Wesband, MP dungeon-crawler (now for Wesnoth 1.9.14+ !)

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o11c
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Joined: May 7th, 2011, 9:43 pm

Re: Wesband 0.7.5, if only the topic title got changed

Post by o11c »

zaimoni wrote: 1) Taking one step at a time confers stealthiness, which directly impairs the "general alert radius". A min-maxer wants to be moving one hex at a time into unsecured territory anyway; that makes it a rote calculation to determine the attack direction(s), in the very important "you hear a noise" case. (in particular, when advancing up a 3-hex wide corridor, a particularly tedious advancement pattern will ensure exact knowledge of the hex you got spotted along.
2) Impact is both common and bad. That said, I'm curious about the party composition, as on DL1 I die much more to outlaws and saurians than to slimes.
3) Fortunately, the buyback ratio of 20% prevents the price premium for stacks from turning stacking potions into a money-making venture.
1. It doesn't make too much sense that you wouldn't "hear a noise" while walking. And, it's not clear at what radius moves will no longer refresh. Also, when trying to do a jump from one out-of-sight area to another through a visible area, the monster involved will see you if another enemy enters your line of sight.

Also, the recommended walking pattern of "click one beyond your maximum range" is suicidal as that player will be alone, ahead of the rest of the party.

2. The issue is not just the fact that they do impact damage, but the fact that they have high health and/or resistances to most types of damage. I'm not saying I don't die to other things, but at least I can kill them in one round.
3. I do not understand how your statement is relevant. I propose only changing the display code (and possibly some other code), not any core mechanics. It would still be 4 individual potions, but they wouldn't take up as much space in menus.
  • Killing a Matriarch of Emptiness is hard as an all-mage team ... This seems to be a unit designed for some specific scenario, not really relevant here.
  • Some higher level elementals have much higher damage and strikes than other monsters - enough to possibly kill in one round, in both melee or ranged.
  • Armor is really expensive and (due to decreased terrain defense) doesn't usually reduce damage taken.
  • The racial exp rate bonus/penalty seems imbalanced due to the fact that TP are handed out based on character level. I haven't played nonhumans extensively, though.
  • The price of healing potions rises far faster than the amount of loot you get.
zaimoni
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Re: Wesband 0.7.5, if only the topic title got changed

Post by zaimoni »

o11c wrote:
zaimoni wrote: 1) Taking one step at a time confers stealthiness, which directly impairs the "general alert radius". A min-maxer wants to be moving one hex at a time into unsecured territory anyway; that makes it a rote calculation to determine the attack direction(s), in the very important "you hear a noise" case. (in particular, when advancing up a 3-hex wide corridor, a particularly tedious advancement pattern will ensure exact knowledge of the hex you got spotted along.
2) Impact is both common and bad. That said, I'm curious about the party composition, as on DL1 I die much more to outlaws and saurians than to slimes.
3) Fortunately, the buyback ratio of 20% prevents the price premium for stacks from turning stacking potions into a money-making venture.
1. It doesn't make too much sense that you wouldn't "hear a noise" while walking. And, it's not clear at what radius moves will no longer refresh. Also, when trying to do a jump from one out-of-sight area to another through a visible area, the monster involved will see you if another enemy enters your line of sight.
Recent versions (0.6.x upwards) have moves no longer refresh at radius 12 from an alerted threat.
o11c wrote:Also, the recommended walking pattern of "click one beyond your maximum range" is suicidal as that player will be alone, ahead of the rest of the party.
Right, that's more of a convenience for safe areas than a real option. If you're patient, you can use the label system to mark the boundary between safe and unsafe areas of the dungeon.
o11c wrote:2. The issue is not just the fact that they do impact damage, but the fact that they have high health and/or resistances to most types of damage. I'm not saying I don't die to other things, but at least I can kill them in one round.
Everyone can run faster than a slime. In a throwaway game, I had a necromancer run into a pack of four slimes on DL 1, about a third of the way through clearing it (so he had already muscled up a bit). They chased him all the way across the north of the level to a well, which cut down the number arriving at any given time to a workable level. (Demise was by bandits on DL4).
o11c wrote:3. I do not understand how your statement is relevant. I propose only changing the display code (and possibly some other code), not any core mechanics. It would still be 4 individual potions, but they wouldn't take up as much space in menus.
Currently, the price of a stack of potions is more than the price of the same potions individually. As a display option it'd look strange to have two identical looking stacks with different prices.
o11c wrote:
  • Killing a Matriarch of Emptiness is hard as an all-mage team ... This seems to be a unit designed for some specific scenario, not really relevant here.
  • Some higher level elementals have much higher damage and strikes than other monsters - enough to possibly kill in one round, in both melee or ranged.
  • Armor is really expensive and (due to decreased terrain defense) doesn't usually reduce damage taken.
  • The racial exp rate bonus/penalty seems imbalanced due to the fact that TP are handed out based on character level. I haven't played nonhumans extensively, though.
  • The price of healing potions rises far faster than the amount of loot you get.
Armor dramatically influences chance-to-kill calculations. Also, for blade and pierce damage taken goes down astronomically once the resistance level exceeds 70% or so -- and it's easy to exceed 100% blade and pierce resistance with heavy armor fighters.

