Design Approaches and Philosophies

As i openly discussed with Weeds; i don't know if he agrees or not;


Waratsea4 said:
It really boils down to this lack of imagination of picking units: Forum involvement doesn't have to mean it has to pick the units.

Weed said:
Except the thing most members want by far is to be able to pick the units that get into a deck. A much smaller group actually want to actively participate in card development. At least that is what I have observed over the course of these projects.

We can't win no matter how we do it.

And now, back to our regularly scheduled card development.


Waratsea said:
Not to upset the thread:: I believe actively participating in card development is best suited for Forum involvement.

I think as the process has evolved so should we, it sounded good a few decks ago; but this voting mechanizism creates

to many duds or units ill suited for the game.

Don't know if its me but i don't remember much discussion on how best to develop a deck

just someone rushing to take the lead and repeat History;; But as you say back to the regularly scheduled program.

That is especially true for Axis navies. What major battles did Axis ships fight in? Of those battles, who hasn’t been done yet?

I tend to approach from a game value standpoint. That said there are limits.

Lots of the units forwarded for voting for example was for 'mines' or 'convoys' - thats not a frontline role, it abstracts poorly into the game. Chiefly because they're strategic activities, rather than offensive-tactical ones.

So while there are lots of options if you look, lots of options that exist are negilibly valuable in a normal game, to a casual player. We really need to look deeper than taking a simple list of classes looking for gaps, look for actual service that can provide as distinct role in a fleet.

The units need to be in balance by nation and type for the deck as a whole and the game. Because of historical realities that balance is skewed (and will always be) towards the allied nations with both more units and later war more powerful units.
To try to maintain balance as well as possible, fantasy/operational repeats are necessary - particularly for the Axis.
Also to help maintain "interest" in the deck as a individual, sellable unit, Allied Fantasy/Op Variants may be used to fill in for bigger pieces or in places where the original unit either fails as a card, or the unit has specific operations of exciting note beyond the scope of the original card.

After units are chosen (by whatever means) my goal is to make each card playable at least within its role, but preferably in the game as whole. While I don't value convoy/scenario cards - other people do, so I try to make sure those cards are appropriate for their role. Cards that are really for general purpose should have a reason for people to take them. There exists certain "good" cards that are always going to be the go to cards for certain situations, but my goal is that if a unit was chosen to be included, I want to design it so that someone who did choose that unit would not be disappointed in the outcome (at least through no fault of the card).

Unfortunately in sone cases, the scaling of cost is simply to coarse to perfectly balance things.

Especially you've got outliers