[Mod][Alpha] Weapons and Armour

+5 tactical managen seems excessive.  Otherwise, looks great.  You should get in touch with Kenata and work on incorporating your two mods!

This mod looks great.............

IF you add in 

https://forums.elementalgame.com/393822

dual wielding.

Because if you overhaul the wep stats like you did, then i add this dual wield mod, they wont make sense.

good work

The +5 tactical mana regen was supposed to be a little excessive due to the large decrease in physical offensive and defencive stats, coupled with the -1 health per combat round. If it does turn out to be too much I'll tone it down and increase the int bonus a little.

I had a look at Kenata's mod before I started this and although adding abilities to weapons is a great idea; I didn't like the way in which it had to be done. To use the abilities you need mana, so Kenata has had to add essence to the weapons. However this enables champions with no essence to cast spells and level up their essence stat. Thus negating the Imbue Champion spell all together.

So for now at least I'm leaving abilities off the weapons untill you don't need to use mana to use them. Although Kenata or anyone else is welcome to use what I have done so far for any of their mods.

Thanks

I've had a quick look at his mod and don't think there would be too much of a problem just using it out right. The main issue would be that the off hand mace adds 4 attack, pair that up with one of my axes and it becomes +8 which may be a bit much. I'll have a look into it.

Yeah, the essence requirement for all tactical abilities is a bit wonky and really restricts what we can do to make units more distinct.

I think 5 mana tactical combat is going to end up being too much.  If you are using the bugfix mod which enables proper shard multiplication, spellcasting is actually quite powerful.  Being able to cast an infernal/chain lightning/blizzard every round for free for every imbued champion in a stack is quite a bonus.  Anyhow, I am testing it as we speak to see how it all comes together!

yeah i didnt like this part about that mod.

i didnt realize what he did until after i tried it and was wondering why there were a bunch of quasi channelers running around

I also thought the game needed staves and wands that provided magic bonus, at least at the lower levels

Staffs
Like spears they are more of a defensive weapon. I gave them a small dodge bonus to make them different from spears.

- Added +1 dodge to the staff
- Added +2 dodge to the war staff

I just had an idea, since a staff should have range to it, maybe instead of a defensive bonus, or in addition to, they could have the no counter attack ability in them?

if possible

Adding ANY tactical mana regen to a spellcaster capable of using Strategic spells just seems too abusable.  I mean, take a sovereign who's running low on mana.  If there's a low CR melee critter anywhere in their kingdom/empire, they can teleport there, attack, run around while their mana regenerates, disengage, cast as many strategic spells as they want, re-engaging and disengaging to recharge, then recharge one last time and teleport back.

Tactical mana regen should only be for creatures who can't cast outside of combat - at least when the system works the way it does now.

I can see your point, if you are patient then you can easily exploit tactical mana regen. Using the bug fix mod to fix the shards makes each mana point more useful than it was. Though I think 1 point of tactical mana regen is fine; you'd have to go through 5 turns of combat before seeing any gains from teleporting to a low CR critter, then another 8 before the strategic spells start becoming available (asuming you are going to teliport back again). I know I'm not patient enough to keep doing that whenever I'm low on mana.

It has got me thinking though that a new ability may be possible to convert hit points into mana, say ina  3HP to 1MP ratio. Then add this to a staff. You'd have to take 15 damage just to overcome the teleporting then.

Some of the big hammers could get a larger speed penalty. If the penalty to attack speed was -1.0 then a lordhammer is a less obvious choice, and would pretty much require a horse or magical assistance to wield. For instance: Mace: 12dam -0.25speed Warhammer: 24dam -0.5 speed Battlehammer: 32dam -0.75speed Lordhammer: 40dam -1.0speed

Along the same line of thought: Perhaps add a Lance, a spear with a large attack damage that only makes sense when combined with a horse

I have been thinking of making the attack speed penalties % based. So any additional attack speed given to the units has a lesser effect. I've beentrying to stear clear of adding flat out decreases as a whole as it has a greater risk of ending up with a unit with zero or negative stats, especially if mixed with other mods.

The problem with messing withe she speed mods though is the effect it has on movement. If I made a Lance with a big attack and a large speed penalty then you'd end up with a mounted unit that doesn't move far but packs a big punch. Unless of course there was a way of altering the blink ability so that it acted and looked like a charge attack.

