Internet Meme Era v 0.0.8

[Dragonchampion]

Hey, guys, I don't know where you are going with this or where you are on it, but an old friend of mine tried for a wildwest era... you could probably use their work for the cowboys.

http://forums.wesnoth.org/viewtopic.php ... 6&start=60

[fog_of_gold]

[...]Now, to answer fog about the triffids. I'm not sure if you meant "let's not talk about the triffids anymore before the rest is settled" or rather "let's settle the triffid before we get back on the rest". I'm still gonna answer you, though.

I meant nothing of both. I just wanted to end triffids' discussions before we release them.

@ Pollinisator & Sprouts:

I just remembered that of course, the 4 EXP I meant would be subject to the omnipresent 70% exp setting, so I of course need to crank it up. Probably somewhere around 6-8 exp. I'm not sure if I have mentionned it explicitly, but I was not planning to give them any attack, so their exp would have been exclusively dependant on the Grow ability. They can still get exp for being attacked, but they are so frail that you'd probably be better not counting on that.

The pollinisator have attacks: rose and plague. I'm not sure then what you mean with I was not planning to give them any attack. Anyway, for the sprouts, I think, it's not good to make them grow. It's better to make them need to kill the enemy. It would make you use the sprouts less often not having lvl1 units for 8 gold. Let's say, they are meat eater and need meat to grow. This would also explain their aggressivlyness and why they grow by fighting(if they don't kill, they just get a piece of the enemy still using that to grow).

@ Charm: I thought it fitted the pollinisator because:
1) Thematically, Charm goes with the flower. Reproduction and pollinisation, as you know, pass through flowers for (most) plants. It gets splitted in later levels, though.

But every flower is different big smelling different deeply. Also, not every sort of living beings like every sort of flowers. And the pollinisators aren't the only one with flowers.

2) Charm uses up a pollinisator's action for the turn, and so does the pollinate melee attack (plague for the gold-generating static plant) and the Reproduce ability ("summon" a sprout). So you get to choose what you want to do with the unit for that turn. It seems to me that separating them, on the other hand, would result in having sprout factories in the back and swarms of charmers at the front.

And that's what I don't like of this idea. Every(It goes for both, UMC and mainline) unit have exactly one role. The keeper have the role to defend the villages, the sprout have the role to level up to the other units and the dandelion is meant to be the scout. But what's the role of your pollinisator? -He has two roles: Producing units and charming units. Both are that important abilities you can't count it as if it is just one role getting units. The necromancer for example, have a less important force, the plague and a a very important force, the role of a mage. That's the reason you can count it as if it's one role since you'll still use it for the mage role.

3) Charm IS pretty useful, but I don't think it's any ultimate. The charmed units jump back to their side when it is that side's turn, with all of their moves and an attack.

Yes, I included that.

Also, if the triffids charmed all of an opponent's units, there would be a point where they would just have nothing left to attack, since they'd all be on the same side.

Don't forget you don't need to first charm and then attack. You can charm the first unit and then attack with the first unit the second unit, before you charm the second unit. Also, they won't charm everyone anyway since there's "just" a chance of 70% to charm.

It's also worth noting that they only get 1 move and an attack, so if there are no enemy targets close by, the charm is wasted.

In the front, there are rarly enemies farer away than one hex. I'm pretty sure you often won't need it.
And then, there's another use for charm: You know, you can go over your own units. If you charmed 3 enemies, you can go with every unit between and attack the enemy from both sides.

Also, charmers are the most expensive units for the faction (which I set to 18g for now), lack any sort of heavy hitting attack and are far from being the toughest triffids out there.

And that's what I wonna tell you: The charmers alone already need to be very expensive. But with other specials, how much shall they cost?

If you don't cover 'em a bit with other units, you risk being toast on the enemy's turn!

This is very easy: While attacking, you go away one hex and you put a tank before.

(also: charm does not work on defense, and I made it so that a triffid cannot charm a unit of an higher level than they are).

Being not able to charm a higher level weaks them a little bit, yes, but enough to mix it with other specials.

And also worth noting: Charm does grant flexibility and the inegaled bonus of removing enemy HP at another enemy's cost, but the exp would be irremediably lost to the triffids, too, which might help balance it out a bit.

Of course you don't try to kill wounded enemies with the enemies, you try to kill them with your own units. You still get the experience for fighting. Don't forget you need to charm the enemy giving you one experience point.

@ Entangle. I concede I must think a bit more about the balance. I'm not 100% convinced by your calcul, but I get the idea and might draw inspiration from it. An alternative would be to set different chances to hit for different entangler types/levels. The way I built the special's macro, it'll be a piece of cake.

I think it's balanced that way with one attack. Just keep one attack and increase the damage suitable.

@ the drain-thing. It IS really simplistic, but so far I named it "Drain-Heal". It seemed like the most efficient name, and I don't think it is so bad. I envisionned the unit as a variation on the carnivorous plant (flytraps and such), and with Triffids being all connected mentally, and possibly by some kind of root system or whatnot, I think the ability is justifiable (thematically).

The root system is a very good idea. This is a very good possibility for the mushroom: You know, some types of the mushrooms link themselves to the roots of a plant and trade water and minerals against food. Yes, it is the other way arround we need it, but since we have alien plants, if I understood right, some changes are allowed.

