Making the Drakes less weird

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Elvish_Pillager
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Post by Elvish_Pillager »

ott wrote:If we want to hinder those big bulky Drakes, we'll need to decrease their cost or increase resistances too.
No, what we'd do to make up for it is increase their defense.

50% on castles, villages, and mountains, at least.

On the water movement: I'd say 'realistic' costs are 3 for shallow and 2 for deep, but I'd rather go with the more simple 2 and 2.
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Post by Neoriceisgood »

Hey why don't you remove the firebreath aswell while you're at it, It's not like drakes need that either.
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Post by Elvish_Pillager »

Neoriceisgood wrote:Hey why don't you remove the firebreath aswell while you're at it, It's not like drakes need that either.
Hmm, interesting idea. Of course, the Burner would need some other ranged attack then; maybe throwing axes? That would fit the Drake personality well, I think.

Of course, then, we'd need new names for the tree; Flare and Flameheart aren't too bad, but for the others... maybe "Drake Thrower", "Drake Flinger" and "Axe-hurling Drake." No, not good enough... and my thesaurus doesn't have any synonyms for 'axethrower', since it's not a word.

This would definitely help alleviate some of the problems Undead have with Drakes on large maps. Still, the cold weakness is a problem... maybe Drakes could lose that to make up for the loss of ranged damage?

P.S.: This post and the previous one are rather off-topic for this thread, so they should perhaps be split?

P.P.S.: Yes, this whole post is nonsense.

P.P.P.S.: However, there's something that needs to be said: Neorice, that comment was counterproductive. When discussing balance and gameplay issues, disrupting them with a sarcastic and realism-based one-liner cannot cause any good whatsoever. It's not like you control the decisions the developers make, even in relation to Drakes, and trying to interfere with changes is disruptive and annoying.
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Temuchin Khan
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Post by Temuchin Khan »

The uniqueness of drake movement is one of the things that marks them as distinct race. It seems to me that softening that uniqueness would make them too much like a "normal" faction. As Dave once said (at least I think it was Dave), "we need to avoid the temptation to reduce all the factions to a brown goo." Anyway, that was the sense of it, even if it wasn't a direct quote. I fear that this proposal may be "brown-gooism."
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Post by Elvish_Pillager »

Temuchin Khan wrote:The uniqueness of drake movement is one of the things that marks them as distinct race. It seems to me that softening that uniqueness would make them too much like a "normal" faction. As Dave once said (at least I think it was Dave), "we need to avoid the temptation to reduce all the factions to a brown goo." Anyway, that was the sense of it, even if it wasn't a direct quote. I fear that this proposal may be "brown-gooism."
This is correct in some respects, but not in most.

For one thing, almost every single thing about Drakes is very unique. Their resistances, their movement, their defense, their ranged damage type, and their hitpoints are each, individually, a unique feature. This is too much uniqueness; When a unit is too far removed from all others, it becomes very hard to balance, and as I have found, each excessively unique unit contributes significantly to the difficulty of making a balanced map. (Saurians and Drakes are currently the worst proponents of that, so I have stopped attempting to balance maps for them. It's just too frustrating and unrewarding.)

For another, Drakes are about as close to brown goo as you can get, once you stop looking at the weird stuff about 'drakes in general'. They have a simple archer, a couple simple fighters, and a simple scout. There's practically nothing unique about them beyond the obvious. Loyalists in general, on the other hand, are practically a 'generic faction' on the face of it, with most units having the 'smallfoot' movetype, but when you look at the units, many of them have abilities, many branch and have high resistances, go at different speeds, do ALL KINDS of stuff. Variety in factions makes them balanced; restricted unit selections, as with Drakes, make them unbalanced. The units, not the race, must be unique.
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Post by Doros »

I like this change, simply because I've also found that it's impossible to balance a map for the drakes. I end up having to split the map up using shrouds, which makes it much uglier, and is really counterintuitive.

I think they should be able to fly over shallow water, though. The drakes are huge, and they should be able to land there and "bound" over. Deep water, however, would be well over their head, so they could have a movement of 2 (or 3, because deep water is usually used to separate areas on a map).

I think that the scout should be able to fly like a gryphon, simply because that's their entire point.

