Chording too powerful

[chaotic_iak]

Chording is when you click on a clue cell to instantly fill everything around it. In general, this is nice so you don't have to manually click everything around a cell, and in fact I do appreciate that chording here works to both reveal and flag cells.

However, I find that chording becomes too powerful for the right-side variants; it often reveal/flag some cells while leaving others unknown. For example, in (M), suppose a cell that has 1 unknown black cell and 2 unknown colored cells has the clue 2; then chording reveals that the black cell is empty (due to parity), while the colored cells remain unrevealed (because either one can have the mine).

I think this should be something that people are supposed to deduce logically. In a sense, the game encourages one to just try chording all the clue cells, since chording doesn't give any penalty; often doing this lets you reveal a lot of cells, sometimes even outright solving the grid.

My suggestion is this: chording should only fill cells if all cells around it end up filled (whether revealed as blanks or marked as mines). A stricter variant is that chording only fills cells if all cells around it are blanks or all cells around it are mines; you cannot have a mixture of blanks/mines. This keeps the convenience of marking cells at once without doing too much. (I know I can disable chording, but I do want chording for all-blank and all-mine.)

A different suggestion that can help tone down random chording is this: chording acts like clicking on an empty cell. If chording doesn't reveal anything new, it counts as a mistake and takes away the star.

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On the other hand, I feel like more chording for left-side variants can be helpful. Specific examples that come to mind are:

• In (D), if a mine is already orthogonally adjacent to another mine, chording either mine reveals that all cells orthogonally adjacent to the pair are empty.
  
• In (B), chording a row/column works like chording a blank cell (a row/column that needs all remaining cells as empty/mine is automatically filled so).

Both of these follow the idea that chording helps fill in obvious deductions that are tiresome to fill in manually.

[Patashu]

I get where you're coming from, but please don't take away my chording power I really like only being made to think when it's a 2+ clue deduction LMAO

I think otho the idea of 'chording the left hand rule' is a bit open ended because while a clue has a limited radius it can consider, a rule can potentially consider the entire board. It makes sense for chording Dual to place empties next to finished dominos, say, but for example... If there's only one valid snake left to place, should chording Snake place it?

[chaotic_iak]

Actually, after thinking about the left-side variants more, I think only (D) and (B) really want chording.

• (Q) The trivial deduction is, a 2x2 with 3 known blank cells wants the last one to be mine. You just need one click to do it, there's no need for chording.
  
• (T) The trivial deduction is, two mines about to form a triplet needs the last cell to be blank. Again you just need one click to do it, although there's also a different reason: it's not clear what you should click to chord anyway.
  
• (C), (O), (S) All of these don't really have any trivial local deduction. At best I can think something of, in (C), a mine with all adjacent cells blank except for one needs that last one to be not-mine. But that's only one click, no need for chording.

So, yeah, I only find I really wish chording in (D) and (B).

[2jjy]

For left-side mechanics: We want to minimize our time adjusting or optimizing a single variant or two; we want our game to be consistent. Considering more content to be added to 14mv (potentially including more left-side bonus variants), we will keep things simple as they are now to prevent overcomplex situations in future updates.

For right-side mechanics: Chording may feel too strong in early gameplay, but it is actually not strong in the late game. Chording only works on the single-clue deduction, which is often the most straightforward deduction in harder sets. If you feel chording is too strong in the early game you may choose to turn them off (in the setting) until you feel all single-clue deductions are evident to you.

Alith