As far as I can tell the racial experience penalty is balanced properly for Dwarf soldier vs. human fighter. There's a lot of balancing to be done there, and frankly some race/class combinations may be intended to be challenges.

Price of healing potions...yes. I think you're supposed to get a healer quickly (choice between white mage line and Elvish sylph line is non-trivial, white mages have better spell damage while sylphs have a better movetype).
o11c
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Re: Wesband 0.7.5, if only the topic title got changed

Post by o11c »

zaimoni wrote:Recent versions (0.6.x upwards) have moves no longer refresh at radius 12 from an alerted threat.
It's nice to know the number ... I was thinking it was related to the number of moves, though. See the attached savegame (from 0.7.5)for evidence that your statement is wrong; Red's moves are refreshing. Actually, it looks like some sort of bug where it doesn't realize that it's alerted, despite having just attacked.
zaimoni wrote:Everyone can run faster than a slime. In a throwaway game, I had a necromancer run into a pack of four slimes on DL 1, about a third of the way through clearing it (so he had already muscled up a bit). They chased him all the way across the north of the level to a well, which cut down the number arriving at any given time to a workable level. (Demise was by bandits on DL4).
That assumes you can run. Bad terrain can easily make this impossible. Or they might be there at the up-stairs. Or enemies might block the way back. (the last can easily happen when enemies with long move chase enemies with less move)

Try with, say, a fencer. I was actually in a two-person game (= more enemies), but due to the alert radius my mage was too far away. Although the metal slime has no melee attack, my fencer could only do 3-3 damage, and the slime has 20 hp, so it has a really good chance of killing .
zaimoni wrote:Currently, the price of a stack of potions is more than the price of the same potions individually. As a display option it'd look strange to have two identical looking stacks with different prices.
I've never seen a stack, everything just says "Uses - 1" (Hm, that would be better as "1 use" - I remember the first time I played a game that had such multi-use items, I read "uses" as a verb)

Speaking of store displays, it would be nice if there were less text in the potion shop. I suggest making another column with the Value, and only have one line. And, it's annoying that the Summon Elemental scrolls don't say the type in their main line. It's also annoying that Fire Resistance looks like Healing at first glance (it has the same icon).

