Currently Online

Latest Posts

Topic: does the imperial blockhouse make any sense?

king_of_nowhere
Avatar
Topic Opener
Joined: 2014-09-15, 18:35
Posts: 1668
Ranking
One Elder of Players
Posted at: 2016-06-26, 14:27

the blockhouse is the smaller military building of the game. it only houses one soldier, and it can be upgraded to the stronger sentry, which houses two. That's justified by it being the cheapest building available to empire, isn't it?

No.

The blockhouse is actually more expensive than the sentry. See, the sentry costs one log, on plank and one stone, while the blockhouse two planks and one log. So, in the blockhouse there is a plank in place of a stone. The assumption here would probably be that the stone is a more valuable resource than the plank, since it is non-renewable. But that's totally not the case, because the empire needs tons of marble to make any advanced building. And for every marble you get, you also get one stone or two. So, in order to get enough marble, the empire will always have a large surplus of stone. With empire, I never lacked stones in any phase of the game, I never bothered to recover them from dismantling, I always treated them as a free resource.

So, the blockhouse, despite having no advantage whatsoever over the sentry, is more expensive.

But they are good for expanding, because you can recover a lot by dismantling them? Again, no. A blockhouse gives back only one plank, so you lose one log and one plank if you make and dismantle one. A sentry gives back a plank and one stone, so you only lose one log, making it the cheapest building to expand over safe ground.

There is absolutely no reason whatsoever to make a blockhouse instead of a sentry. The only times I made one, it was because of misclicks. So I propose that the blockhouse be reduced in price, or it be given some advantage over the sentry, or it is removed entirely.


Top Quote
kaputtnik
Avatar
Joined: 2013-02-18, 20:48
Posts: 2433
OS: Archlinux
Version: current master
Ranking
One Elder of Players
Location: Germany
Posted at: 2016-06-26, 14:44

The only places where i use the blockhouse is to extend the territory, f.e. to make some mountainous areas available. The reason not to use the sentry here is just that the blockhouse keeps only one soldier. If i build a sentry i have to reduce the amount of soldiers after it has been build to get one soldier back. It's just more work for me.

I agree that making it cheaper would be better.


Fight simulator for Widelands:
https://wide-fighter.netlify.app/

Top Quote
king_of_nowhere
Avatar
Topic Opener
Joined: 2014-09-15, 18:35
Posts: 1668
Ranking
One Elder of Players
Posted at: 2016-06-26, 16:48

kaputtnik wrote:

The only places where i use the blockhouse is to extend the territory, f.e. to make some mountainous areas available. The reason not to use the sentry here is just that the blockhouse keeps only one soldier. If i build a sentry i have to reduce the amount of soldiers after it has been build to get one soldier back. It's just more work for me.

I agree that making it cheaper would be better.

hey, that gives me an idea for another suggestion: give the player the ability to change the setting of a new building directly from the construction site. So when one starts making a building, he could click on a window like "building preview" and see how the finished building would be. From there he could choose some settings, and they would immediately be applied to the new building. So one could start a sentry and tell it it only must have one soldier inside, or he could start a taver and tell it to not use bread. Maybe one could even tell the building to upgrade immediately once it's finished, and then he can choose the settings of the upgraded building. Currently, when I want to do that, I just keep open the window of the constrution site so that I will notice immediately once it's done. On large maps, I've had the screen cluttered by a dozen such windows...

No idea how tough it would be to program, though. It probably would be complex, because it would need to add new game variables, namely all the information on what is to be done to the building once it's completed, which must be stored on a separate place, which must be created from scratch.