About Fueling: well, it'll really just come in at Lv3, and requires that you get additionnal kills.

And what does that impy?

Which is to say that it probably will never get into most multiplayer games.

You forgot the epic IME.

Competitive ones, at least, I'm not counting stuff like survivals.

No problem, I don't, too.

Anyway, even if the unit came and made use of it's fueling special, I think it fits, because more damage=more drain/heal.

You can't be that general. For example, if you'd like to make a new village terrain, you can't say "because +damage and +hitpoints is abou the same, I may give +1 damage instead of +8 hitpoints". [I don't count balancing now. I know it would also be very unbalanced.]

Which is always good. But since it's 1/3 drain/heal, it would still need to get three kills to gain 1 more point of healing (per strike). Although it depends on ToD, leadership bonus and such.
[...]
It's mostly a flavour thing.
[...]

Yes, it can be interesting together with drainheal, but it can also be interesting, to get this ability with plague.

I'm not too sure what your big objection is, but if that unit was to not get the ability, I would rather just not include the ability in the faction.

I haven't big objections, It's just I feel it doesn't fit. Anyway, let's not try to discuss without serious arguments, there are just opinions and since this is your era, your opinion is more worth. Do what you want to.

Well, I must admit to have not tested all of what I introduced as much as I could. I had done quite a bit of work on the triffids and rushed the rest along a little bit so I could get it out tonight for you. But you know what: let's drop the triffids for now, as previously suggested, and concentrate on making the actual stuff playable.

Why shouldn't we discuss both at the same time? -We are in a forum and there, it's possible to do so.

I'll admit the status icon thing is a problem, and I,m not sure how to fix it. As you'll probably have guess, the hex border seems to clip overlays. Dang. If you'll look at the picture below, I planned to have four icons for different statuses: Dazzle, Oiled, Charmed and Stunned. The black borders are where the Hex clips. As you can see, more than half of Dazzled would be cliped, and Stunned would barely appear at all:
Attachment:
statuts overlays.png
statuts overlays.png [ 5.07 KiB | Viewed 1 time ]

Even if I said "Charmed and Stunned aren't so necessary, let's not have them", space would be lacking a bit. And it would be hard to make them smaller and still ressemble something/be visible enough. And I think placing them all at the same place would probably not be a good idea: What if you somehow had two statuses? Sure, the chances are slight since all statuses don't belong to the same faction, dazzled removes oiled when applied in second, stunned, charmed and dazzled are temporary, and I don,t know why anybody in their right mind would charm a unit that's stunned or dazzled (although Oiled could be plausible, but the triffids don't yield oil). Still, I don't know what kind of percentage it would make, but I'd prefer if they did not overlap, ideally. Especially Oiled and Dazzled. (Now that I think about it, I haven't even tested if adding a second overlay removes the previous one. That would force-solve our issue, I guess... I'll try it tomorrow. )[...]

I understand you and I concur you.

dazzled removes oiled when applied in second,

But it's still possible. I already did it and it wasn't just to do it, it was a serious move to weak the enemy.

I haven't even tested if adding a second overlay removes the previous one.

It works as it should and you'd like to. You see then two icons right to the unit.

I plan on concentrating more on the esthetic aspect of the era, too. And that doesn't only mean making sprites for every unit: for exemple, maybe you will have noticed that the bots don't do human sounds anymore when they are hit: I picked some robot sounds from IftU. Sure, they are pretty electronic and fit poorly a steam-punk theme, but that's still much better than human sounds. I'll look for more steam-punk-bots sounds in time, but this will have to do for now I also plan on having sounds for all specials and abilities that require them: a sound for when a unit is dazzled or oiled, etc. I also want to include some basic animations: while animating the actual units is pretty down low on the To Do list, I can at least pick projectiles animations from mainline for ranged attacks, halo animations for spell casters/healers/leaders, etc.

An animation and a sound for extracting is, if it doesn't slow the game more, very interesting and even helpful.

Now, some points about balance:

@ Keepers/Sentinels:
While I thought fog's point about the robots being slow and possibly needing a Lv1 Keeper to get to border villages quickly made a lot of sense, and although I always thought the silver mage was a bit lame, I must admit your "cycling" argument makes a lot of sense, too. Not only have they got their fair share of HPs, good resistances, steadfast, above average def (for bots, that is) on villages, the village heal and immunity to poison, but they can run away in an eye-blink to go heal in the fartest territories if needed. Yeah, it is probably overpowered. Darn . Weakening it could be an option, but overdoing it would kinda hinder it's primary tank role. Other options could include putting a malus on Teleport, such as making it cost HPs (a bit counter-productive when sending a freshly recruited Keeper to the frontlines), making it use more moves (not a big handicap, imo), or disabling it altogether when next to an enemy unit (maybe the most realistic option so far). Other ideas on this?

I think it's good to decrease the hitpoints and make them be decreased by teleport (since he need material to build tunnels since there's no anywhere else. And decreasing the total hitpoints is good because of the small image. Costing more movement points is a very bad idea since an invisible teleport gets very interesting and you'd loose it by this. But another idea could be to set the movement points to 2 and the invisible limit to one move. This would balance the advantage of being able to be fast on the battlefield a little bit. If we'd increase the defence on villages and balance that with the hitpoints, teleport would get less dangerous outside of a village.

