Automation

Feature Requests
1

I was reading some of the notes on an older version of the AH/L2 Breakout Normandy Modules…

The latest one is great, one of the older ones had this comment…
“Interdictions are automatically calculated and results applied.”

I realize most modules don’t have automation and in general, while it can often provide advantages, it has one stellar disadvantage… It doesn’t allow the players to explore rules mods & variants…

I ran into this problem with another game implementation, where because the game had serious balance issues, it was impossible for the players to modify the hard-coded rules and thus we stopped playing the game.

The lack of automation is often a big advantage that VASSAL has… However, there can be advantages to it also… The best of all possible worlds is to allow automation for the module designers, but allow players to configure it off as needed/desired.

Don’t know how automation is implemented, but it would be nice if any automation scripts could be configured by the player to disable those they don’t like/want…

I realize this is a possible corner case, but the developers may wish to consider the idea…

2

It’s a thing I’ve thought about before for V4.

3

I completely agree with you and is why I only ever implement ‘optional’ automation, I never, ever have game actions depend on some ‘magic’ automation step having been being performed beforehand. I generally only automate things that the players could do themselves, just slower (moving stuff, dealing stuff etc.) or tracking scores and totals, without making other actions dependent on those values.

I’ve seen modules that where absolute masterpieces of automation that where completely unplayable because if you did not do the list of ‘magic’ steps in the right order, the game locked up.

However, turning off ‘bad automation’ would be exceptionally difficult do in any sort of automatic fashion as the blocks placed by the module that depend on automation are woven into the fabric of the module. It’s impossible to tell from the outside what exact component is preventing you from clicking that end of turn button.

It’s really a module design philosophy and is in the hands of the designers.