In Elemental, you design your own units. Give them whatever name you want to give them, equipment them with weapons, armor, helmets along with deciding how much training they need.
Creating a soldier or a scout or a knight or what have you boils down to how long it takes you to have the equipment on hand and training which is raw time.
There is still "quick build" but that simply, at a cost, gets supplies to that town a lot quicker. It's like having your "stuff" sent to you via Fed Ex Air rather than UPS Ground.
So we're still playing around with this concept so would love to hear thoughts on it.
Shouldn't the summary show 14 turns remaining? 9 for the swords and 5 for the training?
Also are "non-person" units like seige engines or battering rams going to be made similarly?
Nice concept, and I too would like to see a horsey.
Dear Brad....I am wondering about that picture what you drew.
Units will only have weapon/armor/helmet slots? That is _NOT_ enough. What about slots / number of arms for example? Even a simple human should be able to hold a shield and a 1h weapon or a 2h weapon. What if a creature will have 4 or more arms?
Also even if we are talking about normal soldiers, and not heroes, there should be an additional slot for leg armors...
Den, maybe they train with wooden swords, or you need to put weapons in the barracks to train people with.
There's nothing to say that all swords are swords. There could very well be different kinds of swords, although I see very little reason to actually extend it beyond a number of base sets.
I basicly want to have everyone take a step back, breathe, and loudly ask themselves "We want this, but does this actually add something to the game?"
I do that every day. You don't even need to divide weapons into sets. Just classify the weapon based on what it can do. As with anything you can take it too far. But remember what I talked about regarding the difference between cutting and slashing? The worst that can happen is that we end up with 4 numbers on our UI instead of one. And likely 3 of them will be so low that they can be ignored. Complexity within the weapon system will allow for complexity in the armour system. The last thing we want is oversimplified combat.
I generally find that the HP or health system for units is too oversimplifed for my tastes. RPGs are a good example of this, For instance, you have 10 health at lvl 1, and you get hit for 8 damage, you're hurting bad, but at lvl 5 your health is now 50, and that same exact hit isnt so terrible. So whats the difference? The truth is, unit health can get so much more involved without becoming overtly complex. You could do the following:
Have a static amount of health, say 10, and then have another stat called stamina which grows as the unit progresses in level. Whats the difference between health and stamina? Well health is how much actual damage the unit can take, it is static as the unit levels up when you hit 0 health the units dead. Stamina is how much energy the unit has to perform actions such as dodging. Stamina increases with level, and demonstrates your greater skill at judging an attack and moving accordingly. When stamina hits 0 the unit is fatigued and any additional damage is applied to the units health. A 12 damage attack is just as lethal no matter the level, but a more skilled unit can dodge it more effectively due to more stamina.
Stamina would also recover more quickly, whereas health damage would take longer to mend (without magic at least).
Oe question sorry if you already answered it, take for example I want to have a unit armed with a weak and cheap sword and another one with a legendary ultramega expensive sword, do I have, (like the analogy of galciv2) to research the better weapons or do I have to have certain resources (wood, iron, poop, wathever) or do I just research swords up to level 47or how is that going to work?
One of the bigger factors in this whole unit creation scheme will be resource management. How will resource abundance effect what materials you can and can't make? If I have no access to metal, can I instead research/create leather/wooden armors/weapons which have properties comparable to metal counterparts through the use of magic or other means? Will someone with access to metals be at a flat out advantage to someone without? Will I be able to make iron swords and weapons infinitely with one iron mine the whole game? Will having two iron mines increase my ability to produce goods?
I'm leary of systems which claim this much open-endedness, especially in multiplayer. What you may end up having a set of starting conditions which completely negate some aspects of the game. Providing minerals in abundance or upping the amount of gold available to a player might become attractive options to players looking for a fast-paced game, but that also might hinder the viability of many types of units. The game is appealing to a somewhat niche group to begin with, to further divide that community by allowing for a huge degree of options in game creation may have a huge impact on how much actual game content gets used in your game. Now I'm all for providing options to the player so that they can tailor-make a game to how they want to play it, but I don't want a community full of people playing some Elemental version of Big Game Hunters because it's quicker and easier.
Quite right. I touched on that a bit in my old warhammer online thread about MMO tanks. You can find the link in my "hello" someone call for a dreamer thread but even I would advise against reading it. The first 3 (yes 3) posts alone break the 100k character count.
