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Topic: Weapon reuse?

GrandpaKim
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Joined: 2015-01-04, 21:51
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Posted at: 2015-01-07, 03:56

An old, but interesting thread that answered my own question precisely. From a "game" point of view I really don't care how it works. From a "reality" point of view, I would like to see some degree of recycling.

One comment struck me though:

SirVer wrote:

This game is about economy, warfare is just an afterthought.

Absolutely absurd! The whole point of the economy is to support a military. Why do you create a Fisher's Hut? To feed the troops and miners. The iron miners send their product to be smelted for use primarily in weapons factories and you know where their product goes. You can draw this line from anywhere and it will lead directly or circuitously to the military. Try playing the game using the bare minimum of military, just enough to expand your borders, one soldier per building and see how far you get. No, I disagree, this game is ALL about the military.


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teppo

Joined: 2012-01-30, 09:42
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Posted at: 2015-01-07, 05:04

You can draw this line from anywhere and it will lead directly or circuitously to the military.

Military is the way Widelands measures the efficiency of your economy.

I do not think that there would be vigorous opposition against weapon recycle. Doing that (recycling) would just change the game balance, as eventually only highest-grade weapons (and helmets/tabards/shields would need to be made in a well-working economy. The core developers do not appear to see a large-enough problem to go through all the rebalancing. Widelands is GPLv2 licensed, you may modify it yourself!


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einstein13
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Joined: 2013-07-29, 00:01
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Posted at: 2015-01-07, 17:42

I agree with teppo:

Your military is based on your economy, not in the other way. Only a few maps can support more military than economy. Play some large maps and then discuss if your economy had or had not any difference?


einstein13
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Tibor

Joined: 2009-03-23, 23:24
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Posted at: 2015-01-07, 21:38

If I implemented this I would restrict lifetime of such weapon (like 2 hours of gameplay) - also in real life the things do not last forever, and increase the production costs. So at the end the difference would be minimal... face-smile.png


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DragonAtma
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Joined: 2014-09-14, 01:54
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Posted at: 2015-01-07, 23:34

GrandpaKim wrote:

An old, but interesting thread that answered my own question precisely. From a "game" point of view I really don't care how it works. From a "reality" point of view, I would like to see some degree of recycling.

One comment struck me though:

SirVer wrote:

This game is about economy, warfare is just an afterthought.

Absolutely absurd! The whole point of the economy is to support a military. Why do you create a Fisher's Hut? To feed the troops and miners. The iron miners send their product to be smelted for use primarily in weapons factories and you know where their product goes. You can draw this line from anywhere and it will lead directly or circuitously to the military. Try playing the game using the bare minimum of military, just enough to expand your borders, one soldier per building and see how far you get. No, I disagree, this game is ALL about the military.

Is building a military a key part? Yes. But at the same time, most of the buildings are economy buildings. In Starcraft, for example, it's entirely reasonable to have your military be 20% gatherers and 80% military units. In Widelands, however, the vast majority of your people will be carriers, woodcutters, farmers, bakers, while you'd be lucky to have even 20% of your people be soldiers. So although military is the goal in both games, the path to it is entirely different.


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SirVer

Joined: 2009-02-19, 15:18
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Location: Germany - Munich
Posted at: 2015-01-08, 20:54

SirVer wrote:

This game is about economy, warfare is just an afterthought.

Absolutely absurd! The whole point of the economy is to support a military. Why do you create a Fisher's Hut? To feed the troops and miners. The iron miners send their product to be smelted for use primarily in weapons factories and you know where their product goes. You can draw this line from anywhere and it will lead directly or circuitously to the military. Try playing the game using the bare minimum of military, just enough to expand your borders, one soldier per building and see how far you get. No, I disagree, this game is ALL about the military.

This is not absurd. "Widelands is a game about building up, not burning down". That is the way I always saw it - since day one - and what I want and wanted it to be. The problem was that interaction between players was hard to build into the game without conflict. Conflict is always the element in a game that makes it interesting - that invites competition. Conflict is also the plot element that makes a story interesting - it is very hard to design a completely violence free form of game. Super mario jumps on koopas and even Kirby has an evil enemy.