@ Tanks:
Well, I really pictured them as a more-mobile defense unit. Like, a faster, non-teleporting sentinel to keep important non-village hexes, such as a key hill or forest location. But maybe making them more agressive would make sense... I would really need to play them and test the feel they give. I liked the idea of having very low firepower on Lv1 for the faction, but being though as nail, and advancing slowly. Maybe it's horrible as far as gameplay goes, though... Although giving the tank charge would make the opponent anticipate more a Death Roller level up (by the way, I don't absolutely want to have the names that I've put for most bots. Some I downright dislike, like the "Dicer", so if you have some you'd personnally prefer, you can go ahead and suggest them). If we gave charge, I suppose it would make sense to remove knockback (which, although thematical an interesting combo, possibly counter-productive as far as gameplay goes), and maybe steadfast too, so the unit is maybe less ultimate... Btw, if you hadn't noticed, the boat line already had charge. Anyway, I'll play them a bit to get a feel and think some more about it.

lindsay40k is right if (s)he say, you feel the boat line to use more aggressive. I can't say why, but I have to agree. We'd need to decrease that whatever it is or form a new tank.

While I'm thinking about it, if you,ve not noticed it, I've disabled Extractor/Refiner as leaders, because I felt it gave an unfair advantage. Not only do leader cost no upkeep, but it was like starting with an extra village. So yeah, disabled. Any objections?[...]

I thought a leader don't need upkeep?! It would half the use of extract and would therefore balance it. A frail leader isn't good to have anyway so I think it is more or less balanced.

Btw, if you have a bit of free time on your hands and feel like it, it could be nice to have an overall feel of the Lv1 Bots with your calculations. You showed me how it's done, so I could probably somewhat manage it, but it's a lot of job, and I'm less used to hit... Anyway, fon't feel obligated in the least. [...]

This is a good idea. It somewhat fits to me.

Hey, guys, I don't know where you are going with this or where you are on it, but an old friend of mine tried for a wildwest era... you could probably use their work for the cowboys.

Dixie didn't want that since (s)he didn't want us to believe we finished artwork.

offtopic:

Wow, I needed 3.5 hours to write this post without using a break.

[Dixie]

Whoah, big thunderstorm just as I am starting to write this post. Hope the connection doesn't die out on me or something.

So sure, let's get the discussion about bots and triffids on parallel. I hadn't realised this took so much time from you. It is true it takes a bit from me too, but not that much! And I kinda am a dude who writes a lot. Anyway, on with the matter at hands...

---

Triffids:

The pollinisator have attacks: rose and plague. I'm not sure then what you mean with I was not planning to give them any attack. Anyway, for the sprouts, I think, it's not good to make them grow. It's better to make them need to kill the enemy. It would make you use the sprouts less often not having lvl1 units for 8 gold. Let's say, they are meat eater and need meat to grow. This would also explain their aggressivlyness and why they grow by fighting(if they don't kill, they just get a piece of the enemy still using that to grow).

[...]

And that's what I don't like of this idea. Every(It goes for both, UMC and mainline) unit have exactly one role. The keeper have the role to defend the villages, the sprout have the role to level up to the other units and the dandelion is meant to be the scout. But what's the role of your pollinisator? -He has two roles: Producing units and charming units. Both are that important abilities you can't count it as if it is just one role getting units. The necromancer for example, have a less important force, the plague and a a very important force, the role of a mage. That's the reason you can count it as if it's one role since you'll still use it for the mage role.

Well, I meant the sprouts have no attacks. And although I could give them one ad somewhat copy the dimensionnal gates' from EoMa mechanism, my original goal wasn't to create a triffid-themed summoner faction. I also understand your point about the dual-role thing and this unit getting very polyvalent and efficient, but somehow I believe it might balance somewhere else. As I see it, if I separate the roles, the "summoners" will stay in the back and mass produce sprouts. Once you have your original force, you could almost exclusively rely on sprouts, since they are cheaper. Especially if they level by themselves and don't need to engage in battle. And you probably wouldn't risk your sprouts factories either, even if they have that plague attack. Anyway, those plagued plants would be much more useful in the back, where they can heal and produce gold without being endangered.

Otoh, the actual dual-function pollinators are drawn toward the front lines, since they have the very useful charm. I suppose they would charm/plague at day, and spawn sprouts at night. But they need some turns to pull back, which prevents you from "summoning", and you also usually don't want to risk spawning too much at the front since the sprouts are so helpless. They can be a great monetary gain if successful, but a sprout is 8 gold easily lost if not careful handling them. I think it balances out somehow and forces the player to make an hard choice: charm or sprout (or, to some lesser extent, plague)? I will need to play it to feel the flavour it gives, but in theory I much prefer the actual pollinator...

@ Charm:
As I keep saying lately, I will play them out to test how it feels. It is true tht they have 70% cth, but I balanced that by giving them only a single strike (at Lv1, anyway). I suppose I -could- remove the 70% and add a strike or two. I don't know which would be more balanced. And depending on the feeling I get from playing them, I might a) lower their HPs a bit (they're actually around 26 iirc) b) lower their resists a bit (which are currently much like the wose's, like the rest of the faction save for the waterlily (shooter) and the scout) and c) possibly crank up the price to 20, maybe even 22 if needed.

