I was playing around, once again, and I think I’ve thought of a new thing. I’ve searched around and there’s at least a moderate demand for this feature.
Basically what I am referring to is the ability to attach a “token” or a counter to another counter. This token would move with the original counter, but act independently from stacking. (if stacking is displayed left-right when hovered over, perhaps attachments could be done above/below its parent when hovered over).
A new counter/token property might be a good idea too - basically it performs a mathematical function to a DP of its parent while attached. For example: If I have a starship with an HP of 3/5, and I attach a certain “character” (a token) to the starship, the token conveys a plus 2 to max hp. The formula should be customizable, so that we can get divisions, multiplications, and addition, etc.
Forgive me if I’m being pretentious by asking this, but it could prove to be rather useful.
I mentioned before that I hoped to use this feature for things like “officers assigned to a certain vessel”. Having each and every officer as a counters layers would means dozens of layers - I don’t think it would work well, honestly.
Even if the token doesn’t convey its bonuses to its parent, I would be content with just attachable tokens.
“Dozens” of layers is nothing. Further if you used a DP you would only need 1 layer and control the layer display with the DP.
How you can say it wont work well before you even have attempted it is perplexing because it works very well.
I mentioned before that I hoped to use this feature for things like “officers assigned to a certain vessel”. Having each and every officer as a counters layers would means dozens of layers - I don’t think it would work well, honestly.
Even if the token doesn’t convey its bonuses to its parent, I would be content with just attachable tokens.
"Remember: there once was a time in the evolution of all things that work, when it did not." ~ Leo McGarry (John Spencer)
To be fair, I do think this depends on how many of these markers can be
present at at time. If you’re limited to one, then layers are fine. But
if there’s no limit (or even if the limit is 2!), then you start to get
a nasty combinatorial problem. (Suppose there are 10 tokens you can
place, and you can have any of the 2^10 = 1024 subsets of them present
at once…)
True but I think unlikely. Most games have narrowly defined rules particular to them and the number of permutations/combinations is ultimately finite and usually reasonable. Its just a matter of the designer accounting for each possibility in their design.
If a game allowed for placing of 10 unique tokens on one piece all at once and there are many such pieces around on the game board, and they were all subject to constantly changing state the result would resemble a frustrating exercise in micro management of counters/tokens than actually playing and enjoying a game - unless that is the game!
From: Joel Uckelman uckelman@nomic.net To: VASSAL Engine Forums Mailing List messages@forums.vassalengine.org Sent: Friday, April 3, 2009 12:20:00 PM Subject: Re: [Feature Requests]Re: Attachable “Tokens” with adding properties.
Thus spake Timothy Mccarron:
To be fair, I do think this depends on how many of these markers can be
present at at time. If you’re limited to one, then layers are fine. But
if there’s no limit (or even if the limit is 2!), then you start to get
a nasty combinatorial problem. (Suppose there are 10 tokens you can
place, and you can have any of the 2^10 = 1024 subsets of them present
at once…)
