Base capture causes tipping point

Gameplay
#1

Most of the time when the owned base count becomes unequal the game is essentially over.

I don’t remember this happening in WeeWar. Was the income vs unit cost much different? I cant remember.

The effect is more pronounced the less bases are on the map. I’ve created “North Africa” to see if having more bases solves this problem. The problem with more bases is you will have more units and you risk devolving into WW1. Personally I like the unit sparse maneuver play.

It may be that lowering the base income to 75c may help.

Another idea is to separate income from production. Currently we have bases that generate income and are where we build new units. If you increase the bases on a map, new units are then popping up all over the place.

If there were 2 hex types instead, maps would be more interesting and strategic. For example you could have bases that produce units only. Mines? or cities? would produce income. You could then have objectives on the front lines that are either income OR production. The income hexes could have a 50c income. You could then have “High value objectives” (2 income hexes side by side) This is not possible now as you would also have 2 production hexes that would be too much of an advantage. There could be many income hexes and fewer production hexes. This should cause battles to ebb and flow more and delay the tipping point.

1 Like
#2

First of all, let me explain what I believe makes this different from Weewar.

  1. In Hexfray, it takes 3 turns to capture a base. In WW, it used to be two turns. This makes it very difficult to re-capture a base unless you have many more units compared to your opponent.
  2. The unit turnover is slower as the damage returned upon defending is strictly set to 1. This causes players to attack with all units every round, without much fear of losing them. If units returned damage proportionally (even capturing units), it would be easier to defend your recapture.
  3. In HF, the soldier unit is quite cheap. This means that every turn, you can build a soldier on every base and still save some credits. Therefore you can’t really end up not being able to afford a new unit to build on an endangered base, making recapture more difficult.¨
  4. In WW, there was a possibility to set the amount of credits recieved every turn from each base. This allowed mapmakers to properly adjust the income for the indended playstyle, allowing small technical maps as well as large scale multi-army battles. This is planned as well in HF.

From my point of view, the idea of more several base types is good. It would allow for more complex gameplay. My idea is to introduce more ways to win a game - i.e. you win a game when you capture certain hextile. The conditions of victory could be set in advance or random. Some other options like “capture the flag” or something like this come in mind.

It would also be beneficial in case PvE or bots are introduced.

Another idea - leveling up bases. It would be possible to improve/upgrade your base in order to increase the income. The upgrade cost could scale exponentionally (i.e. basic base with income of 50 credits, you could improve it for 200 credits to 100/turn, 500 credits to 150/turn and 1000 credits to 200/turn). You would have to choose whether to produce units or save credits for the upgrade.

Another idea - bases could be used to heal units. It would be possible to heal units on every base, but there could be specialized bases which would heal units much faster.

All these ideas would slightly shift the focus from units and their fighting to map control, larger scale tactics and various other objectives.

1 Like
#3

Really like all those ideas.
A lot of work to implement them all!

#4

set the amount of credits recieved every turn from each base

The credit received from bases is now configurable for each map in the map editor.

#5

BREAKING NEWS!

First game where a player has been down 2 bases and was able to turn the tables.
This was on the Divided Island map where base income is only 30c.