When a problem is too hard to explain

If I understand you made an improvement to your game that now unbalanced another mechanic.

Seems to me the most clear solution is to undo the change you made and re-evaluate why you made that change. Then perhaps see if a different change accomplishes the same thing.

One other note: in my experience when you can't describe how something works it's because you don't low how it works. If you don't know how it works, maybe try scrapping it and looking for a better way.

If I understand you made an improvement to your game that now unbalanced another mechanic.

Seems to me the most clear solution is to undo the change you made and re-evaluate why you made that change. Then perhaps see if a different change accomplishes the same thing.

One other note: in my experience when you can't describe how something works it's because you don't low how it works. If you don't know how it works, maybe try scrapping it and looking for a better way.

I'm going to teach you a magic trick to deal with these situations. I use it myself regularly and most pro's I know use variations because their bosses won't let them do it directly.

Walk away

You sound like you're emotional about the situation. Making a game is a personal thing, you're investing yourself into the work. You're throwing everything you had at "the problem" and when it doesn't work you throw more.

It's frustrating, and infuriating and it's tearing you apart inside. (At least, it does me)

Your brain is more effective when you're relaxed. You should take a week or two to walk away, stop thinking about this, watch cartoon and eat cereal all day... or at least when you're not day-jobbing.

Set a date to return to the project. When you come back you'll have a clearer perspective.

Maybe you'll solve the problem, maybe you'll jump back to the last point you were comfortable with it, or sometimes you just realize that it can't be salvaged.

For now, just clear your head and don't worry about it.

Sigh, You're not putting lassie down. You're locking her in a closet until you have an idea of what to feed her!

Seriously though, shelving a game can -sometimes- be a good answer. Sometimes, we lack the skills, the knowledge or just some piece of the puzzle that you can't continue without.

Card's of Cthulhu's expansion was actually put in hold originally for that reason alone. I didn't know where to look or how to proceed the right way.

It was a fan mail that actually sparked an idea. A week later, I had a strong concept to build on and the motivation to do it.

In fact, some of the concepts didn't make it into the final product. The game I'm working on now uses many of them.

* * *

If you want to power through it I've got a few ideas that helped me (Video Game Devs need to do this often since we've only got 1 game in development and deadlines!)

- Game Jam
The first thing I try is to set aside a weekened to make a completely unrelated project. It doesn't matter what the project is, but I focus entirely on getting something accomplished.

This helps me bleach my brain of the other game for a while and remind me why I love development in the first place.

- Drown Myself In Games
The second thing I do alot of is marathon watch gameplay or review channels. I'll watch hours of reviews of games that I'm not even interested in for the sole purpose of seeing other mechanics.

What you're trying to do here is find that "Missing Puzzle Piece" I mentioned before. A word, a mechanic, an inspiration... just keep your mind and your eyes open for whatever it is the universe needs to tell you.

- Get Help
Finally, alot of times I'll just ask someone else for help.

Whether it's sitting at the table and playing together, or bouncing ideas off them, I try to get a second opinion that isn't clouded by personal feelings.

Sometimes they have an answer, sometimes explaining the problem to them gives me an idea and sometimes it just builds friendship despite being entirely useless.

- - -

Anyways, Good luck. It ain't easy, but it can be so well worth it.

I am trying to understand the problem. It seem you want a system where a weapon could have less chances to hit from great distance than short distance and you refer that has visibility.

First, weapons that get's less efficient over time are not related to visibility from my point of view, but rather from inneficiency on lack of precision because most of the time, the target unit will be seen by another unit.

For a game of mine, in order to see a unit, you had to move another unit adjacent or a scouting unit 2 hex from it, in order to be able to shoot it afterwards with long range artillery. It replaced a fog of war system and prevented artillery to destroy the whole battlefield easily.

One way to simplify this is remove the gradient level with 2 values: true or false. A bit like in mark of the ninja: You are hidden, or exposed, you are not 75% hidden in the shadows. For example:

- If target is in range 0-3, you get no modifier. If in range 4-5, get a penalty for range imprecision.

- As for hidden terrain like forest. Maybe cannot be scouted 2 hex away by scout, must be adjacent. Or only adjacent scout can detect those units.

So try convert all your modifiers as yes/no questions and it could possibly work.

I think you are still putting too much gradient, convert all your math as 1 and 0, yes/no.

Your "visibility" is obstructed or not, Yes/no. It can be a forest, a jungle, a mountain, etc. We don't care, it's all obstructed visibility.

You are at long or short range. Yes/No. There is no multiply X by it's range or any other math. You are at short or long range, nothing less, nothing more. The only variability is that each unit could have different nb of hex for short and long range.

Even movement, I wanted to use in my game something like Xcom where you have half movement and full movement. 1 Action point for half, 2 action point for full (for example)

In the end, you could have a die roll and get +1/-1 for each yes no questions. Like:

The enemy is in a forest (obstructed visibility) in the long range area of attack of your unit, so you get -2 to your attack roll.

You get the idea?