Detachments

deadliver

Loud Mouth Amateur
Joined
Oct 18, 2003
Messages
1,508
Location
Anvilania
Okay so I was thinking about Pistoliers being detachment promotions earlier and decided to expand on a simple idea. Detachments are small units of support troops used in battle to complement a core unit. For example you can get Swordsman to help protect the flanks of unit unsuited for effective melee combat like spearman. Greatswordsman could also do the same thing. Detachments add minor abilities to larger units:

1.) Swordsmen- +10% attack strength
2.) Halberdiers- +10% defense strength
3.) Missile- defensive strike
4.) Outriders- Sentry 1

Detachments would allow players a little more tweaking of their unit and hopefully would be simply enough for the AI to use, especially because Detachments would be a free promo generated either by tech or building power.

I had a long list of detachments, but I figured I'd post the simpler version first. The longer version would use something similiar to Planetfall where special abilities (in this case detachments) would be completely separate promotions from regular ones. There is a limit of one or two depending on buildings and tech prereqs.
 
I dunno; what do these achieve that you don't get through shock/cover/formation/city attack type promotions?
 
detachments could allow for a more unit=army feel, but it will interfere with the special troops are limited restrictions.
Unless the number of troops carrying regiment-promotionX is tracked, limited to Y instances. Requires the ability to 'unload' the regiment promotion so that they can be reassigned to other core units/armies.

For skaven teams it would generate flavour.
weapons teams are not complete units. They might work as siege units, but in TT games they usually create firepower support for the troops doing the fighting.

...Does FF allow for promotions to add models to the unit?
 
I dunno; what do these achieve that you don't get through shock/cover/formation/city attack type promotions?

Because detachments would allow minor abilities from other unitclass types like defensive strikes for a melee unit with an archer detachment. Or a bonus vs. melee units of +10% if you had spearmen with a swordsman detachment. Simpler the better so the AI can understand what the different detachments would do. They would be outside the promotions normally allowed to a unit type, so they are not gained through xp. Only at unit creation.

Tie what detachment promotions you can get based on tech level and I think you have a decent way to keep later techs relevant and also make the armies a little more sophisticated as time goes on.

Sure there could be balance issues but if we kept the advantages small and limited the number of detachments per unit to a max of two i think it could be decent. Besides as a mentioned earlier it would appeal to wargamers to see that even though a unit idea didn't come to be, they'd be able to see background in the promotions.

It would be pretty easy to do. For flavors you'd have Chaos, Orky, Human. Elves and Dwarves armies that are very small compared to others and Undead wouldn't use these I don't think (though maybe the Sylvanians).
 
I remain skeptical. Part of the point of the combat system redesign was to try to encourage combined arms. Ranged units *should* be vulnerable to shock cavalry.

If you want to protect your archers from cavalry, then build a spearmen unit, don't add a spearman detachement (for free?!?) to your existing archers.

Similarly, melee *should* be vulnerable to horse archers, cavalry should be vulnerable to spears and pikes, etc.

Generalization makes unit variety less interesting, because you can do everything with 1 unit time. This is the single biggest problem with FFH IMO; all you really do is spam your best unit type for whichever tech line you follow (champions or rangers or whatever).

This is also part of the intended faction design; some offensive factions lack spearmen, they are supposed to be vulnerable to cavalry. Kurgan for eg has powerful offensive infantry, so you want to be able to whittle them down with cav before they get to your cities.

I see considerable complexity but little flavor advantage.
 
I don't. Detachment availability would be dictated along civ military flavor. Obviously dwarves wouldn't have cavalry waiting in the wings or Chaos Warriors using archer detachments.

At best a detachment promo would provide something like a +10% bonus against a certain unit, nothing like the unit bonuses given to spearman v. cavalry.

If getting them free still sticks in your craw, what about paying gold for them?

Remember you'd be limited to the number of detachments you could take anyhow (maybe max 2) and also you'd need a tech prereq and probably we could work in an existing building as the build prereq. Nothing over the top, just the ability to slightly customize your unit.

edit:as for complexity, I think that would be more on the xml side than the player side.
 
i guess it could work as "special freature for the empire civ".
so just the empire (to stay in the table top fluff) can build a building i.e. Detachment quaters, that allows to buy 2 detachments for each infantry unit for i.e. 25 gold each.
what detachments are avaiable could be seen like this:
when you can build archers cou can get the archer detachment, when you can build swordman you can build them as detachment...
(maybe stay at the core infantry unittypes as detachments... so no flaggelants/knights/greatswords as detachment?)

i guess empire players would be happy to see that detachments are avaiable for them. (even when its not very strong and just a little bonus)
 
If its really something you think is important, then whip up a design and we can discuss and critique it.

But I see very little flavor gain here.

I am strongly opposed to pay-gold-for-promotion mechanics, the AI does a bad job with them.

And with too many %strength bonuses vs x, core unit strength loses importance and the Rock/Paper/Scissors combat mechanics can get lost in the less.

Note that for very late-game advances, we already have a design; instead of future tech we have "advanced combat doctrines" promotions that make superior unit promotions available.
 
im also kinda against this idea. if we were to do it i would only use it for the Empire faction and only a few types. one way we could do it is to make the different detatchments buildable units with a spell that kills them to add them to a unit which gives a promotion that had the detachment bonus and another spell to sepparate the detachement. similiar to equipment in a sense, but equipment that can attack and defend when not attached.
 
Hey no harm no foul. I figured i'd run it by you guys, then trying running you over with it :)

I will file it away in my shiny bits box.
 
We could consider it for the Empire, but they are already incredibly flexible since they have access to nearly every unit in the game.
They have knights, they have all the archers, they have handgunners and cavalry, they have steamtank, they have good magic, they can research all the core techs.
The only things they *don't* get are dragons and horsearchers.
 
I also don't think that eventually adding a few minor unit customization promotions is intrinsically a bad idea, given the caveats that we limit to a few promos with minor effects, and that if the AI is currently not using these effectively we should hold off on them for now until any AI improvements in updated Fall Further DLLs.
 
Top Bottom