Variations on the L0 Human

[Eleazar]

There are lots of opportunities in campaigns to have "ordinary" people around— people not especially good at warfare. Up till now we've just had the peasant. Zookeeper suggested variations on the peasant for NR, and did some frankenstining, and various people thought it was a good idea, and ran with the idea— in different directions.

These units will not be added to a default faction, but are intended for campaign use. To give the designer some good options. Besides NR, there are several campaigns where a town's citizens defend it. It seems odd that farmers pop up in an urban area.


* ruffian (henchman)
Not everyone likes the idea of the ruffian, in part because it is too similar to their concept of other units— but to me it seems pretty obvious. It's a an beginner chaotic unit which a club which advances to the thug, or the more skillful footpad.

The Extended Era has a "henchman" with the same concept as mine. However, the XE "henchman" graphics make little sense as the L0 to
footpad and thug?— it looks like a small barbarian warrior. I haven't quite settled what i think it should look like, two ideas are show.
The XW can use the new graphics or not, as they wish.

* woodsman
The woodsman is essentially as Zookeeper designed him. I cleaned it up a bit and added some frames. These have been added to the trunk. The concept has been well accepted.
Basically the woodman is a neutral unit that lives on the edge of civilization, spending much of his time in the woods hunting small game. He may turn his back on society and advance to the lawless poacher, or accept more structure in his life and become a full-time bowman.

* townsman
There are lots of ideas about what a townsman should be armed with. From the standpoint of logical upgrades, and non-redundancy with the other L0s, he should have a small sword/big knife, and upgrade to the sergeant and the fencer. Fencing and our fencer unit has the flavor of an urbanity, so i like that as an upgrade for him. I'm not sure if the sergeant is a useful enough unit that it wouldn't put the townsman unit in a bad light. (Or is he scorned because the graphics make him look like he has really short arms?)


The Ruffian and Townsman art is still in the rough state.

[West]

Lovely units. Would be well suited for some kind of Robin Hood-like campaign.

[Jetrel]

• The ruffian (left image) art is cool. I think it captures the idea perfectly.

• The areas in the WIP townsman that need work are the legs, which bend inconsistently with how his coat hangs, and his left sleeve cuff, which should creep a pixel higher.



In an unrelated bit, your sergeant image is a bit out-of-date:

Not like it matters, but .. you know.

[Eleazar]

In an unrelated bit, your sergeant image is a bit out-of-date:

Not like it matters, but .. you know.

That is a relief.
Oddly enough it is what is displayed in the trunk portion of the unit tree: http://zapicm.freeshell.org/trunk/tree_ ... fault.html

How does the relative sizing strike you? The peasant (which have so far based the others off of) is technically as tall as some of the shorter L1 units.

[Jetrel]

In an unrelated bit, your sergeant image is a bit out-of-date:

Not like it matters, but .. you know.

That is a relief.
Oddly enough it is what is displayed in the trunk portion of the unit tree: http://zapicm.freeshell.org/trunk/tree_ ... fault.html

I don't think that's true, the one I linked has been there for weeks on my machine. Try going there and hitting the refresh button liberally; or just trying flushing your browser cache.

How does the relative sizing strike you? The peasant (which have so far based the others off of) is technically as tall as some of the shorter L1 units.

The relative sizing is fine; the lack of armor helps make it clear these guys are fragile. In fact I wouldn't want these guys to be midgets - I'd like to keep the gamut of sizes for humans somewhat restricted. If the L1's are 20-22yr olds (give or take), these are 17-19yr olds (in stature). A very slight difference, but not too much.


As a slight note on the art, the protrusion of the ruffian's left cheek (his left) is a big no-no; make that flush with the head above it; preferably by adding to the space above it, rather than removing things below; I hadn't noticed this before, because of the background color.






Actually, on sort of a related, but off-art-topic thought, it might be cool to significantly increase these guy's hitpoints ( up to, say, 24 or 28 ), and then to give them the same damage penalties from lack of armor that the fencer has - but without the movetype bonuses that the fencer has.

[Boucman]

the unit trees are not automatically generated from SVN, they are manually generated...

so they might be a tad out of date...

[Eleazar]

the unit trees are not automatically generated from SVN, they are manually generated...

so they might be a tad out of date...

Yeah, Elricz is on it.

I've committed the ruffian, especially as a XP-fodder for the early levels of tSG. This leaves only the illusive and controversial townsman to be done.

[irrevenant]

The units are very cool, but they look very similar to one another. Except for the first ruffian and the townsman they basically look like Peasants with different weapons.

Could the poses and hats be made more different to each other?

[Boucman]

well, my guess is that these that this is more placeholder than real art...

[Eleazar]

The units are very cool, but they look very similar to one another. Except for the first ruffian and the townsman they basically look like Peasants with different weapons.

"they basically look like Peasants"? you mean "1 unit, the woodsman looks like a peasant"?
Which is true and intentional. The "woodman" is a peasant— with a little skill with the bow.


Note:
comments on posted art tend to make much more sense if the poster will read the text that the artist provides with the art.

[Jetrel]

The units are very cool, but they look very similar to one another. Except for the first ruffian and the townsman they basically look like Peasants with different weapons.

"they basically look like Peasants"? you mean "1 unit, the woodsman looks like a peasant"?
Which is true and intentional. The "woodman" is a peasant— with a little skill with the bow.

It's intentional in this case, because they largely are the same unit.

comments on posted art tend to make much more sense if the poster will read the text that the artist provides with the art.

I'll play bad cop and say "RTFP".

[irrevenant]

The units are very cool, but they look very similar to one another. Except for the first ruffian and the townsman they basically look like Peasants with different weapons.

"they basically look like Peasants"? you mean "1 unit, the woodsman looks like a peasant"?

The woodsman, and the 2nd version of the ruffian.

Which is true and intentional. The "woodman" is a peasant— with a little skill with the bow.
Note:
comments on posted art tend to make much more sense if the poster will read the text that the artist provides with the art.

I read the text. it doesn't affect what I said.

The woodsman may be similar to the peasant stat-wise, but as you describe him, he is not a peasant. He "lives on the edge of civilization, spending much of his time in the woods". That's a very different lifestyle to the peasant and suggests a different outfit.

More importantly:
Even if units are thematically linked, players need to be able to distinguish units with a quick glance. The Woodsman, Peasant and 2nd rufffian are similar enough that they could be occasionally mistaken for each other.

The subtle differences in the townsman's hat and coat are sufficient to make him easily distinguishable from the peasant. That sort of touch is all I'm suggesting for the woodsman (and 2nd ruffian if you decide to use that one).

[EDIT] P.S. Re: the Ruffian. The 1st variant has a footpad-ish (but clearly distinguishable) hairstyle. It's also more clearly distinguishable from the peasant.

IMO, if you went with that version and gave him similarly toned (but not styled) clothing to the thug that would make for a natural transition at upgrade time.

[EDIT2] Perhaps the townsman could be armed with a cane?

[Becephalus]

Nice ideas. I especially like the woodsman, and these would be really useful for some campaigns. Its too bad this isn't as easy with other factions.

[Sgt. Groovy]

Incidentally, I'm in the process of writing a tutorial in making a Lutesian portrait in Inkscape (or any vector program). My example is a young burgher, which might well do for the townsman (the blue lines are just a help for tracing):