Buyable/summonable illusion/decoy units.

Naeddyr · Post by **Naeddyr** » April 8th, 2006, 10:26 am

Basically a unit that could be bought for cheap or summoned/created by another unit in a recruiting-area hex or whatever, which would act as a decoy.

The decoy would have these attributes:

It looks like some other unit. If it is clicked by an enemy, it is showed with the original units stats. It moves like the ordinary unit (though it doesn't penetrate fog).
It's cheap.
It has no health, nor does it deal damage. As soon as it is hit in battle, it dissipates. It can never hit an enemy. It probably has no ZOC - or that could be fixed by only allowing lvl 0 units be decoyed.
Traits do not apply to it, though they are shown. And so forth.

I think this would fit in with the Undead. A spook decoy or something like that.

EDIT:

Gah, NO ZOC I was saying.

JW · Post by JW » April 8th, 2006, 3:55 pm

1) Can it capture cities?
2) What do you mean it doesn't penetrate fog?

Naeddyr · Post by **Naeddyr** » April 8th, 2006, 5:23 pm

1 & 2) If it's cheap enough, I don't believe it should be able to capture cities, or roll back fog. Too much punch to it.

JW · Post by JW » April 8th, 2006, 5:56 pm

So if it doesn't remove fog in it's field of vision, how do you know where you're moving to? And would the units movement_type have village=100?

Post by **irrevenant** » April 8th, 2006, 10:21 pm

JW wrote:So if it doesn't remove fog in it's field of vision, how do you know where you're moving to? And would the units movement_type have village=100?

Presumably it would only be able to move within line of sight; which kind of makes sense - if it's a magical construct it might need to be remotely directed.

IMO, whether or not this precise unit gets accepted, the idea of "Disguised" units whose apparent stats are misleading would be a very handy thing for Wesnoth to support.

Glaucus · Post by **Glaucus** » April 9th, 2006, 5:11 am

irrevenant wrote:IMO, whether or not this precise unit gets accepted, the idea of "Disguised" units whose apparent stats are misleading would be a very handy thing for Wesnoth to support.

Yeah, I agree. JW's Shifters, for example, could be more interesting with a unit that had its true nature hidden until it was attacked. The Chaos faction could have a possesed unit from which the demon inside could burst forth, etc.

How would the AI treat units like this given how it behaves in fog?

Dacyn · Post by **Dacyn** » April 10th, 2006, 12:25 pm

Glaucus wrote:How would the AI treat units like this given how it behaves in fog?

Not knowing anything about the AI, I don't see why it would be a problem... The AI doesn't even know about the unit until it's dead, in which case it doesn't have to worry.
Of course, it might not be able to competently control such units...

JW · Post by JW » April 10th, 2006, 2:09 pm

Glaucus wrote:Yeah, I agree. JW's Shifters, for example, could be more interesting with a unit that had its true nature hidden until it was attacked. The Chaos faction could have a possesed unit from which the demon inside could burst forth, etc.

Now THAT is something I hadn't contemplated before...interesting...

Big Bad Joe · Post by **Big Bad Joe** » April 10th, 2006, 2:54 pm

My first post here: Just two ideas - Teach system and Shapeshifter.. Some ideas never dies..

p.s. I do not know how to make it hypertext, so anyone who knows please do so.
http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic. ... ach+system
edit: finally find out how to make it

Glaucus · Post by **Glaucus** » April 11th, 2006, 12:21 am

Dacyn wrote:
Glaucus wrote:How would the AI treat units like this given how it behaves in fog?
Not knowing anything about the AI, I don't see why it would be a problem... The AI doesn't even know about the unit until it's dead, in which case it doesn't have to worry.
Of course, it might not be able to competently control such units...

Maybe fog was a bad example. I thought that the AI made decisions about the units it attacked based on many things including the unit's level, experience, damage, etc. If these things were hidden from a human opponent would they also be hidden from the AI? Or would the AI treat the level 3 unit disguised as a level 1 like a level 3?

Dacyn · Post by **Dacyn** » April 11th, 2006, 12:55 am

uh, there are many ways an AI could be implemented. Either way is probably possible, but it seems obvious which one makes more sense...

Post by **irrevenant** » April 11th, 2006, 12:39 pm

Glaucus wrote:How would the AI treat units like this given how it behaves in fog?

I would imagine the simplest way to code this ability would be to have the unit actually be the first type of unit, until it's attacked (or the change is triggered in some other way?) then turn into the second type of unit.

A nice side-effect of doing it that way is that the AI would automatically be fooled with no additional effort.

A less nice side-effect is that it requires you to create an actual unit for the 'disguise', rather than having (eg.) a 'disguise' WML tag. However, given the amount of info required to fully model a 'disguise' (stats, art, animations etc.) it's probably most elegant to do that anyway...

Dacyn · Post by **Dacyn** » April 11th, 2006, 12:46 pm

irrevenant wrote:A less nice side-effect is that it requires you to create an actual unit for the 'disguise'

I thought the disguise was supposed to be a preexisting unit. Otherwise it wouldn't work very well against humans...