@ Roots & Entangle:
I will test how it feels and give you feedback. Just to write it down, here's how I had planned the layout for their level ups. I planned having a poison ivy capped at lv2, with an entangling fire melee attack and ranged poison (yeah, maybe it's kinda dual-function too. I had considered maybe having poison on their melee instead, not sure yet), a line that goes to Lv3 that concentrates on improving entangle through other specials (constrict, drain, bloodlust), a Lv2 accessible both from the root and the drain-healer which would get an entangling drain-healing melee attack (fashionned after these carnivorous plants), a line accessible either from the root or waterlily that would go to Lv3 (Kelp), which would get a cold entangling melee attack and a weak cold ranged and maybe a thougher bramble (capped at Lv2, accessible both from root or pollinator) which would get a stronger pierce entangling melee attack. Yeah, 5 choices, I know it's a lot, and they're probably far from all needed, but... somehow, they all fit and give some flavour, I think...

@ Mushrooms:
While the idea is very interesting since it gives a special place to cave/fungus terrains and creates an opportunity to vary resistances/alignments, I must admit I really liked the flytrap thing, too. I'm not sure what kinda attack mushrooms could have. Flytraps were gonna get blade, since it lacked within the faction (roots and trees got impact, pollinator got pierce, albeit a weak one, and waterlily got weak impact melee/cold ranged). Those units were also gonna be the main damage dealers, along with the roots. Anyway, I will think more about it and consider it, it is not excluded.

@ Fueling:

Yes, it can be interesting together with drainheal, but it can also be interesting, to get this ability with plague. [...] I haven't big objections, It's just I feel it doesn't fit.

So that is your main argument/concern about Fueling (and reason why not to give it to the drain-healer)? I reckon it can be interesting with the Lv2 plaguer plant, but you'll likely alredy want to get kills with it, whereas the drain-healer less so: you will want to deal as much damage as possible (so as to drain and heal as much as possible) but not necessarily to finish the enemies. Anyway,

Also, let's not talk too much about Epic IME right now since it is abviously uber-unbalanced. Lv2s and 3s stats are approximate and probably way unbalanced, not counting the unit costs, which are approximative at best. If we can get a balanced era on Lv1, it'll already be a pretty darn good start.

And well, I know it's basically my era, since I started it all and I have the files and everything, but it's also a little bit yours, for what you contributed to it. And I don't necessarily want this to turn into flames (I doubt it would, anyway, I think we are both intelligent people and I don't take such a trivial issue nearly enough at heart to warrant flaming). But anyway, I'm trying to understand why you suggest stuff, sometimes, so that I can well... understand. And not just make a blind judgement or something. Anyway, no matter.

---

Robots:

@ Teleport:
I will most probably tone down their HPs a bit. I'm not gonna make it cost more moves, for the same reasons fog as stated, and also because it would probably be hell to code since teleport is hard-coded. I am also still unsure about making it use up HPs, but I suppose it could cost gold, however, which could be a trade-off. I am still actively considering disabling the ability when you are adjacent to an enemy unit, though, which would solve much of the issue. ANd about their mobility outside village, I don't think it's much of a problem. Seriously, they have three move points, which is VERY little, and if there's anything other than flat, villages or castles involved, chances are they can only move 1 or 2 hexes a turn. And even then, they will have very limited sight if by themselves so as to make poor scouts, they have horrid defenses on anything that's not a village, and if they wanted to sneak by with Burrow to steal villages, they would be limited to moving only one flat hex per turn. Considering most MP maps rarely have villages that are closer than 4-6 hexes, it would mean leaving a village unprotected to -maybe- still another one in 4-6 turns... Not such a great strategy. So I don't feel too badly about that problem, and I don't think reducing their moves to 2 is really needed.


@ Tanks:

lindsay40k is right if (s)he say, you feel the boat line to use more aggressive. I can't say why, but I have to agree. We'd need to decrease that whatever it is or form a new tank.

I am not too sure I understand what you mean to say here: you say we should make the tanks more aggressive, or make the boats more passive/defensive? I definitely don't want to make yet another unit line for the bots, though, I feel they have far enough of them already. So whatever we do to the tanks, it'll be alteration of stats, not anymore splitting

@ Other stuff:

I thought a leader don't need upkeep?! It would half the use of extract and would therefore balance it. A frail leader isn't good to have anyway so I think it is more or less balanced.

I think you misunderstood me: leaders cost no upkeep. They don,t need it, if you prefer, they are free. Hence the free "+2" income in games with standard settings. Even if the leader is weak, he does have a few useful attacks, and mage leaders are weak, too, but people pick them anyway. And nobody would go risk a weaker leader at the front, so it is basically like having a free, permanent village. I really feel it is unbalancing and unfair in some way...

---

Hey, guys, I don't know where you are going with this or where you are on it, but an old friend of mine tried for a wildwest era... you could probably use their work for the cowboys.

