Ranged Era

[Turuk]

I understand, thanks, and already acknowledged it by saying that he has no factual reasoning of saying so. A unit is a unit. Say there would be a unit doing 99-9 blade damage. Now Velensk claims this makes all melee unbalanced. Im not arguing that, why would i, thats his opinion, no matter how strange. The truth is adding new units will always affect vanilla balance, for worse or better, thats why im saying again we are here in the mod section.

I understood what you wrote, thanks, I was responding to the fact that you noted that this was in the mod section, which was solely what he was speaking to, and not about any inclusion into mainline for your work, so you don't need to keep reminding people that this is only a mod.

[Velensk]

I know this is a mod. I am just cautioning that I do not feel that this is the wave of the future (in modding) and explaining why.

Why do you assume that what I am saying is an opinion based on nothing? I assure you that when I say that this era is unbalanced for multiplayer play I am not basing it off nothing. I have played with this era. Races that naturally field more or better ranged attacks (such as undead and rebels) have a strong advantage over those whose ranged attacks are weaker or come at a greater price (such as northerners and loyalists). Rebalancing this era would require immense redistribution of costs and probably stats.

I am also not just expressing an opinion from out of the air when I say that I do not think this mod makes Wesnoth more strategically interesting (though unlike the first point this is an opinion). I have been playing mainline for a long time now and I have played more than a few games with this era. I find that the style of play that it induces tends to be more formulaic than that used in mainline. You cannot hold ground at the wrong time of day in most matches, forming walls exposing hexes is no longer a decent defense. This makes it so that there is considerably less use in a large number of units and requires you to run rather than stand in almost any disadvantageous situation. This removes many styles of play as viable options. Also because there is a great deal of imbalance involved in it certain match-ups just are not fun to play (now this could be fixed through balancing but for the moment it is a deterrent.

Now I am not of the belief that you could not balance an era that uses this mechanic. However I do think that even if you did balance that era it would be a trick to make it as strategically interesting as mainline is without the mechanic. I imagine that doing so would involve making ranged units much weaker in than their melee counterparts but I won't pretend to have spent a whole lot of time thinking about it.

[Nicknick]

This mod is just a template adding plain power to some units, to show ranged attacks are possible in the game. Understandable that this will disbalance the existing game. What im saying is that there is no connection between having overpowered units and ranged trait being overpowered. Having a 1-1 ranged unit is completely useless, for example, even though its ranged. The alpha strike power is a known feature and is solved in other games by restricting the unit in question to move and shoot in the same turn. (for 3-5 tiles units). Two tiles units generally have moderately diminished power. Offensive two tilers vs defensive 3-5 tilers. Wouldn't say it favored the attacker greatly, quite the opposite actually. (ofc, having a 3 tiler who can move&shoot at full power makes any game go "places")

I do agree however that balancing this for multiplayer is no way easy, not desirable for a 4 years old game, although units are already balanced, as such a ranged attack is no different from a suicide lancer attacker(pierce+multitiled range too. 10 tiles.. okkk...) nor is it my wish, i just want singleplayer with archers hehe.

[PapaSmurfReloaded]

It looks nice, I'm curious about it because it might be nice for my 18th Century Warfare Era, though the coding looks sort of complicated and I don't know much time to work on it..

My 18th century era works with the following ranges, melee, short, long, sniper, indirect and ship indirect.

If I could use the ranged coding, I'd like to make short range attacks have one hex in between both units fighters, long ranged attacks have 2 hexes, snipers have 3 hexes, and artillery units with and ships with indirect combat have about 4 tiles in between(plus the ability to actually be able to shoot over other units).

Would something like that be possible?

[PaulInBHC]

Papa, I got it to work in 1.7.+. Once I figured out how to use it, it works well. Bad thing is the AI can't use it and I only play AI. If you use it for ships to bombard shoreline units, you need to have a counter effect that can go either go over water (fly) or in the water.

[PapaSmurfReloaded]

Papa, I got it to work in 1.7.+. Once I figured out how to use it, it works well. Bad thing is the AI can't use it and I only play AI. If you use it for ships to bombard shoreline units, you need to have a counter effect that can go either go over water (fly) or in the water.

Eh... well in real life, when you got bombarded froms hips, pretty much you were screwed up, RL kinda needed balancing too.

This era was never meant to be played against the computer. But against other player, the computer just doesn't understand how you are supposed to do it, not even how to recruit properly(which actually, worked in earlier versions, I think changing cavalry attack units from scout to fighter did the trick).

[PapaSmurfReloaded]

Hey mich, I've been trying to use the ranged system in my era but it doesn't seem to work.
Do you think you could give me a hand?

By the way I got 2 questions.
1-Is it it possible to set the max ranged above 5 hexes?
2-Would it be possible to attacks have a different accuracy % depeneding on how many hexes away the target is located?

[MattDakka]

1) Yes, you can set a range higher than 3 hexagons (I did it simply changing the number as I wished, but I suggest to keep it max 2-3 squares to not spoil too much the gameplay; for example Wizards who can attack from further than 2 hexagons, considering their high accuracy, are really really overpowered).
2) I don't know, I suppose not, but the last word is up to Mich, I'm not the maker, only one little inspirer (I have ever been dreaming of real ranged troops in Wesnoth since my first games).

[PapaSmurfReloaded]

[quote="MattDakka"]1) Yes, you can set a range higher than 3 hexagons (I did it simply changing the number as I wished, but I suggest to keep it max 2-3 squares to not spoil too much the gameplay; for example Wizards who can attack from further than 2 hexagons, considering their high accuracy, are really really overpowered).
I know 3 hexagons is possible, I meant above 5 hexagons.
In one of his files mich said that with the current coding it isn't possible to set it above 5.

And well this era I'm working on isn't like that.

No mages to start with.

[MattDakka]

Yes, you can set the range higher than 5 hexagons.

[mich]

Hi PapaSmurfReloaded.

1-Is it it possible to set the max ranged above 5 hexes?

Yes, and it must be quite easy. The problem is only that for range > 5 there isn't walls control. I try to explain this better with my poor english. With range above 5 (or 6, I don't remember) you can shoot through walls and others units. You can easily disable the wall control for lower range too, or change the macro a little to support bigger ranges (it's easy, but that time I haven't found a way to made single macro to work for every range).

2-Would it be possible to attacks have a different accuracy % depeneding on how many hexes away the target is located?

Well, it was planned in the beginnigsomethin similar (small damage for distant hexes), but I haven't found time and urge to add this. I had also thought of your idea as an alternative in the past. It must be quite easy to implement, but I understand that at the moment the code is quite a mess...

Well, if you are really interested, I can try to implement number 2.

Edit: oops, I forgot to answer to the most important question. Yes, if you have problem using the code, feel free to ask. After all this era is only a template and the code is better used in an era that starts with the long range idea from the beginning (this era is not balanced, and I don't want to became mad trying).

[xron]

It would be a good balence if ranged attacks could not be made at point blank range. Haveing the option of forcing an opponent to retreat his archers could add some interesting gameplay.

[Silux]

How i can get the addon?
I found it on the 1.6 server backup http://add-ons.wesnoth.org/1.6/, but i can't play it in multiplayer.
It doesn't show Ranged Era in the era selection panel.

[TheBladeRoden]

I mostly fixed it by changing all the "~campaign/" references in the main files to "~add-ons/" and correcting some of the drake unit names.

I'm surprised it worked as well as it did being however many years outdated.