpacks/campaign server are great for experimenting with new stuff and trying things out. But having weeks of fun with *different* high quality campaigns/settings out-of-the-box adds quite some value to this already great game.

Just my thoughts...
bxe Miq

atoi · Post by **atoi** » October 22nd, 2004, 10:57 pm

I concur. I don't know why non-playable units ( Yeti, Skeletal Dragon ) should be considered "unit bloat." Only the playable ones would 'detract from knowing all the units' as that seems to be the main argument.

tigrezno · Post by **tigrezno** » October 23rd, 2004, 2:35 pm

Unit bloat fits my idea of a "black market war"

Just a huge list of units where you buy them and start figthing, this means infinite different teams.

Post by **turin** » October 25th, 2004, 10:12 pm

her, i just realized... why don't we scrap the mudcrawler/giant mudcrawler? it seems pointless. it is used in one place, in TROW, and the point seems to be to provide diversity in the enemy faction, but now that there are 2 first level saurians, they're pointless.

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