Presence of Ambush etc. in MP? Issues and ideas.

[Garion]

As to Darth Fool's solutions, the first is nothing more than "Invisible units don't block enemy units but don't get revealed," where the major problem is "Invisible units don't block enemy units". There aren't any other problems I can see with the idea; it's probably a coding nightmare, but so is the current Ambush. The second is worse - if the ambusher moves automatically, then instead of using undo to find the ambusher, the enemy can use his army to choose where to put the ambusher! Shocked Also, the ambusher wouldn't be able to ZoC any of them because the last forest hex left might be on the other side of the forest from the ambusher.

As to the four problems - 1 is the perfect solution from a coding point of view. 2 is not a solution at all, 3 is entirely out of the question, and although a lot of people have been brainstorming on 4, no-one's adressed the underlying problem.

Just from this thread, 1 is the only way that's gained any kind of support. Neutral

I'd argue that the "underlying problem" in scenario number 4 is not a problem at all. Just don't rely on an Ambusher to project a ZOC! Use it for other combat roles.

That's an end-user problem of adapting your strategy to the forces at your disposal. Whereas solution 1 entails a decision by the developers to abandon the ability because it's too difficult to maintain.

Aside to JW - the problem with Turin's 1HP bat is NOT that it's using suicide tactics. It's that the bat is using the Undo trick to cover infinitely more ground than a single bat ever should be able to in one turn. Scouting is fine. Abusing game mechanics for the purpose of scouting is lame.

I'm not a coder, and I deeply appreciate the efforts of those who are. It's my opinion that the Ambush mechanic is one of the coolest ideas in this game, though. And I feel like, if solution one is the only solution we can come up with for it, why keep it at all?

Either units can stay hidden - which makes them Ambushers - or they cannot, which makes them, well, not Ambushers. A unit that just gets free attacks for being in a certain terrain is a "Ranger" or maybe a "Yeoman" or something, but if it doesn't hide, let's axe the idea of hiding and the name that goes with it.

EDIT added quote, since I find myself on a new page.

[Lecter]

Nightstalk/Ambushing

The essence of ambushing is like sending 1 elvish fighter alone in the forest, seeing such thing the orc player sends 3 units on him, but surprise these 2 wose and 1 ranger with him! Thus the orcs cant undo and they are trapped.

Using ambushing to run away is pretty lame, but you could make it than an ambushed unit will only reveal if he moves beside the ennemy unit, or if he attack him.
To balance "that even if you are beside an ambushed unit u cannot see him", the ability that the ambushed unit cannot move for 1 turn, or has slower move on him if he is ambushed.
Adding backstab or initiative to ambushing units would be good too.

Units with some detect ability would have a reason to be then.

It makes me think of seduction, which has the same effect than entangling, or ensnaring. (seduction shouldnt slow movements but prevent unit from attacking at all until the start of his next turn, or until the end of his next turn.)

Abilities shoul be more structured too
Passive/Active (already done since active are special attacks, aruas ar eincluded in passives)
but it can be done further:

Damage boost/ reduce
backstab, steadfast, charge

Attack probability boost
magical, marksman

Combat
Bersek, Swarm, FirstStrike

Status inflicters
Poison, Slow, Illuminates, Leadership, Stone

Healings
Cure, Heal, Regeneration, Drain, "in a village"

Movement
Skirmisher, Teleport

Invisible/Detectors
Ambush, Nightstalk, Submerge

Unit Creator
Pest, (dungeon recruiting)

[JW]

Just from this thread, 1 is the only way that's gained any kind of support.

You're wrong. I think it's pretty clear that I support #2...

Although, if this is really a problem, then maybe the Undo feature needs to be looked at. How difficult would it be to keep a unit from undoing more hexes than it has movement? This would still allow mistakes to be preventable, but abusing the system would be impossible. Also, making 2 mistakes actually punishes the fool controlling the unit. :p

Anyway, do you know of anyone that currently uses the cheap tactic we are discussing? Is it really that big of an issue? Is it just a theoretical possibility that you are using to justify the removal of invisibility altogether? Seriously, I can't imagine anyone is doing this. I doubt anyone would have thought of this had you not mentioned it yourself.

Let's take a moment to discuss how bad #2 really is, shall we? First, tell me why you are so against it.

[Noyga]

As to Darth Fool's solutions, the first is nothing more than "Invisible units don't block enemy units but don't get revealed," where the major problem is "Invisible units don't block enemy units". There aren't any other problems I can see with the idea

Well i see another major problem : if the unit stays invisible, it is simply invincible...
Choose Ranger as a leader, stay in a forest : your ennemies can't win !

[Garion]

The solution to that is profoundly simple. Make Ambushers unable to recruit.

[Elvish_Pillager]

Let's take a moment to discuss how bad #2 really is, shall we? First, tell me why you are so against it.

Mainly because it makes it so that hiding barely hides the unit at all.

As to #4, there's also the stacking units problem...

[JW]

Let's take a moment to discuss how bad #2 really is, shall we? First, tell me why you are so against it.

Mainly because it makes it so that hiding barely hides the unit at all.

And where are the statistics to show that? What percent of the time are hidden units found by undo-abusing?

[Chris Byler]

Not that it might not be a useful and interesting ability, but an ambush that can be seen from miles away doesn't seem very ambush-y. And how does this work for nightstalk? Nightstalk has the same problem and has it on *all* terrains (albeit only some of the time).

It's not as if units with hiding abilities rely on them to be useful, anyway. Rangers are already great units with versatile attacks, good movement and defense and more HP than marksmen. The Shadow is even better with high physical resistances, flying and a monstrously strong backstab. I doubt those units would need any improvement at all if you removed their hiding abilities completely and changed nothing else - at most, a few more HP would be plenty.

