Features for 0.8

[Eponymous-Archon]

as for dusk, dawn, etc: use shades on terrains like mountains, hills, edges of forest, that rotate and in/decrease during the day? A hard thing to draw this in a convincing way, I think though.

How about changing the surrounding widgets and borders, rather than the playing area itself?

Instead of the little panorama, we might also have simply the sun and moon, rising and setting, or being none,half, or all visible.

[Christophe33]

they are not real castles, i think, but are camps.

They are what we say they are.

Both viewpoints seem to me to be possible. Surely if they are really castles, then they ought to provide more defense than they do...but they don't have to. We can decide that.

I agree with EA... In some cases there are only temporary camps, specially for Konrad while in other it is real castle. So maybe there should be a new terrain called camp providing minor defense bonu, allowing to recall/recruit and another called castle/fortification providing stronger bonus.
In the dawrven door scenario there are bunch of fortification around and Konrad says ""The defense of the dwarves must have been strong. Look at those ruined towers!""...
but the towers, ruined or not are not offering better defence than hill or montains.
If you travel almost anywhere in Europe you will find castle and fortifications about everywhere (many were destroyed but you can still see leftover ruins). In disputed area there were a castle (small or big) on almost every hilltop. I counted more than 15 castle in the 10 km area around my childhood home...and probably missed a bunch.
Actually, maybe the bonus of fortification should be additive to the one of the terrain...like that a castle on mountain would be better than in plain for example. For example the defense form fortification could be an independent 50%, so if a unit has 60% chance to be hit in plain and 40% in mountain, the chance to be hit with fortification will be 60x0.5=30% in plain and 40 x0.5=20% in montain.

[Guest]

the problem is castles are not 'on' terrain, they are a terrain in themselves. there is no grass castle, mountain castle, forest castle, there is just castle.

[turin]

no new terrains, no changes to defensive bonuses... leave it the way it is. why add more complexity?
an enemy in a castle still has very good defenses.although it is not impossible to kill, it is likely that, unless you can surround it, it will be hard to kill the unit without getting lucky. the numbers should not fluctuate too greatly, because terrain, i think, should have a very subtle effect on the game, not a huge one.

[Woodwizzle]

I agree with Turin. KISS!!!

[Christophe33]

If you want total simplicity, we can get rid of the terrain effect completely and give a flat 50% chance to hit for any unit in any terrain.
Changing the % chance to hit doesn't increase the complexity of the game neither for the developper nor for the player...you gave a bad KISS . Do you realise that the terrain is the only factor that determine the % chance to be hit? If you want to reduce the amplitude then you can forget any strategy and just have a single terrain... it will make map drawing way easier.
Have you look at the table?
Here are a few examples (chance to be hit):
Armored foot (i.e. professional soldiers, mostly human units): castle 60, hill 50---> you are better protected on a hill than in a castle
Large foot: castle 60 mountain 40
mountainfoot castle 50 mountain 30
In other word for many units the castle is worse than useless... it increases the chance to be hit!
Have you ever been in a castle or a fortified city?
When you are on the top of a 60 feet wall and protected by 6 feet of rock battlement, you are in far better situation than the guy down the trench trying to hit you.
If you wanted to be anywhere close to realism, the chance to be hit by a melee weapon would be around 1%...and maybe 5% with range weapon.

This bring us to the next subject... it might be interesting to have a different % chance to be hit for range and melee weapon.... For example forest offers a good cover against range weapon (specially for elf) but less good in melee.
Plain will offer a poor defense against range weapon but some unit would use it well in melee (like horsemen)...
So we could have a different defense table for melee than for range for each terrain. It will make the use of various weapons more interesting by creating more diversity. Please don't KISS me again .

[Lithorien]

You read that wrong. The 60% is the DEFENSE. Not the chance to be hit.

A castle is 40% chance to be hit. It's 100-(listed number)

[Christophe33]

You read that wrong. The 60% is the DEFENSE. Not the chance to be hit.

A castle is 40% chance to be hit. It's 100-(listed number)

Nope, I'm right, at least if the table displayed in wiki is correct. You were right for the old table ... but the table in wiki now indicates the chance to be hit even if the word "defense" remained.
Example:
Defense Tundra Sand Grassland Forest Swamp Hills Mountains Castle
woodland 70 70 60 30 60 50 40 40
Woodland units (elf) have only 30% chance to be hit in forest and it is what is displayed. In the past the displayed number was 70 for forest.
There might be mistake in this table since the table for movement contains mistakes (shallow water and deep water column are inverted).

[Eponymous-Archon]

I find these tables confusing. I know that what the program uses and what the user sees don't have to be the same, so I think these tables should be differently labeled.

1. Movement - smaller numbers clearly mean more movement. 100 means no movement at all. But how does it work exactly? A divisor of some maximum movement? This is completely unlike the % system in the other tables. If it went by %-age of regular movement allowed, then it would be consistent and 0 could serve as "no movement", which makes intuitive sense to me. And frankly I've only just come to understand the movement stat (0/5, for example) given in the right panel during the game. Why is it necessary, when clicking on the unit shows you its movement capability, as does (to some extent) the thermometer bulb?

2. Defense - this is really confusing (especially if it changed recently). If it's supposed to mean "% Chance of being hit", let's call it that. Defense sounds like it might be "% reduction in hit points dealt by weapon if unit is hit." I realize the wiki/manual is not done, but it took reading a posting by Dave in the Forums to realize how the whole damage thing worked.