The biggest step forward is working how much damage a person can actually take. Once you quantify that you can begin to properly measure how much damage weapons do. Weapons that do an insignificant amount of damage can be simplified to none and calculations for weapons that kill in one hit don't need to be done.
A tech tree dependant on metal can't exist in a world without metal in it. However you CAN provide alternatives. If you can't make a metal hammer then make one out of stone. An empire without wood to make bows would use bone instead. Got wood but not in the correct size and shape to make a spear shaft? No problem, use bamboo.
Well, I just love it. One of the problems I have with AOW is that after a few hundred games its: "OH, here comes that unit again." Being able to do this will allow me to mess with it endlessly and give me a ton of replay value.
One of the reasons I'm a stardock fan is the depth I can, or at my option not, take the game to. I love the auto design in gal civ 2 since at some points in the game when I'm cranking out huge units I don't want to mess with 50 planets to adjust what they are producing when an upgraded design comes out. Sure, the govenors rock (ship and planet, but I'm hoping in gal civ 3 I can use scripts on the govenors....if I have x open spots then build y, if not build z kind of thing). Once you hit that "I'm sure I've won" part in gal civ, the game still can take days (I like huge galaxies), and automating a lot of it is really nice at that point. Of course, up to that point I would hate automating it since I can design better ships...but I can switch back and forth between micromanagement and macromanagement as the game dictates....I love this and hope we see it with units in Elemental.
Oh, I would also like to see a "build que" instead of a single build option (such as in gal civ). I would like for my city to crank out unit one, then unit two, then repeat.
Oh, and on the topic or art? I *like* quite a bit what I've seen of the art. I think that Warcraft proved that its the game that counts, and the art is secondary (as long as it dosen't suck) and taking it this direction makes it much more playable. Sure, I've got a good machine, but even so with everything cranked on gal civ 2 in a huge galaxy, my end turns can take 10 min just watching (too dang many constructors in the air...). I want to play Elemental on an epic scale, with games that could take me months to finish. This sort of unit construction combined with player supported art and mods mean this is yet another stardock game that not only won't leave my hard drive, but will keep me gaming online with others until Elemental 2 comes out .
Heck, gal civ one is still on my drive. Every so often its fun to fire it up and play with deathstars that can actually kill entire races off .
Ha ha, that confused the hell out of me .. seeing Bluestalker's avatar I briefly thought I'd written a meaty well considered post and then drunk too much to remember it!
Oh wow, I totally thought that was you, too! It should be illegal for two people to have the same avatar, it's like identity theft!
Looks good, and better than anything that's gone before but naturally and as usual I'd like more detail! MOAR!
e.g. different training for different effects, special abilities etc, see ideas post https://forums.elementalgame.com/332690
cheers,
kul
Brad has already stated that the picture wasn't the full representation of the unit creation screen. While I'd also love to see a really detailed screen where I could put on pauldrons, arms, hands, boots and legs, the question remains: How will the Tactical Combat system work? Will there be benefits for having less armoured units? Will there be movement/attack speed/dodge speed stats? If it's simply HP and Attack then you might as well keep it simple, as sad a panda that makes me.
Luckmann has a good point. Also if anyone played the RPG "Evil Islands" you had a bunch of base weapon/armour types and you would put better and better building materials into these base blueprints to make the product better/different. So you find a longsword blueprint. Putting in stone will make a pretty crude looking implement, but put in something really sexy like Meteroite Ore into it and it becomes an awesome tool of destruction.
So, as for resources: why not have a bunch of different materials be on the same level so that if you have no access to metal deposits, you can hunt demons for their bones which might not do as much damage but could be enchanted better: make up lack in damage with slight magical kick. Or have the bones come with a slight magical attack as standard.
We already know that SD intend to have us improve weapons in small steps, so what about having a few base models of weapons that have different stats. So for example: We have a one handed axe that does more damage than 1-handed swords but have slower attack speed. Also having 1/2handed weapons would be nice (but that's most likely already planned). So they are different but not better than each other. Player can use personal preference to decide what sort of weapon he wants to follow and tech up.
Problem: this also limits the player: going for one handed axes would exclude other types of weapons.
Maybe as you research One-Handed Axes there would be milestones where new axe types would be unlocked to give a bit more flexibility?
