Slitherine

I'm interested to hear what ideas you have to give glory extra functionality.

My first thought was to buy some kind of extra boost. May it in terms of extra units slots, earlier unlock of units types, or an one time boost for a single battle, but I quickly remembered Panzer Corps and how mechanics that rewards good players makes them even stronger, causing a run-away effect.
So I think glory should provide a something that doesn't necessarily leads to an imbalance down the road.

How about glory unlock special side missions?
High glory puts you at spotlight for supreme command. "Your continued success bought you the attention of high command and Commisar Yarrick himself. They think you're the right man for series of special tasks."
High glory will "reward"(burden) you with the optional playing of highly dangerous missions that have a unique touch.
The high difficultly of these mission should make it unlikely that you end up with bonus requisition. If at all you could very well loose some requisition, but still can valuable experience for your troops, beside the joy of playing an additional mission.
That way you can reward players for earning glory, but at the same time avoid this dreaded run-away effect that makes strong players get even stronger.

I expect Kerensky will object, as this throws work at his direction.

Edit: To further build on this idea. You would unlock missions at certain glory levels. The mission would always be the same. If you're a very good player earning a lot of glory, you will unlock these side mission very early, and as twist have to play them with a less developed core. Extra bonus difficulty! While a not so good or even struggling player which unlocks these missions later in the campaign, will have actually an easier time because of the more powerful units available to him. This would give the whole thing an automatic balancing. Side effect is that a not so good player would not earn enough glory to unlock all side missions before the campaign ends. This could basically be some kind of challenge tree.

Posting other comments to this thread:

Horst wrote:Glory would be good for purchasing extra elite units, like your still missing Ogryns or some units like Tempestus Scions.
Or you start to introduce heroes again like in Panzer Corps which may be purchased by Glory and added to whatever unit as leader with some tiny bonuses.

DownTheDrain wrote:Assuming that you gain more glory for doing better, that would mostly reward players who already excel at the game, instead of helping those that might actually need the additional units or heroes.

Personally I would...

Options available in the Glory tab of the editor. Not every scenario will have every option available. In the future, flexibility of this tab will be of great importance, but for the time being we should be okay hard code a few features.

1. Gain X auxiliary unit(s). What exactly these units are, and how many of them there are, will be defined on a per scenario basis. Upon purchase, glory is removed and the purchased aux unit(s) are added to the deployment sidebarand able to be deployed to the scenario.
2. Gain X core unit(s). Same as above, but instead of temporary reinforcement, a permanent unit is offered. As glory normally unlocks entire unit classes for general use, this will be a special use tool. For example, an early game 'short cut' to buy a Baneblade tank (just 1; NOT unlocking it for general use) before unlocking the entire path to the Bandeblade (which would otherwise require quite a bit more glory and scenarios played).
3. Cash in for Production. Turn glory into the other resource, points, only available at limited times, such as after a scenario that takes place near a factory setting.
4. Gain intelligence forces. One example of the use for this glory option is causing pre-configured aux unit to appear directly on map at a pre-defined location. Another example is mines, the pre-placed kinds.
5. Gain a core slot. This will need to be a variable stored somewhere. This option may be presented say... 5 total times in the entire campaign. The first time its available, if purchased, for the rest of the campaign the player will always be able to deploy the scenario defined number PLUS ONE. If they buy it the second time it comes around as well, the rest of the game they can deploy the scenario defined number PLUS TWO.

I thought about extending mission time limits, but I'm generally not a fan of anything to do with fighting and racing a clock. Those missions will exist of course, but they are going to be carefully planned out(precluding the ability to shorten or extend the time limit), and we aren't going to see every mission be a race against time.

That's all I really plan to use, but if you have more suggestions or recommendations I am always open to more!

I vote for adding heroes to units. We can already rename our units , see its kill score and brief history .. so having heroes will add extra personality / flavor to them. I agree that heroes bonuses should be small though (+2/3 for Armor/Accuracy stat ?).

If I could redesign the mechanic from the ground up, one idea would be to tie unit unlocks to glory.
A line of "mainstream" Steel Legion units the scenarios are balanced for would always unlock, but if you wanted more exotic stuff in your core, you'd have to pay in glory to unlock those units.
This could resolve the issue that makes an especially striking appearance when the first act ends and you suddenly get access to a gazillion new units and that I call choice overload.
If the right range of units were tagged as always becoming available, the effects of unlocking would almost be cosmetical and thus not upset the balance of the game considerably.

On paper, I think Kerenskys ideas sound great, but they also bring back the PzC problem where the player that played worse earlier (thus has less glory) starts on worse grounds than the player that played better.
Unless they cost so little glory that you can always afford them.

Since redesigning unit unlocking is probably not in the cards, though, Kerenskys idea is likely to be more realistic though - if it is implemented, you won't see me complaining about it either.
_____
rezaf

How about Glory is like its name GLORY. So it is just for ranking. So players can challange other high ranking glory players. If you win a battle vs a higher ranking player you earn more glory. So a higher ranking player will earn less glory for playing vs a lower ranking player.