3. Resistance - Honestly, I still don't know what this is. A multiplier for the amount of damage normally done by a certain kind of weapon? It seems backwards then (as the defense tabel used to be): a 200% resistance means you suffer 200% of normal damage, right? Wouldn't that sound better as 50% resistance? The way it is now, it's "susceptibility."

As usual, just after some clarity.

[Dave]

I find these tables confusing.

Which tables? The in-game ones (Under 'describe unit')? The ones in the Wiki at http://wesnoth.slack.it/?MoveTypeTables ?

If the latter, then I would suggest that these are a developer's reference rather than something that is supposed to be used by users. After all, users aren't even meant to know about movement types such as armoredfoot.

1. Movement - smaller numbers clearly mean more movement. 100 means no movement at all. But how does it work exactly? A divisor of some maximum movement?

Every unit has movement points. For instance most foot units have 5 movement points. This is how far they can move in a turn. The numbers are the number of movement points it costs.

Almost every TBS game I have seen does it like this.

And frankly I've only just come to understand the movement stat (0/5, for example) given in the right panel during the game. Why is it necessary, when clicking on the unit shows you its movement capability, as does (to some extent) the thermometer bulb?

Its good to know a unit's total movement allowance. It's good to know that a unit can move 5 hexes in a turn (across terrain that costs 1 movement per hex), rather than just knowing things vaguely based on what happens when you click on the unit.

2. Defense - this is really confusing (especially if it changed recently). If it's supposed to mean "% Chance of being hit", let's call it that. Defense sounds like it might be "% reduction in hit points dealt by weapon if unit is hit." I realize the wiki/manual is not done, but it took reading a posting by Dave in the Forums to realize how the whole damage thing worked.

The defense displayed in-game under the unit's terrain modifiers table and in the top-right corner of the screen is the % chance to avoid being hit. i.e. your % chance to parry/dodge/avoid the attack. The % displayed on the attack dialog is the chance to hit.

The %s in Wiki are the chances the unit has of being hit, and that's what the game uses internally, but we need not worry about that.

3. Resistance - Honestly, I still don't know what this is.

In-game, resistance amounts are displayed under 'Unit Description' -> 'Resistance'. If a unit has 20% resistance against an attack, the attack will do 20% less damage than it would normally. If a unit has -20% resistance against an attack, the attack will do 20% more damage than normal. Usually units have 0 or positive resistance against attacks -- negative values are for things like horses vs piercing attacks and undead vs holy attacks.

In the Wiki and internally, the amounts are the % of total damage received.

David

[Circon]

I haven't looked at the movetypetables and I'm not going to, since they willbe confusing.

But I know this: The first level of "Son of the Black Eye" has a 3-hex castle area which is very nice for standing in while awating reinforcements, as Grunts have 60% defence there (40% to be hit) but only 40% defence on grassland (60% to be hit) and 50% in forest.

So... AFAIK, Castles DO give better defense.

[Eponymous-Archon]

as for dusk, dawn, etc: use shades on terrains like mountains, hills, edges of forest, that rotate and in/decrease during the day? A hard thing to draw this in a convincing way, I think though.

Just playing with the CVS now and this change is in. I thought something was wrong first, but then realized what it was. Very nice.

If anything, I'd say make the transition more obvious by having the screen darken or lighten right after the player's turn starts, or at least after the map has returned to its normal state following the last player's moves. More obvious that way.

This means, btw, that I find the panoramas representing day and night too subtle. How about a simpler set? (e.g., big yellow sun on bright blue background, big white moon on dark blue bg.)

[Dave]

Here are a few examples (chance to be hit):
Armored foot (i.e. professional soldiers, mostly human units): castle 60, hill 50---> you are better protected on a hill than in a castle

I concur that this is a little silly. I think we'll reverse the situation here.

However, about castles...the game isn't meant to have that much emphasis on them. The game is about field skirmishes, not grand sieges. Castles are places where leaders reside and recruit troops from. Their function isn't designed to include making their residents almost invincible.

Sure, in real life you'd need months or years to besiege a well-defended castle, but that has never been designed to be an aspect of Wesnoth.

David

[Christophe33]

I do not ask to have the castle providing such a huge bonus than you need a lot of troup and time to kill the unit bbut that at least it provides a defense as good or better than the best terrain for troup which are "at home" with castle. For mounted units and swimmer, it's logic that the cxastle is not that good...you can even argue the point for elf who prefer forest. But the rest, sepcially human and dwarf who are keen in building castle and fortress, it should be giving a decent defense. Since the best defense for a armored unit is 40 ot would not hurt to give 30 or 20 in castle. Same for mountain units and maybe orcish units.
An alternate would have been to give a bonus for castle that addd to the terrain the castle is build on. You could get ellf fortification in woods, castle on mountain or hilltop (most castle were build on hilltop or a flank of mountains), underwater fortification for Naga... For example armored human would get a 20% bonus for being in a fortress. If built on plain it would give them 50% and 30% for a fortress in mountain.
Other mecanism to give a better defense for castle could be considered, like giving an independent 50% chance to miss (so effectively dividing by 2 the chance to hit) or a damage reduction like a 30% resistance (damage reduced by 30%). While most of the game involve skirmishing and movement, it would be interesting to have situation allowing strong defense line to fix enemies (or being "fixed" by an enemy) by using some fortification as key point. This would add to the diversity of the strategy required to win game. It will also increase the value of slow units like the heavy infantry (very bad for skirmishing and war of movement) if they get good defense in castle and if there are some castle terrain to use to establish a defense line.
Any taker for a diffferential % chance to hit between range and melee attack?

[miyo]

Any taker for a diffferential % chance to hit between range and melee attack?

I think this breaks the KISS.

- Miyo