Dunefolk Rework - Removed Units & Extra Units

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ghype
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Re: Dunefolk Rework - Removed Units & Extra Units

Post by ghype »

Xalzar wrote: March 27th, 2019, 1:44 pm So I think we shouldn't let that stop considering moving the Spearguard Line to the Shield Breaker advancements.
I think i provided a good counter-argument for that in the last section of my comment here. Also don't you think a jump of 30/40% in resistance is a bit much from a lv1 to a lv2 ? There would be also changes in def and weapons.

Doing it the way you suggest would also implement a lot of spiriting work which shouldn't be a problem but it still would be a lot to efforts for such a small change
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Xalzar
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Re: Dunefolk Rework - Removed Units & Extra Units

Post by Xalzar »

ghype wrote: March 27th, 2019, 1:52 pm don't you think a jump of 30/40% in resistance is a bit much from a lv1 to a lv2 ? There would be also changes in def and weapons.
As I said, there are precedents for that. It's just a matter to decide whether we want it for this unit too. Also, obviously resistances and defences should be tweaked then.
ghype wrote: March 27th, 2019, 1:52 pm Doing it the way you suggest would also implement a lot of spiriting work which shouldn't be a problem but it still would be a lot to efforts for such a small change
Apparently I misunderstandably thought the Shield Breaker sprite being quite far from final, so in light of that obviously the current one would have to be adjusted to conform better to the Spearguard. If you have different ideas for the level 1, fair enough.
Honestly IMO the major reason against the change is that the Dune Shield Breaker is intended to be a female unit and the Spearguard is male as far as I can tell, but since you didn't think of it I'll take full credit for this. :lol:

Also, to reiterate: I'm fine either way with the Spearguard, I just pointed out a topic for discussion to be thorough and avoid late arguments. ;)

Oh, and I'm thrilled to see how does the Spearguard fare in MP, since for now I see few reasons to take it over other units. But my opinion is theoretical and I would be happy to be proven wrong. 8)
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Hejnewar
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Re: Dunefolk Rework - Removed Units & Extra Units

Post by Hejnewar »

Everything could be tweaked but why? I see no reason for that. Or do you want to create barnd new unit?

Not the case at all. Did you ever concider what kind of training Shield Breaker needs to go thru to achive this kind of ability? And you expect unit like that to just change its profesion? As well as body type that comes along with this ability is not the easiest thing to change and requires time. Do you really think that it will have time to do bodybuilding in meantime between healing and fighting?

I will prove you wrong. They are all worth choosing and every one of them has its niche.

So how much do you think shock is worth? It turns out that its worth quite a bit. Having more hp never hurts. Being able to retaliate while defending and not taking as much risk with that can be very useful vs chaotic factions and certainly makes counter attacking easier (to be fair having more hp makes everything easier). This unit is also the most versatile standalone lvl up that you can choose and becouse of that this unit has a bit lower statistics than Spearguard. Decision making with this unit will also be important since you will often have to choose if you want to deal more damage or if you want to take less damage.

Leadership is very good ability for this faction. Especialy for soliders. This ability the reason why this lvl up is getting so little statistics with it, otherwise it will be almost always picked but as of right now you might actually be better off choosing one of the other two lvl ups especialy when you have hard time defending. If game is slow and not many units are dying then choosing unit with leadership is the better option, it works like that for any deafult faction becouse strenght of leadership is directly tied to number of units that you have.

Dune Spearguard is powerful but in its best match up is very hard to get (and highest xp requierment in this faction doesnt help with that), solider just dont do too well vs drakes but if you do get them they will do amasingly well (I really like this trade off and if this unit were to lvl up from Shield Breaker it will no longer exist). Becouse of pierce attack this unit will be often concidered as a worse option but at the same time Dune Spearguard has the highest statistics, and the best chances vs regular units. Even if Spearguard is hard countered by Woses he still can do well by killing Elvish Warriors and other units not so resistant to pierce (Im not saying that this lvl up should be chosen vs Elves but you can get him sometimes as random lvl up during opponent's turn). Thier additional 10% pierce resistance also makes them even better vs Loyalist Spearmans and other units that use pierce as thier main damage source.

I hope i showcased them good enough and none of them seems to be too much better than other options.
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The_Gnat
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Re: Dunefolk Rework - Removed Units & Extra Units [naga]

Post by The_Gnat »

Vendanna wrote: March 27th, 2019, 12:51 pm Well possible suggestions for the naga could be:

a) Blade/impact possibilities (blade as in throwing knifes or similar instead of pierce) and for impact it could be a blowpipe/parasites? other option could be putting on his arm something like the drake weapons to differenciate it from the sword the normal nagas uses.

b) Electroshock, these nagas are a breed of electric eels, so its not poison, nor its "magic" but the damage could be elemental (dunno how would that fare)

c) less hits something akin to 7-2 Impact or blade, but they could have steadfast, so they "hold" the line and can defend those water cities well, but they ain't covering the normal cities.

d) funky: the naga gets poison attack, but "heals +4" all enemy units when they start turn near the naga.

e) 3-3 physical and 3-3 ranged (blade) which differenciates upon branching on level up:
e1) 6-3 looses ranged but steadfast
e2) 6-3 ranged, looses melee, but gains marksman
ABOUT THE NAGA

Thanks for the suggestions Vendanna!

