SF RC cap

[Anaris]

They should be.

But the change you are making will mean that they will not be any part of an army.

[Charles]

I personally really like the SF RCs in the realms I have.  I think all my characters lead SF units.  They are very effective and do not die as quickly.
In Melhed where SFs are likely used more than in most other realms, I think we have 7-8 RCs, the CS of the SF troops is 6485 of the total 15815, 41% of the CS.  It's 293 of 1067 men or 27% of the men.  That's from 6 units.  I can understand that this is more than you want in an army.

The RCs that I use are in my region, so I will likely just have to draft more and deal with the concequences.

I would say that restricting how many you can recruit based on your honour and prestige would accomplish what you want better than this would.  Drop the number of men you get per honour by half?  Maybe restrict it to cavaliers and heroes? Or create a new class, but that seems like alot more work than it would be worth, and you would likely want more reason for it than just to command SF units. 

Dropping it from the 100 for a lvl 3 is the right move though, I guess figuring out how much lower is the challenge.

My point is that I do not think this solves the problem you have highlighted.

[De-Legro]

Tom, is the change to the max recruitments meant to make it more difficult for those using SF to refit after battles? That is my understanding from this thread that you don't want SF units to just rock up to the capital and quickly replace the 40 men that died in the last battle.

[Tom]

Among other things, yes. Big SF units should be something you don't want to lose, because they are difficult to refit.

[De-Legro]

Among other things, yes. Big SF units should be something you don't want to lose, because they are difficult to refit.

Makes sense, oddly enough I've always found it easier to refit my SF unit then say refit my Arcaean infantry unit, but then I think I was the only one using the SF recruitment center, while half of Arcaea wants to recruit from the Remton Steel RC. This change would certainly make me think twice about the size of the SF unit I was going to recruit, so if others think the same smaller SF units might be the result.

[Dante Silverfire]

Is it possible though to maybe raise it above 25? I understand the change, but perhaps make it scale to 50 instead of 25, can still meet both the goals that you seek and allow players to still reasonable use them, if somewhat less than they currently do.

[Anaris]

Among other things, yes. Big SF units should be something you don't want to lose, because they are difficult to refit.

Then just retain the low max recruitment rate.  Then, people might be able to re-recruit their SF units once, but not serially. Especially if you make sure that drafting is also not a viable method of refilling a 100-man center (at least, not in under a month).

I still do not see any good reason to add special code to change the sizes of SF centers.  Especially when so many people already have SF centers bigger than that, we have never had any exceptions to the size of RCs, and you didn't even announce the change so people not on the forums have a clue about what to expect.

[JPierreD]

Then just retain the low max recruitment rate.  Then, people might be able to re-recruit their SF units once, but not serially. Especially if you make sure that drafting is also not a viable method of refilling a 100-man center (at least, not in under a month).

I still do not see any good reason to add special code to change the sizes of SF centers.  Especially when so many people already have SF centers bigger than that, we have never had any exceptions to the size of RCs, and you didn't even announce the change so people not on the forums have a clue about what to expect.

I was about to suggest that. Wouldn't it solve the matter, without killing SFs?
Though, to be honest, I have always disliked SFs and their lack of definition (people RP them as anything, mostly as better soldiers of the other types).

[De-Legro]

I was about to suggest that. Wouldn't it solve the matter, without killing SFs?
Though, to be honest, I have always disliked SFs and their lack of definition (people RP them as anything, mostly as better soldiers of the other types).

They mostly ARE better soldiers of the other types. They aren't something like Navy Seals We have always had freedom with how we RP our units. I could recruit men from the same RC as you, but RP they are pikemen wearing mail, while you decide they are axemen wearing brigandine for example.

[Peri]

Then just retain the low max recruitment rate.  Then, people might be able to re-recruit their SF units once, but not serially. Especially if you make sure that drafting is also not a viable method of refilling a 100-man center (at least, not in under a month).

I think the change Tom envisions would change a bit the way SF are currently employed. I more or less agree with Delvin's analysis. I have always shoot down enthusiasm about building a nice SF-centre because they are completely worthless in case of a serious war, where units are lost and refitted on a weekly basis.

The good side of SF's centres was on the other hand to potentially allow people (read: wealthy people) to recruit 2-3 very powerful units and perform specialised tasks, like a long-range expedition to support an ally (where the high cs/man of SF reduces the pain for long travels) or for instance take care of whatever monsters you may find and shred them to pieces with a single unit. The SFs were recruited very slowly, but the large size made sure that if those guys lost their men and went back to the capital some weeks later, they would more or less be sure to find some decent amount of soldiers ready to fill in the casualties.

The change Tom considers, reducing a lot the size but increasing the rate may allow realms to reliably field in every battle some tiny SF units as opposed to before, but those large specialised SF units taking care of something on their own would likely disappear.

Thing is, one can't prevent others from recruiting a certain type of soldiers. Whereas mixing different soldiers is usually not a problem, with SF it's not a very good idea - especially if they have something very peculiar such as range 5. If one has a large recruitment centre this issue is still manageable, as the sheer cost of those guys prevent people from emptying the centre randomly.

If on the other hand one has a 25 men max, the frustration raising from the random guy picking up 10 of them to test and forcing the SF-aficionado to stand still in the capital for a week to wait new recruits could easily lead to basically have no-one seriously consider using SF for more than a fun run some time.

[Charles]

Is there also a cap on cavalry?  If not I need to report a bug.  If so, 13 and 17 were not the limits I was expecting for what I believe are a level 1 and 2 RC.

[Tom]

Is there also a cap on cavalry?

Yes. Half of what normal RCs have.

[Anaris]

Yes. Half of what normal RCs have.

Tom, this goes too far.

If you want everyone to just recruit infantry, then come out and say so.

If you want to make it functionally impossible to recruit cavalry and special forces in any real numbers, then either make them worth it by significantly improving their stats, or just remove them entirely.

And for the love of Great Cthulhu, have the courage to announce that you're doing this kind of thing!

You made this change 3 months ago. In all that time, you never said anything to the players or to your own dev team.

I don't know how you expect us to be able to help you when you refuse to communicate with us.

[Tom]

Wasn't intentional.

In fact, in my mental model of the game, it has always been like that. Apparently, I never added it to the old code for whatever reason, and then added it to the new one without giving it much thought when I updated the code.

I do think that having 100 or 200 men of SF ready is... not fitting to the "special" part of SF. However, I agree the change was a surprise and was probably too strong.

So, everyone please accept my apologies, try to see what I'm seing, and let us discuss what level of size reduction would be a good balance. I do think that cavalry and SF should have reduced max numbers, but on second thought, halving it was way too much.

So, to start the discussion off, how about 80% for cavalry and 75% for SF? For my gut feeling, that's still a bit too much, but given that it used to be 100% all these years, it might be a good compromise.

[Penchant]

Sounds good and once we get used to the new percentages, an even lower percentage won't be as big a deal later on, if you still think they should be made smaller.