Sleepwalker's randomness

[Jetrel]

This L3 assassin certainly has my approval for going into mainline. MP devs will have to approve it actually levelling up to this in MP, but I'm highly skeptical that this will be a real balance concern, being a L3 and all.


Also, those undead cavalry would probably be welcome in mainline as a resource for campaign authors, since there's quite a bit of call for straightforward, generic skeletal cavalry (amongst other things; perhaps a campaign level where some necromancer has a super-powered version of plague, and is actively skeleton-ing enemy cavalry.)

[Reepurr]

This L3 assassin certainly has my approval for going into mainline. MP devs will have to approve it actually levelling up to this in MP, but I'm highly skeptical that this will be a real balance concern, being a L3 and all.

Won't it decrease the flavour of the unit tree, if (virtually) all units can actually get to L3?

[monochromatic]

What if we made it an alternate advancement from the slayer? Would make the orcish line definitely more interesting, as currently the orcs have no alternate advancements, and this unit is the only 'special' unit they have. There might be a need to edit the sprite, but I'm pretty sure Sleepwalker will still do amazingly!

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Suggested (possible) stats:
Orcish Nightblade - 33 gold
7 moves, 34 hp, AMLA
10-1 melee dagger backstab
4-4 ranged throwing knives poison

xp needed to advance from Slayer: 70

[Reepurr]

What if we made it an alternate advancement from the slayer?

What do you mean, alternate advancement? The slayer caps at level 2, which I think makes the orcish line more interesting.

Would make the orcish line definitely more interesting, as currently the orcs have no alternate advancements, and this unit is the only 'special' unit they have.

Let me see, just off the top of my head...
Goblin Rouser
Goblin Pillager
Troll Rocklobber

[hhyloc]

What if we made it an alternate advancement from the slayer?

What do you mean, alternate advancement? The slayer caps at level 2, which I think makes the orcish line more interesting.

I think he meant the Assassin, which is a level 1 unit.
Like this:

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Assassin --> Slayer
         --> Nightblade

Also, may I suggest the possible stat for this unit.

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Name: ? (maybe Nightblade like monochromatic suggested?)
Cost: 32
HP: 33
Move: 7
skirmisher (?)
8-2 melee blade backstab
4-3 ranged blade marksman,poison

IMO, this unit would be more melee-oriented, so it has better melee potential (backstab) with slightly improved ranged attack

[Sleepwalker]

Monochromatic, Reepurr: I might be lost in the woods regarding balance, so thanks for the help sorting out stats. I suppose I underestimate the impact of one additional move point too.

I'm skeptical that the notion of unit trees being more interesting applies in this case (I'm only thinking about the case of long campaigns here). I agree that it is in the case of the saurian spellcasters for example. As the units provided at lvl 2 will always be useful for the healing and/or cold damage. Also sometimes the choice for stopping at lvl2 can be a good decision. Lets take the Loyalist Javelineer: This a unit that to me when looked at by itself seems poor compared to going all the way to Royal guard or Halberdier. But if you have a Grand Marshal in your army the lower level means bigger damage boost and gives me a better incentive to pick that advancement. Most other lvl2 only paths I find useful to the end as well- except the Slayer.

In campaigns I try to keep some Slayers just for fun but I often find they are too lacking in survivability or damage-potential compared to my host of Troll warriors/Warlords/Slurbows. The best use for them I can think of right now is in scenarios where you are forced to fight elves/woses or dwarves on their own turf. Namely in forests or mountains where the slayers get good defense and gets good use from their ranged ability. Even in that case though they are easily killed by lucky foes. The kick attack I wanted to add was mostly for flavor fun and a little more utility.

So that's my reasoning behind this. MP is a whole different matter though as you most probably won't have lots of though, high damage dealing units and a secondary lvl2 unit choice might be preferable. Though that would probably require a bit of redesign of the sprite. Right now I just tried to make it look like a natural advancement of the Slayer. A unit path divergence should require some bigger difference I think.


Thrawn: Thanks! Hmm yeah, maybe some reduction of the saturation for the kilt-thing might help. Can't do it right away though as I'm sitting at an Internet Cafe with no access to my files.

