The Battle for Meridia: Startng balancing: alpha 0.1.7

[thespaceinvader]

I'll consider it, particularly in light of how the balance works out once he Khalifate are in place - they have a lot of horses, so extra pierce damage might prove problematic.

[Velensk]

I completed the swarm healing and the living only specials. I also did SFX for tamer line and included my proposed changes to the shaman and tracker/tracker line (treat these as suggestions).

Question: Now that you've moved the slowing poison around a bit do you still want the paralysis special? That special looks like it will be a pain to create but it should be possible and I will do it if you still want it.

Another question: now that the trackers have marksman do you still want the tracker special?

Another note: A replacement for the marksman on the cannon might be a special that deals half damage to the target if the shot misses. This would be a little bit hackish and cause a few record keeping errors (for example if you kill an enemy like this it would not count as a kill on the stats screen) and is deterministic damage which is something I generally would prefer to avoid but it is your call. This special would be fairly easy to create.

[thespaceinvader]

Paralysis can probably wait for now - it doesn't affect balance much. If I do end up wanting it for campaigns i can always sort it out later.

It would be good to have te tracker ability, yeah - I'm still not completely decided on the changes to the SHaman and Tracker lines.

I'm not wild about the idea of deterministic damage, either. I'd wonder, mayber, about a marksman-like special giving a minimum cth on all attacks, including when defending.

Thanks. No rush for now, it would probably be worth chatting about it on IRC at some point, but probably not tonight as I'm not on my normal computer.

[thespaceinvader]

Descriptions for lines currently missing them:

Miner line:
Miner: Since unification more then ever, League society relies heavily on ores, minerals and metals mined from beneath the tremendous ranges. Miners hail from all over the league, but the best come from Boreus, where they delve for everything from gold and iron ore, to jewels, to the viscous oils used to fuel violent bursts of Infernus flame. Many miners carry powerful explosives to easily break large amounts of rock, which are equally useful for killing opponents.

Candler: In the bowels of the earth, light is at a premium, particularly given the danger of explosion. Candles can only be used above ground, but are useful in extending the time a miner can dig in open cast workings. They can also be valuable in combat, dazzling night-loving opponents.

Laterna: Safety lanterns, developed by the great miner Davvius shortly before unification, allowed industry to increase at a dramatic rate, by letting dwarves mine even deep in the dark without fear of explosions or poisoning by mine gas.

Neophyte line:
Neophyte: The Untamed religion is, more than anything about these secretive elves, a mystery. The lowest levels of its priests are often seen, ghostly white forms flitting through the darkness of the forests. They are always female and, despite vicious magics and even more vicious temperaments, have never been known to fall prey to the ravages of the Bestia seen in others.

Acolyte: As well as their powerful arcane abilities, Untamed preistesses are terrifying foes in close combat. Their sacrificial daggers, made of obsidian, are sharp enough to cut a whisper, and they have strange powers which enable them to pierce a man's chest bare-handed and, if he is not careful, tear his heart bodily from it.

High Priestess: High Priestesses are rarely seen. They spend most of their time in their pyramid-temples deep in the forests and jungles. It's not known what they do within, but those who survive to get close enough sometimes hear screams, roars and the clanking of chains.

Serpent line:

Serpent: The fins of these beasts are prized as food in the Meridian League, but they are dangerous prey. They frequent watercourses throughout Meridia, and if care can be taken to avoid their poisonous fangs, can be hunted for food, or controlled by an opportunistic Bestia user.

[Velensk]

Here is a copy of the paralysis special. I take no credit for it; it was made by of krotop. As I am not exactly sure how you want it applied I'm merely sending you the file and not integrating it into the era myself.

Krotop mentioned that he could not figure out how to get it to stop the enemy from striking mid-fight however I do not believe this is needed. If a fluff explanation is required then it can simply be said that the poison takes a short while to kick in.

[thespaceinvader]

Indeed, I think that having it act only after the fight finishes makes a lot of sense to me - instant sedation is a trope in itself, and one it would be fun to play more realistically than hollywood does...

Thanks =)

I'm looking forward to integrating this =D

[PeterPorty]

Ummm... I don't know if maybe my add-on is too old, but the attack animation of the harpooner is te incendious.

[thespaceinvader]

I could have sworn I fixed that... In fact I did - I think it's been reintroduced from Velensk's working copy.

I'll fix it again next update.

[thespaceinvader]

For affects living only: is it possible to have two different versions; one which causes the whole attack to only affect living opponents, and one which causes only the special to only affect living opponents?

I.e. could it work such that a blow pipe would damage a non-living opponent, but not slow it, but that the acolyte's heart-ripper attack simply wouldn't work on a non-living opponent?

Also, looking at Entrench: could the extra 10% bonus for not moving be added to terrain defence, not resists?

Krotop, if you're reading: what is the UNIT_VARIABLE variable for in the paralysis special that's attached above? I don't know how to use the special otherwise...

Yeah, I'm being super-picky. Sorry folks.

Also, going to put out an official release with those various changes. Need to have a chat with Noy about Khalifate cfgs, too.

