What features would you like in mainline wesnoth?

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(this is unofficial) What features would you like in mainline wesnoth?

Custom AMLAs (like in UtBS, DiD, etc.)
13
22%
Custom Early Finish Bonuses (viewtopic.php?f=8&t=51087)
5
8%
Large map of scenarios, move using teleporters (like in Affably Evil, The Beautiful Child, Inferno, Akula's Palace)
1
2%
Inventory system for items
3
5%
Item drops from enemies
4
7%
Wider Range Abilities (wider leadership, etc.)
4
7%
Higher Level Units
5
8%
Area of Effect attacks
3
5%
True Ranged attacks
8
14%
"Carry" Units (like ships, wagons, etc.)
9
15%
Other (please list in forums)
0
No votes
None
4
7%
 
Total votes: 59

Jay_jayjay
Posts: 13
Joined: April 17th, 2020, 2:46 pm
Location: null

What features would you like in mainline wesnoth?

Post by Jay_jayjay »

Disclaimer: This is absolutely unofficial

This poll is to collect data from users (only because I want to see some statistics). I know many of the ideas are on the FPI list, but again, I'm making this poll only for the statistics.
Because you can select only 3 options, please select the ones that you desire most.

Again, this is completely unofficial.
LienRag
Posts: 127
Joined: September 24th, 2018, 4:03 pm

Re: What features would you like in mainline wesnoth?

Post by LienRag »

Custom AMLAs : yes if they stay balanced (and probably not for all units).

Higher level units : ditto. That means not creating super-units, but specialists. Like assassins or skirmishers that are not glass cannons, but not invulnerable either.
A gryphon rider with ranged attack would be neat : very useful tactically as it can hit-and-run, but still can be ZOC-locked and killed if the opponent plays well (that also means that its hit points should not be that much higher than the current ones, and that its melee attack should not improve much either).
The "detach" ability from UtBS is great too, as it's not unbalancing but still can be used for innovative tactics, so a balanced unit gaining "detach" at fourth level (with an improvement to its hit points as per the standard, but not an unbalancing one) would be interesting to have.
I also really like the "stun" from Merman Brawlers, great tactical ability but not unbalancing.
I proposed terrain-specific skirmishing ability on another thread, that also could be great for fourth level.
A dwarf scout (or thunderer) gaining invisibility on mountain (not hills) terrain at fourth level would be nice too (more fitting lore-wise for the scouts, but probably more fitting balance-wise for the thunderer). Again, it gives interesting tactical options without being unbalanced.
Getting limited regeneration would not be unbalanced imho as high-level units are probably going to take a lot of damage, so regeneration helps their survivability without making them impossible to kill (shouldn't cure poison though, as poisoning high-HP units is an important option in dealing with them).
Maybe have one dwarf unit get free movement on rails for its fourth level ? Devastating on some parts of the map, but manageable by the opponent (just post units to ZOClock it). If the scout gain mountain invisibility, then the thunderer could get that one.

IIRC the limit for more higher level units was the ability to make easily identifiable sprites, which is not a problem that easy to alleviate.
LienRag
Posts: 127
Joined: September 24th, 2018, 4:03 pm

Re: What features would you like in mainline wesnoth?

Post by LienRag »

Two other abilities that would fit well for high-level units and make them interesting but not unbalancing :
* Push (don't remember which campaign it came from, nor how it was actually called) : when this attack lands, the attacked unit retreats one hex directly behind it (if available) or to one of the nearest available hex. Bonus if it takes additional damage when landing on an hex with adjacent enemy (to the pushed unit) unit. If it can't retreat, then either it takes additional damage, or not (both choices are valid, in the second case it just means that there's no point in using this particular attack when the enemy cannot retreat).
* Advance after battle : when you kill or push an enemy unit, the unit with this trait takes its place. Also possible to have a trait that allows to take the place of any adjacent enemy unit killed or pushed, even by other units.



Also, if this poll is for the Wesnoth 2.0 version : one very important thing that could be added is Facing of units.

A second one (linked to the first at least conceptually) is faced protections : I mean, it's always frustrating in a medieval game to not be able to simulate the breaching of a fortified castle. Of course once you broke into the castle your units now also benefits from the high castle defense, but the enemy units still have the same defense when attacked from outside the castle and when attacked from inside the castle (due to the breach).

Of course these two points should be implemented only after a careful examination of whether they break or not Wesnoth's core design principles.


Another point that would make a huge difference is a morale system.
Actually, two morale systems : a unit morale, and an army morale.

Unit morale is the simplest I guess : a value (like hit points) that is reduced by events and restored by other events.
And with consequences when this value gets below certain thresholds.