While I appreciate the initiative and the sprites look good, I guess they are pretty tall and fit my sprite style poorly. And even though they are probably not used anywhere at the moment, I'd appreciate the era to eventually have as fully original art as possible at some point. But thank you for mentionning it anyway

[lindsay40k]

RE Keepers/Teleport: I like the idea of disabling teleport when adjacent to an enemy. Starting to dig the tunnel would leave the unit prone, and most wargames I play disallow units to make themselves prone whilst in melee. This would solve the problem of 'cycling' with easily available, robust Teleporters. Also, the idea of putting a gold cost on the teleport move generally makes sense to me, since it entails building a tunnel. I think we'll need to write in a bit of explantion that the unit fills in the tunnel behind itself to make it fully make sense that no units can follow in the 'tunnel' and that the 'tunnel' needs rebuilding every time the unit wants to teleport. My only concern is disallowing teleports whilst in contact may severely nerf the unit, which will only be determined over playtesting.

RE Tanks: I'm picturing the lv1 Tank having a hollow hull that makes it buoyant. Its tracks double as 'paddles' whilst it is floating. The lv2 Boat line replaces its tracks with more specialised paddles, such as seen on a steamboat. The lv 3 splits into a Captain Nemo inspired submarine, and an ironclad warship. The Dozer and Deathroller will remain unchanged.

RE Triffids: I'm sitting back on this one until I get to play with the faction in beta.

[fog_of_gold]

Sorry I didn't answer for a that long time because I thought it would be better to first make the calculations.

@teleport:
Making it cost gold isn't a good idea. You need to teleport again and again if you expand (and you have to expand, even with the robots). Either you don't care about that since it's one gold or less, or it's that much you can't teleport again and again. It wouldn't solve the problem of the easy retreating. If it costs hitpoints, you don't care if you aren't fighting, but you do, if you are. I don't think it helps lonly to disallow it while an enemy is near, since you can go with the keeper sideward, defend your position with new ones, and retreat to another, free village. But making it cost hitpoints would weaken your supplies so maybe it would help to make a combination of these two.

[...]I am not too sure I understand what you mean to say here: you say we should make the tanks more aggressive, or make the boats more passive/defensive? I definitely don't want to make yet another unit line for the bots, though, I feel they have far enough of them already. So whatever we do to the tanks, it'll be alteration of stats, not anymore splitting [...]

I wanted to make you understand that we need to make the tank more passive. And I think atillery make the problems since it's a very aggressive range. You can't counterstrike but you need to attack yourself. Another unit should be given atillery.

@extractor being a leader:
Peoply choose a mage for a leader, to have fun, to level up or to be able to escape fastly. You don't seriously choose them and they are only a little bit balanced by the more or less much moves they have and their possiblity to heal/to get teleport and more hitpoints. Very good specials aren't important since they only make differents if you are skirmished by good tactics or skirmishers. One more village isn't much anyway in big maps in which you can have up to +50 gold/turn and more.

@sprouts and pollonisators:

[...]but somehow I believe it might balance somewhere else.[...]

But where? -That's problem. You mustn't decrease the damage or the moves, since this faction is meant to be an aggressive faction. Decreasing the costs isn't fitting in this faction, too. We'd need to put every balance into the hitpoints. How frail should the pollonisators be? If they are that frail they can't surive an attack, you won't be able to use their specials expect leading and summoning. Then, this unit is too weak. With that much hitpoints they can surely surive one fight, you are able to use them to summon, awake, charm and lead getting an alrounder. In every ability, you'll be able to sacrivice tanks after using the abilities since you'll nearly always be able to have at least one hex between you and your enemy. I think it is impossible to get exact balancing. My formula won't be able to help with 4 abilities are all uncalculatable. And also, there's still the role problem. It isn't just because of balancing I'm against two roles, I fear and feel a unit with two roles can't make fun more then 3 minutes and makes you confuse the players. You can put plague and lead together to have a supporting while fighting role not really be meant to be protected. Summon+plague makes a unit factory being meant to be protected. Lead+summon is an outpost is mean to defend or keep attacking from a special position not being meant to be supported but meant to be protected by the summons and not meant to fight. But what can you do with charm? -With plague, you have a very aggressive special(need to kill before enemies turnsince if that start, the enemy can retreat to a village to be 1)healed 2)saved from plague 3)protected from other attacks) and an allrounding special(it can be used aggressivly by, for example, just fighting against the enemies; it can be used tactically by, eg, just freeing the way and it can be used defensivly by, eg, push back the enemy is able to reach a wounded unit is just retreating.) These are, hopefully all, reason I'm reluctent to put charm in this unit.

[...]I planned having a poison ivy capped at lv2, with an entangling fire melee attack and ranged poison (yeah, maybe it's kinda dual-function too. I had considered maybe having poison on their melee instead, not sure yet)

I wouldn't think it makes you have two roles: While attacking, you poison an enemy. With entangle, you can do a lot of damage while defending against your enemy. Your enemy isn't very likly to attack and the enemy is forced to be shooed away. The two specials complement each other somewhat. It would get a very defensive, solo-fighting unit with the role, to defend a village, a plagued plant or a key terrain from annoying scouts.

, a line that goes to Lv3 that concentrates on improving entangle through other specials (constrict, drain, bloodlust),

It's sounding interesting. What's constrict?

a Lv2 accessible both from the root and the drain-healer which would get an entangling drain-healing melee attack (fashionned after these carnivorous plants),[...]

