Units loses that do not upset the player

[Chris]

Unit loses are good for realism and can enrich the combat system.
Unit loses are dreaded and make the defeated player upset.

Most games go one of two ways (please provide examples of those that do not, it might help), they either go for deadly full casuality combat where the loser is crushed or they go for no casuality combat where no units are lost.

Can we get only the good part of the unit loses system without the negative consequences? Not in absolute sense, it might still hurt the player to lose unit (or even it should?), but much less than in traditional games.

Warcraft III come to my mind instantly, there is progressive units upkeep cost. When I was playing it and was losing units I frequently smiled "OK, now I will pay less/nothing". I was even looking for ways of getting rid of some excessive units via suicide runs, just to lower the upkeep cost (ignore the strategic value of such tactic, talking purely about my impression during the game .

So, how could we diminish the players fear of unit loses?

* The limiting factor for military power are not units, but maximum units. No resources but industrial capabilities. The maintenance/upkeep capabilities. The size of your military is capped by industry. Like 1 factory can support 5 units, if you have more units the production gets slower. When more than 10 units per factory production is stopped.
* Mixed system could be capital ships (expensive and it hurts when these are destroyed) that have hangar bays for fighters. Fighters on the other hand are produced for free (in limited quantities, like 10 fighters per industry level daily, for more you need to pay). Players would give an order to the fleet to fight regardless of figher loses and retreat when capital ships are getting damaged.
* Obsolete units. Each day the technology level increases (regardless of player upgrades). The newly produced ships are always better than the old one. Once you get a month old fleet you don't really mind getting it destroyed (especially if there is upkeep cost, you might even want scrap the old units).

I'm also tempted by a kind of system where at the beginning you have undestructable units, but later you upgrade (on your own will) to those that are destructable. New players that are still scared of the game would stick to the "invincible" (but not most efficient) forces and get less trauma during the entry part of their gaming experience (nothing lessens your worry if in this game you won't become a farm more than having forces that do not die . Later, when you learn about the combat system you switch to more fragile forces (for more efficiency/some perks).
I mean, it would be cool to reverse the peaking order. Noobs are not pwned, hardcore super rich and powerful players are.

[Fizzadar]

I love the idea, so many RTS's similar to Warcraft 3 use it too, I'm surprised it hasn't been implemented.

I remember building billions of houses in Age of Empires just to build one more set of units, and often sending in weaker old units on suicide runs to allow me some space to grow.

[lolninja]

I like the idea you got going on Chris, I've been toying with a simular idea for a while in that you have a max population size and you need specific buildings to increase it from its starting value to the set max.

With the concept I've been working on, losing is kind of a good thing, I wanted to show that during desperate times people tend to work faster, so when your under attack you'd get a massive boost to your production and research. And the opposite would be true, when your doing really well your ability to research would decrease, giving the game a pretty cool cycle of a civilisation rising to power, dominating everyone, then failing and falling by the way side.

This cycle can be see in the real world when a country is getting beaten in a war, they tend to adapt and innovate, take world war 2 for example, during those dark days massive technological advances were made.

I just wonder if a PBBG that has relatively easy to hit caps could work, it would allow new players to get in the thick of the action pretty quick, and not be at to much of a disadvantage to higher level players, other than the obviously lower standard of technology, but over time this would balance out, as they are getting beat down on they are researching and unlocking new toys to defend them selfs with

[dbest]

Drawn a nice parallel to the real world there - lolninja. What would happen in a player attacks another one, would that increase his productivity? Imagine a situation where a stronger player keeps attacking weaker players, his production would increase and he might also make the weaker players weaker. (Did I make sense? )

@Chris - Upkeep costs seem to be one of the better ways out currently. There are houses / farms in AoE that would be similar to this concept.

[lolninja]

dbest, when a stronger player is attacking weaker players their ability to research and build new stuff would already be limited. Being in a state of war would turn it into a war of nutrition, which forces the cycle of rising to power and die out.

Bring this idea back on topic, I was planning on building it so when you finally get defeated, survivors from your civilisation escape and start rebuilding a new somewhere else, the idea being that while you were getting beat down on you'll level up quickly, so when you restart you can go on a rampage in noobington

[Chris]

More:
* you get experience for *your* lost units, like if the strongest survived Can lead to degenerated play through.

