The Elvish Shyde violates RIPLIB!

[Elvish_Pillager]

The Elvish Shaman now has "slow" on melee. The Elvish Druid now has slow on melee. The Elvish Shyde now violates RIPLIB. Therefore, I think the shyde should get a 4-2 slowing melee impact attack. Ugh.

That, or the shaman's and druid's melee slow could be removed, or someone could finally implement multiple attack specials and give the Shyde both, or something else somebody could come up with.

[Cuyo Quiz]

I've always wandered why both lines get slow.

If vilolating RIPLIB is so bad, i would propose the shaman losses slow. Then we could keep slow and thorns on one line and just thorns on the other.

[Noy]

Umm how is it RIPLIB? The Shyde already had Magic attack when we decided to the line slow melee. We thought about it keeping RIPLIB in mind, then decided to keep it as it is because:

#1 it is more powerful attack than the druid This is a clear upgrade of one damage.

#2 IT is highly debatable whether a magical attack is better than a Slow attack. Personally I'd rather have the magical attack. Slow is nice and all, but may not be as effective or useful given that the Shyde has some pretty nice defensive modifiers. Even if it was slightly less effective than slow, would be equaled out by having one more damage. So its by no means a downgrade overall.

#3 We think Fairy Touch is goes quite well with the nature of the unit.

[Elvish_Pillager]

Umm how is it RIPLIB?

RIPLIB applies in any situation in which a unit is weaker in any way due to upgrading. In particular, it applies to situations in which a unit becomes weaker in a way that often applies: The Shyde will take more damage than the druid against almost any melee unit with 3 blows or less. That, as it happens, is more than half of the level-1 melee units in the game. So, basically, the Shyde takes more damage than the Druid in melee. Very clear RIPLIB violation.

Similarly, the Druid does not use slow on its ranged retaliation, but the shaman does. However, this situation can be tolerated, since a Druid being attacked in Ranged is much less likely than a Shyde being attacked in melee.

[Noy]

Umm how is it RIPLIB?

RIPLIB applies in any situation in which a unit is weaker in any way due to upgrading. In particular, it applies to situations in which a unit becomes weaker in a way that often applies: The Shyde will take more damage than the druid against almost any melee unit with 3 blows or less. That, as it happens, is more than half of the level-1 melee units in the game. So, basically, the Shyde takes more damage than the Druid in melee. Very clear RIPLIB violation.

Similarly, the Druid does not use slow on its ranged retaliation, but the shaman does. However, this situation can be tolerated, since a Druid being attacked in Ranged is much less likely than a Shyde being attacked in melee.

No thats your "opinion", not a clear violation. I have already provided a reason why I do not think having magic over slow is a decrease. Do you honestly think we didn't explicitly talk about this issue between DK and I when we did this? Actually I even said I thought you would complain about it in the first place.

Please find something esle to complain about. Actually please don't.

[Elvish_Pillager]

No thats your "opinion", not a clear violation. I have already provided a reason why I do not think having magic over slow is a decrease. Do you honestly think we didn't explicitly talk about this issue between DK and I when we did this? Actually I even said I thought you would complain about it in the first place.

Please find something esle to complain about. Actually please don't.

*Sigh* SO many things have been decided based on RIPLIB. You can't just toss it out the window.

[Noy]

No thats your "opinion", not a clear violation. I have already provided a reason why I do not think having magic over slow is a decrease. Do you honestly think we didn't explicitly talk about this issue between DK and I when we did this? Actually I even said I thought you would complain about it in the first place.

Please find something esle to complain about. Actually please don't.

*Sigh* SO many things have been decided based on RIPLIB. You can't just toss it out the window.

Please Read. We do not think this constitutes a violation of the rule. You think it does, WE DO NOT. Get that straight please.

[Elvish_Pillager]

Please Read. We do not think this constitutes a violation of the rule. You think it does, WE DO NOT. Get that straight please.

You have a great misunderstanding of he rule, then. Please read the debates over RIPLIB in the past. Your position is not supported.

[Darth Fool]

No thats your "opinion", not a clear violation. I have already provided a reason why I do not think having magic over slow is a decrease. Do you honestly think we didn't explicitly talk about this issue between DK and I when we did this? Actually I even said I thought you would complain about it in the first place.

Please find something esle to complain about. Actually please don't.

