One of CoN's worst aspects is how dependent it is on players' ability to check the game. I don't think it should play itself, but a player who checks 6 times a day and has good strategy shouldn't have a massive dis-advantage to someone who checks 20 times a day. More checking means:
- re-routing units headed for a fight they can't win
- saving air craft patrolling in an AA net more often
- catching and responding to sneak attacks or sus behavior
- etc.
I think a great new feature would be something like "Contingency Orders". The idea is give players a new menu with a few types of triggers, in some cases an associated location, and then typical orders for a stack they own.
Let me give some examples of situations this would impove:
1. You are Sweden and would like to prevent potential enemies from sailing units or warships past the choke point by Denmark (generally speaking, you want to blockade a naval point)
* currently, you can't respond to this unless you happen to log into the game and see the soon-to-be enemy ships sailing past you
* the proposed trigger
- Trigger type: "Naval Breach"
- Action: "Declare War"
- Action Unit: null
- Target country: "any" (owner of unit that caused trigger)
- Target unit: null
This would provide a solution to a very annoying mechanic in the game that allows soon-to-be enemies to sneak past naval defenses and directly attack homeland cities if the opponent is not micro-managing the game
2. You would like to patrol air planes for defense but would like to avoid them sitting there if they start to get hit with passive AA they cannot counter attack with their given patrol order
* currently you loose all your planes over the course of an hour or something
* the proposed trigger
- Trigger type: "Unit suffers damage"
- Action: "return to base" | "new patrol order" | "attack the thing shooting at you" (return to base if out of range)
- Action Unit: your patrolling air unit
- Target country: null
- Target unit: unit that caused the trigger
This would provide a solution the the very annoying mechanic in the game that planes sit there taking fire from AA repeatedly until they die if the owner does not micro-manage them. It's fun to do to people, annoying to have it done to you, and very unrealistic. I'd like to note that the AI does have some kind of trigger like this if you hit a city with artillery.
3. You have trolling rogue infantry rampaging through your occupied territory and you wanted to try playing without air craft this game (granted this is a bad strategy)
* currently, you can try to path your units to intercept the roving enemy, but if you can't micro the game, there's a good chance you will not catch them
* the proposed trigger
- Trigger type: "Chase"
- Action "Attack" order
- Action Unit: one of your stacks
- Target country: null
- Target unit: unit you want to hunt down
This would be a recursive order - your unit makes an attack move, at with point the enemy has moved and your unit get's another attack move to the enemy's new position. It's not as good as micro-managing moves since you'd miss opportunities for short-cuts, but it would at least give you some way to hunt enemies with ground forces especially if your units are faster. It would also let you automatically follow enemies and recapture the lands they are taking with this annoying tactic.
Such tactics are always annoying, but they are way more punishing if you can't micro-manage the game
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I may come back and add more detailed examples, but a few more trigger types I think that could help mitigate the massive advantage mico players have:
- Unit attacked (give orders to other, possibly nearby, unit)
- Air space violated (by non-RoW country, by enemy)
- Specific province air space violated (by non-RoW country, by enemy)
- Homeland air space violated (by non-RoW country, by enemy)
- Missile launched targeting any of your lands/units (MAD baby!)
- Missile launched at specific province (evacuation orders
I imagine this has potential to increase data storage requirements per game by maybe 20% (given a reasonable limit to the number of contingency orders a player is allowed) but I think this would be well worth it to address some of the really annoying things that can happen if you can't micro a game for a bit or have to, you know, sleep or something.
- re-routing units headed for a fight they can't win
- saving air craft patrolling in an AA net more often
- catching and responding to sneak attacks or sus behavior
- etc.
I think a great new feature would be something like "Contingency Orders". The idea is give players a new menu with a few types of triggers, in some cases an associated location, and then typical orders for a stack they own.
Let me give some examples of situations this would impove:
1. You are Sweden and would like to prevent potential enemies from sailing units or warships past the choke point by Denmark (generally speaking, you want to blockade a naval point)
* currently, you can't respond to this unless you happen to log into the game and see the soon-to-be enemy ships sailing past you
* the proposed trigger
- Trigger type: "Naval Breach"
- Action: "Declare War"
- Action Unit: null
- Target country: "any" (owner of unit that caused trigger)
- Target unit: null
This would provide a solution to a very annoying mechanic in the game that allows soon-to-be enemies to sneak past naval defenses and directly attack homeland cities if the opponent is not micro-managing the game
2. You would like to patrol air planes for defense but would like to avoid them sitting there if they start to get hit with passive AA they cannot counter attack with their given patrol order
* currently you loose all your planes over the course of an hour or something
* the proposed trigger
- Trigger type: "Unit suffers damage"
- Action: "return to base" | "new patrol order" | "attack the thing shooting at you" (return to base if out of range)
- Action Unit: your patrolling air unit
- Target country: null
- Target unit: unit that caused the trigger
This would provide a solution the the very annoying mechanic in the game that planes sit there taking fire from AA repeatedly until they die if the owner does not micro-manage them. It's fun to do to people, annoying to have it done to you, and very unrealistic. I'd like to note that the AI does have some kind of trigger like this if you hit a city with artillery.
3. You have trolling rogue infantry rampaging through your occupied territory and you wanted to try playing without air craft this game (granted this is a bad strategy)
* currently, you can try to path your units to intercept the roving enemy, but if you can't micro the game, there's a good chance you will not catch them
* the proposed trigger
- Trigger type: "Chase"
- Action "Attack" order
- Action Unit: one of your stacks
- Target country: null
- Target unit: unit you want to hunt down
This would be a recursive order - your unit makes an attack move, at with point the enemy has moved and your unit get's another attack move to the enemy's new position. It's not as good as micro-managing moves since you'd miss opportunities for short-cuts, but it would at least give you some way to hunt enemies with ground forces especially if your units are faster. It would also let you automatically follow enemies and recapture the lands they are taking with this annoying tactic.
Such tactics are always annoying, but they are way more punishing if you can't micro-manage the game
---
I may come back and add more detailed examples, but a few more trigger types I think that could help mitigate the massive advantage mico players have:
- Unit attacked (give orders to other, possibly nearby, unit)
- Air space violated (by non-RoW country, by enemy)
- Specific province air space violated (by non-RoW country, by enemy)
- Homeland air space violated (by non-RoW country, by enemy)
- Missile launched targeting any of your lands/units (MAD baby!)
- Missile launched at specific province (evacuation orders
I imagine this has potential to increase data storage requirements per game by maybe 20% (given a reasonable limit to the number of contingency orders a player is allowed) but I think this would be well worth it to address some of the really annoying things that can happen if you can't micro a game for a bit or have to, you know, sleep or something.