I know that some have discussed ideas about it already, but I didn't read the 279 threads that research brings for that keyword, nor did I find a good synthetic post in the ones I tried to read, so bear with me when I re-invent the wheel (or maybe more accurately, that I synthesize the usually-agreed-upon principles of a unit morale system, and refine it to what I believe would work in Wesnoth).

Now that I begin to learn how to play better, I understand why the creator didn't believe a morale system was useful (I very often played with mass deathballs rather than the more subtle approach of having units more dispersed in a tactically sound positioning), but I still believe that if carefully planned it can improves the game.

The main aspect of it (which will indeed be a game-changer, so it has to be thought out well and long) is that breaking enemy morale should be easier than killing enemy units, and as such would be one of the main tactical objective in most fights (killing the unit would be a better result, but a more difficult one), a bit like now when you poison a unit to make it leave the battlefield for a few turns in search of a local tactical advantage.

I guess one of the way to do that is to raise up significantly the hit points of all units, so they're much harder to kill.
So, each unit would have a set base morale level (let's say 5 for a weak unit, 10 for a basic one, maybe 20 for a stronger one and 40 for an elite one). Note that it allows to really differentiate units by their morale (maybe goblins could have low morale compared to their hit points, while trolls could have very high morale compared to their high points; and of course many undead units - but not necessarily all of them - could be immune to morale loss). It's also possible to have morale-related traits, so a unit could be neither strong nor resilient but instead get a big morale boost (either base morale or morale recuperation).

What reduces morale of units :
I guess we could have each successful blow reduce its morale by one (yes, that means that high-number-of-attacks low-damage weapons would be more impactful on morale, it needs to be taken into account when balancing units).
Also each turn where enemies of higher level are hitting it reduces its morale by one. Some specific trait/ability ("hardened") could avoid this effect.
Also each turn where it is adjacent to more enemy units than it is to friendly units reduces its morale by one (or by the difference). Again, a specific trait/ability ("maverick") could avoid this effect.
Also each turn where it has enemies in its back could reduce its morale by one.
Also each turn where one friendly adjacent unit is killed would reduce its morale by the level of this unit.
Also each turn it is attacked by an enemy he can't retaliate to reduces its morale by one.
Also each turn it is attacked by an enemy with a much higher resistance than him (let's say more than 30 points of difference between each one's resistance to the enemy's most efficient attack) reduces its morale by one.
Also each turn it is attacked by an enemy with a much higher terrain defense that he's on reduces its morale by one (I guess that units that have very low defense on most terrain, like dwarves, could have traits that avoid that effect - "fearless" could be used to that effect rather than what it currently does).
Also each turn it is attacked by an enemy with a morale-affecting ability ("terror" or whatever) reduces its morale by a value depending on this ability.
Also each hits it gets from a morale-affecting weapon ("barbed shards" or whatever) reduces its morale by a value depending on the weapon. It could be a way to balance weapons with a low number of attacks (like thundersticks).
Also each turn it is attacked by an enemy while on a bad period of the day (mid-day for liminal units for example) reduces its morale by one.
Also each turn it is attacked by the enemy while on a terrain that it hates would reduce its morale by one (a bit redundant with the "inferior defense than the enemy" so I'm less sure about it, but it still could be interesting tactically). What terrain each unit hates (and the level of hate, maybe some terrain - like swamp for Heavy Infantry - would be doubly-hated, reducing the morale by two) would be added to the terrain chart of each unit.
Also each turn it is attacked by an enemy on higher ground (since elevations are introduced in 1.17) would reduce its morale by one point for each adjacent enemy on higher ground.
It's also possible to have each turn attacked by an enemy with a much higher unit morale reduce the lower-unit morale by one (needs to be carefully thought out, though - but it would make for interesting strategy where high-morale units are used to progressively break the enemy lines, as in real-world pitched battles of the medieval or ancient eras).
And to have each turn attacked by an enemy with a much higher army morale (more on that later) reduce the unit morale by one.

Since we want to have morale breaking be a more frequent objective than killing the unit, and we made the units hit points higher, we don't want to have morale reduction heavily dependent on unit health, but it's still reasonable to have - in addition to all of the above - a morale reduction of one per turn spent adjacent to the enemy while below half health, and of two per turn spent below a quarter of maximum health.


Expected result of all this : surrounding some enemy units would be enough to break their morale in one or two turns (so you don't want to put your own units vulnerable to that in a position to be surrounded) but some other units would still be able to stand their ground alone for many turns, while still being vulnerable (except again for some undead units) to slow grinding of their morale by adequate tactics, all of this quite dependent on terrain (and by consequence on positioning, bringing interesting tactical possibilities).
And other specific tactics than surrounding would also allow to break enemy morale, especially by careful positioning and management of unit rotation.