Reduction of glory should makes the win of a scenario easier.
I would prefer an "option list" for each scenario.
There could be a condition to make an option available. And the player decides, if he activate such an option.
The list is scenario specific.

Example:
Condition: turn 10 (in a 12 turn scenario)
Option: Add 1 turn
Cost: x glory

The Player decides to activate the option.

Other example:
Condition: capture a victory hex (vh, repair point)
Option: heal all units around this hex (max. 10 HP)
Cost: y glory

First player has to capture the vh. After that he moves units to the victory hex. Some turns later he activates the option and the units around the hex heals some HP.

Or

Condition: capture a victory hex
Option: build a bridge over a canyon (or change a terrain)
Cost: z glory

The conditions should be available as conditions in the editor.
The option actions too. I think, (near) all of the suggested fuctionalities could been accessable using the actions in the editor.

Alex has to make a structure to define the options (condition, text, cost, action) and a option list in the UI.

rezaf wrote:Since redesigning unit unlocking is probably not in the cards, though, Kerenskys idea is likely to be more realistic though - if it is implemented, you won't see me complaining about it either.

We can make no promises about anything at this point... but it never hurts to brainstorm!

bram1979 wrote:How about Glory is like its name GLORY. So it is just for ranking. So players can challange other high ranking glory players. If you win a battle vs a higher ranking player you earn more glory. So a higher ranking player will earn less glory for playing vs a lower ranking player.

This actually makes most sense to me. I suggested something similar for PzC but it never materialized. in the W40K context, there would probably need to be a distinction between the single and multiplayer glory points. Not sure that can be done without impacting the generic Slitherine PBW server mechanic which seems to handle all supported games. The server could use some kind of pairing algorithm or filter to show opponent's open games within a +x/-y glory points spread relative to your own glory points amount. You should be able to ignore this setting altogether, but likewise the player hosting the game could have an option to define a target points level when seeking opponents. I would LOVE to see players penalized for quitting a game by losing x glory points. Quitting could be the same as no longer playing turns, so eventually the opponent can claim the game (as implemented today).

I would like glory to allow purchase (which would also cost reqs) of special units not availablr elsewhere, like the legio metallicus Reaver titan. Scion tempestus or warlord titans would also work(as would getting non unlocked units). Of course, I would also like to have heroes for glory+req.
I think giving "free units" or requisition for glory is dangerous and would go against the current campaign balancing paradigm(how you did before does not matter much), which I find a welcome change from Panzer Corps.

Regarding new units... I don't think we can pay our artists in 'Glory' to have them create new units.

ROFL!

heh, how about having them do a few recolors for glory then?

I can think of the following potential uses for glory:
1. Purchase of auxiliary units for certain scenarios
2. Unlock of unique equipment
3. Elite reinforcements
4. Make available another (small) deployment location on another part of the map. Units deployed there might randomly take casualties to simulate trying to make their way in without support of the main force.

The idea behind #3 is that a commander with high glory will have experienced soldiers wanting to flock to him as opposed to another commander. From a technical perspective, it's the least intrusive, as the others would likely require changes to the scenarios and rebalancing. It also doesn't provide much in the way of a long term effect as infantry (which sorely need an experience boost) would benefit the most, but would also lose much of that gained experience as they take losses, forcing the commander to spend glory again or just go with regular reinforcements.

Thought of something unimplementable but decided to post it anyway. Maybe in the next expansion\game?
So, wouldn't buying unit type specific core slots with glory be cool? Like, one player might prefer lots of infantry with arty support and scout vehicles, the other lots of tanks, and titans, etc. Tanks and infantry would probably have to be divided into medium and heavy. Basic(light?) infantry and 1-2 of all the rest of the unit type slots would probably have to be free. Would add replayability etc.

Glory should work just like prestige from PC/UoC/strategy_wargame_name_here, the only difference being the "eliness" of buyable units. It may be, of course, implemented into some sort of ranking system, but I personally don't like the idea. I think it's better to stick to elite tanks, heroes, Tempestus Scionis and Adeptus Custodes type of thing (jokin ofc, the last one would be too damn absurd xD). OR- airraiding and orbital dropping. Give players a special ability to call down on enemies rain of plasma or blizzard of Elysians and Drop Pods. I would also recommend changing the scale an rate of glory acquisition- so, instead of 50k at the end of an act, you would only have 5k (totally random naumber, just to get the idea straight)

Glory points seem to be added automatically every turn. Not sure if the amount is influenced in any way by actions taken by the player, but if you want to max it out you could stretch every scenario to the very last turn. Whatever the glory points will be used for, this fact should be taken into account.

Shrike wrote:Glory points seem to be added automatically every turn. Not sure if the amount is influenced in any way by actions taken by the player, but if you want to max it out you could stretch every scenario to the very last turn. Whatever the glory points will be used for, this fact should be taken into account.

That is not necessary, you receive the full amount of glory points for the remaining turns. I tested that myself.