wesnoth
Restructuring the Monsters Race
This has been proposed several times before, so I think an issue about it is reasonable. I will try to address what is said here in a PR restructuring some races soon. This involves splitting the cluttered and confusing race of monsters, which is very vague and full of quite disconnected units. Feel free to add other proposals beyond those shown here.
Elementals
There is already an issue on this: #8890
I will probably be addressing this in a PR soon. Discussion specifically related to elementals should currently go there. IMO this should be followed later by adding UMC elementals, already being added in another PR.
Animals
Personally not a classification I like given the very blurry line between animals and monsters, but it has been proposed by several people now. This would involve splitting many unit, such as many of the recent fauna additions, into an animal race. I personally propose this race to be called "fauna" if it is added. It's also relevant that very few core monsters would be left if this were split, and almost none if this and elementals were split.
Arthropods
I also proposed splitting ants, but I now disagree with this. This relatively clear split would split around 20 or so units from monsters, while still leaving many more. A neat and useful category in my opinion. I would make this a sub-folder of monsters. "Bug" race is alternative name I've seen proposed, though I personally prefer arthropods. Examples of units would be Fire Ants, Giant Spiders, Monsters Crabs from UtBS, Dragonflies and many more.
Aquatic Creatures
Like arthropods, I would make these a sub-folder of monsters. Includes a smaller but relevant group of aquatic creatures, such as Caribes, Sea Serpents, Dolphins from WoF, Krakens and a few more.
Related issues
Another thing that has been proposed surrounding this is to merge smaller races into monsters. If these were made sub-folders of monsters I would be in support of adding falcons, cats and possibly wolves/gryphons/bats to monsters. However, removing these races entirely would probably cause unnecessary breaking of UMC, which is why I would avoid it.
Again conceding that I don't have much experience/concern about unit factions, balance, etc, but I note that regarding elementals there's also #5532 outstanding.
For arthropods, I take it that is suggested in contrast to insects to be inclusive of arachnids?
"Bug" race is alternative name I've seen proposed, though I personally prefer arthropods.
I prefer "bug" because it's more general and less clearly-defined. A worm is not an arthropod, but it is a undeniably a bug.
I agree that bug might be a better name (though keep in mind mainline doesn’t contain any cases of a bug unit that isn’t an arthropod, though I know some UMC units that fit that).
Another somewhat related proposal to this that has already been made before in #7252 is to create a birds race comprising of falcons and ravens. I would also include gryphons, rocs and stymphalians from WoF in such a race. I think this would make sense to prevent having an entirely separate race for two or three units.
though keep in mind mainline doesn’t contain any cases of a bug unit that isn’t an arthropod, though I know some UMC units that fit that
Like giant leeches? Anyway, it should be made inclusive enough that add-ons can use it for things we haven't thought of.
I would also include gryphons, rocs and stymphalians from WoF in such a race.
I don't think gryphons count as birds. Merging the falcons and ravens might be fine. Throwing rocs and stymphalians into the mix might be fine. But adding gryphons in is probably not a good idea, not just because they're not a bird, but also because they have names, and because they have their own unique undead variation.
Which reminds me, the undead variation may be the biggest reason why some groups can't really be merged.
Well, undead variation can be different within members of a race, like for monsters. That’s not a significant issue givne that these races are still supposed to be fairly broad imo. I suppose gryphons aren’t fully birds, though they are half-birds.
Ah, alright, I didn't realize the monster race was already doing that. The fact that the gryphons have names (and are not really birds) still feels like a reason not to merge them.
I do wonder if, rather than merging existing races, it might be better to just make races hierarchical. Then (for example) the "cat" and "wolf" races would just be "subraces" of the "beast" or "animal" race, so they'd match both a race=cat filter and a race=animal filter.
Personally I don’t liket he vagueness of race=animal. I thiught the idea of having several races as monster subraces, like cats, but I’m starting to think this is a bit unncessary. I agree the anems are a good reason not to add gryphons to a bird race. I wil, be prearing a PR of my proposals here soon.
For many scenario designs monster is a useful distinction carrying quite a lot of game play relevant connotations - micro ai behavior, attacking players and enemies alike, disinterest in capturing villages, unable to open doors, unable to pick up objects, not speaking commentary dialogue, et cetera...
So it is a bad idea to break up the monster race into a bunch of arbitrary ones. For example "arthropods" like spiders, scorpions and dragonflies have nothing meaningful in common - unrelated move types, unrelated resistances, unrelated attacks and unrelated habitats.
Doing a bit of necromancy, but I thought about that recently. My two cents:
IMHO, there should be only two (sub)races (elemental and animals) instead of the current 8 (bats, cats, falcons, gryphons, horses, monsters, ravens, wolves), as currently any non-elemental monster is an animal (yes, the Fire Dragon is an animal).
Currently, if you want to filter for animals, you have to filter for 8 races and excludes all monsters by hand. On the other hand, if you want to filter for elementals, you also have to filter units individually.
IMHO, the "recent" inflation in the number of races in core (addition of cats, falcons, ravens, and horses) is not a good thing. Why not add aquatic creatures and arthropods as proposed above, and everything imaginable then? As was stated above, adding sub-races would solve this issue and would prevent breaking current content, and could also be used for humans (adding back dunefolk into humans, while giving differents subraces for dunefolk, loyalist, outlaws, and necro potentially).
If sub-races cannot be implemented, it would IMHO be preferable to break content now and prevent further inflation of the number of races and clean a bit the mess the monster race is.
There is also the issue that some animals (those with their own race) have traits while others (those of race=monster) have none.