The board designer has team fortify set to "off" by default, and many board designers have simply forgotten to turn it "on" before publishing boards. This really limits team games on many boards -- while it can sometimes be interesting to play without team fortify, I would guess that for most boards and most players, not being able to fortify to teammates is generally a negative player experience.

So why not allow the team settings to be changed when creating a game on a board? Perhaps this is really challenging from a programming aspect, but if it's not too bad then I believe this would be a big quality of life improvement!

As a board designer and board reviewer, I doubt that Fortify ON is forgotten or overlooked in any board designs. If it is Off it was meant to be OFF, and if for some reason a designer were somehow to forget to turn it on, reviewers would almost certainly notice, as they are really should be checking everything including team settings. But I suppose it's possible that it has happened, and I recommend that if it is the case, ask the designer to fix it. I have it OFF intentionally on one or two of my boards, and I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want it turned on. And even if I was OK with enabling the game creator changing it, it would become yet another box to check in the Designer :(

Regardless, I think it might not be a good idea to make it a game creator's option. Assuming the game designer would be OK with it (and you wouldn't know unless you asked them - in which case they could fix it), it becomes one more box to check when creating a game. Now I know you've been a member longer than me, @K. Since the very beginning, so I'm sure you remember how a lot of game creation options were also nixed because folks were very concerned about too much complexity in the launch window. As for somehow making it optional, you could ask the designer to create a Team scenario.

All that said, I know there are a number of boards here that have obvious overlooked flaws. Isn't there someone that Tom has authorized to go in and fix boards whose designer's are no longer active?

Glad you chimed in, @M57! One of your boards is actually a motivating one (though not the only) for this thread. See this game here on Quantum Entanglement: https://www.wargear.net/games/view/81325032. You can see that at least half the players (there's some more convo in private/team chat that you can't see) have commented that it would be more fun with the ability to send units to your teammate.

And here's a team tournament on Pangaea and Panthalassa where it's also just kind of annoying for many players that there's no team transfer: https://www.wargear.net/tournaments/view/3470. And not an obvious reason why there shouldn't be, at least as an option.

Moon Base is another example. I've played a few team tournaments, and it's just a bummer that it's not possible to play one where it's possible to transfer units to a teammate: https://www.wargear.net/boards/view/Moon+Base.

I'm sure others who play a lot of team games can think of other examples, as well. To my mind, none of these boards would be fundamentally broken in any way if it were possible to fortify units to a teammate. They would play differently, which some players might not like, but which are players would prefer -- why should the latter group never get their chance to play the board how they'd like to play it?

As a designer, I'm almost always in favor of allowing players more choice in how they prefer to play. Some like heavy fog, some don't; some like 2 player games, some prefer 6 player games. And so on. You and I might have a philosophical difference in that regard, as designers, and I have no problem with a designer saying, no, this board will never have team transfer turned on. But for so many boards where it's not going to break anything, why not offer the option?

Also, I should add that I play a lot of team games and team tournaments. While it's sometimes fun to play w/o team transfers, it's more of a novelty appeal than a desired feature. Team transfer opens up a lot more options to coordinate, which is what many players enjoy about team games. Reducing interactions with your teammates, in my experience, is generally NPE.

Kjeld wrote:

And here's a team tournament on Pangaea and Panthalassa where it's also just kind of annoying for many players that there's no team transfer: https://www.wargear.net/tournaments/view/3470." target="_blank"> https://www.wargear.net/tournaments/view/3470. And not an obvious reason why there shouldn't be, at least as an option.

I find this one interesting as it is one of my tournaments which is basically a redo of a recent random teammate only pick your teammate. In the first one a player complained after his first turn in his first match and my opinion was if there were team xfer it would be an unfair advantage to the team that went first. Didn't hear much after that first game with regard to that. Did hear what great matches they were which was why most everybody came back for the second tourney, including yourself, this time riding shotgun with the map designer.

I'd be very curious who the "many annoyed" players are????

The "obvious reason there shouldn't be" is the crazy advantage it would give the first team.

Don't get me wrong, I love team xfer, I would do bad things if I had to to get it added to Antastic, but I really don't feel this map (or that tourney) is a good example, frankly.

Fair enough (though the first team/player almost always has an advantage regardless). But the point is that different players have different preferences, and it's a shame that for boards it either has to be one or the other unless the designer makes totally different scenarios (which strikes me as inelegant). I just don't see the harm in letting it be an option during game creation.

Yes, there is almost always an advantage to going first, however on P&P fortifies are "to connected" territories which would be an obscene advantage imho. We all get comfortable with team fortify and we all probably scream when it's not there, sometimes because we didn't look at the rules before our first turn and find out our big plans for our turn have just gone up in smoke.

I don't see a great harm either, tbh, but we might miss board specific nuances in play by caving to our comforts. I honestly think there would not have been interest in the 2nd tourney if the first one would have had team fortify option.

My .02 anyway.

>I doubt that Fortify ON is forgotten or overlooked in any board designs

/me sheepishly raises hand...

I do this ALL THE TIME. I just don't think about team games that much on my boards, so unless I remember it just stays on the default (i.e. team fortify off).

In fact I'm pretty sure that for P&P if I had thought of it I would have turned it on.... but hootz makes a good point, so now I'm torn.

I guess I could make a different scenario for it.

If Tom were to actually change something, what I'd like is for Team Fortify to default to True. (What I'd really like is three settings - on, off & let the players decide - but the third option is probably more complicated).

Way too busy with life to expound much but wanted to weigh in a little bit. There are a ton of boards (some already listed) that either were forgot or didn't realize and make them drastically less desirable. I play almost exclusively team games besides a few non-team BRG matches and the majority of them as tourneys where you can really start to work with your partner. Other than very specific boards that would break due to mechanics (hootz point and especially a chunk of stuff Ed Nygma designed) not allowing team to transfer it bewilders me that it shouldn't be on as the default from the start.