Jetrel: Thanks for the approval Jetrel. I pretty much agree that being lvl3 doesn't matter too much. Isn't there already several lvl3 units in mainline MP that is pretty unbalanced? I'm thinking about Mage of light and Paladin VS undead for example. I'll keep working on the skeleton cavalry.

hhyloc: Again, I reckon some revised sprites would be required for a second branch. Maybe this lvl2 unit would have back stab while the main one goes without?

[Mountain_King]

In campaigns I try to keep some Slayers just for fun but I often find they are too lacking in survivability or damage-potential compared to my host of Troll warriors/Warlords/Slurbows.

QFT.

[hhyloc]

hhyloc: Again, I reckon some revised sprites would be required for a second branch. Maybe this lvl2 unit would have back stab while the main one goes without?

Yes, you're the artist who made the sprites so it's entirely your choice. I have nothing to say much beside the congratulation on the awesome works.

[Sleepwalker]

hhyloc: thanks.

OK, so here's the female demon and a tweaked male -turned down the saturation on the loincloth... As for the female; I know you said kitty that you could turn your head like that but it was uncomfortable. But as I really liked how the face turned out I've been reluctant to redraw it. I figure demons would be heavily into pain anyway, both given and recieved. I think the other things mentioned are fixed though.

[Iris]

This is great. Thank you for the portraits; I’ve committed them both to IftU in the Wesnoth-UMC-Dev SVN repository and they’ll be in the next release... assuming I ever get a new maintainer to replace me (although since the 1.8 version is stable enough, I might be able to upload a new release for it by myself soon anyway).

I used your mainline credits entry this time. If this is a problem, PM me with new information.

[Sleepwalker]

My pleasure Shadowmaster, thanks for the commit. Mainline credits are fine.

Here's the beginnings of the grunts; More brawn, bone and bling... I had an accident though, the glaive/axe weapon got a bit long on the male, almost sticking out a good 100 pixels out of the square frame. Is this alright or is cropping of his toy needed?

[thespaceinvader]

Just put in a bit more space at the top. Or, extend the portrait to the right so it's 400x500. Both solutions are acceptable.

[Pewskeepski]

Is the lvl 3 assassin going mainline? If it's not, I'd like to use it in a campaign that I'm secretly making. However, if it's not even done, I can wait

[Sleepwalker]

The lvl3 assassin has made a bit of secret progress, and more work will be done some day.

But right now I picked up the grunts again, cleaned them up and put down flats.

[Iris]

Greetings! I hadn’t noticed the sketches for the L2 Grunts last time I checked this topic, so I’m going to complain a little in this post; sorry about that.

The first thing that bothers me about the male variation is the tongue, which seems very thin and long, and impractical for speaking. I’m also generally not fond of sentient creatures sticking their tongue out and spitting like that.

The second thing is the different in amounts of clothing compared to their sprites. When I worked on these the last time, I decided for the L1 demons (a.k.a. “regular” demon) to go bare-chested as they can advance into the flying Zephyr or the fighting Grunt. Both of their advancements are intended to be specialized in completely different aspects: Zephyrs carry as little weight as possible (no armor, no weapons and only minimal clothing as the demon skin is supposed to be very resistant to damage by itself, and they mostly rely on ranged fire attacks and hit-and-run tactics), while Grunts wear basic leather chest armor and some rudimentary clothes covering them at waist level.

You went for some cool-looking metal waist armor for the male, but not the female, which seems a little odd. The fur in both portraits doesn’t seem to serve any practical purpose either and it appears to be there just for decoration, something which I generally tend to associate with L3 or L4 units.

I’m not saying any of the aforementioned points are reasons against the inclusion of the portraits, since they are looking quite cool nevertheless and I’m sure the current maintainer (Espreon) isn’t more exigent than I am , but I thought I may as well explain what my original intentions were before someone else started second-guessing them, as I believe I never went back to that point in the sprites working topic.

EDIT: Of course, I or someone else can also edit the sprites later. I’m open to that possibility since they currently look a little stiff and unimpressive.

I also get the impression that the female’s left knee (at our right) is significantly thicker than her waist, but that could be just a consequence of the funky angle.