As for upkeep, there are 3 options, wonder which one would be best:
- upkeep is paid by money, which is used for everything, upkeep hinders everything
- production and upkeep are paid by "factory points", does not hinder the economy
- upkeep is paid by separate buildings (that have progressive cost to build), does not hinder economy nor production

that during desperate times people tend to work faster, so when your under attack you'd get a massive boost to your production and research.

You get a friend to attack you by 1 unit, day after day. You get the permanent boost, for an expense of 1 unit of your ally only.

Bring this idea back on topic, I was planning on building it so when you finally get defeated, survivors from your civilisation escape and start rebuilding a new somewhere else, the idea being that while you were getting beat down on you'll level up quickly, so when you restart you can go on a rampage in noobington

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/40692/small-world

[Nox]

that during desperate times people tend to work faster, so when your under attack you'd get a massive boost to your production and research.

You get a friend to attack you by 1 unit, day after day. You get the permanent boost, for an expense of 1 unit of your ally only.

Come on Chris, you can do better than this in the final system it wouldn't be surely implemented so plainly, you can limit it by amount of losses, possibly set it to at least average loses etc.
Pretty much anything unless fixed like this can of course be abused fully

[Marek]

The question is not just about abuse, is about what kind of incentives you are giving the player.

If the player only gets penalized for attacking others (because the victim gets more powerful) then players might just stick to defending and turtling instead of attacking others.

I think it's something you've talked about before Chris, when you said that you prefer to balance the incentives in your game towards more attacking rather than defending.

[Chris]

that during desperate times people tend to work faster, so when your under attack you'd get a massive boost to your production and research.

You get a friend to attack you by 1 unit, day after day. You get the permanent boost, for an expense of 1 unit of your ally only.

Come on Chris, you can do better than this in the final system it wouldn't be surely implemented so plainly, you can limit it by amount of losses, possibly set it to at least average loses etc.
Pretty much anything unless fixed like this can of course be abused fully

I would love to play with you some unbalanced game for money, you would surely be unable to abuse the loopholes as efficiently as I would :-P
Average loses can be overcomed by:
- build cheap militia, select race with regeneration abilities
- maintain small army (and rely on passive defences/fortifications), this way you can get even 100% army loses and rebuild the army each day.
- if the game forces you to maintain a big army most of the time, transfer most of the army to an ally before being attacked, after attack the ally send the army back (make sure to ask the other freind who attacked you to send you back your resources he stolen! Or just attack him, because you want him to have the bonus too, right?
If you are able to invent some unabusable "average loses" algorithm you deserve Nobel prize (at least you would get one if I were in charge of giving these ).

I think it's something you've talked about before Chris, when you said that you prefer to balance the incentives in your game towards more attacking rather than defending.

More like, in all games there should be some action, attacking, combat. If defence if supreme such things can not exist. Unless you make some special rules Like, most attacks fail because everyone have strong defence (traditional setup), but each day there is a tournament where only offensive units can participate, the winner gets a huge reward.
Of course this is cheating, because these are actually two completely different combat systems that just happen to use the same units and similar mechanics

Like, each player has a castle that produce resources. There are 2 types of units: Archers (1 attack, 9 defence) and Knights (attack 2, defence 1). Of course with such setup you will be able to defend your resources almost always. But there is also a tournament, each day all players attack total is compared. If you are one of the top 3 players with biggest attack you get 10 times the daily resource production of the biggest castle in the game! Now just defending resources (which is easy) is not a desired strategy. Actually, you can not win without big attack. But to have big attack you won't be able to protect your resources (lack of defence). Oh sweet dilemma that players strive for...
(obviously this would not work with more than a few players, just a theorethical example)

[Nox]

that during desperate times people tend to work faster, so when your under attack you'd get a massive boost to your production and research.

You get a friend to attack you by 1 unit, day after day. You get the permanent boost, for an expense of 1 unit of your ally only.