Your post made me super sad - I do not want to be the inventor of a war game. I opened bug https://bugs.launchpad.net/widelands/+bug/1408775 to promote the collectors win condition more strongly. It is the way Widelands should be played by default - balance your military need with your true goal of hoarding wares that give the most points. You'll need this wares though to strengthen your military so that no other player can overrun you.


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Dhy-Sle-an-nder
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Joined: 2015-01-06, 00:49
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Posted at: 2015-01-08, 21:28

This game is more about economy i can say, even though most of the things are used to help soldiers, you can't forget that to make these things you need the basic economy, it's alike supplies on a battle, the diference is that (what i think it is) it is about expansion and economy, (i might be new on the site but that doesn't mean anything) like if someone wants to start the Expansion of his own base he needs supplies and these supplies aren't obtained from battle to battle, but for your own strong economy, you said on a part that this game is about war, but could you tell me what makes you think that because i might think in a diferent way but i have my explanation.

Although you may be right about war, the game still focus on the economy, and no i'm not saying this to make anyone think this way, but to they think which way to agree and disagree, about what i was saying before.

Like if you just focus on the war, you might not be able to move, that because you didn't focus on the economy and the basics, you gain space by defeating enemies in battle right, but this space is for a high grow of economy, if you just put there things about the battle, they might be able to cut your supplies and you might not be able to win the battle in the exact moment, thats where the economy gets in. If you did what i put up there you are not capable of controling your own captured site, but if you build an basic economy on that side maybe your loss isn't that high, think with me.

if you prepare an great economy but you don't think of the military forces you will easily die, but if you put it in the half-term (middle-term i don't know) your economy and your military forces the same, it will be an easy way to balance the battle of your own economy system, i think the only absurd thing is that you two are saying things complete diferent even though the answer is that both are not just important but critical to the term, so i absolutely think that YOU TWO are wrong, or maybe YOU TWO are right, it doesn't matter what and how you think you can't negate that both need each other.

And here i end my writing, if i need to say more i will if i need.

Edited: 2015-01-08, 21:32

You Might Not Have A Talent, But With Train You Can Overcome It.

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Dhy-Sle-an-nder
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Joined: 2015-01-06, 00:49
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Location: Brasil,Rio Grande Do Sul
Posted at: 2015-01-08, 21:58

oh yeah and if you had the idea how it works, then how about you give us the name of it (the name of the building).


You Might Not Have A Talent, But With Train You Can Overcome It.

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QCS

Joined: 2009-12-29, 22:47
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Posted at: 2015-09-15, 18:45

Ok, I know this is old, but since I got the same feeling, I tried to tinker around a bit. I also opened a Wishlist item at https://bugs.launchpad.net/widelands/+bug/1493221

What I found so far...
First, from a purely technical point of view, this is totally doable. May need some new graphics if you want to represent the scrap metal as own item (and not simply as iron ore), but that's about it.

Also, playing it is absolutely straightforward and feels good.

But, and that's a real downside, I guess it will be difficult to do from two perspectives.

1st problem perspective: Balancing. It will be kind of easy to balance Empire and Barbarians since they have about the same iron waste in their war economy. But the Atlanteans do use much less iron for their war economy, so scrap metal would boost Atlanteans too far (too much iron available early) while making them suffer later because iron is not so important. And a recycling for spideryarn? Mhh...

2nd problem perspective: Prices. Reusing iron makes it available where map makers may have constrained it for a reason. To keep it in the ratio, the weapons and armor must be significantly more expensive in terms of iron, while making it less expensive in terms of coal. The coal could be balanced off, but the iron... I don't have an idea at the moment.


CMake is evil.

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Ex-Member
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Joined: 2014-09-12, 10:53
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Posted at: 2017-11-29, 11:17

I am reviving this old thread as the "soon to be released" (TM) Frisians tribe has a recycling centre, it has ben tested a lot and seems to work well. It may be there is a slight advantage over other tribes and therefore the other tribes will need to use recycling as a feature to maintain ballance.

I have a working Atlantian economy with recycling, it probably needs balancing a bit better. I am thinking of creating a branch with recycling for each tribe included for testing purposes. This would give a tested branch to merge around the time that Frisians are added.


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