combat strength quick glance

[Forbes Family]

Actually after long thought, I'd like to see all of the info about my unit go away. Here's why...

You know your about to go into a big battle and have no clue what the outcome will be. You get on after reset and notice right away the status of your men and pretty much know if you won, lost or even survived the battle. I really hate this and find reading through the battle report to be kind of like reading a book when you know the ending. I'm to the point where I'll put a post-it over that spot on the monitor so I don't see it.

[Shizzle]

Actually after long thought, I'd like to see all of the info about my unit go away. Here's why...

You know your about to go into a big battle and have no clue what the outcome will be. You get on after reset and notice right away the status of your men and pretty much know if you won, lost or even survived the battle. I really hate this and find reading through the battle report to be kind of like reading a book when you know the ending. I'm to the point where I'll put a post-it over that spot on the monitor so I don't see it.

I'm going to buy post-its tomorow

[wraith]

-1 for it's impact on immersion.

In fact I would like to see all numeric unit stats replaced with adjectives.

Could be as simple as very bad, bad, average, good, very good but would prefer more descriptive descriptions..

Training: Raw, Unskilled, Competent, Skillful,  Elite,
Morale: Mutinous, Grumbling, Content, Happy,  Elated
Cohesion: Shambolic,  Disorganised, , Organised, Unified
Equipment: Derelict, Damaged, Worn, Used, Pristine
Captian: Novice, Inexperienced, Seasoned, Experienced, Veteran
CS: Weak, Average, Strong, Formiddable

Your unit page would say something like..

"The Dragon Slayers are a strong unit of competent, organised archers with derelict equipment and a seasoned captian named Boris."

CS would be replaced  with the CS adjective everywhere and the sentance description could be a mouseover on the army list, potentially a chance (per unit) of it appearing as a mouseover on on scout reports too. Region/army totals would be based on the per-man average compared to the 0-100 theoretical average.

As head-counts would still be shown and the relative strength of units it would still be possible to strategise but it would be  more vague, more immersive and more realistic.

[Perth]

-1 for it's impact on immersion.

In fact I would like to see all numeric unit stats replaced with adjectives.

Could be as simple as very bad, bad, average, good, very good but would prefer more descriptive descriptions..

Training: Raw, Unskilled, Competent, Skillful,  Elite,
Morale: Mutinous, Grumbling, Content, Happy,  Elated
Cohesion: Shambolic,  Disorganised, , Organised, Unified
Equipment: Derelict, Damaged, Worn, Used, Pristine
Captian: Novice, Inexperienced, Seasoned, Experienced, Veteran
CS: Weak, Average, Strong, Formiddable

Your unit page would say something like..

"The Dragon Slayers are a strong unit of competent, organised archers with derelict equipment and a seasoned captian named Boris."

CS would be replaced  with the CS adjective everywhere and the sentance description could be a mouseover on the army list, potentially a chance (per unit) of it appearing as a mouseover on on scout reports too. Region/army totals would be based on the per-man average compared to the 0-100 theoretical average.

As head-counts would still be shown and the relative strength of units it would still be possible to strategise but it would be  more vague, more immersive and more realistic.

This would be oh so nice. I don't even care about all the fancy mouseover stuff, but the basics of beginning to replace numbers and percentages with descriptors and more immersive and atmosphere fitting words would be great.

Because, honestly, combat (which so often pointed out to be the main focus and central tenant of this game) is still the LEAST SMA and LEAST atmosphere inducing part of the game. It is hard to even TALK about combat and strategy and even remotely sound SMA or natural.

[Kai]

Good thing only one island is SMA.

[MaleMaldives]

Yeah little disappointing thing is there no way to role play right before a battle starts. Like two armies meet and get into formation on the field. The game works where you go from traveling or waiting for an army to arrive which could be a misdirection to the outcome of the battle. You could do a roleplay of recapping before the battle starts, but that seems a bit silly since you know who won. The only way I could think to fix this is allow like a 10 minute time free when turns are changing and there is a message that gives very brief information on a battle about to happen and a box to right a roleplay. Though this would probable be weird and encourage people to be around when turn changing happens.

While writing this I thought of an idea to have an enemies list where you could put the select nobles to put on the list. The purposing being is when you go into battle you would have a greater chance of facing off against a noble you dislike in close combat or be more likely to fire on them.

[Gustav Kuriga]

Good thing only one island is SMA.

Amen to that. I play on the SMA island, but far too many people there feel that SMA is the only way to play.

[songqu88@gmail.com]

Ha, yay for anachronistic stew! And that's often a good thing. BM offers quite a bit of freedom, even if there are some restrictions on the gunpowder (It exists, but no guns or other firearms apparently), magic (You ain't a wizard/mage/sorcerer/whatever, but you could call yourself one and be a charlatan), and inhuman races (Ok, fine, Sirion has elves, but that's not very distracting. There are monsters, undead, and daimons, in some places, but you ain't one of them, and never will be. You can go call yourself one and be a lunatic though. I pity the poor fools who actually let you into their realm though.)

I mean, I kind of like how everywhere but Dwilight I can play a sort of Medievapunk style game. It adds to my imagination's enjoyment of the fictional world my imaginary characters inhabit. Immersion's good I guess, but we have to also respect the fact that the players are still human, and user interfaces are one of the most important aspects of every game. Successful videogames manage to allow audiovisual immersion while still allowing the user to understand how to maneuver in the world, with parts that can be managed with precision for obsessed or competitive players. Take Starcraft for example. The balance among races certainly factors into the popularity, but think about it. If we had something like Minerals: Pretty good, Gas: Kinda low, Supply: Nearly there, then guys like Flash wouldn't have the incredibly timing to know when to expand as much, due to the inherent uncertainty of an exact value being converted through the user interface into a non-exact value.

That is the same for BM stats, somewhat, I believe. Let's remember that at the heart of it all, BM is still a competitive game where we really are supposed to attempt any means for our realm to beat up some other realm. Maybe the goals have evolved after a while, but really, I think we are supposed to, you know...work as a team, aka the realm we chose, to win against other teams, kind of like how professional sports works.

So basically that means at the moment it's good that only the lord and the knights can view the exact stats of their regions. For something like the bottom bar having a lot of info (Woohoo, back to the topic.) I don't think there's anything really wrong with having some sort of expanding option. Some people like having fifty monitors to show every page with digital calculators open to optimize tax income and distribution to the armies and so on. There's nothing wrong with it, and in the end, it's that guy's time and effort that is being invested into a free online browser-based multiplayer strategy/roleplaying game.