Quote:Original post by markm
Long long ago a game designer friend now resting in peace used to make you have to *lose* a battle in order to be permitted to upgrade at all, because no-one changes what already works. Until what you got fails no one wants to finance some newfangled thing kind of idea.

In a pen and Paper RPG I recently bought, there was this kind of concept in it. Sometimes to get what you want, you have to loose (btw: the RPG system is: Capes)

Loosing a conflict gives you story tokens which allow you to end up with more control over the narative of the story.

So, here is my idea for a "loosing gives you research" game (this is off the top of my head):

Loosing should not give a definite advantage. It should give the player resources with which to gain an advantage, if used well.

So, loosing a skirmish will give the player an amount of research resources based on the size of the skirmish.

If the skirmish is too small, the player won't get a lot of resources. IF the skirmish is too large, then the chaos of the battle does not allow easy analysis and so not much advancement can be got out of it.

These two principals means that medium sized skirmishes will be prefered by the players as they attempt to optimise their gains. But it also means that they will try to push the other player into smaller or larger conflicts to try and minimise their opponents winnings.

This creates two mutually exclusive goals that interact in interesting ways to increase the ariety of strategic options. It gives incentive to scout with small groups if you are trying to avoid conflict and large battle if you think you can win. If you think you can't win, then medium sized skirmishes are encouraged.

The main problem is that it will create asituation where neither play will commit large forces to battle, and this might mean the game continues for a long, protracted time (with little happening).

The key to a system like this lies in balancing the reward for loosingh against the rewards for winning.

Winning a battle actually helps your enemy in most situations as they get research resources). Winning a battle eliminates your enemy units, but as this is only a temporary set back it is only significant if the victor can use this time to thir advantage. This advantage will likely be in the form of more units (and/or resoruces).

However, if this advantage for winning is greater than that of loosing, then the reward for loosing is not a reward, but actualyl just a reduction in the penalty. If the reward for loosing is greater than that of winning, then the victor is not the player who defeated the enemy units, but the player who lost the skirmish.

One way around this is to have the rewards for winning uncertain but potentially greater (and lower) and the rewards for loosing fairly deterministic.

This uncertainty is not totally random, but might have significant randomness to it (at least more then loosing has). However, it should be based on the situation and how the victor of the skirmish utilises the time the gained.

If you havae to claim resourcfe nodes, or strategic points to gain resources or units (unit cap), then these would be the best options as a player has to work and spend resources to capture and exploit these points (and also has to expend resources and assets to defend them). This means a capture and hold type gameplay with unit caps is needed (rather than swarm style play - aka: Tank Rush).

If a player fails to exploit the time gained from the victory, then they will have given resources to their enemy. This will force players to asses if each battle is worth it (it could put too much mental strain on them and this could just act as a deterent to play). So a slower paced game (so super weapons are out) and the ability to withdraw troops from a conflict are needed.