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Re: Consumption-per-fire?


>> This would certainly work, and somewhat extent the possibilities of game
>> design. However, I doubt these extra range tables would be of much use. The
>> reason why I put a range restriction of 1 on capture-by-fire (and I believe
>> I did that at some point) is that I thought that capture-at-a-distance was
>> inherently silly.
>
>Potential examples of capture at a distance include:
>(1) Spiderman throwing webs at criminals.
>(2) Starships firing tractor beams at other starships.
>(3) Swat teams throwing stun grenades into buildings.

This I would call incapacitating at a distance. Similar to damage. Capture
is completed only when the swat team has entered the building or the
starship has been boarded. Real capture at a distance might involve
teleportation or long-range psychic powers. BTW, teleportation is on my
post-7.5 list. I think it could be useful in many games.

>Ooops. For some reason, I had thought that capture-by-attack was not
>limited to adjacent cells (if someone was using an 'attack-range' > 1).

In theory, yes, but like many other tables attack-range is not used by any
games. This is something we should keep in mind before adding even more
unused tables. It is nice for the game designer to have many tables, but
too much freedom can be confusing.

>> I'm not sure about this. Many units that can fire are specialized at that
>> and not very good at melee combat. Forcing them to attack when out of ammo
>> would therefore be a bad idea.
>
>As a game designer, I generally do not even allow firing units to attack
>the same unit types that they can fire upon. If someone does allow an
>attack by a firing unit (which can happen easily enough by just ignoring
>'fire-hit-chance' and using 'hit-chance' instead), then he/she should
>suffer the consequences. 'fire-hit-chance' is there for a reason, and if
>an unit is not intended to attack, then its 'hit-chance' entries should
>be left at 0%. (Or, better still, its 'acp-to-attack' should be set to 0
>against all units.)

I also do this, mainly to force the AI to use fire instead of attacks when
possible. However, there is one case where a firing unit has to use melee
attack and that is if it is attacked, survives and then counterattacks.
Which is certainly a possible scenario. Think of Tennyson's Light Brigade
actually reaching the Russian guns with ensuing hand-to-hand combat in the
trenches.

Hans



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