Come on Chris, you can do better than this in the final system it wouldn't be surely implemented so plainly, you can limit it by amount of losses, possibly set it to at least average loses etc.
Pretty much anything unless fixed like this can of course be abused fully

I would love to play with you some unbalanced game for money, you would surely be unable to abuse the loopholes as efficiently as I would :-P
Average loses can be overcomed by:
- build cheap militia, select race with regeneration abilities
- maintain small army (and rely on passive defences/fortifications), this way you can get even 100% army loses and rebuild the army each day.
- if the game forces you to maintain a big army most of the time, transfer most of the army to an ally before being attacked, after attack the ally send the army back (make sure to ask the other freind who attacked you to send you back your resources he stolen! Or just attack him, because you want him to have the bonus too, right?
If you are able to invent some unabusable "average loses" algorithm you deserve Nobel prize (at least you would get one if I were in charge of giving these ).

of course I recognize you're more experienced Not sure if it has a point to debate over practically non-existent design, but

Then maybe the % bonus could be recalculated through absolute losses related to absolute economic power (than it would be task to make it correctly).
Small army or sending it to ally would lead to only negligible bonus and, reasonable loses would have reasonable bonus.
Losses wouldn't of course be raw number of units but sum of their attribute (power-like) which will also relate to unit's cost

Right now I don't know how to abuse this but of course there might be a way, just thought

[Chris]

The more I think about it the more I like the model where at the beginning your units are undestructable and later you switch on your own free will to perishable units. This solves traditional problems like noobs being feeling miserable and individuals being ganged on (they could switch to undestructable fleet if they made too many mortal enemies ingame ).

How a combat system where undestructable and perishable units coexist could work?

Also, I'm still looking for comments which upkeep model is the best:

As for upkeep, there are 3 options, wonder which one would be best:
- upkeep is paid by money, which is used for everything, upkeep hinders everything
- production and upkeep are paid by "factory points", does not hinder the economy
- upkeep is paid by separate buildings (that have progressive cost to build), does not hinder economy nor production

[dsheroh]

* Obsolete units. Each day the technology level increases (regardless of player upgrades). The newly produced ships are always better than the old one. Once you get a month old fleet you don't really mind getting it destroyed (especially if there is upkeep cost, you might even want scrap the old units).

Personally, I really like this idea and have approached it in a number of my past design thoughts, but have never come up with a solution to the issue of inactive players.  If someone misses playing for a few days or even a couple months, you still want them to come back and get involved again, but this type of system leads to them saying "I'll have to start over again from nothing because all my ships are so hopelessly obsolete" and trying a new game instead of returning to the old one.

[Chris]

* Obsolete units. Each day the technology level increases (regardless of player upgrades). The newly produced ships are always better than the old one. Once you get a month old fleet you don't really mind getting it destroyed (especially if there is upkeep cost, you might even want scrap the old units).

Personally, I really like this idea and have approached it in a number of my past design thoughts, but have never come up with a solution to the issue of inactive players.  If someone misses playing for a few days or even a couple months, you still want them to come back and get involved again, but this type of system leads to them saying "I'll have to start over again from nothing because all my ships are so hopelessly obsolete" and trying a new game instead of returning to the old one.

1) Resets This changes everything. Players will wait quietly (playing casually and/or socializing in the meantime) till the new round starts. And then they will start fresh. Proven empirically

2) If action points exceed max value (= player is not active) additional points are converted into units upgrade.

3) This whole point is not valid, since if you are inactive you have no chance anyway due to "lost opportunity", you won't catch with top players no matter if there are obsolete units or not.

[dsheroh]

1) Resets This changes everything. Players will wait quietly (playing casually and/or socializing in the meantime) till the new round starts. And then they will start fresh. Proven empirically

2) If action points exceed max value (= player is not active) additional points are converted into units upgrade.

3) This whole point is not valid, since if you are inactive you have no chance anyway due to "lost opportunity", you won't catch with top players no matter if there are obsolete units or not.

You assume a specific model (resets, action points, hard competition to be a "top player") which not all games follow.  I find it more interesting to try to find ways to make the 'creeping obsolescence' model work in the more general case than to just say "it's not an issue for games which follow this particular model, therefore it's not an issue, period."  Particularly since your preferred model is one that I don't much like. 

