Designing Games with Xconq - Unit Manipulation

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## Unit Manipulation

The actions in this group are a mixed bag of manipulations. If they need to be in your game, then the need will be obvious, otherwise they are pretty much optional.

- Transferring Unit Parts Action
- Changing Side
- Changing Type
- Disbanding

### Transferring Unit Parts Action

Any unit whose `parts-max` is greater than the default of 1 is a multi-part unit, and its hp denotes size rather than amount of damage. Armies and fleets are two kinds of units which can be usefully defined as multi-part.

Players will very often want to merge or detach parts of a multi-part unit, and there is an action `transfer-part` provided for that. You can control the cost of the action by setting `acp-to-transfer-part`.

### Changing Side

Side changing is like capturing, but players can only do it to units that they control. The action is `change-side`, and you enable by setting `acp-to-change-side` to 1 or more. This will also enable side changing for units that cannot normally act.

Side changing is especially useful for alliances in multi-player games, so it should usually be enabled. On the other hand, it should not be too cheap; you should consider what side changing really means in the game's context.

For instance, even in the close British/American alliance during WWII, armies never actually changed sides; British ground units were always British, and American ground units always American. On the other hand, ships and bases could be traded back and forth with only a cost in time and expense.

### Changing Type

In some games, it will be useful to have a notion of promotion or upgrade for units. You can implement this by allowing players to do a `change-type` action.

You enable this via the `acp-to-change-type` table.

### Disbanding

Sometimes a player will want to get rid of a unit, perhaps because some type has been overproduced and is tying up valuable resources, or to prevent it from falling into enemy hands.

You can allow this by setting `acp-to-disband` to 1 or more.

You can control the rate of disbanding with `hp-per-disband`. You may, for instance, want to allow the deliberate destruction of large units, such as battleships, but you don't necessarily want disbanding to be a convenient way of preventing their capture. Setting `hp-to-disband` so as to require several turns to get rid of a unit will accomplish this. The table `supply-per-disband` will allow you to govern the rate of recovery of the unit's supplies during the disbanding process.

It is also possible to make disbanding a way to recover materials that were consumed in the construction of the unit, by using the table `recycleable-material`. Care should be taken that creation and disbanding of units is not a convenient way to manufacture lots of a material; players will use the loophole if it exists!

It should usually not be possible to disband something large like a city, otherwise a clever player might try to eliminate it as a strategic target, but most mobile units should be easily disbanded. This is especially helpful in an "construction spiral" game, where the winning player(s) can accumulate large numbers of useless units.

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