Internet Meme Era v 0.0.8

[PapaSmurfReloaded]

Anyway, the era looks kinda fun, you should make an Internet dudes faction xD, after all we created all memes, we r liek godz!

http://wikifaqs.net/index.php?title=LUE

Use that as inspiration :3

(Man everytime I read that page I feel so proud <.<)

And btw if you want to make units use GIMP is a pretty good program.

[Dixie]

Ok guys, I'll be honest with you, I've made absolutely no work on my era since last time

Your comments have all set me thinking, though. At first, I wanted robots to be a highly defensive faction, and I had plans for some insect or mutant faction that would lay cheap eggs and spam tons of units. Now, you tell me robots get too much gold and could have that feature. So I've been wondering: either I change my vision of robots to include that egg-like creature, either I switch scavenge/forage over to the eventual 5th faction.

Otherwise, you have good points about a bunch a stuff, from repair's name and stackability to my sprites team-color being deffective and Teisatsu's strong trait . Talking of which, it didn't bother me that knockback didn't interupt combat if there wasn't a unit behind to block (wouldn't the mounted cowboys be too strong, else?), although I don't really mind either making it interupting the combat. It could indeed replace slow for some units, I guess. Although if I make that change, I should logical make it so for Teisatsu's retreat too. And make it so even if you can't be knocked/retreated off a village, you can still interupt combat in those cases. I'm still not exactly sure how I'll do all this, but I could look into it.


@lindsay40k (comments to your ideas for robots):

Agreed about poison. Robots could become a highly defensive faction that win out of indirect damage and attrition rather than fast frontal assault. Should we just give it to the healers (power cell line), or create a different smog belcher line of unit?

About slow. My main idea initially for the scavenger, apart being a weak lv0 gold-hoarder, as that it could skirmish around to slow ennemies so they could not flee from the slow-moving robots. Thus my idea of a MP-deprieving replacement for slow, which was rejected. An alternative could be a "slow" that lower defenses to a maximum of 30% or 40%, or lower resistances perhaps, but since we were gonna go on a indirect damage/attrition oriented faction isntead of a direct damage one, maybe it doesn't fit as well. Of course, it could be just some kind of marksman tesla bolt, or a tesla bolt that attacks all surrounding units (could be nice, actually)

Btw, does anybody else think the scavenge/forages abilities are abusive? Maybe it could jsut stay with 1 gold/turn regardless of the unit's level (drop forage)? Agreed, the screen could scroll to the money gathering units, or something. I'm not sure what you meant about a scavenger menu though? (fog_of_gold)

About the mad prof. I didn't envision the robots with much alive units, but I concede it could fit. If the "egg-laying" thing is adopted, he could pretty well be the one doing it (building small robots). Here's how i imagined those eggs: small lv0 unit with barely any offensive and very low defensive capabilities (little MPs, only a single melle attack doing something like 3-2 impact), buit it would require only 3 or 4 XPs to level into any recruitable lv1 or lv0 (scavenger) unit, and would have a special ability that would give it 1XP/turn. It could cost something between 4 and 6 gold. Level ups of the prof could maybe build lv1 eggs that evolve into lv2 units, etc.?

There's something else about this faction merging. I saw those eventual mutant/insects with a special sort of leadership: it would take into account all the levels in adjacent unit from the same side times 5% of leadership. Let me give a few exemples to explain: a unit adjacent to 2 lv2s and a lv0 unit (of their side) would get 20% leadership bonus (2 units*lv2*5% + 1unit*lv0*5%). A unit surrounded by 5 lv3s would get 75% leadership bonus. (Ok, maybe it could be slightly more, like surrounding units level+1 times 5%?). Anyway, I first had this idea for the robots, but decided to keep the lv5 leader (which would be weird added to that sort of communion leadership), but I could reverse things. What do you think?

Water unit. Sure, the robot lack one, but they got a flyer with pretty nice range. Agreed, it's not that strong and will have a hard time actually controlling the water, but... It's not an absolute must to have a water unit. Look at the Knalgans. But we could still think about it, if it has something interesting to add.

Teleport. I must admit I REALLY liked the idea of a teleporting village-defense specialist. Seriously, it's easily one of my favorite unit idea in the faction, if not the whole era. I understand it fits the theme poorly, though, but still... And I don't see much point in giving teleport to another unit if not that one. We can explain it how ever we want, but I really like it .