-------------------------

0.1.8: Alpha release
* Changes:
* Many new abilities: swarmheal for the Swarmcaller line, only affects living for various Untamed, and for Aracaya Shaman line.
* Added heartripper attack for Acolyte and High Priestess.
* Added descriptions for Miner line, Neophyte line, Serpent.
* Fixed sounds for Tamer line.
* Some balancing changes to Novice Shaman and Tracker lines.

[Velensk]

aking entrench affect defenses would be pretty easy.

I'm not at all sure about making a slowing effect that only works on living though I could try a couple things there and report back. A very simple but very ugly way to do it could be to give them two attacks, one which only works on living and slows and the other which deals the same damage but does not slow. Alternatively I could see if I can apply opponent filters inside the [slows] tag but I'm not at all sure it will work.

I'll work on the tamer ability later this afternoon. I'll report on the affects living only special after I finish working on it.

EDIT: It seems slow does not listen to filters in that fashion nor will changing entrench over to resistances be as easy as I thought (they have a [resistances] tag but not a [defenses] tag in specials. I believe there may be a way to get the effect anyway but I'll have to check up on it before I say for certain that it will work. Also, I forgot to ask, do you know if any of the different types of animals have their race defined anywhere? I thought that tuskers were used in a certain UM orc campaign however although I could find the unit cfgs for the Tuskers, I could not find definition for the race anywhere. If they exist send them to me so I can synchronize our era to them.

[thespaceinvader]

I can send you the old CFGs and new images for the TUsker line, if you want. I also need to make up CFGs for the Racayanti and Ceratothyrus too - probably some others as well.

EDIT: here's the images and cfgs for the new fauna for BfM - Tuskers, Racayanti, Ceratothyrus, Shrieker Worm. Probably buggy as heck, but it'll do.

[krotop]

Krotop, if you're reading: what is the UNIT_VARIABLE variable for in the paralysis special that's attached above? I don't know how to use the special otherwise...

You are refering to lines that are concerning a WML tool, a macro refered to in the actual special which is WEAPON_SPECIAL_PARALYSE. This UNIT_VARIABLE shouldn't be of any concern to you, what you should use is something like the following:

Code: Select all

[specials]
{WEAPON_SPECIAL_PARALYSE}
[/specials]

in the [attack] tag you want to use the paralyse special into, like the way you would do for backstab, magic, poison, etc...

I am a bit busy currently to give the final version we talked of, but I made some quick try and I have good hope to implement the colour and no-ZoC modifications. I'll give you explanation on how to set the colour mod of your choice once the special is done.

Also, night gave me some advice on how to stop the hit-by-paralyse unit to fight mid-battle if you actually would prefer the hollywood way I'm not encouraging you to adopt this way it's up to you, just letting you know what options are, or aren't available. It's not 100% certain that I can do it, but I regain some hope that's it's in my WML range, and I can give it a try if you changed your mind on the matter.

[thespaceinvader]

Nah, i prefer it the way it is right now. It's good to know I don't need to worry about it and can just drop it in. Thanks =D I look forward to that final version, but there's no need to rush.

[Velensk]

This took longer than I expected but I've been distracted.

This includes a tamer ability for the untamed and a few tweaks (for example the war chariots wheel blades are no longer ranged and piercing).

Some notes on the tamer ability.
Currently the way it works is that it will put the the killed unit through a series of if statements that check its race which will make it so that any unit of the appropriate race turn into a level 1 form of the animal with 10 hp. I have tweaked all the relevant beast mounted troops in the era to be of the appropriate race for this too work.
There are a couple downsides to this implementation for the purpose of campaigns. If you killed a gorer with the tameing attack for example it would revert to the level 1 form.
Also as it currently stands, this will only work for the animals that you have in this era.

It is very easy to expand this ability to work on more different types of creatures you would simply need to add more [if]/[then] statements with the appropriate filters. For example if I wanted wolves to be tameable I could add a clause that would say if type of creature killed =wolf,wolf rider, goblin pillager,goblin knight, direwolf rider ; create a wounded wolf it would do so. The downside of this implementation would be if some other era had a wolf riding creature it would not work on that even though it would work on the mainline wolves which would cause some inconsistency (Infact it would not work on a virtually identical to mainline wolf rider with a different id).

It is also relatively easy to get it to work so that it will take into account the level of the slain beast and create a different creature based on the level of the beast however this will have to be coded into each case where you want it. (For example you might want your level 2 tuskers to turn into gorers instead of tuskers but you only have 1 level of the beast which pulls the chariots)

A thing that bothers me about this ability vaguely is horses. As it currently stands you cannot tame horses (which are fairly strong creatures in their own right). This is in part because we do not have riderless horse art but even if we did there would be practically no way to make this ability work consistently in any sort of combined era environment without finding every horse unit in every era the ability can be combined with.

I am not entirely sure what take you have on all these various issues so I'll just give you what I have for now.

EDIT: Forgot to actually include the zip

[thespaceinvader]

Thanks very much. This will recieve some much needced attention this week - last week was wedding prep more or less thoruhg and through. What little time I had available was given to mainline.