Code: Select all

-           Item            hp      Available
(red pot)   Heal            8       3
-           Item            level   Available
(scroll)    Air Elemental   2       1
-           Item            turns   Available
(scroll)    Metal Drain     3       2
And there's the minor annoying fact that the Heal+20 potion you start with is different than the rest.
zaimoni wrote:Price of healing potions...yes. I think you're supposed to get a healer quickly (choice between white mage line and Elvish sylph line is non-trivial, white mages have better spell damage while sylphs have a better movetype).
The problem with healers is, that even if you're upgraded enough to cast heal 4 times in a turn, you'll have practically no mana left.
And for a one-player game, a lone healer (or any type of mage) is vulnerable to a lot of things, and if you increase your physical stuff instead, you can't upgrade enough to heal. I guess that's what hired minions are for, though ... I never used to use them at all, but now that I'm playing with a necromancer I can see how to appropriately give the xp.
  • The order of casting spells shouldn't make any difference as to how much casting time is left over. Currently, a white mage of appropriate level can cast "Magic Resistance" and then "Heal", but not vice versa.
  • The undead minion upgrade tree seems unbalanced ... it allows creating really resilient temporary allies that live for long enough to finish the current battle.
    • Cap effective necromancer's power based on the level of the creature.
    • Or, put a global limit to the number of upgrades that can be done on non-permanent minions.
    • When "decay" decreases max hitpoints by 6, first decrease current hitpoints by 3. This will have no effect for fully-healed creatures, but make them less useful as meat shields.
    • It sucks that spirit-type undead decay twice as fast as corpse-type undead (because they have half as many hitpoints)
  • The first upgrade for Crossbow Strikes seems pretty cheap for the amount of damage it unlocks.
  • Can we please have different colored enemies? It's very difficult to tell if, say, an Armored Cuttle Fish is on the same team as a Giantstool.
  • I wish monsters wouldn't attack each other so much and take my exp. It would make more sense if they would only engage each other occasionally, or if I intentionally lead them to each other (I did this to take out the Matriarch of Emptiness btw)
  • Please document that staves only give the bonus from the first slot ... or change the code to just use the single biggest bonus from the slots. In particular, I wanted the possibility of using a Scroll of Metal to Drain with an alternative weapon
  • Please show the currently wielded weapons like in the Armor shop.
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zaimoni
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Re: Wesband 0.7.5, if only the topic title got changed

Post by zaimoni »

o11c wrote:Actually, it looks like some sort of bug where it doesn't realize that it's alerted, despite having just attacked.
Or engine limitation. In any case, monsters don't alert by seeing you on their turn, only by seeing you when you stop moving on your turn.
o11c wrote:
zaimoni wrote:Everyone can run faster than a slime. In a throwaway game, I had a necromancer run into a pack of four slimes on DL 1, about a third of the way through clearing it (so he had already muscled up a bit). They chased him all the way across the north of the level to a well, which cut down the number arriving at any given time to a workable level. (Demise was by bandits on DL4).
That assumes you can run. Bad terrain can easily make this impossible. Or they might be there at the up-stairs. Or enemies might block the way back. (the last can easily happen when enemies with long move chase enemies with less move)
Slimes have truly awful movetype, however. Nothing has worse move cost than a slime, not even elves. I haven't seen a DL generated with a slime-proof rubble barrier (slime 5MP entry cost bites with a 4MP slime) yet, but it should be possible.

Other comments valid, although enemies blocking the way back doesn't happen much to me. (Movement doctrine, don't move where you wouldn't have backup if you alerted a monster. That means the monster-monster fights generally are almost over or over before you get there, unless it's turn 1/2 when you blunder into it.)
o11c wrote:Try with, say, a fencer. I was actually in a two-person game (= more enemies), but due to the alert radius my mage was too far away. Although the metal slime has no melee attack, my fencer could only do 3-3 damage, and the slime has 20 hp, so it has a really good chance of killing .
So...not implementing movement doctrine kills.
o11c wrote:
zaimoni wrote:Currently, the price of a stack of potions is more than the price of the same potions individually. As a display option it'd look strange to have two identical looking stacks with different prices.
I've never seen a stack, everything just says "Uses - 1" (Hm, that would be better as "1 use" - I remember the first time I played a game that had such multi-use items, I read "uses" as a verb)
In 0.6.x stacks (Uses -2) started showing around DL8 or so in the stores. I haven't been using the magic shop much in my current serious game so I haven't been paying attention.
o11c wrote:
zaimoni wrote:Price of healing potions...yes. I think you're supposed to get a healer quickly (choice between white mage line and Elvish sylph line is non-trivial, white mages have better spell damage while sylphs have a better movetype).
The problem with healers is, that even if you're upgraded enough to cast heal 4 times in a turn, you'll have practically no mana left.
And for a one-player game, a lone healer (or any type of mage) is vulnerable to a lot of things, and if you increase your physical stuff instead, you can't upgrade enough to heal. I guess that's what hired minions are for, though ... I never used to use them at all, but now that I'm playing with a necromancer I can see how to appropriately give the xp.
Yes, both the white mages and the sylphs I'm thinking of are hired minions. It's more cost efficient to hire the mage at L0/sylph at L1 and promote.
o11c wrote:
  • ....
  • The first upgrade for Crossbow Strikes seems pretty cheap for the amount of damage it unlocks.
  • Can we please have different colored enemies? It's very difficult to tell if, say, an Armored Cuttle Fish is on the same team as a Giantstool.
  • ....
Crossbow strikes: mainly because crossbows normally have one shot, and they have the highest base damage. Extra cross-bow strike #2 isn't happening until character level four or five, so it's not that big a deal to me.