Bulldozer. I don't dislike the idea. Hell, it could even replace the blocker/waller (which names somewhat suck anyway). However, it won't recognize just bridges and cavepaths, but all flat terrains: plains, river fords, dirt parts, etc. (Bridges enter the flat category too). So all these terrains should normally remain at low move cost (1) and thus unmodifiable (as far as the path goes). It should be possible for hills and forests, though. And what about sand and snow? Slow movement (cost 2 or 3, which is the same since it has only 3MPs and not 4) but not alterable? (About the MPs: we could give the unit 4MPs, but cost 4 in hill/forests) (water, deep and shallow, are of course un-walkable). An alternative would be to add an option to the right-clic menu to use all MPs to destroy a terrain tile. It could even cost gold (money sink!). Maybe you could also select a flat (bare) tile around and make a pit out of it through the right-clic menu, costing gold too. You could thus build trenches, or walls of sorts. And it could still have the steadfast and resistances of the blocker/waller.

About illuminate and reverse-illuminate. Ok, if it fits a unit, I don't mind adding it. However, I really don't see the point of making a unit specifically for this. I mean, the robots will have very little to gain from it, why should they ever hire/level to this unit if it has no other uses and is weaker to damage resistance/wise? But I guess it could be added to some unit, the crab-like scavenger evolution, for instance. The same goes with the smog-cloud which could be given to power cells and such.

Your defense-increasing smog-cloud idea was good, but since robots will already have high resistances and HPs, I fear it will make them a tad too ultimate... Unless their average defense was really sucky without it. Could be an option...

Centipede. You would give it both drain and mechanical-feeding? Well, why not. I don't see feeding affecting balance all that much in MP matches anyway, so I guess we could consider it. I think it could be scripted fairly easily, too.

About traps: I think your right. It would tend to lead to stale-mates and slow games, plus being hard to script... let's drop the idea.

If I'm not mistaken, so far the faction would look like (the * indicate temporary names):

Probe - Sonde
------- Bomb
------- Collider

*Power Cell - *Recharger - *Energizer
------------- *Firebot - *Dragonbot
------------- *Polluter - *Smog Belcher (maybe merged with main powercell healer line)

*Inventor - *Mad Prof - *Brain Jar

*Combat Droid - *Battle Bot - *War machine (I moderately dislike those names)

*Minigun - *Machinegun - *Railgun (I'm not sure these names are ok/in a good evolutive order)

Tanker - *Buildozer - *Rampager
-------- Keeper - Sentinel

Scavenger - *Tesla Crab
------------ Centipede - Millipede

Plus the lv0, lv1 and lv2 eggs.


@PapaSmurfReloaded:

I'm not sure I'd add that faction to my era... Sure, it's about the internet, but it doesn't really fit the themed factions, I don't know what I would give them, and I don't really know of that forum or community, so I would miss most of the inside joke anyway... Sorry.

[fog_of_gold]

Ok guys, I'll be honest with you, I've made absolutely no work on my era since last time

Your comments have all set me thinking, though. At first, I wanted robots to be a highly defensive faction, and I had plans for some insect or mutant faction that would lay cheap eggs and spam tons of units. Now, you tell me robots get too much gold and could have that feature. So I've been wondering: either I change my vision of robots to include that egg-like creature, either I switch scavenge/forage over to the eventual 5th faction.[..]

I think it should be left in the robot's faction. It helps you playing defensive because you haven't to convert all these villages. Just defend and spam these units.

Btw, does anybody else think the scavenge/forages abilities are abusive? Maybe it could jsut stay with 1 gold/turn regardless of the unit's level (drop forage)?

I think, the scavenge ability gives you too much money. I'd like to have a random choice with only 50% chance to get one gold coin. Forage is more or less balanced, I think.

Agreed, the screen could scroll to the money gathering units, or something. I'm not sure what you meant about a scavenger menu though? (fog_of_gold)

I thought of making a menu that will open a message with the expected money you get from the scavenges. If you make the getting random, you should count every unit on the battlefield and just divide them by two.

Here's how i imagined those eggs: small lv0 unit with barely any offensive and very low defensive capabilities (little MPs, only a single melle attack doing something like 3-2 impact), buit it would require only 3 or 4 XPs to level into any recruitable lv1 or lv0 (scavenger) unit, and would have a special ability that would give it 1XP/turn. It could cost something between 4 and 6 gold. Level ups of the prof could maybe build lv1 eggs that evolve into lv2 units, etc.?

Getting 1xp/turn is too much if they haven't got any other disadvances. I suggest to disallow them to move. It would make you able to spam these units but it'll also prevent you from recruiting.

