Some interesting naga units

[fmac81]

Hello,
I felt that the nagas needed a scout/mixed fighter/rider of some sort, and then I stumbled upon the shark/megaladon units in Inky's Quest (which is very good by the way), so I added the naga hunter unit onto it to make it a scout-like unit. The art isn't very well done because I just combined two units, but I wanted to hear what other people thought.

Spoiler:

megaladon-rider-ranged-3.png (7.17 KiB) Viewed 4201 times

megaladon-rider-ranged-2.png (7.14 KiB) Viewed 4201 times

megaladon-rider.png (6.88 KiB) Viewed 4201 times

megaladon-rider-ranged-1.png (7.1 KiB) Viewed 4201 times

I gave the unit, Naga Megaladon Rider, a ranged bow, and flame bow plus bite attack (I used flame because wesnoth had an error when I had poison). It's a level 2 because that's what the megaladon was in Inky's Quest. I haven't made the lv 1 shark rider yet.

All observations/opinions/other ideas are appreciated!

Thanks,
fmac81

[Great_Mage_Atari]

Naga is sorta.. small, don't you think?

[fmac81]

Yes, but that was how the unit was anyway, which fit perfectly onto the megaladon. I know there was a bigger version of the naga hunter somewhere, but I took it from UtBS. Although, if you look at the wolf rider units, the goblins are pretty small, aren't they?

Thanks,
fmac81

[Great_Mage_Atari]

Not as small as this proportionally

[Shinobody]

OMG... That Megalodon is franken of "zombie fish" variation of WC...
And there's naga on it... Franken of franken... Resized in GIMP. It's... not good.
And why:

• One of the units you have used for this frankenstein is already frankenstein, it is just mermen/naga variation of Walking Corpse, without hands. Also, it is fuzzy/blurry because it was resized in GIMP. (Don't know if it was done by you, or by someone who made those sprites for Inky Quest). When you are "frankensteining" units, you must use original sprites, otherwise results will not look good. If you need to find some good quality material for frankensteining, I say you start here. As far as I know, noone yet made good sprite of a shark, but there are other aquatic creatures, you might consider water serpents for example. There is lot of possibilities.
• You might want to use some bigger naga for rider unit: even although they might be actually those small naga hunters, it doesn't matter: compare goblin spearman and goblin wolfrider. One of them is bigger than the other, to don't look puny on that big wolf. As I remember, there are level 2 Naga Archers, you might want to use one of them as a rider.

Don't let these words put you off, though. You should still try again, we get better by learning, and we learn from mistakes
As for actual idea of nagas riding sharks, I think it's cool, (naga never have enough units to make them proper faction, so why not give them village grabber?) yet it needs better art. Just one question: How he/she keeps arrows lit when surfing at high speed on sharks back? As for error when you used poison: you should actually ask about that in WML Workshop... (although it doesn't sound like something complicated...)

[Great_Mage_Atari]

Now, I would question why a Naga would actually need a shark/boat to ride at all, given that it doesn't (from my understanding) travel large distances that often.
It also looks incredibly awkward that a water-based unit would be on a mount in the first place.
But all this is beyond the point. Point is, this doesn't seem like it will work out all that well. The Naga will be too small, fire arrows would be irrelevant (as anything the Naga has to light it with will be drenched from water exposure), you decided not to use poison on account of "errors", and the "megaladon" looks EXACTLY like a Merman Soulless. This needs to be "Naga Unit Workshop", not "Some interesting naga units."
What you have here is a good start (better than some). You just need to work on it is all.
If you have WML problems (as in the poisoned weapon issue), you may refer to the WML workshop.
Keep on working on it and you'll get there.

[fmac81]

Thanks guys for the feedback. As for the "shark," I didn't even make it, I took it directly from Inky's Quest Campaign. I was truly bummed when the poison arrow thing didn't work, but yes you guys have a point with how the arrows would fizzle underwater. Well, it was worth a try anyways, so I will continue to try and edit it...eventually.
@Shinobody-That water serpent idea sounds great! I did see the Naga Assasin unit somewhere, but I used the hunter b/c it looked more proportionate to the shark (frankensteined) unit. Maybe the unit wouldn't have flaming arrows, just normal ones, and the serpent would supply the poison... Thank you for that link to all the frankenstein pack stuff, looks useful.

@Great_Mage_Atari, I made the unit because nagas don't have a mounted unit/scout like all the other races (except for mermen + drakes) although you are right about them not leaving their lairs too far in the distance.

I will ask about the whole "poison weapon special" thing in the WML workshop, thanks for your help!

Thanks,
fmac81

[battlestar]

won't you need a saddle or a strap... won't the naga will simply slip off riding bare-backed, especially if they forget to synchronize their wiggling?

[Shinobody]

Actually, it naga could entwine its mount: they're snake people, with long flexible tails...

[uncleshelby]

Wait, why would a Naga ride anything? Aren't they fast in water? I can see a lightly equipped Naga going faster, but having a mount?

[Telchin]

As the proud creator of Inky's Quest I'd like to admit that, yes, I lack the talent and patience required to make sprites from scratch, so most of custom sprites in my campagn are horrible defilements of mainline sprites done by my amateurish use of GIMP. The only non-frankenesteined sprite is the Giant Clam because it was done by homunculus. I'm not surprised if any more talented artist find my sprites awful. However, if you like them , you're free to use them in your era or campaign.

[boru]

fmac - to fix your poison problem, simply look at a unit that has a ranged poison attack (i.e., human or orc assassin) and copy how it's done in the cfg file.

I'm not sure a race that has 7 movement points really needs a scout, but it would be interesting to give them a mage or a unit with impact damage.