Wesball

[Bob_The_Mighty]

I had some time on my hands so another add-on slipped out. This one is a football mod. I always thought Wesbowl was a good idea, but I never found it that much fun. I decided to revamp it, using right-click commands to allow units to pass the ball to adjacent team-mates or kick it a couple of hexes away. Every unit also has a 1-1 'tackle' attack, which they can use to grab the ball from their opponent.

Instructions on how to play can be found in-game by viewing the 'scenario objectives'.

Rules of Wesball...

- Move a unit onto the ball to pick it up.
- To take the ball from an opponent a unit must hit with a tackle attack.
- Rightclick on an adjacent unit to pass the ball to a team-mate.
- Rightclick on an empty space within 4 hexes to kick the ball.
- Kicking and passing the ball entails a 30% risk of dropping it.
- Both throwing and passing the ball uses 1 move.
- Score goals by kicking the ball onto an opposing goal post.
- The winner is the team with most goals by turn 20.

- If a unit carrying the ball dies it will drop the ball.
- Dead units are sent to the injury bench and can rejoin at any time.
- Killing a unit counts as a foul, and the offender will be stoned.
- Both your leader and the unit carrying the ball can kill without fouling.
- Move your leader next to a stoned unit to unstone it.

At the start of the game you get to pick your team from a selection of units based on your faction. All default factions can be used (but I haven't added undead or drakes yet). I've tried to balance it out by adding special abilities to certain units. For instance, the loyalist sergeant has 'butterfingers' (+20% chance of fumbling) to compensate for leadership, whilst the high-movement of horses/gryphons/wolves is offset by the the 'mounted' ability which gives them a kicking range of 2, instead of 4.

I've played it a few times, and it seems to work quite well. There's certainly a lot to think about, which should make for lots of tactics. As usual, please post feedback/bugs here.

[Wintermute]

I have hoped for someone to revamp this for a while - I am very excited to try it out!

[jb]

I had some time on my hands so another add-on slipped out.

This is one of the funniest things I've heard in a long time.


I'll have to check it out soon.

[ivanovic]

Here at FOSDEM Boucman and I just had a short look at this extension, which really is a *lot* better than the good old wesbowl. Here some comments about stuff we saw in the short test:

* stoning seems broken (does not work at all...)
* poison is too powerful
* please port it to 1.5.x
* (the principle of) healing was fine, but maybe some faster healing needed, like reappearing with 50% HP and unpoinsoned then
* what about "replacement players" on the bench, so that only a specific number can be on the field, but you can switch in "other players" (the ones you did not select at the beginning? probably not the whole team, but some of them)
* maybe a 2nd unstoning unit would be good to have (once stoning really works) since if the defender loses his leader, he really is lost since he basically can not attack

It is not sooooo nice that at the moment you can rely on "all random" in leader selection, since you will get drakes every now and then, resulting in a non working match. Yes, we do know that drakes are probably really imbalanced in this mod, since all of them are so fast.

Beside this: please continue work on this mod, it looks really promising. We tested version 0.2 (and only for a little less than 10 turns).

[palloco]

Drakes and undead do not receive units

[Turuk]

Drakes and undead do not receive units

All default factions can be used (but I haven't added undead or drakes yet).

Reading is your friend.

[Bob_The_Mighty]

Thanks for the feedback. Version 0.2.1 has a few changes...

- Fouling/stoning now works again.
- Poison is cured automatically when a unit is killed.
- Units are unstoned and set to original pitch positions when a goal is scored.
- The chance of fumbling when passing is now 10% (kicking still entails a 30% risk). I changed this to make more of a distinction between passing and kicking. Kicking is probably more useful, but more risky.

[Boucman]

so no change to HP management ?

(maybe it's planned for next version)

what we found out with Ivanovic is that the game is more about managing HP, both in your team and your oponent's than actuallyplaying the ball

unit can only heal in villages (since when they die, they don't get any HP back, you still need the time to get them back.

This means that a well timed killing spree can be deadly, and poison is particularly dangerous since HP is much more valuable.

