Unit genders

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GunChleoc
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Re: Unit genders

Post by GunChleoc »

I prefer var 2, it's more distinguishable from the male variant.

The male shaman needs more natural looking legs, they are too straight.

Thanks for taking this on :)
fluxbird
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Re: Unit genders

Post by fluxbird »

GunChleoc wrote: June 1st, 2018, 7:15 am I prefer var 2, it's more distinguishable from the male variant.

The male shaman needs more natural looking legs, they are too straight.

Thanks for taking this on :)
Thank you for the input! :D
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Re: Unit genders

Post by Destructinator »

Whiskeyjack wrote: May 26th, 2018, 6:30 pm Usually when this discussion came up, soldiers where discussed as a bad option, because women in realistic armor won't be that starkly different from males on sprite level.
Bonjour! First off I found this thread when I was seeing if anyone mentioned how only white people exist in Wesnoth apparently, but I also thought about the lack of women and love this thread! With the armored male units to make female sprites and portraits you could just draw a portrait of a female heavy infantryman holding her helmet instead of wearing it and you could change the sprite armor in a small way without adding boobs, like add a plume to her helmet or something like that.
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Re: Unit genders

Post by Blackberry »

That's.... actually a good idea, if you wanted to do it. Sucks that I'm not an artist though.
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The_Gnat
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Re: Unit genders

Post by The_Gnat »

I believe there is also a thread in which the Saurian genders were being discussed, and someone started working on the Fencer female variant. :)
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Re: Unit genders

Post by Soufwar »

ey fluxbird, if you can get the art done count me in to implement everything as an add on. I haven't dabbled in modding for Wesnoth but I am flexible enough as a game designer to learn how Wesnoth works under the hood to implement your work in a few days max, cheers :)
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Re: Unit genders

Post by beetlenaut »

I'm sure the devs would be happy to add a gender to a unit that had artwork available. Just one file needs to be changed. However, I don't think it should be the Elvish shaman. Elves seem to have this huge sexual dimorphism where the females can join the faerie world, grow wings, lose the ability to touch steel, and do healing magic. A female elf could choose to be a fighter or scout (and artwork would be welcome), but a male can't choose to grow wings any more than they can choose to be pregnant. I'm not sure if I've seen all this explicitly stated in mainline or not, but it seems to be cannon.
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Pentarctagon
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Re: Unit genders

Post by Pentarctagon »

Personally what would be interesting to me would be to perhaps have a male elf instead take the place of the human mage. While I get the canon/historical reasons for the faction having the mage unit, it still always seemed out of place.
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Krogen
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Re: Unit genders

Post by Krogen »

I accidentally stumbled upon this thread. And all i got to say to the last comment is YES!
It always kinda bothered me how the high and mighty elves rely on human mages. When we say "elves" what comes to our mind? Forests, archery, pointy ears and... magic of course, at least for me. Elvish Shaman just doesn't have the raw magical power i would expect from the race. Yes, after level up to a Sorceress that changes, but i'd really like to see that at level 1 too. Also there is the Elvish Lord, but that's not part of the Default Era. So when an average elvish army comes to battle, they'll use mostly archery and swordsmanship and very little magic. Which is kinda weird, always felt they lack something, that makes them as mythical as they should be in my opinion.
Of course, from a practical point of view, the human mage absolutely does it's job in the Rebels faction and fits well into the balance. So designing a new unit that has similar role might be an overkill. And even if it'd have almost identical stats, it might have unexpected, not exactly positive consequences on the balance of both single- and multiplayer.
Whether it'd be male or female, or random, doesn't really matter in my opinion.
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josteph
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Re: Unit genders

Post by josteph »

Would the rebels need a new unit line, or just one new lvl1 unit that advances to the existing Sorceress/Druid?

By the way, not directly related to rebels but more generally about gendered units, the addon "Combined Mage unit-line tweaks" adds has an option for male and female Mages to have different advancement paths.
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Re: Unit genders

Post by Pentarctagon »

josteph wrote: June 11th, 2019, 8:24 am Would the rebels need a new unit line, or just one new lvl1 unit that advances to the existing Sorceress/Druid?

By the way, not directly related to rebels but more generally about gendered units, the addon "Combined Mage unit-line tweaks" adds has an option for male and female Mages to have different advancement paths.
I guess it'd need to be a new L1 -> L2 -> L3, yeah. Otherwise it'd be pretty strange to have a unit that casts fire magic level up into a unit that doesn't.
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Re: Unit genders

Post by beetlenaut »

Level-1 would have to be a copy of a human mage in stats so as not to affect the balance, but I don't think higher levels would have to be. There's no reason for elves to have two level-2 healers for example. It also might be interesting to have it be a male-only unit that casts fire at all levels, preserving arcane for female casters only.
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Pentarctagon
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Re: Unit genders

Post by Pentarctagon »

Lore-wise the stats could also be explained by saying that the elves learned their fire magic from the humans during the campaign, and so their stats are the same/similar.
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Re: Unit genders

Post by Xalzar »

Pentarctagon wrote: June 12th, 2019, 1:08 am Lore-wise the stats could also be explained by saying that the elves learned their fire magic from the humans during the campaign, and so their stats are the same/similar.
I'd even say that an elvish version of the Mage would perhaps make sense. Is the Academy in Anduin is the only place to learn that sort of magic? Can the Elves have built academies of their own? If not, is it plausible that - at least in times where the relationship between Elves and Humans are not strained - Elves are admitted to the Academy? Also, is the Academy directly under control of the Crown of Wesnoth or is it largely autonomous? Maybe they include other races in their ranks all the times without need for permission (mainly Elves I imagine).

If the prospect of an Elven Mage is feasible, I'd say slight modifications of the existing sprite are quite sufficient (surely more than just pointy ears though, or the visual differences would be too subtle).
Pentarctagon wrote: June 11th, 2019, 3:41 am Personally what would be interesting to me would be to perhaps have a male elf instead take the place of the human mage. While I get the canon/historical reasons for the faction having the mage unit, it still always seemed out of place.
I agree with it being strictly male for lore reasons (why would female preclude themselves of the possibility to go faerie and limit themselves to "human" magic?), but I can see it being female too. Is it possible in that case to skew the male/female ratio from 1:1? The female version could be rarer, it would be a nice touch.

The major (?) problems with my idea are defenses and resistances.
Defense: would the Elf Mage lose touch with the forest and so its superior defense? (minimum 60% vs 50%)
Resistance: how could the Elf gain a resistance to arcane, when it's characteristic of Elves to be vulnerable instead? (-10% on non-faerie ones vs 20% and more on mage levelups)
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Re: Unit genders

Post by otzenpunk »

beetlenaut wrote: June 12th, 2019, 12:33 am Level-1 would have to be a copy of a human mage in stats so as not to affect the balance, but I don't think higher levels would have to be.
Wouldn't this unit at least have to have an elvish moving profile and forest defense? And how would this effect the balance on its own? I'd think, a human mage with 60% or 70% forest defense and unhindered movement would be way better than the original one, and must be nerved somehow. Maybe stripping him of his melee attack, like the Dark Adept?
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