I'm starting this thread to summarize some use of damage points I suggested in others thread.
Firaxis has used damage points to reproduce damages taken in combat.
Damage points are also used to reduce helicopters radius, because every turn ended outside of a base add some damages.
Trireme have a chance to get lost outside of shorelines (it may appear a different topic, but you can see it's another way to reproduce the damages inflicted to the ship from a hostile environment).
Some people already suggested that early units shouldn't simply have slow movement on bad terrain, and that exploring an unknown world can take its toll in human life.
Throw here also the problem of "full or nothing" unit production, where we know units are a reproduction of a group (army division, naval group, air wing), still...
Why, if it take eight turn (year) to build a whole wing of fighter, I can't have anything ready till the end of the eighth turn?
Wonder what? My suggestion is: use damage points everywhere.
Exploring losses
If a unit is exploring, it will take some % (e.g. 5%) of damage every turn it spent outside of known terrain.
To avoid cheats, as a chain of units moving "one over the others shoulders", the check
about known terrain must be done matching previus turn status.
This way you must spend some turn repairing the unit (rest mode) or you'll end with a destroyed unit. This approach will slow down quick explorer players, helping to have time to grow a bit more before first contact, and it can be considered a bit more realist of early exploration.
If nomadic tribes will be in, they can have s bonus to suffer less or no damage (people more prepared to long journey).
Explorer units (a dedicated unit as in CIV II or a special ability a la SMAC) and fast units will have benefits, the former because more trained to explore, the latter because they move quicker in proper terrain: same damage taken by any turn, but exploring more terrain.
Same concept can be extended to known but hostile terrain (polar regions, deserts, high mountain).
Lost trireme effect
Also early sea units as trireme can take damage on deep sea, to reproduce the CIV II feature of risk loosing a trireme far from shores (shores will be considered "known and safe" for this use).
Building half force units
Instead of let the player rush build every units by money in a turn, using unit damage attribute Firaxis can let a player to "force out on the battlefield" a unit after two/third of development (max "rush build" limit, in my proposal), with -let's say- half of damage points already taken: we get an untrained, half force unit.
This way you can oppose some resistence against any incoming weaker enemy, avoiding the "empty city syndrome" induced by barbarian raids.
Of course this approach has at least a flaw: with current SMAC rules, your unit is automatically repaired of some percent of damage every turn it rest (no fight).
It doesn't repair to 100% outside of a city, yet, until with a late tech advance you
can repair it 100% in one turn everywhere.
This way we can have the unit completed for free at the end of a repair process: no good.
We can counter this introducing a "repair cost" equal or more expensive to the cost of rush build the remaining unit part.
This rule will also be more realistic, because it add same cost to repair units hitted by enemy.
Repair cost can be equal everywere or kept higher on the battlefield (outside cities,
fortress or airbases).
Cost will be deducted from whole civ tresury or from supporting city (as already happens
to city improvement costs).
So, you can e.g rush build your "ten turn" Knight to the eight turn level (new limit of the actual rush button), but it'll have the lower morale level (corrective points from barracks/s.e. level apart) and half the points of strenght taken (as if damaged).
Next (resting) turn it will cost some money to regain a 25% of strenght, then next turn
again it will pay same amount to go to full strenght.
Now you have the unit full force after the original ten turns, but keeping the morale
penalty, in change of the advance of using it in emergency some turns before.
In the process you use money (instead of shields) as in actual rush building.
Well, it appear to me quite easy to implement without too much code change, I let to you to vote it as an interesting improvement or just an unbalanced, silly idea.
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Admiral Naismith AKA mcostant