1) Not having resets is pretty much the norm in my experience.  I've played several BBGs and poked my nose into even more of them and, offhand, I can't remember ever seeing one which had only round-based servers (and only one which offered both round-based and never-ending servers) aside from those that you wrote.  Even if round-based were the norm in BBGs, it would still be dwarfed by WoW alone, never mind the rest of the MMO market, and I've never so much as heard of a round-based MMORPG.  From this, I conclude that, in the broader context of persistent-world games, players want their achievements to persist indefinitely, not to be periodically wiped away as each round ends.  (This is likely also relevant to the original thread topic, as your original question addresses the displeasure of players at having their accomplishments wiped away when they lose a fight.)

2) You know I'm no fan of action points, but that could easily be adapted into "after a certain period of inactivity, player resources are automatically diverted into modernizing units".  One interesting variation on this could be to have limited resource storage and, rather than losing excess resources, having them applied to unit upgrades whether the player is active or not.  This would create a mild tension between having large resource storage capacity (to allow for larger expenditures) and smaller storage capacity (so that more resources will be diverted to unit upgrades), particularly if players are not allowed to actively upgrade units, but instead have to rely solely on resource overflow to do so.

3) There is a large psychological difference between standing still while others move on and being actively moved backwards.  This shows up constantly, in real life as well as in games.  Opportunity cost is never valued as highly on a gut level (and rarely on any other level) as more concrete costs.

Plus, again, you're assuming a specific game model and specific player motivations.  There are a lot of people out there playing non-round-based BBGs in which you can't win (because there's no ending) and they have no chance of catching up with "top players" (who have a large head start because they started playing sooner), yet they play anyhow.

The issue I see isn't "I've lost any chance of clawing my way to the top", it's "OMGWTF, you took away everything that I built up?!?  Screw this!"

[Chris]

The issue I see isn't "I've lost any chance of clawing my way to the top", it's "OMGWTF, you took away everything that I built up?!?  Screw this!"

Interesting... It's the first time I saw someone give meaningful and obvious reasons for everlasting model, made me pursue it further in a separate topic http://community.bbgamezone.net/index.php/topic,2922.0.html Please, drop there your thoughts about various models.

From this, I conclude that, in the broader context of persistent-world games, players want their achievements to persist indefinitely, not to be periodically wiped away as each round ends.  (This is likely also relevant to the original thread topic, as your original question addresses the displeasure of players at having their accomplishments wiped away when they lose a fight.)

The curious thing is that everlasting games tend to have deadly combat model, while games with rounds tend to use softer low casuality/no casuality combat. Intuitively it should be the other way round, right?

As for obsolete units that work in everlasting games and do not cause a feeling of "losing progress":
- you have upgrade technology button, you can click it once per day (could be done other way, just something that require action of a player and is not done automaticly, so it is not done while inactive).
- when you click it you get +1 to tech, additional +1 if you are below average tech in game, additional +2 if you are below current starting tech level.
- newly produced units are of that technology level.

[dsheroh]

The issue I see isn't "I've lost any chance of clawing my way to the top", it's "OMGWTF, you took away everything that I built up?!?  Screw this!"

Interesting... It's the first time I saw someone give meaningful and obvious reasons for everlasting model, made me pursue it further in a separate topic http://community.bbgamezone.net/index.php/topic,2922.0.html Please, drop there your thoughts about various models.

I'll see what else I can come up with to say in the other topic, but, just to be perfectly clear, I was talking here solely about a case in which an absent player's forces become completely worthless (due to obsolescence) while other players are not similarly affected (because they've been building more recently, so their units have kept up with the automatic tech inflation).  I wouldn't expect the same "OMGWTF" reaction to a game reset because that wipes out everyone's fleets, not just the single absent player's.

The curious thing is that everlasting games tend to have deadly combat model, while games with rounds tend to use softer low casuality/no casuality combat. Intuitively it should be the other way round, right?

