Ok, after some backroom discussions I'm a little less furious now. So let me try another approach here.
The equipment system, as I presented it, should not be a huge problem for players. The equipments so naturally self deliver to units that while a player will take a while to learn the various benefits and differences, it will be pretty obvious what is better for a unit in general. We aren't giving a LOT of choice, but at some junctures a bit of choice will be given. My point is, it won't be a massive headache for the player. If they could figure out all equipment promos overnight it wouldn't be any fun for them anyhow.
Yes, the AI does need some further refining, the ability to evaluate not just the current unit selections but also tacking on any automatic promos the unit will come out with that are available in the city its being built. It needs to make buildings that provide the best possible equipments an absolute priority in its military production center(s). It needs to move its units into the cities now and then to capture updates, and it needs to be given a way to select some of one, some of another when there are multiple options available along the same equipment line. So yeah, the ai isn't completely ready for equipments yet anyhow. But it will be.
And in the meantime, an oversimplified approach is not going to help to change the fact that there's still some coding to be done, nor is it going to create a sense of quality in our mod.
Stripping the equipment down like this removes our ability to:
- Show complex interactions between weapon and armor styles - a big part of what was intended to deepen the unit design mechanism. So far this has always been roughly and crudely 'estimated' by mere combat modifiers vs combat class types. I wanted us to zoom in on this like we zoom in on the rest of the mod elements.
- Work with numerous tags in the combat mod designed to promote a sense of reality in the equipments being employed (for example, heavier armor and weapons tiring out a unit over the length of a combat.)
- Place numerous features of a unit on the weapon itself, subject to change on selection of a new weapon. THIS is a big one because it means that by simplifying the equipment side, you'll be planning to make those considerations a part of the unit design itself and if we do that and I do a modmod to turn that development around, it means that modmod would need to override and carry definitions for nearly every unit we have!
- Design Culturally specific equipments. Too much generality here and we eliminate our ability to display a targeted culturally unique development. This is what National units are for? Sure, to an extent, but there's a lot of room for this kind of thinking here too that doesn't suggest we should try to make sure every culture is made equal.
- Power Attacks? Although they haven't been fully expressed to everyone on the forum, their full intention is to reflect a nuance in the way some weapons are used over others, requiring a far greater level of detail than this proposition so that some few units can gain such benefits, so that those who do can have those benefits vary by the nuances of the weapons they wield, and so that they can be properly defined rather than shoved onto the design of the unit itself.
Look... there may be more problems I can't think of off the top of my head now but I think Hydro made the perfect argument: The entire Combat Mod was designed to help unit development to take on the same depth and detail that is expressed elsewhere in this mod like in buildings, techs, civics and properties processes.
Its a system that allows us to give a full disclosure on specific weapons, armors, tools and mounts that mankind has utilized to get us where we are today, a way for us to zoom in on historical details, show the step by step evolution of these things, perhaps even to teach a little by expressing some of that history in civopedia texts.
Pounding it down into something more simple is in short destroying the vision entirely, not just on equipments, but on the whole system the combat mod is giving us to work with. And if I take a little offense to that its simply because I've sacrificed much of this year to make it possible for the vision Hydro and I have long shared to become a reality.
I'm ready to sacrifice the rest of it, and much of next year too, to make it come around to fully manifest (correctly). So a quick and easy throw together approach that avoids challenging the player to work with a new set of complex combat variables simply flies in the face of everything this development is about and is highly contrary to the manner in which the rest of the mod has been designed as well.
Since combat is the heart of civ, it'd be a shame to see that end given little more than a paint job while the rest of the structure gets an entire renovation.
I thought the point of having the new system was so we could have a much more detailed system that takes in account of the full range of diversity in different types equipment.
Something that just gets in the way of the game.
