Post office for items

[Chazar]

It would really be nice if heroes could send an item from one friendly city to another friendly city.

What are you supposed to do if you find three swords? They are useless unless you manage to get your heroes together, but I find the logistics involved to be too cumbersome to bother. After all, there are always so many foes waiting to be slaughtered, yet so few hero-movement points available to serve them all.

Maybe sending an item requires that the sending city is also vectoring a unit towards the target, and the bag arrives along with a freshly produced unit?
Or maybe there is just a chance that an item might get lost along the way (maybe with even a bag randomly popping up somewhere on the map)?
There could even be a cost for sending an item, say 100 gold (per vector turn distance)?

[Versace]

I think that is a clever idea, I never would have thought about that.

I think sending from one city to another city would be best. And it would take some time, similar to vectoring. More time the further apart the cities are.

Chance of the item getting lost is something I would not mind personally but I think it is a bad idea. There could be confusion as wether it is a bug or not and also people in general don't accept small percentage/high loss things easily, they just get pissed off. Well, who am I kidding, I do too.

[smursh]

I agree that it would be nice to send items, it always seems that if you have a good ruin hunter he ends up with extra items. As an alternative to vectoring it might be nice if non-heroes could carry an artifact. Then you have the possibility of finding and killing the enemies mail man and stealing the artifact. Possibly this would be a skill that only certain units would get. Either way it would be a nice upgrade.

[LPhillips]

You know, Smursh, I've been thinking about that possibility for a long while. I didn't put it forward because there are two obvious problems:

1) Non-heroes can retrieve items even if a hero is not present, removing an important feature of current item use: you kill a hero or lose a hero, and the item must be retrieved by a hero. This seems important to me.
2) Non-heroes can keep items out of play indefinitely. This takes a good bit away from the game. Secondarily, it allows players to evacuate items if there is fear of losing them.

These two problems should tend to ensure that items remain in the hands of the one who discovered them, without reasonable hope for competitors to retrieve them. A shipping option with cost seems most effective. Best of all, if the destination city is captured, so is the artifact upon delivery. The idea of a chance that it will be lost is just a griefing feature. That just hands over the outcome of major events to dice rolls without any merit applied.

[KGB]

All of LPhillips points make perfect sense to me.

On the other hand if we can send items in this manner then why not armies (including heroes) too? DLR allowed already produced armies to vector in order to save the dreaded 'walk 10 turns from one front line to another after conquering an enemy' micromanagement problem.

KGB

[LPhillips]

KGB,

How do you view the idea that mismanagement of armies and vectoring (particularly when someone acquires an opponent's vector destination city and breaks their supply chain) is integral to the game? Sure, I find myself disbanding slow-movers far from the front, especially if they require high upkeep (think dwarfs). However, it seems to me that the concept of non-production units vectoring is a big step toward favoring the unprepared. In other words: I think players should have to live with their decisions and "suffer for their mistakes" so to speak.

Proper planning of vectors is currently a big advantage for good players.

[KGB]

How do you view the idea that mismanagement of armies and vectoring (particularly when someone acquires an opponent's vector destination city and breaks their supply chain) is integral to the game?

Nope. I don't view it as integral at all. The only reason I even mentioned it is because if you can suddenly transfer items across vast distances via vectoring then why can't you transfer existing armies?

I've always pictured vectoring of newly made units (ie the current vectoring) as being that cities are sending raw material from one city to another and the destination city is merely assembling them. Not that you assemble a dragon as that doesn't make sense, but rather all the things needed for a dragon unit or a Hv Calv unit like armor, swords, horses, men, master at arms trainers, a dragon, smiths, food, medical supplies etc were sent. This is why they move faster than regular armies and while in transit they can't be used to attack/defend because they technically don't exist yet.

However, it seems to me that the concept of non-production units vectoring is a big step toward favoring the unprepared. In other words: I think players should have to live with their decisions and "suffer for their mistakes" so to speak.

Proper planning of vectors is currently a big advantage for good players.

It is a big advantage for good players. But I am not sure that vectoring existing units would help poor players much. You'd still have to wait between 2-5 turns for the units to arrive so its' not like they are there instantly. Plus it should cost money like vectoring items. Say '1 gold per turn to make the unit' so a 1 turn unit costs 1 gold and a 5 turn unit 5 gold so you may be better off disbanding in many cases unless it's an important unit/hero.

Also unlike DLR which allowed MASS vectoring which was over powering, I'd still limit vectoring to 4 units per turn. So if a city was receiving 2 units from production vectors then the most you'd be able to send from existing armies would be 2 per turn. So this transfer rate would be slow (2 turns to transfer 8 men to a single city sending them 4 at a time plus of course the travel time for them to arrive).

That said, I really don't think the game *needs* this feature any more than it needs the ability to vector items. I would merely suggest that you either have neither or both of these features for consistency sake.

KGB

[Versace]

That said, I really don't think the game *needs* this feature (vectoring amries) any more than it needs the ability to vector items. I would merely suggest that you either have neither or both of these features for consistency sake.

KGB

Vectoring an item and vectoring some pikemen army do not seem like the same thing to me at all. Since you like to picture the game like real life think of sending a packet by DHL to the other side of the world in modern times in 24h and sending a tank division to the other side of the world. No quite the same at all. Important post used to move very fast even in ancient times as a horses/riders would be changed as they tired on important routes.

[KGB]

My response to which would be whom would you entrust with delivering your magic artifact but yourself?

I can't ever imagine any scenario where a hero would hand over an artifact sword to some peasant and say please deliver this half way across the continent to my brother and whatever you do, don't lose it, sell it or use it. Otherwise Frodo could have just given the One Ring to any one to take to Mount Doom and spared us all the Bromance with Sam that ruined half of books 2 and 3.

Remember these are one of a kind unique items like say the 'the Arc of the Covenant'. If you dug that up on Mount Sinai and wanted to deliver it to Kabul, Afghanistan to win the war there how are you shipping it? You calling the DHL guy to come pick up and drive in his truck to Kabul? Or maybe you think it's better to use Brinks and their armored trucks? Or do you realize the ramifications of what you just found and bring in a full military escort and accompany it personally.

KGB

[smursh]

After reading some of the arguments against non-heroes moving artifacts and vectoring artifacts/already produced troops I am on the side of leaving this alone. Since a powerful artifact can make a new hero powerful he should have to travel to the older hero with the extra artifact and beg for it. If you want your hero to get the artifact badly enough you will do this.