It'd be for it, but we'd need to discuss first the lvl1 drainheal since a mushroom can't mutate or whatever to a plant and the other way arround. Yes, you can say mushroom and plant is one unit because they are linked that tough like lichens are. But I've tend to disallow that, if we choose the mushroom.

For the rest, I agree with them and I like the idea two units are able to advance in one unit since its too rarly seen in UMC and mainline.

While the idea is very interesting since it gives a special place to cave/fungus terrains and creates an opportunity to vary resistances/alignments, I must admit I really liked the flytrap thing, too.

Why not combine them in one unit? I imagine a meat eating, flytrap-like mushroom having gluey fly traps.

I'm not sure what kinda attack mushrooms could have. Flytraps were gonna get blade, since it lacked within the faction (roots and trees got impact, pollinator got pierce, albeit a weak one, and waterlily got weak impact melee/cold ranged).

It depends on how we imagine this unit. If we make it be flytrap-like and if we use mouthes instead of gluey traps, we can still use blades. Maybe we have, like suggested above, plant and fungus in one unit.

[lindsay40k]

Hmm, I think I see fog_of_war's point re the Tank. Artillery is an aggressive ability, as with fixed accuracy + lack or retaliation it's a safe option and makes it behave somewhat mage-like. Perhaps if we tried my suggestion of making it move-or-fire - in other words, the attack is only accessible if the unit has not used any MP this turn? That would make it behave more like a point defence weapon, further distinguish it from the default ranges of melee and ranged, and furthermore keep it as a powerful terrain clearer - but one that has to be 'set up' a turn in advance.

[Dixie]

Ok, so sorry I haven't replied in a day or two. I'll try to answer everything. There are some really nice ideas getting around in here

Hmm, I think I see fog_of_war's point re the Tank. Artillery is an aggressive ability, as with fixed accuracy + lack or retaliation it's a safe option and makes it behave somewhat mage-like. Perhaps if we tried my suggestion of making it move-or-fire - in other words, the attack is only accessible if the unit has not used any MP this turn? That would make it behave more like a point defence weapon, further distinguish it from the default ranges of melee and ranged, and furthermore keep it as a powerful terrain clearer - but one that has to be 'set up' a turn in advance.

I must admit I like this idea. What do you think, fog? I think it could solve our problem (for the most part. The only issue I could imagine with that is that knockback wouldn't make as much sense anymore: why would the tank want to push enemies one hex away? If he does, he won't be able to attack them with his mortar attack next turn... If I had to choose between removing the mortar or removing knockback, though, I think I'd go for scrapping the latter. Also, it's a solution I am mostly envisionning for tanks and their mortars only, not all artillery units.

@ Teleport:
Fog does have a good point here about "not working with an adjacent enemy" not being the ultimate solution, since the sentinel could still just quit the village by normal means and be replaced by another. While the HP cost could be an idea, I must admit I have NO ida how I could code that. The obviously easy solution would be a moveto event that removes HPs when the target is a village, but it wouldn't differentiate between teleport and normal movement, which can be a bother (and also illogical).

An alternative I just thought up could be preventing sentinels to quit villages by other means than teleport. They would get their actual movetype when recruited, but as soon as they step on a village, their movecost for any terrain other than village goes up to 5 (since they have only 3 move points, this is effectively saying they can't move to any other terrain than a village). Since the Sentinel is supposed to be tracked into its tunnel or something, I think it could make sense. And combined with the "no teleport if there's an enemy adjacent", it could possible solve the cycling entirely. Sure, there's always the chance that they manage to knockback every attacker and thus be allowed to teleport, but... I don't think it would happen often enough to really be a problem, plus knockback is relatively easy to counter if you have more than one or two units around. If it turns out to being really problematic, we could just remove knockback.


@ Extractor leaders:
I must admit I play mostly 2v2 or other such settings, in which you have an average of 4-6 villages per player. Hence, an extra village can make a hell of a difference. But I could still just allow it and say it's a prerogative of the bots, it's not that big a deal.


@ Pollinisator issue:
Well ok, I,ll let myself be convinced about the Charm thing - let's create a new Lv1 Rose or something that's only accessible from the Sprout. It'll have to go all the way to Lv3 (since Charm doesn't work on enemies of higher levels), but it'll be somewhat weak all around, since it's not its purpose to deal or soak damage.

Now, though, I wonder what I'm gonna do with the pollinisator's other specials. Initially, I wanted the reverse-leadership ability (I called it Pacify, iirc) to go along with Charm, all the way up to Lv3, and Plague to go with the unit generating thing. I guess I could still keep the same pattern: transfer the leadership to the new rose unit, leave plague (or rather, pollinise) to the pollinisator. Also, the Lv2 Bramble (unit with constrict, also accessible from the root) made sense for the pollinisator, since rose - thorns - bramble, but if we're gonna remove the rose part...

Although now that I think about it, I think the new "rose" could be your mushroom unit: mushroom - spores - effects like pacify and charm fit somewhat. And the pollinisator - pollen - flower - bramble still makes sense. Plus it lets us take advantage of the Lv2 Drain-Healer-Entangler, since it's not mushroom and plant merging together. So I think I'd do that. What do you think?

