Unit ability: defends

entropomorphic · Post by **entropomorphic** » March 18th, 2005, 11:32 pm

I understand we're pretty much feature-complete for 1.0, but here's an interesting idea (stop me if it's old).

A unit with the Defends ability would act like a bodyguard, increasing the damage resistance (of all types, except maybe magic, I dunno) of all adjacent friendlies by 25% (or something). Perhaps if this is abused you could have the Defending unit take the damage instead.

Both Leadership and Illuminates (for lawful units) increase the ability of adjacent units to deal damage, but no trait can currently help a unit withstand damage. Heal kind of does it, but not on the current turn.

The reason for such an ability would be if you attacked with an important unit, but that unit did poorly, and is almost dead. You do what you can, but you are unable to wall off the enemy from your injured unit. ::whew:: good thing you recruited a Defending unit, he can move behind the injured unit to save his life in the next turn. It would also be useful for moving your units in a phalanx, bolstering all their defenses.

romnajin · Post by **romnajin** » March 19th, 2005, 12:24 am

I realize that WINR, but what realistic unit could give this bonus, a bodyguard would be more of someone that "takes the bullets", which is like your second idea, so maybe a really low attack, high resistance, high hp, unit that takes attacks for nearby units(maybe a 50% chance?) Sounds like a fairly good idea. An attack with something like 2-2 fist(2 fists that deal low damage, right left)

romnajin · Post by **romnajin** » March 19th, 2005, 12:26 am

Kick 5-1

Punch 2-2

40 hp(real high for level 1)
over 20% resistance in all of the physicals
at least 20 gold

Deathtenks · Post by **Deathtenks** » March 19th, 2005, 1:10 am

A Unit like that would cost about 50 gold.....

And I am not a coder so I don't know how hard this would be to apply but I am sure pretty hard.....

romnajin · Post by **romnajin** » March 19th, 2005, 1:17 am

He could never kill anything.

Post by **Dragonking** » March 19th, 2005, 1:24 am

But unit un front of it coultn't be killed too...

romnajin · Post by **romnajin** » March 19th, 2005, 1:32 am

Hum...Maybe 30 gold? Or more? 2nd level unit?

romnajin · Post by **romnajin** » March 19th, 2005, 1:33 am

Maybe same high hp, but lowered resistances?

Post by **Dragonking** » March 19th, 2005, 1:39 am

I think if this unit will be created (I'm not fan, but I learned to not reject ideas witout testing it first) he should be slow like gurdsman - to force player to plan using it at begining of the game

romnajin · Post by **romnajin** » March 19th, 2005, 1:42 am

You just reminded me of the guardsman-I usually don't play Knalgan, Why don't we just tack on a "bodyguard" ability to the sentinel; or the what's his name level two in the line, I think that would be better than making a bodyguard unit.

CyberJack · Post by **CyberJack** » March 26th, 2005, 2:42 am

romnajin wrote:I realize that WINR, but what realistic unit could give this bonus, a bodyguard would be more of someone that "takes the bullets", which is like your second idea

Or consider modelling it as a reverse-attack-with-drain :-0
That is your unit with this ability "attacks" your own injured unit, losing hitpoints but transferring to the other unit half as many as it loses.
As though the other unit were attacking it, and had the 'drain' attack special.

cf. "The Empath", from the original series of Star Trek.

romnajin · Post by **romnajin** » March 26th, 2005, 2:46 am

That could work, but it only works if an adjacent unit was under attack.

Monkey · Post by **Monkey** » March 26th, 2005, 2:57 am

Back in a while I wondered that leadership should raise the unit's defense, because the leaders tend to hold the lines on defensive formation. So it is organized and get killed less easily.

romnajin · Post by **romnajin** » March 26th, 2005, 4:31 am

A good leader could help his army on both attack and defense; if they did that they would be WAY unbalanced. Back on the topic of the bodyguard, the idea is, a spearmen is standing next to the bodyguard, a skeletal archer fires his arrow at the spearmen, the bodyguard has a 50% chance of taking the arrow himself, he basicaly jumps in front of the spearmen, and will probaly take the arrow. The club would probaly be a good weapon for this dude, a club just seems like a good "toughie" weapon, like for the thug.

CyberJack · Post by **CyberJack** » March 26th, 2005, 2:11 pm

The bodyguard idea doesn't really fit the Wesnoth map, with it's strict one-unit-per-hex style. The bodyguard can't leap from behind the front-line unit it's defending to in front in order to get in the way of the opponent's attack.

Also there's the issue of how to resolve multiple bodyguards and multiple potential guardees; can a bodyguard protect more than one unit? More than one per turn? The same unit multiple times in the same turn? Can a unit have multiple bodyguards? Which one(s) (possibly) get hit? The one nearest to the attacker? All of them? Does that mean that if a unit with one bodyguard has 50% chance of being saved from an enemy attack, a unit with 3 bodyguards has an 87.5% chance of being protected?

I think it's all too complicated, and just not the Wesnoth way of doing things.

Alternatives that I think would fit much better are:

1) the Empath hit-point-donor that I mentioned before.
Since this unit's special is modelled on the existing 'drain', it probably wouldn't be to difficult to do (just need to work out how to "attack" a unit on it's own team). And since it has to initiate the hitpoint transfer itself, it has none of the ambiguities of the bodyguard: it can give hitpoints to only one unit per turn, and multiple empaths (if you have them available!) can give hitpoints to the same unit in the same turn. Since the empath loses twice the hitpoints it gives to the recipient, I don't give much for its life expectancy, and they'd be unlikely to unbalance play. I should think they'd be quite unpopular units: weak in both attack and defence, you're not going to populate your army with hundreds of them. But you might choose to have one following your favourite unit around, ready to sacrifice itself to save your leader in a life-or-death situation.

2) a unit with an area-effect that improves adjacent units defence%
This would work just like (but be orthogonal to) the current leadership bonus-to-damage. Some sort of a mage who projects a shimmer field all around, making it more difficult for enemies to accurately strike those within it? Actually, this sounds like a nice upgrade for the Silver Mage, who could do with a little extra

But I think it could only improve defence by 10% (maybe 20% if it's a new specialist unit, rather than a boost for the Silver Mage), as we don't want anything to become totally unhittable; so it's not that likely to be usable as 'the unit that rescues your favourite unit from the front line'.