Steelhive Faction feedback/balancing

[Creativity]

Alright, so I've been working on this era, and have made tons of changes:

• Wired in animations that were unused
• Made a few new animations (mostly using existing frames plus missiles/halos)
• Fixed several bugs
• Re-implemented the lightshifter's transformations in Lua
• Added an Age of Heroes era
• Tweaked stats
• Added fluff to unit descriptions
• Changed the electric status to display as a status icon instead of an overlay
• Added traits for Steelhive - each Steelhive other than the Sentient gets one random trait from autotarget, antigravity, reinforced, optimized
• Added a Steel Hivequeen leader-only line
• There are probably other little changes that I've forgotten.

It has been on the add-on server for a few days now; I'm just about to upload a new version with an actually working lightshifter. Regarding the lightshifter, the only thing I'd still like to do (unless I've forgotten something) is make the AI able to use its ability. Unfortunately, when trying to do so I got cryptic errors ("PANIC: unprotected error in call to Lua API (attempt to index a nil value)" even when I commented out my entire Lua file, but not when I commented out the [engine] tag that calls the file), so it's probably going to take awhile to figure this out.

Updated to your new version, thanks for working on this

Bug: Lightshifters lose 1MP per turn and and sometimes don't move, and you can't move them on the turn after you recruit them(you have to wait for two turns).

[Celtic_Minstrel]

Bug: Lightshifters lose 1MP per turn and and sometimes don't move, and you can't move them on the turn after you recruit them(you have to wait for two turns).

I see the problem; it's because the code to ensure that a lightshifter never has more than four movement points doesn't actually check if the lightshifter has shifted. So, the lightshifter currently can't move at all until you shift to something and (optionally) back. I'll just add something to the filter to exclude lightshifters that aren't in disguise, and upload in a couple of minutes (along with minor updates to the Steel Larva/Nymph graphics).

EDIT: It's up; I also added a minor XP bonus to the optimized trait.

[melinath]

Will this be updated for 1.11?

[Zerovirus]

Will this be updated for 1.11?

I've got a graphically-revamped and statistically-rebalanced version sitting on my computer, right now. Whether it'll get released hinges mostly on how many NO I give and when I finish revamping graphics for the other 2-3-ish factions I intend to package with the revamp.

[Crow_T]

Man those are some pretty sprites

[ChaosRider]

How about to make also animation for each of them (attack/defense etc)?

[Rbuck]

Didn't I see a Supercore/Hypercore somewhere in the depths of Zerovirus' art thread?...
Not that its style would exactly fit with these

Edit: sorry, that's Monolith/Hyperlith.

[IPS]

Where can be found the unit's stats and stuff? the era should been ballanced againist default faction at not being too op or too weak againist these. Is there any download link? would like to see what I can add to that idea

[Zerovirus]

After a billion years or so of me procrastinating on the project, here's the new version of Steelhive- playable!- with updated graphics and everything. No animations yet, and the new Larva -> Cocoon -> Metamorph line is still missing, but otherwise I've tried to balance it for multiplayer gameplay.

A lot of the code is cribbed from the old version which was maintained by Celtic_Minstrel, for which I'm thankful. If anybody wants to help me update Repairs+4 and Repairs+8 to 1.12-compatible format, that'd be cool (I have literally no idea what I'm doing, my coding ability is strictly limited to copy-pasting chunks around and changing the values within those chunks.)

(also if anybody wants to help me code this into a full era with at least 3 other factions, that'd be great too because man I have tried to do it myself and I have no clue what I'm doing.)

[8680]

If anybody wants to help me update Repairs+4 and Repairs+8 to 1.12-compatible format, that'd be cool

As far as I know, the big 1.12 ability description format change is merely that the ability’s name is no longer included in its description — so this:

Code: Select all

        description=  _ "Repairs +8:
This unit repairs adjacent allied machines at the beginning of its turn."

Would become this:

Code: Select all

        description=  _ "This unit repairs adjacent allied machines at the beginning of its turn."

(also if anybody wants to help me code this into a full era with at least 3 other factions, that'd be great too because man I have tried to do it myself and I have no clue what I'm doing.)

I’d be willing to help.

[Zerovirus]

Right now I'm looking at implementing, for starters, the Jade Alchemicals: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/301 ... micals.PNG

After that, there's a whole laundry list of factions that I'd need to finish the art for, but which are on the way. The red-guys are probably closest to completion, trailed by the not-zerg and a clockwork faction with all of, like, one unit completed.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/301 ... tagion.PNG
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/301 ... Legion.PNG
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/301 ... agon_2.PNG

So yeah, that's about the scope of the project. I've got a list of markov-names and some design-notes on the stats of the Jade Alchemicals, but that's about it as far as the WML for that faction goes. If you're still interested, I can PM you the notes and stuff over PM. (As a sidenote, Bumbadumbum's also offered to help me with this project.)

[8680]

If you're still interested, I can PM you the notes and stuff over PM.

I’m still interested.

I’ve created a GitHub repository for this era, provisionally named “zerovirus-era” (you have a better name, right?).

While forum PMs work for one-to-one communication, if you’d like to discuss things with me, bumbadadabum, and whatever other co-maintainers you may accrue, I recommend using the #wesnoth-umc-dev IRC channel on freenode (or I could register a new channel). (Edit: Or we could use these nice forums, of course.)

[Mabuse]

Right now I'm looking at implementing, for starters, the Jade Alchemicals: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/301 ... micals.PNG

After that, there's a whole laundry list of factions that I'd need to finish the art for, but which are on the way. The red-guys are probably closest to completion, trailed by the not-zerg and a clockwork faction with all of, like, one unit completed.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/301 ... tagion.PNG
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/301 ... Legion.PNG
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/301 ... agon_2.PNG

So yeah, that's about the scope of the project. I've got a list of markov-names and some design-notes on the stats of the Jade Alchemicals, but that's about it as far as the WML for that faction goes.
If you're still interested, I can PM you the notes and stuff over PM.

I’m still interested.

I’ve created a GitHub repository for this era, provisionally named “zerovirus-era” (you have a better name, right?).

While forum PMs work for one-to-one communication, if you’d like to discuss things with me, bumbadadabum, and whatever other co-maintainers you may accrue, I recommend using the #wesnoth-umc-dev IRC channel on freenode (or I could register a new channel). (Edit: Or we could use these nice forums, of course.)

haha, epic

[Celtic_Minstrel]

I notice that the selection of units looks, at a glance, drastically different; how much of that is simple renames, and which units were outright removed? I'd be interested in seeing the inclusion of some of these anyway even though their balance is poor; not including them in the faction definition, but just having them there in case someone wants to use them in campaigns. I seem to recall liking some of the weird, unbalanced ones, like the amniote or cybercone.

[Zerovirus]

Hey there, two-month-late reply!

The Amniote and Cybercone have been... not quite replaced, but I haven't been able to implement their replacement unit line, the Larva-Cocoon-Metamorph line. The impalers are completely new and mostly me attempting to address the lack of piercing ranged units in the faction (I'm pretty sure literally every mainline faction has a unit with piercing ranged attacks), but everything else should be mostly recognizable.