Top Quote
einstein13
Avatar
Joined: 2013-07-29, 00:01
Posts: 1118
Ranking
One Elder of Players
Location: Poland
Posted at: 2016-06-26, 21:16

I agree that the blockhouse should be cheaper then. In old settlers II, there was the cheapest military building, which costs only 2 planks (barracks?). This cost here is quite cheap in a late game, but in early game it will be middle-cost for Empire.


einstein13
calculations & maps packages: http://wuatek.no-ip.org/~rak/widelands/
backup website files: http://kartezjusz.ddns.net/upload/widelands/

Top Quote
DragonAtma
Avatar
Joined: 2014-09-14, 01:54
Posts: 351
Ranking
Tribe Member
Posted at: 2016-06-26, 23:54

I avoid the blockhouse for an entirely different pair of reasons:
(1) It's utterly useless offensively, as holding only one soldier means it can't send anyone out to attack.
(2) The land coverage is less than impressive; I normally go with towers.

The only reason I would even consider building one would be to fill in gaps that would never be anywhere near the frontlines.

Therefore, I support the idea of making them cheaper to build (or removing them entirely, considering how tempting a target they are when I see AI buildings protected by only a single blockhouse soldier).


Top Quote
GunChleoc
Avatar
Joined: 2013-10-07, 15:56
Posts: 3324
Ranking
One Elder of Players
Location: RenderedRect
Posted at: 2016-06-28, 22:28

How about reducing the cost to 1 log + 1 plank?

king_of_knowhere: Yes, that would take some programming, but it's an interesting idea. Would you create a wishlist bug for us?


Busy indexing nil values

Top Quote
king_of_nowhere
Avatar
Topic Opener
Joined: 2014-09-15, 18:35
Posts: 1668
Ranking
One Elder of Players
Posted at: 2016-06-28, 23:28

GunChleoc wrote:

How about reducing the cost to 1 log + 1 plank?

king_of_knowhere: Yes, that would take some programming, but it's an interesting idea. Would you create a wishlist bug for us?

Yeah, I was thinking something like that. the blockhouse may cost 1 log and one trunk, and refund one log upon dismantling, thus becoming the choice building for expansion over safe ground. The sentry may refund only 1 plank instead of one plank and one stone, thus becoming a bit more expensive to make and dismantle (though the difference would only be psycological, because as I've said, empire never runs low on stones).

I'd make the bug report, except for one problem: I have no idea how to call it. It may seem trivial, but the title of the bug report is the thing that will enable it to be searched. I'm trying to think, if some months down the line I have some vague recollection of that report, and I'm trying to search for it, what strings may I use? Call it silly, but I can't think of anything that will let me find it in the future. Suggestions accepted.


Top Quote
DragonAtma
Avatar
Joined: 2014-09-14, 01:54
Posts: 351
Ranking
Tribe Member
Posted at: 2016-06-28, 23:31

Lowering the price definitely helps.

I still recommend adjusting the AI to make it less likely to pick them, especially anywhere near enemies -- but that's probably not until the next release.


Top Quote
kaputtnik
Avatar
Joined: 2013-02-18, 20:48
Posts: 2433
OS: Archlinux
Version: current master
Ranking
One Elder of Players
Location: Germany
Posted at: 2016-06-29, 08:58

king_of_nowhere wrote:

I'd make the bug report, except for one problem: I have no idea how to call it. It may seem trivial, but the title of the bug report is the thing that will enable it to be searched. I'm trying to think, if some months down the line I have some vague recollection of that report, and I'm trying to search for it, what strings may I use? Call it silly, but I can't think of anything that will let me find it in the future. Suggestions accepted.

Finding older bugs could be difficult, yes face-grin.png

  • "Add buildings settings-window-button to construction-site-window"
  • "Possibility to set building options when building is under construction"

Fight simulator for Widelands:
https://wide-fighter.netlify.app/

Top Quote
king_of_nowhere
Avatar
Topic Opener
Joined: 2014-09-15, 18:35
Posts: 1668
Ranking
One Elder of Players
Posted at: 2016-06-29, 13:52

I made a report here.

https://bugs.launchpad.net/widelands/+bug/1597310

Maybe I should make another one for the blockhouse? But that can be done in one minute, so there's no reason to wait build 19 for it, as long as there's consensus.


Top Quote