Btw, constrict is a special that increases damage by x (currently, x=2) with each successive successful strike. So it especially made sense with Entangle, both gameplay-wise and thematic-wise.

And by the way, I still haven't figured a way to deal with the overlay icons issue. I'm playing with the idea of piling some icons, with the following logic:
- Dazzle and Oil can't be one atop the other, since they are used by the same faction and complement each other well.
- Charm and Stun, on the other hand, could be piled up, since nobody in their right mind would have any use charming a stunned unit, appart for a slight experience gain, perhaps.

I can't decide which of Dazzle or Oil should be piled up with Charm and Stun, though, because both occurances, although unlikely, are possible and justifiable. And I don't think I have the space for three icons, unless I made them much smaller.

An alternative idea could be changing the icons entirely, making them little colored spheres that could all fit (like, dazzle=white, oil=black, charm=red, stun=yellow), but it'd be much less obvious to the unaware player which is what and such, because even though the affected unit gets an ability dummy explaining the thing, abilities are not listed like weapon specials, and if there are more than two or three, they quickly disappear from the menu...

Anyway, if anyone has ideas or opinions about this, they're welcome

[fog_of_gold]

@tank|teleport:
What's about disallowing to teleport in villages having enemies near? -It would you still allow to retreat but it costs you a village, since you can't get supplies. Either you knock your enemy back and loose your moves to move away, or the enemies adjacent to your units disallowing teleporting. It also keeps beeing KISS, unlike the not-moving idea.
Anyway, don't care about coding. It's possible, I think and I even have plan for that.

@icons:
I don't understand the problem you have. Why don't keep it like it is?

For the rest, I'm not sure enough what I think about it to answer.

[Dixie]

@tank|teleport:
What's about disallowing to teleport in villages having enemies near? -It would you still allow to retreat but it costs you a village, since you can't get supplies. Either you knock your enemy back and loose your moves to move away, or the enemies adjacent to your units disallowing teleporting. It also keeps beeing KISS, unlike the not-moving idea.
Anyway, don't care about coding. It's possible, I think and I even have plan for that.

Well, the idea has merit and might do it, but I don,t know how I'd prevent teleport from working if there was an enemy adjacent to the destination. Would you also prevent teleporting from villages adjacent to enemies, or just teleporting to? I think I would go for both.

@icons:
I don't understand the problem you have. Why don't keep it like it is?

Because as it is now, the hex clips the icons:

statuts overlays.png (5.07 KiB) Viewed 3453 times

[PeterPorty]

I didn't read the whole thing because... I didn't want to, but I just want to say one thing; an internet meme era *without* trolls? Come on...

[fog_of_gold]

@tank|teleport:
What's about disallowing to teleport in villages having enemies near? -It would you still allow to retreat but it costs you a village, since you can't get supplies. Either you knock your enemy back and loose your moves to move away, or the enemies adjacent to your units disallowing teleporting. It also keeps beeing KISS, unlike the not-moving idea.
Anyway, don't care about coding. It's possible, I think and I even have plan for that.

Well, the idea has merit and might do it, but I don,t know how I'd prevent teleport from working if there was an enemy adjacent to the destination. Would you also prevent teleporting from villages adjacent to enemies, or just teleporting to? I think I would go for both.

If we get the teleport work like I imagine, I wouldn't disallow to go away, since it's fair enough to loose a village to get healed. We wouldn't need it to balance and the free the player is, the intereting the match can get. For how to get it work, I've three ideas how to solve it. I can't go with them but for now, it's better than nothing:
1. We have two filters for that ability: [filter_self] and [filter]. Since in the event "moveto", the second unit is the unit before moved and the first unit is the unit after moved, It can be possible that [filter] is the unit didn't moved and [filter_self] is the unit after moving. I don't think there's a high chance for that, but let's try.
2. We can wait until a BFW version is out having the move event. Until then, it's just a bug.
3. I read it is possible to get the way the unit moved with lua. Unfortunatly, I'm not able to handle with lua, but maybe you are and if not, there's still the WML workshop. With this possibility, you can make a moveto event with [allow_undo] moving the unit to $x2, $y2 if there are two hexes villages in a row. I've no idea what happen if you undo then the move, but it can crub the "intentional bug".

@icons:
I don't understand the problem you have. Why don't keep it like it is?

Because as it is now, the hex clips the icons:

statuts overlays.png

I understand. But why don't you move them to the corners? -There are 4 corners, if you ignore the corners below the unit and that's pretty enough for all.

[lindsay40k]

re Icons. Moving them to the corners sounds like a good idea to me.

re Sentinels. So, make it so that once they build an underground railway (by the player activating Teleport), they cannot leave it and can only move via Teleport? Interesting. Would certainly solve the problem of a Probe or Scavenger being able to sneak along, capture an obscure property, and a tide of slow but robust units with potent melee appearing the next turn. However, if Teleport gets disabled whilst in contact with enemy units, wouldn't a Sentinel potentially become a liability to itself and the property by essentially giving a guaranteed kill and village capture in many common situations? A big part of village defence is being able to rotate the guard through attack waves, and a village keeper unit that prevents this seems dubious.

re Tanks. A few weeks ago I sugested changing Knockback to make it just terminate melee instead of moving the enemy unit away (which still presents problems as Tank/Sentinel and Cowboy 'trains' are able to push a unit a remarkable distance). I'd like to suggest we give this a try, together with the 'move or fire' mortar, to see if it fixes the Tank.

