So, oddly specific question here, but it relates to something I’m planning for my own project!
So, say right in midgame theres a very short army split, only about 3 or 4 chapters, would you rather split your army in half, or rather have a set handful of units on the other side with mostly temporary units filling out the roster on the map for the other army?
Generally just asking to see which most people would prefer, since I dont wanna waste my time having to completely redo something if the other way is better-
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Probably in half- presuming we can choose who goes who. I could see some issues cropping up if we can’t…
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I don’t like the idea of temporary units, since the player loses any investment they put in them. If you go with the second option, I’d have them permanently join the main army at some point.
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I would say that you should give new units for your new temporary army, then add them to the old army when the two join back together.
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Splitting down the middle is likely the best approach, though it comes with its own kinks to iron out.
As long as you can get it to work, it’ll be a much better option than using units you’ll never see again. If you’re going that way, though, I recommend making the temporary units literal generics so the player isn’t incentivized to train them.
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Prefacing this by admitting I am biased in favor of multiple factions in chapters, but even if I weren’t I still wouldn’t like the idea of commanding both temporary and non-temporary units in the same chapter as part of the same group. If all blue units in the chapter are temporary, I’d be fine with it as long as this chapter has some impact later on in the game. I’d be fine with it if the blue units are split into groups which are entirely one or the other. But mixing them up ends up in an uncomfortable place that makes me prefer that the temporary ones were to be made green units to begin with, and I even made some patches that make NPCs closer-but-not-equal-to playable units if you want to check them out.
To play a bit of the devil’s advocate here though, you might want to have setpieces that shock/impress the player in your work, and some argue that inevitable loss of investment is one way to achieve that. “So you know how you were incentivised to give a lot of investment to Vic? Yeah now I’m going to kill them off in a cutscene to just hammer in the point that Trey is a piece of trash backstabber and make you REALLY hate him.”. (Any similarities between the example characters’ names in existing works or reality is purely coincidental)
The nicest way I can put it is that this is ambitious, and personally I’d build attachment to Vic through story instead of gameplay. Gameplay-story integration is usually good, but it becomes more arguable when the desired effect on the player is negative. Perhaps make it a New Game option instead, to satisfy both kinds of players. But this doesn’t seem to be what you were intending to do, so I may have digressed.
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