Different colored enemies...they're generally assigned sides by race. Wolves are confusing because they may be either orcs or cave dwellers, but other than that the race rule holds.

Aside: a L4 Giant ant still has no zone of control. Very counter-intuitive. (I found out the hard way on DL13 in my main game.)
o11c
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Re: Wesband, multiplayer dungeon-crawler campaign

Post by o11c »

Just tried playing elves for a while, and they're pretty bad. What sadist gave elves Heavy Blade when they have a Body penalty? The Noble in particular is useless, since the attack is weak anyway and most monsters have a resistance to arcane (you'll do more damage with a cracked bow!), and you'll probably never have a chance to upgrade your melee attack (due to the experience penalty and your low health - no free partial heals, and having to choose whether to upgrade your attack or your health).
Exasperation
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Re: Wesband, multiplayer dungeon-crawler campaign

Post by Exasperation »

Funny, the elf noble is one of my favorite starting characters, and I do pretty well with it (although it was not I who gave them heavy blade starting out). He's also pretty good against slimes (especially metal ones).

I found the sources of the two lava-blocked areas in that save, and they will be fixed in the next version (that's still a while away, though).

Regarding the lich touch issue, a PC that got lich touch shouldn't trigger that error. The cause seems to be that skeletal fist inventory items don't have magic adjusts initialized to 0 properly (while other types of fists do). Looking for the cause of this issue did get me to catch that lich touch was calling itself faerie touch, though. :doh:
o11c
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Re: Wesband, multiplayer dungeon-crawler campaign

Post by o11c »

Tried Elf Noble solo, and it's a lot easier than Elf Noble in a group.

Martial Focus is pretty useless since you can only get 3% (subsequent levels have unreasonable Body requirements)
zaimoni
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Re: Wesband, multiplayer dungeon-crawler campaign

Post by zaimoni »

Finally got one of those invalid-terrain savegame load fatalities. As far as I know this was with the safe multiplayer reload protocol (Edit 4: not!) (game was played in three sessions before this one failed).

Context: almost cleared DL14, went up to cash out the loot and upgrade, then re-entered DL14. Went away for several days, had malware-like weirdness (all scans clean) so outright deleted the Wesnoth cache files to speed up the AV scans.

Then...on open:

Code: Select all

The game map could not be loaded: Illegal character in map: (Ryv) 'Ryv'
The map cannot be loaded.
Attaching bzip'ed savefile; decompressed reads ~9003K. Edit: this is 0.7.5+the obvious lua error suppression fixes.

Edit 2 Wow...whatever happened has rendered all manual saves of Wesband back over three weeks suddenly unloadable by illegal terrain errors.

Edit 3 Ok...finally found the well-concealed load game option from the multi-player menu. That means the savegame is no longer of interest.
o11c
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Re: Wesband, multiplayer dungeon-crawler campaign

Post by o11c »

When I upgraded my henchman White Mage into a Mage of Light, its equipped bow disappeared until I reentered the Manage Equipment menu.