There's something else about this faction merging. I saw those eventual mutant/insects with a special sort of leadership: it would take into account all the levels in adjacent unit from the same side times 5% of leadership. Let me give a few exemples to explain: a unit adjacent to 2 lv2s and a lv0 unit (of their side) would get 20% leadership bonus (2 units*lv2*5% + 1unit*lv0*5%). A unit surrounded by 5 lv3s would get 75% leadership bonus. (Ok, maybe it could be slightly more, like surrounding units level+1 times 5%?). Anyway, I first had this idea for the robots, but decided to keep the lv5 leader (which would be weird added to that sort of communion leadership), but I could reverse things. What do you think?[...]

Wounderful idea. I think, you'll have to name the faction insects and 'keep' it there; it doesn't fit into the defence robots. Also I think, you should increase the level by one for calculations. Therefore with your example above, it should get 2*(2+1)*5%+1*(0+1)*5%=35% bonus.

[Dixie]

I think, the scavenge ability gives you too much money. I'd like to have a random choice with only 50% chance to get one gold coin. Forage is more or less balanced, I think.

I mean no offense, but I don't understand how forage would be balanced if scavenge isn't I mean, Scavenge lets a lv0 unit produce 1g/turn, forage lets a lv1 unit produce 2g/turn.

Wounderful idea. I think, you'll have to name the faction insects and 'keep' it there; it doesn't fit into the defence robots. Also I think, you should increase the level by one for calculations. Therefore with your example above, it should get 2*(2+1)*5%+1*(0+1)*5%=35% bonus.

So you would suggest dropping the robot theme entirely? It would be pretty sad... I guess I would rather make both the highly defensive robots AND the cheap mutant/insect swarming factions... I feel robots are an important part of internet X vs X debates, mutants/insects much less so.

[fog_of_gold]

I think, the scavenge ability gives you too much money. I'd like to have a random choice with only 50% chance to get one gold coin. Forage is more or less balanced, I think.

I mean no offense, but I don't understand how forage would be balanced if scavenge isn't I mean, Scavenge lets a lv0 unit produce 1g/turn, forage lets a lv1 unit produce 2g/turn.

1. It's difficult to level units having that less damage.
2. This lvl1 have upkeep, don't it?
3. You can't recruit the lvl1s.

Wounderful idea. I think, you'll have to name the faction insects and 'keep' it there; it doesn't fit into the defence robots. Also I think, you should increase the level by one for calculations. Therefore with your example above, it should get 2*(2+1)*5%+1*(0+1)*5%=35% bonus.

So you would suggest dropping the robot theme entirely? It would be pretty sad... I guess I would rather make both the highly defensive robots AND the cheap mutant/insect swarming factions... I feel robots are an important part of internet X vs X debates, mutants/insects much less so.

No, I don't suggest to drop the robots. I just don't vote for swarm leadership for the robots since this is an ability makes you act agressively which doesn't fit into robot's theme. Also, I wanted to say, that I like the name 'insects' more than 'mutants' since mutants won't care about each other and it doesn't really fit into spamming.

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BTW, there's a weird '!' shown while stealing.

[lindsay40k]

Heya, sorry I haven't been active lately. I'm in the process of moving house and until I get broadband installed my web access is limited to popping into my Mum's house for an hour or so. Glad to see the ideas are flowing, I've developed some of my sketches further and once my connection's improved I'll be scanning and uploading. Here's the general gist of how my sketches have been developing:

- Quadruped battle bot getting an alt evolution that looks like a knight; his chin turns into a face guard, and a smoking exhaust on top of his head recalls a knight's plume. This unit would be vulnerable to impact attacks, as they would be good at toppling the mecha-horse.

- Minigun starting out as a chunky unit with a hammer arm and a basic gun; evolutionary lines can either develop into big hammer wielders or mobile gun turrets.

- Tanking unit starts out basically as a land train with a cattle catcher and a steering carriage like on the early battle tanks that used naval principles. The cattle catcher gets replaced with rollers or dozer blades as it levels up.

- Oiler has big eyes that recall cartoonish 'Jamjar' glasses to emphasise that it's not an aggressive front line unit. Possibly three evolutionary paths: repairer, flame tank (basically a slow-moving village clearer) and pyro - a crazy-looking bike robot with a large lance-type flamethrower and an exhaust in its mouth that recalls a cigar. This would be a fast-moving 'glass cannon' unit well-suited to a role similar to a lancer (perhaps having Charge on its ranged attack to represent its impetuousness?). This unit would be vulnerable to impact and pierce attacks, both of which are a threat to its fuel tank.

