WC, variations and recruitment.

Tomsik · Post by **Tomsik** » January 31st, 2007, 10:25 pm

Idea: when you recruit a WC make it create random WC variation instead of base WC.

Why:
- Walking corpses have many nice variations, but they're rarely seen in MP games, because you need to kill a troll, drake, swimmer, wose or other unit you usually don't want to kill with a WC.

- This change would make WCs more interesting and unique.

- Since some time WCs have no resistances what makes them little underpowered, this change would give them little boost.

Post by **Noyga** » February 1st, 2007, 12:26 am

Sounds cool, but...
IHMO the variations are too different for that, some are stronger than the default (troll), some are weaker (saurian), and some of the movetypes/resistance sets are very different.
The result would be too chaotic and all the variations don't have the same value.

Gus · Post by **Gus** » February 1st, 2007, 12:59 am

Could it be only a change in skins then? At least it'd showcase the wonderful artistic content available...

Post by **turin** » February 1st, 2007, 1:08 am

Noyga wrote:Sounds cool, but...
IHMO the variations are too different for that, some are stronger than the default (troll), some are weaker (saurian), and some of the movetypes/resistance sets are very different.
The result would be too chaotic and all the variations don't have the same value.

Sounds like an excellent description of traits.

I don't have a problem with the idea per se, but it would probably screw up the balance at least somewhat, and so is unlikely to be used.

Random idea: Could it only choose from among the corpses available from the opposing faction(s)? So, if you're facing drakes, it might be a drake, but otherwise it wouldn't be. Same with trolls, etc.

-> What i might be working on · Post by **Eleazar** » February 1st, 2007, 3:19 am

Gus wrote:Could it be only a change in skins then? At least it'd showcase the wonderful artistic content available...

Um, so some of the WCs look like zombie mermen, but can't actually swim?
Not good.

Post by **Jetrel** » February 1st, 2007, 5:22 am

turin wrote:I don't have a problem with the idea per se, but it would probably screw up the balance at least somewhat, and so is unlikely to be used.

Random idea: Could it only choose from among the corpses available from the opposing faction(s)? So, if you're facing drakes, it might be a drake, but otherwise it wouldn't be. Same with trolls, etc.

That would be really cool.

ozymandias · Post by **ozymandias** » February 1st, 2007, 9:05 am

Yeah, I more pretty corpsies for the necromancers!

Leo · Post by **Leo** » February 1st, 2007, 1:26 pm

I think this is great idea!!

It resolves problem with undead too boring, and demonstrating all good art that artist done for this game.

Yes, walking corps are different in strength, but also units with traits.

Gus · Post by **Gus** » February 1st, 2007, 1:29 pm

Eleazar wrote:
Gus wrote:Could it be only a change in skins then? At least it'd showcase the wonderful artistic content available...
Um, so some of the WCs look like zombie mermen, but can't actually swim?
Not good.

- Nothing in what i said implied ALL skins were to be used.
- I don't find it very logical that a zombie merman can swim in the first place. It's more zombie than merman, imo. So i wouldn't find it "not good".

Post by **Darth Fool** » February 1st, 2007, 1:57 pm

I have thought for a while on how to do this. I have come up with a couple of possibilities:

1) random recruitment: add a tag "recruit_variation=drake,suarian,default" which would specify for a unit_type that when recruited the variation of the unit would be randomly seleceted from the comma seperated listed

2) make variations directly accesable in the recruit list so, in the scenario file have something like "recruit_list=walking_corpse[drake],walking_corpse[default]" This would then allow the player to decide which version of walking corpse to recruit, and allow scenario designers to, say, only allow the recruitment of troll walking corpses after the undead player has defeated the troll king.

3) Both.

I don't think that this would be a difficult modification to the code base.

Granted my perspective on this is heavily weighted towards Single Player mode, not MP games.

Tomsik · Post by **Tomsik** » February 1st, 2007, 2:04 pm

Noyga wrote:IHMO the variations are too different for that, some are stronger than the default (troll), some are weaker (saurian), and some of the movetypes/resistance sets are very different.

That's exactly what would make them more fun.

turin wrote:Sounds like an excellent description of traits.

Something like overgrown traits indeed.

Post by **torangan** » February 1st, 2007, 2:11 pm

Darth Fool wrote:Granted my perspective on this is heavily weighted towards Single Player mode, not MP games.

I think this could work for MP as well, the devs would just have to define the costs correctly for the stronger / weaker variations and maybe not include all of them.

Tomsik · Post by **Tomsik** » February 1st, 2007, 2:34 pm

Darth Fool wrote:Granted my perspective on this is heavily weighted towards Single Player mode, not MP games.

IMO this would be nice for MP too.

Gus · Post by **Gus** » February 1st, 2007, 3:12 pm

DarthFool's suggestion would be VEWY SWEET for SP =)

UngeheuerLich · Post by **UngeheuerLich** » February 2nd, 2007, 9:56 pm

anything that makes undead not so boring is fine...

i like undead very much, but walking corpses are a waste of money at the moment... they are slow, weak and die easily due to lack of resistances...

i seriously think giving you the ability to chose between variations of walking corpses would be very very nice:

- a swimming corpse if you have to defend water
- a troll corpse with low defense but bore hp
- a riding corpse with good movement on planes, but lower defense and movement penalties on all other grounds
and so on...

(all these units are allready there, and finely balanced, but very difficult to get, due to low damage and only two attacks of WCs)

seems very very nice!

I like the idea of making WCs which you could get from killing enemies available in mp...

the other would be always allowing to recruit at least swimming and riding corpses...