Re: [Wesnoth-dev] The problem with Knalgans....

[Richard Kettering]

On Mar 1, 2005, at 2:49 AM, Susanna Björverud wrote:
> Hej allesammans,
>
> And old truth that does deserve to be repeated yet again is: NOT 
> EVERYTHING NEEDS TO BE MAINLINE. (Sorry for shouting)
>
> If the forum/wiki etc are considered unsatisfactory for storing image 
> sets for units, then I would much rather see an extension to the 
> campaign server (and I am not even sure it needs to be extended) to be 
> able to upload unit repositories, either with or without stats. For 
> the Dwarvish Runemaster line to be available to all campaign devs, I 
> guess all that is needed is an unplayable mini-campaign featuring only 
> these units to be uploaded to the campaign server, with a name clearly 
> specifying it is a unit rep. not a playable campaign. If I am wrong, 
> and this is not possible, tell me so.

This would be better suited to Dave's proposed Content Server, or to 
the forum, or to an FTP site people could upload this stuff to.
Using the campaign server for this purpose is a bit unwieldy, though 
possible.

> As for balancing _races_, which is what I take 'making Classic 
> balanced' means, I thought it had long been decided that this is not 
> something we intend to do, that factions should be balanced, but not 
> races, and that Classic era is more or less a cave-in for demands from 
> players wanting to play another kind of game than the one most of us 
> wants to play. If the existance of the classic era yet again brings 
> forth claims to make races balanced, I vote for the exclusion of the 
> Classic era from mainline Wesnoth. If there are enough players that 
> want to play by race, then they are most free to create such an era 
> themselves.

The point I am making is that the different Eras exist to facilitate 
the playing of games that only change the units in a faction.
Classic doesn't do any harm by being in mainline, nor does a pure 
racial era.  It's a tiny little text file, and it doesn't affect 
anything in the other eras.

I've tried to state this before, but people keep trying to wind this 
back into the "making all factions the same" argument.

I do not advocate making factions/races which each contain analogous 
units.
I do advocate factions which have an equal capability to beat any other 
faction in a multi or single player game, given a symmetrical 
distribution of/access to resources.

I think that a player should not be at a disadvantage simply because of 
which side he/she chose.
This is the design methodology we have followed for the Default era, 
and people have done a good job there.



In campaigns, it is often necessary, for storyline reasons, to pit a 
player against units of ONLY a certain race.  For example, in HttT, the 
player faces several enemy sides consisting of only trolls inside the 
cave.  It would be to our advantage to be able to do something other 
than just giving them a strong economic advantage, or at least I think 
so.

Different units, which do not currently exist, would facilitate this.  
They do not need to be used in default.  In fact, they would insulate 
default from changes by allowing races in another era to balance 
themselves by including a unit that does not otherwise exist.