Well, I must say that after looking at the units files, I agree that the recent changes to the shaman line cause the shyde to violate a long standing policy of Wesnoth that has gone by the acronym RIPLIB(see http://wesnoth.slack.it/?WesnothAcronyms). There have been a few units that have violated this stance from before it became canonized, but the movement has always been to remove these issues by either changing units, or adding a branch that is strictly better then the original unit, not to introduce RIPLIB problems. While you and DK have generally proved that you understand many issues of multi-player balance and have been punished ( )for doing so by being given the responsibility for balancing units in preperation for version 1.0, You should not ignore this long standing tenant of wesnoth advancement. I understand that you and DK may not have fully considered the implications, probably are not as steeped in some of the forum discusions that took place many moons ago, and do to your somewhat antagonistic history with EP on balancing issues may be disinclined to pay attention to his comments on this issue, however I would urge you to address the issue.

I feel strongly enough about this issue to take the time to post some of the reasoning that you may have missed. When a unit advances, if there is not a branch that in every way is at least the equal of its predecessor then the player may be faced with the unpleasant fact that the leveled unit is less useful to him in a certain instance than the unadvanced unit. EP has previously accurately noted that the upkeep rules violate this for all units that advance levels, but it has been generally felt that we can live with that failing, but not others. A unit advancement is considered to obey RIPLIB if there exists a unit A advancing from base B such that:

1) HP(A) >= HP(B)
2) for all attacks of B there is a corresponding attack of A which
a) does the same type of damage
b) has the same special or a new special if the base unit's attack had none)
c) #Attacks(A) >= #Attacks(B)
d) AttackValue(A)>=AttackValue(B)
3) MV(A) >= MV(B)
4) The movement type is identical or strictly better.
5) the defenses in all terrain of A are strictly better.
6) I'm probably forgetting something, but you get the idea.

The current druid -> shyde advancement violates 2b. Note 2b is important because specials are "special" precisely because they make a particular attack useful in ways that the other specials don't. While your playing style may emphasize the use of magical attacks so that you feel magical > slow, another player may not feel that this is the case (or even a particular scenario can be designed where it certainly is not the case). So, it is generally impossible to declare that one special (or damage type for that matter) is superior to another.

This should be fixed.

I am in no way trying to be critical of the excellent work you and DK are doing making the hard decisions about unit balancing, but am rather trying to address an issue that you seemed to have missed in this arduous task. Keep up the good work.

[Noy]

Okay. My mea culpa, I made a mistake. I first suggested that the whole line should have 2-2 Slow. I wanted that across the board. At one point DK noted that the shyde had magic. I didn't think it would contravene the law so I just said leave it and DK did not object at the time. I really didn't put much thought into it though, but RIPLIB was in our minds. We discussed this again tonight, and yes it might be a bit less powerful than before. I made a mistake and I'm sorry.

[scott]

I agree with EP. Having a slow-melee unit and then all of a sudden losing the ability would reduce the usefulness of the unit. Since it's not less powerful than previous versions of the unit and it still has the slow ranged attack, it's not an obvious case. However, assume my druid is getting into melee battles (for example with archers) and very usefully slowing every unit that attacks her - a great thing for my other units - then removing this upon upgrade would be bad. Adding a second melee attack like the halbardier has would be an easy fix.

Edit: I guess I got into the game late here. You people seem to have it under control.

[Elvish_Pillager]

2) for all attacks of B there is a corresponding attack of A which
b) has the same special or a new special if the base unit's attack had none)

Exception: The addition of Charge or Berserk does not fulfill this, due to the extra damage taken.

[Darth Fool]

2) for all attacks of B there is a corresponding attack of A which
b) has the same special or a new special if the base unit's attack had none)

Exception: The addition of Charge or Berserk does not fulfill this, due to the extra damage taken.

I stand corrected. There are some specials that can not be added without making the attack worse in some situations. Thanks for pointing it out.

[Noy]

Darth

No it wasn't a misunderstanding about the law at all. We do know what it means, and are quite clear about it. Thats actually why I first said just give the whole line 2-2 slow. Actually 2-2 slow really nothing to do with the druid or sorceress lvl2s or 3s. ITs inclusion was to increase the effectiveness of the Shaman, as we find has been marginally used by MPers, where its existence really is just to level up to a lvl2. So we were faced with a difficult problem of balancing the shaman while not overbalancing the lvl2s, BECAUSE of RIPLIB. This was due to the fact we would have to increase the effectiveness of the melee of the lvl2s (already very powerful units), when we increased the effectiveness of the shaman. The shaman's level 1 was our focus.

We were both tired at the time and trying to get it all in on time. We had the last change and we didn't think it through. It really wasn't a major change either because it would be an upgrade of the Shyde. So it was RIPLIB accidetly when we upgraded its predecessors. We didn't really think it through and a mistake was made. Yes it will get changed to a 4-2 slow for the next release

[Darth Fool]

cool, thanks.