While the conquer mechanism is interesting, the perpetual capture problem definitely holds it back a lot in terms of playability.
Playability is only superficially restricted. The rules clearly state that constant repetitions are excluded. The extent to which players follow this rule or not cannot determine whether a variant is published or not. Incidentally, the current games on Game Courier show that players follow the rules to avoid repetition and that playability is a given.
…it is very easy for pieces that move alike to perpetually capture one another, making the conquer mechanism very drawish as it is now.
In my opinion, it should be left to the players to judge whether the game is interesting or uninteresting. In any case, you can find players on Game Courier who are interested in the game. Furthermore, my game 'Nasty Neighbours (conquer style)' has recently been released. Why should 'Queens (conquer style)' be judged by different standards?
This mechanism might work with piece rosters with a lot of forward bias (e.g. Shogi), but this idea is untested.
May I ask whether passing a test is a criterion for publication? And which test would that be? The games I have played and those on Game Courier show that playability is a given - and that could be considered a passing 'test'. Furthermore, variants are published on CVP that neither have an interactive diagram nor can be played on Game Courier. This again raises the question of different standards.
If the interactive diagram cannot cope with the conquer rule, then this is not due to the rule, but to the AI or the script. It would be nice if the problem could be solved, because then the variant could also be tested against the AI.
P.S.: H.G. has just posted that he has made a change to the diagram that should prevent crashes in conquest versions (see here) - thanks for that.
Playability is only superficially restricted. The rules clearly state that constant repetitions are excluded. The extent to which players follow this rule or not cannot determine whether a variant is published or not. Incidentally, the current games on Game Courier show that players follow the rules to avoid repetition and that playability is a given.
In my opinion, it should be left to the players to judge whether the game is interesting or uninteresting. In any case, you can find players on Game Courier who are interested in the game. Furthermore, my game 'Nasty Neighbours (conquer style)' has recently been released. Why should 'Queens (conquer style)' be judged by different standards?
May I ask whether passing a test is a criterion for publication? And which test would that be? The games I have played and those on Game Courier show that playability is a given - and that could be considered a passing 'test'. Furthermore, variants are published on CVP that neither have an interactive diagram nor can be played on Game Courier. This again raises the question of different standards.
If the interactive diagram cannot cope with the conquer rule, then this is not due to the rule, but to the AI or the script. It would be nice if the problem could be solved, because then the variant could also be tested against the AI.
P.S.: H.G. has just posted that he has made a change to the diagram that should prevent crashes in conquest versions (see here) - thanks for that.