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I have looked around in this subforum, but could not find a similar discussion (or I overlooked it) so here it goes:
I had an inspiration while painting and watching some StarCraft 2 gameplay. In SC2, units cost minerals, vespene gas and supply. Striking a good balance in unit costs and availability of these resources creates this interesting mechanic where some units are more expensive in the early game, while being relatively cheap in the late game - and vice versa.
Now applying this in the listbuilding stage for a hypothetical wargame, managing multiple resources for unit selection might open up some interesting design avenues, where units have different costs depending on their utility and their desired amount used by the games designer.
I would like to play through a hypothetical game, let us say a game similar to 40k (maybe not that many miniatures, I personally think 40k is a bit to massive in scope, but that's not the topic here).
The intended game size should encompass roughly 2 to 4 squads of basic infantry, 1 or 2 tanks and a character or two. To allow the players a certain amount of customization, squad leaders may equip special wargear, and special/heavy weapons can be issued in a limited capacity. Additionally, the characters can take a hole suit of special weapons, close combat weapons, and even items which enable interesting effects or actions otherwise not allowed by the core rules of the game.
At least in 40k, and I can imagine in other games as well, there seems to be a special weapon or close combat weapon that is always better than the other options.
Now let us assume that instead of building a list solely from points and adhering to some kind of force organisation chart or detachments, units cost resource called supply, and the upgrades cost a different resource called requisition. Maybe some upgrades cost a combination of supply and requisition, and maybe some elite units or capable characters cost requisition as well. I would imagine that this would allow a more interesting balancing of desired army composition and upgrades, as maybe the most efficient special weapon can't be spammed as the amount of requisition required for more than one, while still paying for character upgrades, may be to expensive.
I could already imagine quite some pitfalls with this approach:
- it may limit the possibility of an army theme
- it might be frustrating for players who build a miniature a certain way
- instead of spamming one special weapon, they are not used at all (pendulum swinging the other way)
Has anyone any experience with this? Are there any games which already implemented this?
The only example that comes to mind would be dropfleet commander, where the amount of ships that can launch fighters or bombers is limited by the game size dependent launch capacity.
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