Slitherine

Is a Swap Move desirable to have in game where unit A and unit B can swap places?

I would have to say yes, b/c it would be easier to change tactics quickly and efficently.
You could also counter attacks with greater ease.

~coldknight

It's not vital, but would avoid some ridiculous situations ...

What is a swap move????


-

A swap move allows you to change 2 adjacent unots with each otehr.

As it stands at het moment you need a 3rd unit - you move unit 1 out of the line, you move unit 2 to where unit 1 used to be, then you move unit 3 into the gap left by unit 2.

A swap move is pretty dodgy - doing that with enemy adjacent would be a dangerous manouvre - the current situation requires you to have reserves, which is more realisitc and desireable IMO.

I think the ability to move before or after attacks is much more important.

Definitely "yes", especially as it's a strategic and not an operational game.

With an operational game you can perhaps make the case that units couldn't move past each other due to space restrictions. At the strategic level without a swap feature you end up with anomolies such as the one that S.O. mentions. I.e. if you have a position guarded by a unit with a reserve behind it then without a swap option you often have to juggle to get that reserve unit in place. In fact, not having a swap feature makes the situation that he doesn't approve of (i.e. units moving along the line) more likely as sometimes it's the only way you can juggle your reserves into place.

I'm not sure what the scale is, but it's probably such that you could argue that there's enough depth to a tile that you can manoeuvre within it and shift along the line. There's usually a penalty for doing so, i.e. movement cost penalty due to ZoC of enemy units.

I know that you think it is needed, but try out the beta maybe when there is a new round, because I think if you see it you will find it just is not necessary - I just can't think of any time it was appropriate.

Fair enough. I can't see how that could be the case as I'm playing another very similar game as we speak and have just bumped into it again, but I haven't played the beta.

Is there a particular game reason why you think that it shouldn't be included? Or is it just that you've yet to find a need for it? Are defensive lines broken quickly, meaning that there's little need to shuffle units on/off the line?

At best in most cases you have a single line, and in addition the weak units can still be pulled from the line and the new units brought in, and the overall feel that I have is that a swap will affect the dynamic, which as of now is working well, so I feel it will not add anything and in fact be a detriment.

I believe one reason is we are working with a larger map and lower unit density.

Thanks for the reply. I defer to your feelings on the not adding anything front (which, as you've played the beta, is a good enough reason to not spend development time doing it).

Out of interest, why might it be detrimental?

I was always annoyed in Strategic Command about how cumbersome it was to replace units in the front line with other units. You had to pay close attention to the sequence of which units to move and many a time you could not get units to where you wanted because of the no stacking rule. As an alternative to swapping, why not allow the movement of a unit or units in to a hex that is already occupied as long as the overstacking is corrected before the completion of of your turn? Hexes that still have multiple units should be highlighted when a player clicks that his movement phase is completed. At that point the player has to move units out of hexes to eliminate stacking in any hexes. If he is not able to do this then he should be allowed to choose which units in a stacked hex are eliminated . All the aforementioned assumes of course that units are all moving within their assigned movement allowances. Using this alternative, the no stacking design intent will be achieved, the movement of units will be less cumbersome, and at the same time the movement of units will be much more realistic.

I just played a turn in SC2 where the swap move would have been desirable. In the tiles adjacent to Moscow I completed a fortification and wanted to move my engineers to the next tile, a forest tile, where another unit resided.

I had to move that unit out to move my engineers in and start the fortification feature leaving the previously fortified tile unoccupied. Luckily I had units ready to deploy from the build queue and they went right into the fortified zone.

So a little proactive planning makes the swap move obsolete. Now if I hadn't been adjacent to a city tile, activating the deployment option from the queue, then I would have needed to preposition a unit to take advantage of the newly created fortification and with the possibility of mud looming it would have to be adjacent to that tile I wanted occupied.

So I planned accordingly, no swap move necessary. Yes its a nice feature, but my advice is to concentrate on more relevant issues.

bromley wrote:Definitely "yes", especially as it's a strategic and not an operational game.

With an operational game you can perhaps make the case that units couldn't move past each other due to space restrictions. At the strategic level without a swap feature you end up with anomolies such as the one that S.O. mentions. I.e. if you have a position guarded by a unit with a reserve behind it then without a swap option you often have to juggle to get that reserve unit in place.

It's not an anomolly - it's what happened historically!!

You do NOT move 2 armies into each others postions - you withdraw one and replace it with a reserve force, you then use the 1st one to replace a third.

A "swap move" is pure laziness on the part of players!!

In fact, not having a swap feature makes the situation that he doesn't approve of (i.e. units moving along the line) more likely as sometimes it's the only way you can juggle your reserves into place.

sorry, but that's just nonsense. If yuo dont' ahve enough forces and yuor forces are in teh wrong place then you SHOULD find it difficult - that's exactly what happens from not having enough reserves!!

Sheesh!!