On the subject of the Tank, since the Mortar is a 'scattershot' weapon (albeit one where the scatter comes from a projectile rather than the weapon itself), why not make it behave similarly to the Pirates' Cannon using Grapeshot? (I still think some sort of 'many weak strikes being resolved simultaneously' system would fit 'area' weapons like this better than 'a fairly powerful strike with fixed accuracy', but regardless of which is used I'd like to see it applied consistently.)

There's an argument to give the Mortar a Frag round (Blade or Pierce) and an Incendiary (Fire).

re Robots in water. Do I recall from my previous game that Submerge has been rolled out for most units? If so, I must voice my opposition to this. I've found Probes to be a capable match for Merfolk in a naval battle (admittedly, this could have just been luck on my part) even without support from the aquatic brawler the Tank has become; adding hidden units to this - even with very low Defences - is a frightening prospect. In addition, Submerge is a trait given to units whose nature means that they could physically cross the seabed without any sign of them on the surface. If a non-breathing Skeleton can sneak along the seabed, but the Merfolk can not, then steambot infantry with long smokestacks that would either give away its position or let water into the furnace - and whose steam engine would be quenched by being submerged in water - seems to be a very odd candidate for the ability. Furthermore, almost faction-wide Submerge seems to clash with having a speacialised Submarine.

[fog_of_gold]

@teleport:
Disabling moving outside a village isn't a good idea. At first, you won't be able to see anything and thus you are an easy target for the enemies you wanted to trap. Also, it isn't very KISS and wesnothy. Just one example: What is, if one scenario in a campaign ended. Will the unit still not be able to move outside a village or will? And if the unit will, why can the unit outgame but not ingame?

@Knockback:
Truely, I can't remember, but I like this idea. It would get useable since it can't be that easy blocked by units behind. But I think, it have interesting tactically values to be able to move enemies arround while you are on-turn. Therefore I wouldn't like it also in the cowboy's faction. This leads me to two different abilities: One weak knockback, and a strong one. The reason the tank being heavier than the other knockbacker is still not as good in knockbacking as the others is, they are too slow.

@triffids:
I think, since there's something like a break in discussions, you could release them like we/you have them.

[Dixie]

If we get the teleport work like I imagine, I wouldn't disallow to go away, since it's fair enough to loose a village to get healed. We wouldn't need it to balance and the free the player is, the intereting the match can get. For how to get it work, I've three ideas how to solve it. I can't go with them but for now, it's better than nothing:
1. We have two filters for that ability: [filter_self] and [filter]. Since in the event "moveto", the second unit is the unit before moved and the first unit is the unit after moved, It can be possible that [filter] is the unit didn't moved and [filter_self] is the unit after moving. I don't think there's a high chance for that, but let's try.
2. We can wait until a BFW version is out having the move event. Until then, it's just a bug.
3. I read it is possible to get the way the unit moved with lua. Unfortunatly, I'm not able to handle with lua, but maybe you are and if not, there's still the WML workshop. With this possibility, you can make a moveto event with [allow_undo] moving the unit to $x2, $y2 if there are two hexes villages in a row. I've no idea what happen if you undo then the move, but it can crub the "intentional bug".

I think I have found some way how we could pull it off. If you go see the event page on the wiki, section name=moveto, we could use it to filter a unit with the ability "tunnel" that moves to a village with an enemy adjacent to it. Then, [if] x2 y2 was a village, we teleport back the unit to x2 y2. Rests to be seen if we give a warning message and give the used move point back. Just in case x2 y2 is within 3 hex of the new village and the unit could there walking, maybe we could include a close to detect is x2 y2 is within radius 3 of the new location. Maybe also remove the necessary movepoints (since the unit will teleport anyway, but we want to emulate it walking), although if the sentinel teleported (walked) next to an enemy, it would lose them because of ZoC. Unless the enemy was Lv0... Maybe we ought to also use some kind of [move_unit_fake] to emulate the unit walking rather than teleporting, just for the visual aspect of things...

And hm.. More comments on the rest some other time, it is pretty late here and I just wanted to post this before I went to bed and risked forgetting it.

[fog_of_gold]

Yeah, I thought about this solution, too. But it has some flaws: At first, you usually can't see the new village location if you delayed fog. With this, you can test if there's an enemy anywhere in fog. Also, it isn't like the game would do. And it can get buggy with undoing moves. But I have a new idea how to solve: You can make an event being fired every select if the unit have tunnel or whatever this ability will be called. It'll change every village terrain adjacent to enemies and not being in fog into a fake village not having the important stats a village have to be able to teleport teleporters. If the fog's refreshed, [I'm thinking of the sight event but if we use it, we need careful; It's written there it's buggy] and if some teleporters teleported next to enemies, they are teleported back. Then, there's a nested select event and a nested side turn event. If one's fired, the other one won't. The select event have filter to prevent to be fired from other tunneler. In these two events, we change the fake villages back to real ones. Anyway, I think it's more than just a short discussion and we should move it into your WML thread.