About once a year or so I try to pitch a veterancy system upgrade to the fine folks at UniWar. Essentially, I like the idea of adding a small skill/ability improvement upon obtaining three stripes.
Veterancy is one of the more fun aspects of the game, and I think it could be made amazing with the addition of difficult to obtain abilities. For balance, the abilities would have to be small, but enough to add a new wrinkle to longer games.
This year, rather than offer it up as a half baked idea with vague suggestions, I thought I’d instead list specific ideas for special abilities for each unit type. Upon obtaining a third stripe, in addition to 13 health, and in lieu of additional damage or other bonuses at lvl 3, I would add the following:
- Lvl 3 Marine – increase range to 2
- Lvl 3 Underling – from submerged, resurface in current OR adjoining hex
- Lvl 3 Mecha – teleport ends turn, but does not disable
- Lvl 3 Marauder, Swarmer and Speeder – either added mobility or small armor piercing %
- Lvl 3 Fuze – 1 hex move after attack
- Lvl 3 Salamander – 1 hex move after attack
- Lvl 3 Mantisse – 1 hex move after attack
- Lvl 3 Bopper – attack range of 2-3
- Lvl 3 Borfly – splash damage (see battery, etc)
- Lvl 3 Guardian – heal 1 per turn with aide of engineer
- Lvl 3 Helicopter – +1 movement range after attack
- Lvl 3 Eclipse – teleport ends turn, but does not disable
- Lvl 3 Garuda – is it possible to stun on critical hit?
- Lvl 3 Tank –
- Lvl 3 Pinzer –
- Lvl 3 Plasma –
- Lvl 3 Battery, Wyrm and Walker – +1 splash damage to adjacent light ground and amphibious
- Lvl 3 Submarine – dive after attack
- Lvl 3 Kraken – attack land/air from underwater
- Lvl 3 Skimmer – attack land/air from underwater
- Lvl 3 Destroyer –
- Lvl 3 Leviathan –
- Lvl 3 Hydronaut –
There are a few units I’ve not figured out, but you get the idea. My goal is to add some incentive to strive for veterancy beyond the added health and damage, without making any unit OP.
A single three stripe marine with a range of two wouldn’t alter the game dramatically, but it would be an interesting dynamic. It’s the same with an underling that can spring up from more than one hex.
Also, to the fine devs at UniWar, I’d dump serious Unicoins into the ability to level up to three stripes.
Cheers!
That same line, or something very similar was in the tutorial for another game I recently downloaded, 