Option B) elemental damage is a very interesting suggestion! It would require a lot of backstory, though, to convince most people how the naga came to taming the creatures to use them as weapons. :) Also it could cause some matchup issues against other water control units. (for example arcane kills UD, and Cold does nothing against Mermen)

We actually considered giving the Naga steadfast (option c) but after consideration decided it to be too powerful and stop other water units from (almost ever) taking back the villages. The stats of course could be tweaked but overall we felt that steadfast also wasn't really something that we could see a swimming unit having.

D) this is a good idea, but unfortunately would lead to confusion about how and why. A easier implementation of this would be a lesser-poison which only damages 4hp.

E) We personally thought that if the naga has less strikes (7-2 is its current melee) that would make it more unique from other level 1 water units. But I believe it would be interesting to consider making it more of a mixed fighter unit.

Then again the DF faction already has a number of mixed units which are both melee and ranged (rover, burner, rider) so it is hard to say what would be most unique.

Ultimately we probably want to avoid any significant abilities or powers for this naga so it doesn't mess up the balance of the faction (which was our key goal in creating the unit).
Celtic_Minstrel wrote: March 27th, 2019, 1:04 pm Re: chakram idea - that would mean changing the ranged to blade, which is fine by me, but I don't know if it would affect balance.
I don't think that would be too much of a problem. Do you know if any other water units have pierce/blade resistances?
ghype wrote: March 27th, 2019, 12:21 pm I think a more ranged concept is worth to be considered. Mermans as well have 1 ranged and 1 melee unit (disregarding the mermaid).
True but as you said currently in mainline is 2 melee and a ranged naga. So I think a mixed-fighter would add the most variety. That said I personally do not believe the unit cannot be unique as a melee unit or a ranged unit instead.
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Re: Dunefolk Rework - Removed Units & Extra Units [spearguard]

Post by The_Gnat »

Xalzar wrote: March 27th, 2019, 6:52 pm Apparently I misunderstandably thought the Shield Breaker sprite being quite far from final, so in light of that obviously the current one would have to be adjusted to conform better to the Spearguard. If you have different ideas for the level 1, fair enough.
Honestly IMO the major reason against the change is that the Dune Shield Breaker is intended to be a female unit and the Spearguard is male as far as I can tell, but since you didn't think of it I'll take full credit for this. :lol:

Also, to reiterate: I'm fine either way with the Spearguard, I just pointed out a topic for discussion to be thorough and avoid late arguments. ;)
sergey wrote: March 27th, 2019, 7:52 am What if you change Spearguard to have 3 medium strikes? I think loosing skirmisher ability is ok as long as there is another advancement wich preserves the ability. Explanation - Spearguard uses longer spear and heavier armor, as a result he lost the skirmisher ability.
ABOUT THE SPEARGUARD (sorry for the double post, this is about the Spearguard whereas my last post was about the naga and combining them together would have been long :mrgreen: )

@Xalzar @Hejne - You both have presented good reasons for why the Spearguard should stay. Anther key reason why the Spearguard is better advancing from the Soldier than the Shield Breaker is because it has MUCH more in common with the former.

If you compare it to the Shield Breaker the only thing it has in common is the pierce attack. Not defences or res or movement type or damage or strikes or hp or ranged attack.

Compared to the soldier the only thing it has different is the pierce damage. And if you consider the Spearman, there is clearly a precedent that damage types should not effect the advancement of units. The Spearman advances to a blade unit and a pierce unit, it even advances to a mixed fighter (javelineer). So there is no reasons why the Soldier should not advance to both blade and pierce. :)

@Sergey - Yes that is definitely a possibility. I personally don't really think it matters where the Spearguard ends up advancing from. :) But I do think there are plenty of reasons to leave the unit where it is.

The only main thing I don't want to see is that the Shield Breaker is re-worked to fit the Spearguard... That would inevitably cause matchup issues and balance problems. Even changing the resistances of the Shield Breaker could have some significant effects and should be carefully considered.
Celtic_Minstrel wrote: March 27th, 2019, 1:04 pm Re: the bolas - if they have bolas, they should have slow; if they don't have slow, they shouldn't have bolas. That's my opinion on this matter. I wouldn't mind a sling upgrading to a bolas though.
I personally would be fine with that also. :D
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josteph
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Re: Dunefolk Rework - Removed Units & Extra Units [naga]

Post by josteph »

