DFD: 563 vs. 338, 345 vs. 227

[Nighthawk]

For fight one:
Given that I'm the submitter of issue 563, it should be a foregone conclusion which I'm going to argue in support of, but anyway. May as well be objective about this.
Simply, #563 would let the modder create unlockable missions. These could be used as an end-of-campaign surprise or reward for players, something to give a sense of accomplishment or even as a reason for players to finish the campaign. Additionally, as one commenter in the tracker issue said, it could be used as an alternative method of mission progression. Coupled with the campaign list, you could have each individual mission as its own "campaign", with the previous one having to be finished to be unlocked, at which point players could choose individual missions to play from the list at their leisure.

The "Charge-thing" request. I can see its merits. Though I'm assuming this is for something other than buildings, as SHP buildings can already do this (Tesla Coil and Prism Tower for one), and if it weren't up against my own issue, I'd probably go along with it. However, I personally wouldn't see much of a use for delayed-fire weapons outside of structures anyway. Now that I think about it, such an effect could possibly be worked around (albeit horribly hackishly) using gattling logic, with the first gattling weapon being a non-damaging weapon with the charging animation, followed by the actual weapon.

Thus, my stance is support #563, kill #338.


For fight two:
I'm finding this one a little difficult - both issues have pros and cons to them. Going with the Veteran/EliteAt, I think this would be quite a good idea as it would let modders individually control when their unit can be promoted. If something like Rock/NarmPatch's unit-changing-on-promotion logic were ever implemented, such a tag as this could come in handy. Even then, in mods where the elite version of a unit has an upgraded weapon, such a tag could be used quite well to help balance it. That said, I think there might need to be more advantages to having veteran/elite units than merely weapons for these tags to be widely used, but those would be for other DFDs to decide.

I like the idea of the second issue, however it does sound quite complex to me, and makes me think of a multitude of questions as it is. How do you control what each radio button does? What if I don't have Team Alliance / Minor Super / whatever in my mod? What if my mod doesn't use cloaking units? How would such a system react to additional StealthTypes being introduced (which I think is on the cards somewhere in these DFDs)? What if the Assault packs and support for them isn't incorporated into your mod? Basically, I see this request as being too complicated to use, and too limiting, given that there's no guarantee modders will keep/use any of the options it presents.

Thus, my stance is support #345, kill #227.

Edit: I've had a few more thoughts on #227. If it were combined with something like the INI inclusion logic, so that each button can control the inclusion of content in a certain INI, I could even be persuaded to flip my stance. However, I can also see more issues with this. Firstly, how do you control what takes priority? Say one INI changes the GI's strength to X, and another changes it to Y. If you activate both radio buttons, what takes priority? Also, the size of the menu interface would need to be taken into account. In Skirmish, there's plenty of space to play around with, yes. However, hop over to LAN or Multiplayer, and that chat window gets lobbed out in front of everything, drastically reducing the available space. If #227 were to be implemented, something would need to be figured out there.