I don't see any way to avoid #4 being even more complex than the current system. Hiding is already one of the least-KISS abilities in the game and most of the proposals on this thread make it more complicated or *much* more complicated.


The current system doesn't allow moves to be undone if a fogged hex was revealed, even if it was empty (because the player gains information that cannot be taken away by an undo), but it *does* allow moves to be undone if a hex (in which hiders might previously have been present and unrevealed) was searched for hiders and none were found. Undoing is only prevented if a hider *is* found.

This falsely assumes that finding nothing is uninformative - it isn't. In the real world it is commonly stated that "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence". In Wesnoth, finding no evidence of a hider *actually is* evidence that there isn't one there - in that specific set of hexes - because if there had been, the chance of finding it would have been 100%.

Using a cheap fast unit to sweep areas for a hider is reasonable, but it should only be able to sweep an amount of area determined by its *actual* movement, not all of its *possible* moves at once - if you want to search a large area you should need several bats, not just one bat and the undo feature. Proposed penalties to the finder don't address this problem because the finder may be expendable.


This is why, if hiding is allowed to continue to exist and looking at a hex up close is different than looking at it from a distance, most moves are informative (even with no fog, and with shroud update delayed) and thus most undos would have to be banned to kill the exploit; I would rather lose hiding than undos (and I'd rather do either than keep the exploit - I really like undos, but not if they are exploitable in that way). In other words, I would rank EP's four alternatives by desirability 1, 3, 2, 4. 4 complicates the issue further and creates more problems than it solves.

This partly arises out of the opinion that hiding doesn't really contribute much if anything positive to Wesnoth anyway, so I don't mind tossing it if it causes problems (which it clearly does). Seeing or not seeing a hex may be fine, but seeing it well, seeing it poorly and not seeing it is just too much (especially when the first two aren't distinguished by the interface).

[Cuyo Quiz]

What about... ambusher can't be attacked unless it has entered into ZoC last turn?. No hiding nor invisibility (okay, maybe parcial transparency to show that the units is in "ambush" state, of course, you may choose to make it invisible to force the enemy to search for it).

Another way to explain it... if the unit ends the turn out of ZoC, it enters "ambush" state, in which can't be attacked. This state lasts until the end of the next turn, at which point is re-checked to see if it continues or not. I wonder if the state can be lost when the unit its in ZoC, making the oC'er lose all actions, so one actually has to use two units to hurt the ambusher.

Optionally, while in ambush state the unit may have no ZoC, although i don't know all the consequences of that.

Now you can rely on the ambusher to have the offensive/choose-the-time-of-combat AND not be attacked in the turn it gets ZoC'd/discovered.

EDIT: modified idea.

[JW]

I find that -in fogged games or unfogged games- Nightstalk is a precious ability for Shadows. If they lost their invisibility than their usefulness would drop and it would be even less used than it currently is (remember the old Wraith fellow?).

And look...I don't understand why using an expendable unit to find a hiding Ambusher is a problem anyway if the ability removes that unit's attacks, because it's still a bonus compared to nothing. It also serves a purpose that I think Ambush would serve.

[Deathblower]

Perhaps instead of removing the unit's attacks it just halves the damage of each attack. Otherwise it could be grossly overpowered.

DB

[Garion]

I don't understand why using an expendable unit to find a hiding Ambusher is a problem

Again, this is not the problem. Using expendable units as scouts is fine. Sound strategy, even.

The problem is that there is an exploit built into the game mechanics that allows those units to search an unereasonably large number of hexes in an unreasonably short time.

Actually, the least complex solution I've seen so far is the suggestion that Undo be altered so that (effectively) each unit can only use it once each turn. Then Ambush could remain exactly as it is and the exploit would be basically eliminated, since you'd have to use a more reasonable number of scouts (not just the one) to be guaranteed to find an Ambusher.

[Darth Fool]

Another possibility is to make ambush have a portable fog of war. Thus, an ambusher would be visible if a unit can move next to it, however, if it would not be visible when playing with Fog of War, then it would not be visible even in no fog games. This poses two problems. One, ambush would have no use in FoW games. Two, it would still have all the problems of FoW. One possibility is to make it so that it is slightly better than FoW in that units can only see it if they can move onto it, not just 1 past their movement hex. This would be useful even in FoW games, although not too much better. Thus, if the ambusher is just outside the range of the units that are moving, they can more right up next to them, but can't attack, because they can't see them. The next turn, the ambusher can attack.

[Deathblower]

I don't think it's a problem that it wouldn't work with fog. After all you're just as likely to see an ambusher in the fog as you are a goblin spearman!

DB

[Tondo]

Hi,

Im greatly in favor of ambush, I think it brings great fun to the game. Here are my views on some issues discussed here:

A) The move-undo search - although I strongly disapprove of this and hate to see someone do it, I dont suggest it should be prevented by banning the undo feature completely. Perhaps there should be some general limitation to number of undos a unit can make in a turn.

B) What I see as a problem is that when an ambusher moves out of a forest, across several hexes where he is revealed (if not covered by FOW) into another forest hex, it is easy for the opponent to see or estimate where he ended his move. My suggestion here is that ambusher moves shouldnt be visible to the enemy during the other side's turn - the enemy should see him during other side's turn only if the ambusher ends his move (I mean really ends, when he has no movement left) outside of a forrest.

Also, I would like to see ambush ability extended to high mountains, too, as this in reality is a good terrain for ambushes.

Ambush is a very specific trait because it does not improve the attack or defense of the unit, it rather gives your side element of surprise and tactial advantage. I think this makes it special.

I would like to know what you think especially of point B. If there are enough people for, maybe the change will be implemented soon, because I dont think it would be difficult to do that.

Bye