Heroes and Villains Idea

[Thunderhog]

Was going through my 5th playthrough of the Grand Campaign when I had a thought. What if there were negative versions of heroes? My thought's led me to something akin to Metal Gear Solid 5 where you could sometimes get personnel with negative traits. It would be an optional addition that you would have to encounter randomly. Say a unit gets attacked and losses lots of health many times during a campaign. That unit would get a random negative modifier showing the unit is "cursed" with a high mortality rate giving certain debuffs. Or maybe a unit with "Fearsome Reputation" captures a bit too many towns giving you no prestige as they are pillaging instead of properly capturing. To get rid of these negative modifiers/villains you would have to spend prestige to "retrain" the unit or not use them for a battle so they could rest and refit. Just a random idea and would probably be a bit too mean for the average player though.

[Tassadar]

This could work, but not necessarily in such a way as it would be too random and as you say, punishing for most players resulting in a negative feedback loop. Perhaps we could have specials heroes granted as awards, that would combine positive and negative abilities? For example, you can get that special Rapid Fire 2x hero for a fighter unit, but he at the same time reduces the air defense by 5. Now it is up to the player to either combine him with other heroes to work around the negative, or find some other, perhaps niche use for him. This way you can have some of the more powerful unique heroes not always be obvious choices. Not saying this should always be the case, but why not challenge the player's planning skill from time to time?

[Thunderhog]

This could work, but not necessarily in such a way as it would be too random and as you say, punishing for most players resulting in a negative feedback loop. Perhaps we could have specials heroes granted as awards, that would combine positive and negative abilities? For example, you can get that special Rapid Fire 2x hero for a fighter unit, but he at the same time reduces the air defense by 5. Now it is up to the player to either combine him with other heroes to work around the negative, or find some other, perhaps niche use for him. This way you can have some of the more powerful unique heroes not always be obvious choices. Not saying this should always be the case, but why not challenge the player's planning skill from time to time?

Yeah, I like that idea too. Would be nice if heroes would come with debuffs as well just to make it a bit more interesting. Honestly, it could probably be done through modding the hero files.

[VirgilInTheSKY]

This could work, but not necessarily in such a way as it would be too random and as you say, punishing for most players resulting in a negative feedback loop. Perhaps we could have specials heroes granted as awards, that would combine positive and negative abilities? For example, you can get that special Rapid Fire 2x hero for a fighter unit, but he at the same time reduces the air defense by 5. Now it is up to the player to either combine him with other heroes to work around the negative, or find some other, perhaps niche use for him. This way you can have some of the more powerful unique heroes not always be obvious choices. Not saying this should always be the case, but why not challenge the player's planning skill from time to time?

Indeed, as long as it does not comletely cripple the effectiveness of a unit (i.e. removing all ammo or fuel count).

[DefiantXYX]

Not a big fan tbh. Could be really hard to balance this, I see people with hundreds of units in their core, if one gets a negative buff they could simply put it in reserve or recycle it.
I am only playing with the the units I can really use. Lets say if I have around 100 core slots in a DLC my core has <120 core slots, I only have some planes/art in reserve.

But I do like negative effects by limited ressources, like prestige, elite repairs, fuel, ammo. The traits you can pick are too extreme, I dont want to have everything limited, I want to decide which units gets fuel and which dont.
The modders are already doing some stuff like that, but once again its really hard to balance to fit any playstyle and skilllevel.