Now, regenerating morale :
1- Killing (or pushing) an enemy unit (1+3*enemy level I guess ?).
2- Having a badly wounded adjacent enemy unit retreat (2*enemy level; threshold for "badly" to be defined).
3- Having an adjacent enemy morale level go below zero (1*enemy level).
4- Successful retaliation (inflicting more damage than the ones taken). I guess one morale point per occurrence ?
5- Being on a terrain the unit loves (1 per turn).
6- Being on higher ground than all adjacent enemies (1 per turn).
7- Not being adjacent to any enemy (2 point per turn).
8- Being in a village (5 points per turn).
9- Being adjacent to a healer (3 point per healer and per turn).
10- Being adjacent to a leader (3 points per leader level, not cumulative).
11- Having a higher army/faction morale than the others (see below).
12- Being adjacent to a unit with "raising morale" ability (value defined by the ability, cumulative).


Expected result : both necessity and possibility to manage unit rotation from the frontline to the back, and also possibility for the opponent to prevent that.
It still is a bit redundant with unit rotation for hit points recovery, so I'm open to suggestions. Maybe have effects 7 to 10 conditional on being n hexes away from enemy units, n being the level of said enemy unit (+a value depending on said enemy units abilities, like "eldritch howls" that would add two to that level on ghost units) ?
Effect 11 would be partially conditional on that distance from enemy units (see below).
The fact that abilities/trait would be different for health and for morale helps making this rotation dissimilar, too (units like professional soldiers would have a high morale regeneration when not adjacent to the enemy, making their management quite different than management of other units).


Effects of morale :
- Once a unit goes below zero, it loses one movement point
- Once it goes below negative its morale base value, it loses one retaliation attack.
- Once it goes below negative twice its morale base value, it starts losing one morale point for each adjacent unit whose morale is below zero, and one morale point for each adjacent enemy unit whose morale is above zero.
- Once it goes below negative thrice its morale base value, it cannot enter an enemy ZOC except to go toward a healer, a leader or a morale-raising unit.
- Once it goes below four times its negative morale base value, it doesn't get any morale regeneration except from leaders and morale-rising units.
- Once it goes below five times its negative morale base value, each enemy blow has a chance to push it back. Being pushed back to an hex adjacent to an enemy unit gives a cumulative loss of morale equal to the enemy unit level. Not having any hex to be pushed back to gives the adjacent enemy unit with the weakest melee attack a free melee attack (no retaliation) to the pushed-back unit. This is repeated each time it is pushed. I guess that the chance to be pushed back should rise with each enemy blow that lands.
- Once it goes below six times its negative morale base value, it loses half (rounded up) its number of attacks.
- Once it goes below seven times its negative morale base value, it loses half its movement points..
- Once it goes below eight times its negative morale base value, it cannot enter an enemy ZOC at all
- Once it goes below nine times its negative morale base value, it loses one morale point for each hex closer to an enemy unit than the enemy unit's level times 2 (plus the enemy unit's level morale-affecting ability times two), cumulative for all enemy units.
- Once it goes below ten times its negative morale base value, it has to make a morale check each turn it is not getting farther away from the enemy, and routs if it fails that check (routing : automatically moving towards the camp where it was spawned, or to a scenario-specified side of the map). Any routing unit causes all adjacent unit to lose the routing-unit-level of morale points.
- Once it goes below fifteen times its negative morale base value, it automatically routs.

Expected result : It would still be possible to have demoralized units keep fighting, and it would often be a necessary strategy, but also a risky one. And with good planning it would be possible to rout a full section of the enemy forces, and with even better planning to then massacre them.


Army morale : this one I believe has never been proposed, but it would both work well with the former and provide for nearly-infinite variations for scenarios, both in campaigns and in multiplayer.

Each army (or even faction in the army, in some scenarios) would have a starting morale value (let's say 100 by default in multiplayer).
The UI would display this value on screen, like it displays the gold (for scenarios where the army would have factions with different morale values, I guess the value for each faction would be displayed by mouse-over on the general morale value).
Then again, events would raise this value, lower this value, and thresholds (both relative and absolute) have consequences.

Raising this army morale :
- Specific units could raise morale each turn by a value depending on this unit ("flag-bearers", for example).
- Specific locations could raise morale each turn by a value depending on the location. The simplest situation would be to have "flags" on these locations, like villages now, that change each time a unit from a different side occupies it. But it's also possible to have locations that raise morale only when there's a unit on them, or when there's a unit on them without enemy unit in the vicinity, or when they're closer to friendly units than to enemy units, or when there is no enemy unit on them.
- Taking a village with an enemy flag would raise morale by one.
- Leveling up a unit would rise morale by the square of its new level.
- Killing an enemy unit, or having it rout outside the map, would raise morale by the unit's level (if there are factions, all factions get this rise).
- Specific events could raise morale (like killing an enemy leader, killing or routing a specific enemy unit type, reaching a specific location on the map, surviving a certain number of turns while fulfilling certain conditions,...).
- We may want a runaway effect, at least on some scenarios : having your army morale superior by 30% to the enemy army's morale raises your army morale by one each turn.