Most of the everlasting games I've seen have pretty anemic death penalties - you get put in "jail" or "the hospital" for a few minutes or an hour and, once you get out, there's no further effect beyond possibly having been looted and lost a fraction of your cash on hand.  The games with cash looting generally seem to also include a bank where you can put your cash to keep it from being looted, which eliminates even that form of loss unless someone jumps you between when you get the cash and when you bank it.[1]

The only exception that comes to mind offhand is ogame, where destroyed ships are gone for good and (for larger fleets) it may take several days to rebuild after a lost fight.  Even there, though, I seem to recall that production facilities can't be destroyed and planets can't be lost, so the only thing you really lose is the time spent on waiting for construction to complete, which is basically passive - just queue everything up and come back when it's done.[2]

As for the deadly vs. low/no casualty tendencies, I'm going to use some terms I picked up from you and suggest that it's because round-based games seem to fit well with the eurogames mindset, which also tends to favor 'soft' conflict models.


[1] Which leads to a play style of "immediately click bank and deposit all cash after each action" that I happen to find horribly tedious and annoying.  Explore, bank, explore, bank, attack, bank, explore, bank, sell, bank...  Since there's no reason not to immediately bank everything, it doesn't create an interesting choice, just a way to get spanked if you forget to do it.

[2] Yeah, I know you need to check in and fleetsave your ships/resources as you're rebuilding, but that's something you need to do anyhow as a part of regular ogame play, not an additional requirement resulting from your loss.

[Chris]

I wonder about one way loses "only attacker receive combat casualities, defender is always safe". This would nullify most of disadvantages of casuality models (suicide attacks, ganging up, multiaccount attacks, etc). Also it could act as self balancer "you attack till your army is severly crippled then have to wait till it regenerates". Combined with newer units being always better than older ones (promoting "getting rid of old units") it could provide interesting dynamic...

[Jesterhead]

Actually I like the fact that players who attack slay all the opponent units (or you get slaughtered) all in once.
But you can add a "surrender" option: surrender when x% of your units are still alive (+ you have less units then the opponent)

When you surrender, those troops will be send back.
Now lies the decission in the hands of the player, not in yours

[Chris]

Now lies the decission in the hands of the player, not in yours

Rather in hands of my moderators, will they be able to eliminate multiaccounters fast enough to not let the game world fall into oblivion or not

[Jesterhead]

Rather in hands of my moderators, will they be able to eliminate multiaccounters fast enough to not let the game world fall into oblivion or not

Totally true, but I was talking about the troop loses part. Players can choose to surrender early, or late. Giving them the option to spare some troops.

It was just my idea, and I wanted to share it

[Chris]

Rather in hands of my moderators, will they be able to eliminate multiaccounters fast enough to not let the game world fall into oblivion or not

Totally true, but I was talking about the troop loses part. Players can choose to surrender early, or late. Giving them the option to spare some troops.

It was just my idea, and I wanted to share it

Yeah... but my mind is preoccupied with multiaccounts created for killing puroses only and ganging up so much I can't think about anything else

[Chris]

I think any cap on units won't work in casuality model. It would simply result in HPs like in RPG, player would replenish it after each battle... Can you think of a situation when it could work?

I think there could be 2 resources. One used for unit production and upkeep, the other for enlarging your empire (permanent upgrades, buildings, technologies). This would be good for 2 reasons, you would always progress even if you do bad military decisions and upkeep would go from the same pool that new units, which I think is critical to make upkeep be important (and I wish others would talk too so I won't have to reply to my own questions ).

Another mechanic to promote loses:
- Each military unit require "barrack" which would cost 200% of average unit cost. This way when you lose a unit you actually lost like 1/3 of the unit investment. A nice combo with units getting outdated.
- There could be recruits pool (sort of like another name for barracks above, I think...). To build a unit you need production and recruits. But recruits can be fully get back if you disband the unit. Also when the unit is destroyed some of them are back (more if medical facilities, maybe even full 100% if cloning technology present). Or they become wounded and you can spend production capability to get them back.

[BaRRaKID]

Just wanted to throw another idea into the bag.
After the battle ends, the units that where destroyed (either from the attacker or the defender) leave debris on the battle field that can be turned into resources that equal 75% of the real cost of the lost units. Those debris can only be returned 15minutes after the battle by the defender, and 30 minutes after by the attacker.
Instead of debris it can be injured soldiers, or something like that. Whatever applies to your game.