The_Gnat wrote: March 27th, 2019, 10:12 pm
Celtic_Minstrel wrote: March 27th, 2019, 1:04 pm Re: chakram idea - that would mean changing the ranged to blade, which is fine by me, but I don't know if it would affect balance.
I don't think that would be too much of a problem. Do you know if any other water units have pierce/blade resistances?
Drakes, Saurians, and to a lesser extent Footpad (has reasonable defenses in shallow water and reefs). Gryphons and Bats have non-zero impact resists/vulns.
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Re: Dunefolk Rework - Removed Units & Extra Units

Post by Vendanna »

Well I didn't suggest it before because as I'm not really good playing the game, I don't know how good could that be but I'll leave the missing suggestion for the naga.

f) Give an alternate "Charge" attack (like the impaler) the idea is that you could use it to punish units on bad ground (or drakes) with bad defense, but it doesn't really help the naga as much against the other water units (since those have more defense) dunno how that could play out.

about the shocking ability, you only need to recolor the naga and maybe remove the sword, it could be a naga mage of shorts or just a different species of snakes that had to use the ability to fend off giant squids on their waters, since they don't have mermen near (where shocking wouldn't be good) as a note, its a "natural advantage" since electricity helps a lot to the marine creatures (it protects the creature, it helps in hunting prey, and it could help the naga to orientate in very deep waters with the "magnetic currents"? heck it could be a way to silent talk between them by changing the intensity of the electricity. (good thing a recolour and no weapon nor shield would diferenciate the unit and wouldn't require too much graphical work on it).

Take care and thanks for your time!
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Re: Dunefolk Rework - Removed Units & Extra Units

Post by Celtic_Minstrel »

I'm not a fan of the eel-naga idea, to be honest. Nagas are not snakes; they merely resemble them. Furthermore, eels are not snakes either – they're fish.
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Edwylm
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Re: Dunefolk Rework - Removed Units & Extra Units [naga]

Post by Edwylm »

Ok a question about the balancing issue about the naga that i think we forgot.
we are talking about just the level 1 unit for naga right and not its higher levels?

remember the merfolk having split level paths. level 1 units don't have any specials/abilities but some of their advances do... in fact there is 2 units lines that have (not counting drakes, undead and Mermaid Initiate) Merman Netcaster and Merman Hoplite.

but lets first talk about what are the plans for the naga advancements. what do we want them to be? level 1 can be a default with no specials/abilities. I wouldn't mind seeing a naga line have 2 different paths.

seeing a naga wield a rapier it be a piercing weapon and giving it chakram would making quite interesting. another line be that with a spear with poison. but these are some ideas to play with. you could even place the hunter in a path and keep it as a level 2 with no higher advancement.

:eng: electricity in water... bad idea as electricity would be a AoE in water and might cause damage to the user if they are unprotected. what type of attack would it be? Most times it be a fire attack but in water it acts very differently with resistance. Also another problem is that its very hard to control it.
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Re: Dunefolk Rework - Removed Units & Extra Units [naga]

Post by Celtic_Minstrel »

Edwylm wrote: March 28th, 2019, 2:58 am :eng: electricity in water... bad idea as electricity would be a AoE in water and might cause damage to the user if they are unprotected. what type of attack would it be? Most times it be a fire attack but in water it acts very differently with resistance. Also another problem is that its very hard to control it.
I think you're probably misunderstanding the physics here, though I don't really understand them well either, but given that electric eels can do their thing without shocking themselves, I'm sure there must be some way for it to work.

(That doesn't mean I approve of the idea, though. I'm still against an electric naga.)
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Edwylm
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Re: Dunefolk Rework - Removed Units & Extra Units

Post by Edwylm »

its debatable and no one really knows but this is what i found "https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2018 ... 73d03064a0" and "https://www.thenakedscientists.com/arti ... ctric-eels".

i agree with you on the electric naga along with it being not practical
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Re: Dunefolk Rework - Removed Units & Extra Units

Post by The_Gnat »

Edwylm wrote: March 28th, 2019, 4:07 am i agree with you on the electric naga along with it being not practical
I love how long we have discussed the electric naga even though it is such a crazy idea ^_^
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Re: Dunefolk Rework - Removed Units & Extra Units

Post by sergey »

Ok, you convinced me that Spearguard must be advanced from Soldier. I like that you removed Piercer and Falcon (you will completely remove the Falcon from the game or just exclude it from the DF faction?). And I like new Shield Breaker unit. I didn't read the Naga discussion yet. Great work so far!
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Re: Dunefolk Rework - Removed Units & Extra Units

Post by The_Gnat »

sergey wrote: March 28th, 2019, 6:54 am Great work so far!
Thank you! It is nice to hear encouraging comments like this! :D

I personally have no opinion in regards to whether the falcon is kept or removed from mainline. It isn't very balanced but could be interesting in some scenarios or a future DF campaign. :)

And after you read the Naga discussion if you have any ideas they would definitely be welcome!
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Re: Dunefolk Rework - Removed Units & Extra Units

Post by sergey »

An idea for the naga. Melee - impact tail. Ranged - blade chakram. Melee is weaker than ranged.
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