That's what we thought of extra players that would be able to get in the game while others are healing...

[ivanovic]

- Fouling/stoning now works again.

Some comments that came up after showing the extension to Dragonking (who seemed to have liked it, too...):

* You have to explicitly move your leader unit at least one hex to have a unit unstoned. So when the leader stands close to a unit killing an opponent, the unit still gets stoned and the leader has to at least be moved one hex to unstone the unit again.
* After being unstoned, the unstoned unit has no attack. Intentional?
* If you kill an enemy while *defending*, the defender is stoned. There is quite some possibility to missuse this by bringing badly wounded units to the front and attack the enemy with those, to have the enemy stoned. Especially at the end of the game this is a lot more likely to be possible than early on, so the attacker can be favored.

And I got to repeat myself: nice idea with this add-on!

[Bob_The_Mighty]

* You have to explicitly move your leader unit at least one hex to have a unit unstoned. So when the leader stands close to a unit killing an opponent, the unit still gets stoned and the leader has to at least be moved one hex to unstone the unit again.

Yes, this is how it was planned. Is it a problem? The alternative would be to give fouling immunity to all units adjacent to their leaders. This would work nicely as an ability. But as it stands, I find that your leader is often given a choice to move about unstoning players or to attack. It is neat when you can do both, but the fact that there's sometimes a decision to made is probably a good thing. Do you agree?

* After being unstoned, the unstoned unit has no attack. Intentional?

This wasn't intentional, it just seems to be a feature of wesnoth. I didn't mind it though, since it makes fouling slightly more detrimental. Units that return from the injury bench can also not attack in the same turn, so it kind of makes sense.

* If you kill an enemy while *defending*, the defender is stoned. There is quite some possibility to missuse this by bringing badly wounded units to the front and attack the enemy with those, to have the enemy stoned. Especially at the end of the game this is a lot more likely to be possible than early on, so the attacker can be favored.

I wondered if this was a problem, but I kept it in because it is sometimes amusing to use the sacrifical strategy. If the team has a lot of nealy-dead units, they probably aren't in very good shape anyway. And they will be readily giving away tons of xp. But all the same, I guess it could be abused - and it would make sense that only the attacker is able to foul. Should I change this?

The stoning feature was included to ensure games didn't just become a bloody battle in the middle of the pitch. I wanted tackling, passing and kicking to have more priority. All the points you raised, if implemented, would mitigate the severity of fouling. I am willing to re-jig it, but I'd like to keep it so that fouling is still pretty penalising to the player. Do you agree with logic?

[Boucman]

I agree completely with the logic

I think none of us discussed the concept... it was more a question of balance issue.

HP management becomes critical... which is not a bad thing, but is still a very new thing. so we have to consider the consequences...

[Wintermute]

* After being unstoned, the unstoned unit has no attack. Intentional?

This wasn't intentional, it just seems to be a feature of wesnoth. I didn't mind it though, since it makes fouling slightly more detrimental. Units that return from the injury bench can also not attack in the same turn, so it kind of makes sense.

I agree, I like that there is a bit of a penalty, but I would note that in the rules (where it says that your leader unstones, add: "unstoned units can move but not attack the turn they are unstoned" or something).

Great work, I have yet to play a real game but it seems like great fun!

One more comment: is there a way for weak units to go to the injury bench to heal without being killed? I think that units like shaman are really great since they can slow (no foul!) and heal. I think there is merit in considering allowing you to pick your team from among all the factions (say one of each race or something for each choice? maybe that is too much), since factions without healing may have some problems. Though there is some fun in not being able to pick the ultimate team every time...

[Boucman]

there seem to be a huge player one advantage, since he can both attack first and pick the ball...

I would advise placing the ball behind the P2 leader, so PA has first turn advantage and P2 gets the ball...

[Wintermute]

here is a replay of an interesting loy vs. orc game. Note that the replay crashes for me if viewed with 'skip animation', but works fine the slow way.

[TheMasterOfBattle]

This looks like it could be a very interesting add-on and already sounds much better then the old wesbowl. I look forward to playing it when it is finished.