- Smog belcher is looking at being like a factory/forge on wheels. Working on a design based around a chin with a grille, showing intense heat in the gaps. Evolutionary paths to be a furnace that gets +1 to attack strength every time it kills a unit (like Feeding, but it heats up instead of growing), and the pollution factory with an as yet unconfirmed effect from the smog. It's be nice if the furnace's burning head could be represented by melee attacks resulting in automatic fire damage or something... get close, get burned. This would need thought - if every hit gets an automatic burnt hand, then many-hitting units will get slaughtered whilst Orc Grunts and the like will thump it a few times with less risk. (Not necessarily a bad thing, just worthy of note.)


Regarding the smog, these are the possible effects I think we should consider:

- Unit has high evasiveness, Poison-immune units next to it gain evasiveness boosts. (The high evasiveness for the unit itself could be combined with any of the below.)

- Reverse illuminate. (Main argument for this is that it is very similar to an existing effect, and if it's in the hands of a level 3 unit it is by no means a game-breaker on account of being scarce.)

- Concealment of Poison-immune units next to it. (To be used offensively, this would require a lot of movement micromanagement. I don't like that sort of thing as it amounts to exploiting loopholes in turn-based rules.)

- Poison damage to (all? enemy?) units next to it at the start of turn. (Units do not get Poisoned per se, just take 8HP damage with immunities as per Poison.) Could be combined with first suggestion.


All of these suggestions make the 'bots both a strong ally for Undead, and half of them give Undead a bonus when fighting 'bots. I don't think any of that is an issue, for the following reasons:

- Loyalists being able to level up an Illuminate unit makes them a strong ally for Drakes. There are a number of alliances with similar 'dream team' unit combinations, I see no harm in adding one more.

- 'Bots have a lot of fire and impact attacks which make them very strong against Undead.

- If you're fighting against Undead, you'll evolve your factory thing into a Skelly/Ghost-eating furnace, not a pointless smog belcher.



Anyways, more (and pics) to follow when things are less hectic here. Toodles :3

[Gwynnedrion]

Anyway, the era looks kinda fun, you should make an Internet dudes faction xD, after all we created all memes, we r liek godz!

http://wikifaqs.net/index.php?title=LUE

Use that as inspiration :3

(Man everytime I read that page I feel so proud <.<)

And btw if you want to make units use GIMP is a pretty good program.

You were on LUE? Hmm, nice But you didn't make alot of memes. That was the chan's doing. Especially /b/ en ebaumworlds.

[Dixie]

Sorry for the late answer. It is my vacancy month, and at the contrary of what you might expect, I'm moving around quite a bit and don't have much time and energy to put on this. It should change cometime around June, though, I guess. Anyway, I'm not one who likes wasted efforts in general, so I'd prefer if the design was complete before I put any real work on the code, so it doesn't matter much for the lack of time.

So let's just summarize a bit:

Ninjas: Mostly OK for now, I'll just have to work on the graphic sometime to replace the burrowed sprites (and probably the lousy ones I made too).
Pirates: They would be OK, appart from the sprites, but I find the faction to be flavorless. I'll meditate on the issue, they might somewhat change eventually. Ideas welcome, btw.
Cowboys: Mostly OK, appart from the sprites and heavy balance issues. I'll have some work and test to put on them.
Insects of sorts: Just a general idea for a somewhat cheap swarming faction, with gold producers, gold stealers, egg-layers and some collective leadership. I'll have some good work to put on those ones, and I don't believe there exists any somewhat decent, theme-fitting place holder sprites.
Robots: We are redisigning them for the most part, so much of the code should have to be redone.

Okay, so, Robots, where we're at:

I mostly like your ideas lindsay40k. As of now, we should have 1) some kind of oil-unit that splits in either healer, flamethrower (village-buster) and smogbelcher (some kind of special poisonning unit), 2) a gun line (pierce-range), 3) a meleeist line, 4) a tank line that splits in village keeper with teleport and knockback (sorry, I really like the idea, even though it's rather cyberpunk :/) and some kind of terrain-altering tank (and possibly that berzerking dozerblader, too, unless it's merged with the tank), 5) a mad-prof line that evolves into brainjar and super computer to go all the way up to Lv5 leadership, 6) a flying scout line that evolve into either better scout, kamikaze bomb or charging collider and 7) the scavengers, which will most probably be deprived of some special abilities. I guess we could just remove scavenge and slow, and leave it with just steal, so it evolves into either the still stealing crab or the drain/feed centipede, plus we should find something for their range attacks to be a bit special, although weak (not slow). Maybe some dazzle tesla-bolt that would set a maximum attack accuracy of like 40% or 50% for the victim's next turn?