Having said that I've not messed around with UnitStat_TacticalMovementCostMultiplier which by the sounds of it could be just the thing to give to a mounted unit with low attack speed.

The thing is, engaging in combat costs no move, and can be done as many times per turn as you like, even against the same foe.  This will probably be changed eventually, but until it is, there is no mechanical limit on potential abuses.

It is entirely possible to create a mana regen ability that roots you to the spot so you can't kite the critters when it is active. Do you think that would be more worth while? Can also make it castable just once in combat as well.

Yeah I know Lance is more complicated. I think the lordhammer penalty makes more sense. It would make this high damage units very slow. If they were footsoldiers a unit with lordhammers would only move one square each round with -1.0.

That said, if horses could change the movement cost multiplier instead, then you could remove the bonus to combat speed, making them only move fast and not make attacking faster. The alternative I think would be using the "Sprint" ability from Sions, that is much closer to a charge than "Blink" is.

I had a play around with things last night and making the mount bonus to movement only is easy to do as well as making more sense than extra attack speed (I'm on a horse I can cast spells faster! :/). Scrapped the blink idea as like you say Sprint makes more sense.I was originally just thinking about doing the whole charge and attack in one button click, but it didn't seem feasible.

As for the Lance I've got an idea in mind that has some promis. If I can add in a new unit stat called something like "ChargeMultiplier" and add a charge ability to mounts that partly acts like Sprint but also increases your attack by the charge multiplier. I could then modify the charge multiplier depending on the weapon equiped. So a Lance would have a large multiplier but a low initial attack rating making it great for a charge.

The main problem I'm going to have with that though is that the cooldown tags crash the game when the cooldown on the ability ends. So it would have to be a one off combat ability. Unless I did something nuts like make it cost health. Would a one off massive damage charge be worth it if after the unit did very low damage with the lance?

I have some thoughts on ways round the problem but they all involve extra abilities and unit stats. Like adding an "mounted" stat to the units which gets set from equiping a mount. Then adding an ability to the lance that does enhanced damage when mounted to be used in place of the standard attack (though it would cost 2 action points as it is an ability).

Sounds great. This should be a must for any balance mods.

I am suddenly reminded of the assasin ability, they have something that gives extra damage to "first attack". I am not sure how that works or what counts as first attack, but could sound like something that could rudely simulate a charge.

[quote who="Carewolf" reply="13" id="2759665"]
Quoting Nimbyjester, reply 10I have been thinking of making the attack speed penalties % based. So any additional attack speed given to the units has a lesser effect. I've beentrying to stear clear of adding flat out decreases as a whole as it has a greater risk of ending up with a unit with zero or negative stats, especially if mixed with other mods.

/quote]

what i did for my mounts was for 1 set (brown and shadow) i made it +2 movement no speed

for the other (black and ice) i made it +1 movement and +4 attack, as in the mount helps you attack.

and spread the costs out a bit, i like it.

All that's pretty nice, but I think armor shouldn't reduce attack power or intelligence. Intellitgence is useless to troops, and your soverign should be decked out in the most powerful stuff without being penalized to the one thing that makes him stand out. I'd make the heavy armor's just reduce speed. And make the leather shirt, chainmail, etc, all the "lighter" versions of those armors not change a thing. Or maybe even increase speed. That way you have a purpose to actually equip them. Otherwise they're just useless. Why bother with a Leather shirt when you can just equip the heavier version of it for +1 defense and no penalties? And why bother with the chainmail when you can just equip the leather armor which has the same exact stats but is cheaper to make?

Hmmm, now that we have corrected the essence issue with the weapons mod, how would you feel about a merger?  We're setting up a version control site for easy collaboration, and regularly toss around ideas in the stardock IRC.  Hop on sometime and look up me and Kenata.  If you want to keep them separate, would you mind if we pilfered some of the values from this mod to further distinguish the weapons?  I have a working prototype of a merged mod with some minor changes.

The eventual idea is to create an expansive Conceptual Balance mod that serves as a kind of community patch and eventually an expansion.  We're not going to really aim for much expansion until 1.1 comes out.

Some feedback for your mod

The large multipliers for axes can quickly get out of hand with high strength heroes.