Brad,Thanks much for continuing to feed us info You asked for comments, so:1) It'd be great if the list unit "slots" were moddable so if we wanted to add 10 more slots for left wrist armor, right pinky finger armor, back-of-the-right-shin armor, etc we could. Question: you mention "you just get a person", is that the only base unit type that allows design? You've told us about dragons and stuff and I imagine those aren't just "a person" plus gear. Can non-person units be designed, and will the architecture support them being modded to have different gear slots?2) I'd also really like it if training "levels" could be moddable to give a modifier to practically any stat or characteristic (giving special abilities could be done through gear, if necessary). Questions: Do all "a person plus gear" units gain the same benefits from training? How are you handling the degree of training or "levels"? Are there xp tiers and each turn of training gives a certain amount of xp? Can units gain xp in battle, and is it the same stuff as they get from initial training?3) Unit production types of bonuses:a.) Downward Multiplier on "quick build" additional cost (e.g. hero that takes 10-20% off quick build premiums)b.) Multiplier on effect of training time (e.g. special building or city enchantment that doubles effectiveness of training in that city; or negative enchantment that halves effectiveness of training in that city)c.) Special that makes training impact additional statistics (e.g. city enchantment that causes training to add +1 more attack power per turn)Etc, having every modifier-source (including initial game setup picks) be able to apply every type of modifier either positive or negative is of course preferable.Thanks again,Keith
Its important not to pidgeonhole weapons into specific roles. For example if you made an axe for you channeler he would be able to split wood to make his campfire. However to drive stakes into the ground to set up his tent he *must* have a hammer and all he has is his axe. If you at that point say "why can't I use the flat side of my Axe to hammer pegs?" and all the game can come up with is "durrr hurr?" then you have a little work to do.
Therefore we should avoid labeling things as "one handed" or "two handed". Instead one handed weapons are simply weapons of the correct size and weight that you can lift and wield them with one hand. Two handed weapons are much the same. Its impossible to wield something with both hands if you don't have enough room on the grip for both of them. A spear would be no trouble but there would be no such thing as a two handed butter knife.
"Is the weapon one handed or two handed?" Is a trick question, the answer is "I can".
Does unit customization mean race distinctions weaken?
I mean we all have a stereo type sense that dwarf are good at axe, hammer; elves are good at bow, drows are good at magic from MoM1. I am not sure if it's a good thing if the unit customization could be extend to a level where the race might be irrelevant.
Or am I worrying too much?
Well, there is only one race humans with two flavors regular and fallen each having 6 factions that are all a bit different.
When custom content goes in I'm sure you could add racial modifiers. Balancing them could get annoying however.
Well, thanks. But all human? Does that mean there is no elf, dwarf, orc, troll... units to produce?
Doesn't sound too good.
IMO the whole elf dwarf orc mix is stereotyped to the point of blandness. I guess at this point most of us are tired of bow using elves, axe using dwarves, evil orcs and regenerating trolls.
Sorry, but I kind of disagree here. Somewhat it's those stereo type that make a fantasy game what it is.
That is not to say I am against the flexibilities. But what if we have boar-riding elves that regenerate, fire-breathing knights that stalk, or fairy that wield war club that also drain life? Doesn't that feel "a bit" wierd? Or simply put it this, to remove the stereo types, we could actually call the red dragon "fire-throwing flying giga machine"
I put some exaggerations here, but hope someone could get my points.
I raise the drows of Eberron as an example of "doing it right" instead of "doing the same". I'd also like to bring forth his eminence David Eddings who rarely (ever?) uses other (major) species than human (although often a multitude of actual races) in his settings.
Dwarves & Elves in themselves doesn't define fantasy, nor does Fantasy need these crutches by necessity. The reasoning behind their inclusion or discrimination may differ (such as "they're tiresome & bland"), of course.
Then does every pixie happen to be tiny and fragile? What if there happened to be some mutant fat fairies that is savage and possessing ogre strength? Or like you've mentioned, do knights have to wear heavy armors? Comparing to a regenerating boar-riding elf, it's simply a level of difference. And the debat could keep on and on until all the "stereo types" are overthrown.
You are certainly right. What left here is my curiosity how the Dev is going to present the diversities that should exist in a fantasy strategy game without employ some of the old-school fantasy elements?
In this context, I'd once again like to voice my request for not having set hero classes and/or heroes - I'd love to be able to recreate Knight-Ranger Sarathian Sol, of the house of Sol.
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