Rather than allow it to get lost in the midst of a lengthy discussion of ethics, warfare, emotional reactions, and so forth, I'd like to have a separate discussion on an alternate scoring proposal, along the lines I described here. In essence, it would encourage you to destroy military targets, while minimizing civilian casualties on both sides.
Just to be clear, I'm not suggesting the "theme" of the game is offensive, or that this mode would be more "realistic", or that any of the other scoring modes should be removed. It is simply that I personally prefer to play with a somewhat different set of objectives, which I happen to find more challenging - more like a nice game of chess, rather than a food fight, if you'll pardon the poor analogy.
At least a couple of other people have expressed some interest along such lines:
@train_glunkr, on Apr 26 2007, 06:49 PM, said in Oh Man...:
If the goal of the game was not total annihilation, I think there would be many other considerations -- how to get rid of another player's nukes without escalating violence, how to destroy military targets without being detected, etc (I know CrecentEdge talked about this earlier). In short, it would be a different game. Actually, a game like that might interest me more than DEFCON does...
@pisketch, on Apr 26 2007, 08:00 PM, said in Oh Man...:
I agree that a game where you were to destroy military capability with as few civilian losses as possible would be more enjoyable to me, though this game certainly does make you think.
It seems to me that it should not be tremendously difficult to add a scoring mode, though as noted earlier it would require a little more effort to work through the details. I believe it would extend the appeal of the game for some people, and certainly allow for a wider variety of playing styles, perhaps helping to maintain long term interest.
Anyone else interested? And from the development side, might this be considered?