Tactical mana regen is problematic as has been noted

I'd up the defense penalty to 30% for hammers, that way its definitely noticeable

Spears are tricky.  Until they get the FirstStrike command to work, they probably will stay that way.

Otherwise all lookin really good!

Just a quick update from me (at work). Would love to do some collaboration work with you and kenata, feel free to nick anything I've done so far. It was a pretty rough first pass through the stats to get the ideas out there.

Actually got a pretty good charge ability working last night not 100% happy with it though. Activate it to get a movement and attack bonus. The attack bonus is based off what weapon you are using at the time. Spears getting a bigger bonus than swords etc. Lasts for one round. In my tests I had a char that could usually move 3 squares and had 3 action points with a spear. Activate the ability (2 action points used) can still move ~5 squares and have a fraction of an action point left in which to do a high damage attack with.

The down side was that in the enemies turn the ability is still active so any counter attacks still had the large damage bonus which is annoying. Still as a concept of an ability that differs based on a new weapon stat it worked out quite well.

Nimbly, a quick thought on your counterattack woes--try setting a negative counterattack modifier that lasts one round as well.  Voila!

Good idea! will give that a go.

"All that's pretty nice, but I think armor shouldn't reduce attack power or intelligence. Intellitgence is useless to troops, and your soverign should be decked out in the most powerful stuff without being penalized to the one thing that makes him stand out. I'd make the heavy armor's just reduce speed. And make the leather shirt, chainmail, etc, all the "lighter" versions of those armors not change a thing. Or maybe even increase speed. That way you have a purpose to actually equip them. Otherwise they're just useless. Why bother with a Leather shirt when you can just equip the heavier version of it for +1 defense and no penalties? And why bother with the chainmail when you can just equip the leather armor which has the same exact stats but is cheaper to make? "

I'm used to the old school of heavy armour impeding casting hence the intelligence penalties. The general idea was to make the user think more about attack and defense. I'm going to have a re-think about the armours in general though. As you say why bother with chainmail at all etc. Rather than give the lighter armour bonuses to movement etc I think it would make more sense to decrease the default movement multiplier and add penalties depending on the armour. That way you gain benefit when not wearing any armour.

I don't think I'll be removing the attack/int penalties from armour though, but I might limit it a bit more depending on the armour location. Chest and arms will make it harder to wave your arms about to cast a spell for example. A helm will make it harder to see (so maybe a sight penalty instead).

Alternatively I may remove the general penalties and add in movement. Then add in some abilities to the armour which when used will decrease attack/int while improving defense.

"what i did for my mounts was for 1 set (brown and shadow) i made it +2 movement no speed

for the other (black and ice) i made it +1 movement and +4 attack, as in the mount helps you attack."

I was thinking about something similar to make each mount different. Though for the wargs I was thinking of making a joint attack ability where the rider and mount attack together. Or maybe some sort of fear inducing ability that lowers enemy moral. Actually kinda like that, one warg lowers moral the other raises your moral.

that's not a bad idea either, modding in joint attacks and whatnot is a little above my paygrade.

here's a question, is Kingdom supposed to be able to buy wargs in the shop and empire the horses?

Wargs and horses are available for both. Would be a matter of deleting a few lines to make them kingdom/empire specific I think. Where you have:

<!-- Equipment Prerequisites -->
<Prereq>
<Type>Tech</Type>
<Attribute>Mounted_Warfare_Amarian</Attribute>
<Value>0</Value>
</Prereq>

<Prereq>
<Type>Tech</Type>
<Attribute>Tools_Of_War_Trogs</Attribute>
<Value>0</Value>
 </Prereq>

Just delete the prereq for the side you don't want to have it.

Looking at a big spreadsheet of armour values at the moment fiddling around with ratios between each armour location etc trying to decide what might be special about the armlets. The chest armour is the largest so reduces attack and movement speed, legs are the next largest area and effect the same things but in the reverse ratio. Helms offer decent protection partly due to the importance of the area being protected but reduce unit sight. The armlets though are so small that they don't really add much of anything at the moment.

Will have to re-balance all the costs after as well

I would also like to suggest something for you since you are putting effort into arms and armor,

https://forums.elementalgame.com/395751
https://forums.elementalgame.com/395710
these guys are releasing weapon models for modders.

maybe you could add them in to spice up your numbers?