Another point we have to decide: the smog around the smogbelcher. Deluminate, although it's somewhat pointless for the bots, could fit the theme nicely. It could also balance out the eventuallity of giving a big light bulb to some scavenger evolution. I don't much like the defense-improver: since the robots already have generally high resistances and HPs, giving them a mean to achieve greater defense might be a game breaker. Plus, if e giving the dazzling tesla-bolt to the scavenger-crab, it would be that much more pointless. Local poison... could be an idea, but I dunno. The unit already poisons, so... And I like the concealment thing, but I don't know to which extent it would unbalance the thing. But I like it, so maybe. The smog belcher would mostly be an utility unit, anyway, and it would by no means have strong attacks or tank-like abilities, so giving them stronger effects shouldn't be TOO much of a problem. I think I had some other ideas, but I can't get them back off the top of my head, so I'll rethink about this for some later time.

So huh, later, folks! Keep the ideas and comments flowing.

[fog_of_gold]

[...]7) the scavengers, which will most probably be deprived of some special abilities. I guess we could just remove scavenge and slow, and leave it with just steal, so it evolves into either the still stealing crab or the drain/feed centipede[...]

That's a good idea. Let's remove scavenge and make it only available for level one. But the damage should be increase as well as attacks to make it possible to kill sometimes units so you can level up these units with preparing. I wouldn't suggest to remove getting gold per turn since it helps you playing defensive since you don't need to defend your villages being outside your "town". I made a special formula to get a prebalancing and the weekend after next, I'll time so if you are patient, I'll calculate/balance with them a little bit the robots and if you think, you need others, I'll do, too.

[Dixie]

Hmm... Maybe. I was thinking more along the lines of : let him steal opponent's gold with melee attack, but don't get any gold per turn. It fitted the theme since it would gather for the community and continue doing so as a Lv1 "crab", but would go more selfish and gather for himself with his other lv1 "centipede", thus explaining the drain/feeding thing.

I was thinking about giving the gold per turn thing to the insects, since they would be able to spawn eggs. They wouldn't be THAT cheap, actually, but could have massive income through gold per turn units and eventually masses of units to seize villages.

What's your opinion on that? Allow lv1 gold per turn for the lv1 scavenger only? Or for the insects? Or both? And what's your opinion 'bout the steal thing?

[fog_of_gold]

Giving a faction producing his own gold by just defending won't make a faction aggressive. Better just keep stealing making you have to play very aggressivly since you have to get next to the enemies with the units. If you give them now less hitpoints, it'll make you have to even play more aggressivly since you need to kill the enemy being attacked by 'steal' to make sure your stealer won't die. The more a unit costs, the less units will die since you can retreat with your unit being near dead before it dies because it'll stay alive longer than a cheap unit. So better you keep the idea of less costs so there'll die more units and you'll play more aggressivly. It could be the balance to the leadership they have.

[Edited to make some points clearer. Also, some misstakes are corrected.]

[Aura]

Are insects really the best choice for an Internet Meme faction ? I think Spartans would be better and more fitting, or maybe aliens or something. If you want a swarm race, Triffids (big killer plants) might be a fun idea.

[fog_of_gold]

Are insects really the best choice for an Internet Meme faction ?

I like this idea, but it's Dixie's choice, of course

I think Spartans

Don't you think we have enough human factions already?

would be better and more fitting, or maybe aliens

Usually, they've got too much specials to get a serious chance to get balanced. I dislike this idea but, again, it's Dixie's choice.

or something. If you want a swarm race, Triffids (big killer plants) might be a fun idea.

I like this idea, but there are some problems about it:
1. Who should be the scout unit? -Treeghosts? -Spores? -I can't imagine a good scout.
2. What should be the differents between this and the robots? -Plants are slowly, tough and the only different is, that they are there in masses as against robots.

But it would give interesting ideas. I'm just thinking about units are very strong but not able to move (and only available by advancing, of course).

[Aura]

Lv 0 spore units that are weak, fast and cheap would be the scout unit (maybe with a reworked plague ability that makes a new spore on a kill). Basically you would flood the map with spores, and then send in saprolings to finish the wounded enemies and level into big killer plants. I think this would be a nice race to have.

You could have several different spores (basic spore, poison spore, 'plague' spore) that can level into saprolings, and then different saprolings (vine saproling, venus flytrap saproling, toxic saproling etc). They could have the ability to corrupt the ground they stand on, damaging enemy units or boosting friendly units. The bigger ones could 'swallow' enemy units.

[dipseydoodle]

Ay Dixie. Can you PM me with a list of artwork you need me to do... I know it's a late post but I'd still like to do some sprites... Nice new avatar bye the way.