Strategy Games - Fundamentals of Game Design - page 433

SPECIAL CAPABILITIES
Many units in strategy games have special capabilities that strongly affect the tac-
tics and strategy of play. Some special capabilities influence the attributes of a unit;
others simply allow the unit to do things that other units cannot. Here is a short
list of possibilities:
■ Stealth. A stealth unit can become invisible to enemy units. This capacity is
extremely valuable because it enables the unit to sneak past guards posted by the
enemy and attack a vulnerable point. Designers traditionally require stealth units
to reveal themselves when they use their weapons. Units able to attack while
remaining invisible would be too powerful. Some designers reserve stealth capabil-
ity for unarmed units, which serve as scouts.
■ Flying or sailing, that is, traversing terrain inaccessible to ordinary land-based
units. Aircraft and ships tend to be specialized and incapable of operating in any
other medium, but there is no reason you cannot create amphibious craft if you
want to.
■ Repair. You can design units to repair themselves; you can also devise special
units that repair others—essentially, medical units. This valuable feature rewards
players who keep a sharp eye on the health of their units and set up systems to
repair them efficiently. The repair feature is especially beneficial if new units cost
resources to manufacture, but repairs cost nothing or at least, less than building a
new unit.
■ Transport. Transport units allow the rapid conveyance of a certain number of
other units around the landscape. Destroying a transport unit destroys the units it
carries as well. Because rapid transport is a valuable feature, designers often make
transport units unarmed, to offset this strength by increasing the transport units'
vulnerability. This requires the player to assign armed units to go with them in a
convoy, which lends realism to the game.
■ Constructing buildings and producing mobile units. As the earlier section
“Strategic Conflict” describes, most modern war games use a construction unit to
build and repair factories, and the factory constructs other mobile units, often of a
specific type.
■ Leadership. Some games, especially those that represent ancient warfare,
include special leader units that give a fighting bonus to other units near them or
under their command. This bonus is lost if the leader is killed, thus simulating the
loss of morale and organization that occurs in those circumstances.
For every special capability you create for one side in a battle, you must also create
a capability of similar military value for the other side or a means of defeating the
special capability. If you give one side stealth units, you should either give the
other side something equally useful or give them special units that can detect
stealth units. The special capabilities of either side need not be symmetric—
Carthaginians use war elephants and Romans use catapults—but there must be a