Lowering the army morale :
- Losing a village to an enemy unit would reduce morale by one.
- Being in negative gold would reduce morale by one, and by an additional one if you're also on negative income. It may be possible to lose more than one per turn, also to make the loss depend on how far in debt you are.
- Having a unit killed would reduce morale by thrice its level (this unit's trait/ability could nullify that).
- Having one unit rout out of the map would reduce morale by twice its level (this unit's trait/ability could nullify that).
- Having a unit's morale stay below -50 for five consecutive turns would reduce army morale by 1 per turn (this unit's trait/ability could nullify that).
- Having specific units killed would lower morale by a value specified by some ability of this specific unit (in scenario with multiple recruiters, that's a way to emphasize the value of some of them, so even if you don't need all of them, you'd better not lose one).
- Having the mean morale of your units below zero could make you lose one army morale point per turn.
- Having the mean morale of your units below half the enemy units mean morale could make you lose one army morale point per turn.
- Having the enemy take specific location could lower morale by a specific amount (shouldn't be symmetrical with what the enemy gets by taking it).
- Having the enemy occupy specific locations could lower morale by a specific amount per turn (by default, the starting castle could be worth one morale point per turn lost when the enemy occupy its keeps).
- Specific events could lower morale (the enemy surviving a certain number of turns, the enemy occupying one specific location at a specific turn, the enemy having more units than you at a specific turn, you failing to occupy a specific location at a specific turn,...).
- Scenario-specific rules of any sort could make you lose morale (like losing three morale points each turn in a race-against-time scenario).

Effect of morale :
* Effects of Absolute morale values :
- Having an army morale below zero makes all your units adjacent to more (combined level enemy units + terror-related enemy units abilities) than they are to (combined level friendly units + morale-rousing abilities of adjacent friendly units) lose one unit morale point per turn.
- Having an army morale below -50 makes all your unit adjacent to a unit with unit morale below zero lose one unit morale point per turn, unless they're in a village or adjacent to a healer, a leader or a morale-rousing unit.
- Having an army morale below -100 makes all your units that are closer than n from any enemy unit (n being said enemy unit's level+terror-related ability level) to lose one unit morale point per turn.
- Having an army morale below - 200 makes all your units use 2n instead of n in distance from enemy units calculations.
- Having an army morale below scenario-specific thresholds have scenario-specific effects.

* Effects of Relative morale values :
- Having an army morale below half the enemy army morale makes all your terror-related abilities reduced by one and all the enemy terror-related abilities raised by one (only if your morale is below enemy's morale, since if both are negatives the first rule doesn't work alone).
- Having your army morale negative AND more than 100 points below your enemy's morale makes all your units lose one movement point if the enemy's morale is still positive.
- Having an army morale above thrice the enemy morale's value allows all your units to regenerate one morale point per turn (condition 11 in the "regenerating unit morale" section above) independently of their distance to enemy units (so, to be clear, if you have an army morale superior to the enemy but not thrice so, your units regenerates one morale point per turn only if they satisfy the above-mentioned distance conditions from enemy units).
- Having an army morale negative AND more than 200 points below your enemy's morale, all units not adjacent to a healer, a leader or a morale-rousing unit lose one unit morale point per turn.
- Having an army morale below a quarter of the enemy morale makes all your units adjacent to a higher-ground enemy unit lose one unit morale point per turn and all of your units adjacent to an enemy unit able to strike them without retaliation also lose one unit morale point per turn.
- Having an army morale more than 50 points below your enemy's morale makes all of your units lose one unit morale point each time they enter any enemy unit's Zone of Control.


Expected effect of this system :
Mostly, this is designed to allow for far more varied scenarios than "kill the enemy leaders" or "flee to that direction".
I believe the rules above allow for a quasi-infinite variation of scenarios, from those were a small band with high morale has to take on huge armies to others where morale is rapidly dwindling and one has to get results fast, and probably many variations that even I haven't imagined.
It also gives a balanced way of managing village upkeep, allowing to get in the red but discouraging staying in deficit for long; so as to make careful recruitment a way more rewarding strategy than recruiting a big deathball once and for all.
In interaction with unit morale, it allows for varied tactics and strategies to try to break and rout the enemy lines/forces.
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