Also, I think what E.P. said about varying the units within a faction rather than varying the faction itself is brilliant, and just about sums up my feelings on the matter.
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Post by Temuchin Khan »

Well, a prompt, speedy, and excellent reply, E.P.! And I must admit, it would be nice if individual drake units were more unique. Still, I'm not sure I quite get the logic for making them have 2 movement in forests. Surely they could fly above the treetops (or at any rate, some of them)! Maybe they need to take some extra time looking for an opening to descend to the forest floor?
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Post by Elvish_Pillager »

Temuchin Khan wrote:Well, a prompt, speedy, and excellent reply, E.P.! And I must admit, it would be nice if individual drake units were more unique. Still, I'm not sure I quite get the logic for making them have 2 movement in forests. Surely they could fly above the treetops (or at any rate, some of them)! Maybe they need to take some extra time looking for an opening to descend to the forest floor?
Forests = Stinkin' pointy wooden things that shred our wings oop! Forests baaad! :P
Basically, yeah, a Drake can only do pure flight at a cost of 2; he'd rather run, using his wings to help him bound over obstacles. A forest is a nuisance,
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Post by js138 »

I also find most of the drakes pretty interchangable when fighting them - they all look much the same, but that doesn't matter too much since they all die much the same way - cold if you have it and pierce.

Their large HP is actually their biggest weakness since while that combines with their low defence values to have similar effective HP to most other units in combat situations, they take longer to heal.

On movement perhaps over water should be as it is - level flying being simple (you can glide lots of the time) even for large critters. The changes of elevation in mountains would slow a poor flyer down more - and I agree that increased defence ratings might compensate somewhat.
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Post by Neoriceisgood »

js138 wrote:I also find most of the drakes pretty interchangable when fighting them - they all look much the same, but that doesn't matter too much since they all die much the same way - cold if you have it and pierce.

Their large HP is actually their biggest weakness since while that combines with their low defence values to have similar effective HP to most other units in combat situations, they take longer to heal.

On movement perhaps over water should be as it is - level flying being simple (you can glide lots of the time) even for large critters. The changes of elevation in mountains would slow a poor flyer down more - and I agree that increased defence ratings might compensate somewhat.

I'd like to make the drakes even more different than they are; However large part of the developers says no against custom resistances;
And I REALLY don't see how making them fly less good will make them more different from eachother.
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Post by Elvish_Pillager »

Neoriceisgood wrote:And I REALLY don't see how making them fly less good will make them more different from eachother.
It's a dual objective --- Making them fly less well allows them to be different in other ways, in my view.

And I do believe it is a catalyst to balance, as well.
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Post by Darth Fool »

Neoriceisgood wrote:
js138 wrote:I also find most of the drakes pretty interchangable when fighting them - they all look much the same, but that doesn't matter too much since they all die much the same way - cold if you have it and pierce.

Their large HP is actually their biggest weakness since while that combines with their low defence values to have similar effective HP to most other units in combat situations, they take longer to heal.

On movement perhaps over water should be as it is - level flying being simple (you can glide lots of the time) even for large critters. The changes of elevation in mountains would slow a poor flyer down more - and I agree that increased defence ratings might compensate somewhat.

I'd like to make the drakes even more different than they are; However large part of the developers says no against custom resistances;
And I REALLY don't see how making them fly less good will make them more different from eachother.
I personally find the drakes a little bit boring to play largely because they are nearly the same in all terrain. Changing their movement in different terrain is probably not as important as changing their defense in different terrain. for a wenoth-ality argument: Sure they can fly over stuff to move about at high speed, but they have a hard time fighting in forest, because all those big pointy wooden things get in the way of maneuvering. This would help preserve one of the things that keeps drake unique (they (almost) all fly) while still make the placement of them more important. Yeah, they're big, but if they have room to move, they should still be harder to hit.
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Post by Neoriceisgood »

I think initially they had worse defence in forests, Not sure when that changed.
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Post by Ankka »

Neoriceisgood wrote:I think initially they had worse defence in forests, Not sure when that changed.
You mean worse than in grasslands... 20%? :shock:
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Post by Neoriceisgood »

No I thought 30%; 20% in shallow water/snow; And 10% in deep water.
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