[ollie]

Originally Posted by Rich10

Lets stretch a strained analogy further. In your ecology, DW7K and Hatamoto (non tournament winners) are extinct. Moriko, the Drudge, Templars, Groks, Obsidians, and Shiori have non sustainable populations. The DW's, Roman Archers, Shades, Saylind, etc. are near extinction..... With a little bioengineering (change in points), we can bring them back. I would like to see Deathwalkers and Templars running in the forests with Raelin and Major Q9/10 (OK, I'm taking the analogy a bit far). The net cost is that people will have to take another 5 minutes to compute the cost of an army.

I think you've misinterpreted the analogy. Touranment winning units are a tiny part of the ecosystem. Think about a tournament and all it entails, in every sense. How much of is about which units in the winning army? How much is the conversations you had with other 'scapers? How much is the particular games? The location? Your identification of the ecosystem with the winning units is exactly the physics-approach I was arguing was inappropriate.

Here's one way I see the analogy being extended. Units used at an event are the fauna. Some are more common than others (flocks of Raelins are easy to spot) others are more reclusive (indeed the legendary Hatamoto has not been sighted for almost three years---extinct? shy?).

The trees of the forest are the players. Different trees, and mixes of trees, attract different animals. While Raelins are common everywhere, they especially love to nest in the dok tree. In different regions of the forest, different animals thrive. In the more competitive forest of Ohio it seems that the theoretically stronger armies dominate more, with some of the rarer species surviving on the sap of a forest cactus. In the northeast it's not too unusual at all to see deathwalkers scurrying through the undergrowth. Other flora include the shrubs (parents that occasionally play) and the saplings (children) that might grow into mighty oaks one day. These tend to attract different wildlife than the mature trees.

Tournament winning units are the show-off animals; the ones with the distinctive call or tendency to charge at you attempting to eat you. They're the most noticeable part of the web of life and that prominence misleads people into thinking them the most important part of the web.

Underneath all this, garnering little attention from our city-physicist, is the soil. The soil recycles the nutrients through the web. This is where the hard work of the tournament directors takes place, efficiently adapting to what the local area provides and turning it back into useful material for the flora and fauna.

I'll stop there before my typing incontinence gets too far out of hand. You get the idea.

Your bioengineering comment I think illustrates exactly the physicist mentality. That is not how healthy ecosystems are built, it's how highly-optimised-for-a-single-function systems are built. Healthy ecosystems come from working with nature to keep everyting in balance (heh, what's "balance" again? can I sub in "harmony" here without being branded as an irredeemable hippy?).

Our current tournament scene is a healthy ecosystem. If you must bioengineer the animals to give yourself a greater sense of control, at least be aware that there might be unexpected consequences, and check with the trees and the soil in the region you're experimenting on that they have at least have a chance of interacting well with the new species.