Edit: Since levelling him a bit more, his Illuminates ability has disappeared, although misleadingly the halo is still there.
Edit2: Probably related to this, which repeats 6 times when he levels up:

Code: Select all

<Lua error> ...esnoth/data/add-ons/Wesband/lua/UnitConstruction.lua:478: attempt to perform arithmetic on field 'illuminates' (a nil value)
            stack traceback:
                ...esnoth/data/add-ons/Wesband/lua/UnitConstruction.lua:478: in function 'find_npc_value'
                ...esnoth/data/add-ons/Wesband/lua/UnitConstruction.lua:2703: in function 'construct_unit'
                ...esnoth/data/add-ons/Wesband/lua/UnitConstruction.lua:2733: in function
            <...esnoth/data/add-ons/Wesband/lua/UnitConstruction.lua:2725>
Edit3: Riposte 2 requires 14 Deft and Light Blade Damage 3, but Light Blade Damage 3 requires 15 Deft
zaimoni
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Re: Wesband, multiplayer dungeon-crawler campaign

Post by zaimoni »

o11c wrote:When I upgraded my henchman White Mage into a Mage of Light, its equipped bow disappeared until I reentered the Manage Equipment menu.

Edit: Since levelling him a bit more, his Illuminates ability has disappeared, although misleadingly the halo is still there.
It never was there for me on 0.7.5. I got the same error you did. That's why I play with the changes from the pre-0.7.6 ZIP merged in (earlier in this thread); it includes the official fix for this and several other things (but not the lich touch description fail).
o11c
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Re: Wesband, multiplayer dungeon-crawler campaign

Post by o11c »

In the attached savefile, he still has 'illuminates'.

About the same time 'illuminates' disappeared, it looks like it's using the default AMLA (staying at level 4, adding 3 max hp) instead of doing proper upgrades.

Edit: when walking into the LoS of a cloaked enemy, you still get the message stating the name and type of enemy.
Edit: the upgrade to add 'slows' to the vine attack doesn't work.
Edit: Backstab is documenting as requiring Light Blade Damage 1, but is offered when I only have Light Blade Strikes 1.
Edit: the "Poison thrown light blades" upgrade doesn't work.
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zaimoni
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Re: Wesband, multiplayer dungeon-crawler campaign

Post by zaimoni »

Managed to hit a "initiate wants to be dark adept no matter what" (promotes to a mage with dark adept spells) in a game that never had been loaded. [I did save the game for checkpointing, but the instance of Wesnoth it was running in had been up since the game's start; almost 3 days.]
o11c
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Re: Wesband, multiplayer dungeon-crawler campaign

Post by o11c »

In Wesband/events/npc_creation.cfg , [case]value=dexterous should be dextrous

Edit: the map in the attached savegame has very strange terrain. I could understand a water level, but water above a cliff over fire? It also has a small unreachable area, but there were no enemies in there this time - hopefully, the same fix applies.

Edit: the experience requirements are really unbalanced after player level 4 or so - I suggest decreasing the player exp requirements slightly, and increasing the requirements for henchmen and enemies. Also, decrease the amount of exp the enemies start with - if you can't kill them in one turn, it can easily become fatal because they'll get a full heal just from fighting.

I guess at this late stage of the game evade becomes much weaker than armor ...

With the large number of strikes, you're guaranteed to take quite a bit of damage back (unless you've spent all your points in bludgeon + storm), so dealing with groups of monster becomes much harder - especially since most of them have ~8 attacks in both melee *and* ranged
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Exasperation
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Re: Wesband, multiplayer dungeon-crawler campaign

Post by Exasperation »

Nice catch with the value=dextrous. As for the balance issues, both npc vs pc experience gain and toning down armor somewhat are on the to-do list, and your suggestion for the experience issue is actually pretty similar to what Ken_Oh and I had discussed doing as a first attempt at rebalancing that.
o11c
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Re: Wesband, multiplayer dungeon-crawler campaign

Post by o11c »

The number of henchmen available to choose from is too few with only one player.
The henchmen should show their attributes (intelligent, resilient, ...)
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