For the next FAQ, I'd like to respond to questions from the forums.
Do you guys have any questions?
I'm pretty sure mods are covered under the "fair-use" provided nobody directly profits from it. So the people who made the game that was modded can't directly endorse the creation of the mod, making it seem like they want to gain sales as a direct result of the mod.
It's more like in the "We won't bother coming at your for making a tribute to our characters" but fir use really just covers the ability to talk about something...
"Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 17 U.S.C. § 106 and 17 U.S.C. § 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include:
The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors."
Lack of FAQ so...
-Altough Elemental is based on the idea of Channelers influencing land (from desert to plains, for example), will it be actually easy to just ignore that feature and have just one type of terrain without too much effort (or maybe include a tutorial about it )?
-A secondary plane will be included and/or planned and/or easy to add (random map generation problems apart)? And more than one secondary plane? Iknow this wouldn't be easy but the potential... And if there were planes, could we associate some races/civilizations to them so you can only play them if you pick a perk that allows you to do so?
-Will units be only of one gender? Can be there mixed genders in the same unit and/or units of a different gender than the standard (supposed male)? Would playing with gender in the military units affect population growth?
-Any kind of weather? I would enjoy to have frostbite making life of travelers more interesting (and deadly).
-Will be possible to have units with pets? Be it just one pet or a group of pets.
-Will art be given to support mods? Like models for medalions and the like. So we can add new icons that fit the already stablished style.
-Will Elemental include many extra options not used in the campaign like monsters, armors, buildings...?
From the previous one come:
-Will I get weapons and armors of ancient design (ancient Greece, more preciselly)? And some matching buildings? Repeat those two questions but for Chinese/Japanese/Vietnamese/... style? Is leather as resource and leather type armors in the game anyways?
-Will we get dwarves, elves and orcs?
-Altough I'm not fan of bear cavalry, I had an idea for a unit and... hey, I need it so... bear cavalry in or planned to? It also depends on the presence of female dwarves with not so many clothes.
For the first two, I think that the answer is a resounding "no". Orcs might appear in some dungeons, but they would probably be more like trolls than Tolkein orcs.
Do you consider a "unit" to be a single entity or a sqad? Just wondering...... and don't worry, Winter. With the vast number of modders out there, you'll get your playthings soon enough......
Well, my first guess would be "no". Generally, militaries have rules against that, and a pregnant soldier usually becomes a dead soldier very, very quickly. Also, in the games I am used to playing, population is measured in thousands, millions, and billions: individual births don't count for much, although in the screens we've seen the population is much smaller, on the scale of 10s to hundreds.
Will there be Corflu Cultists?, Cronks? Killer Penguins from the North? Vortexes (random or controlled tornados)? Different Dragons ie Red, Black, Green, White, Blue, Gold, Silver, Brass, Copper? How bout unique items like The Rex Rotary? The Black Hand of Death? How about portals from one side of the map to the other built into specific ground locations or able to be built by races with the technology? Spiders and Spider Queens? Rok Riders? Stone an Elemental Golems? Zepplins and/or Hot Air Balloons? The ability to name ALL our Heroes? How about an indepth magic system that provides power from the Sun(s) There could be two or three suns and each sun would give out more power or less depending on the planets revolution around them? Summon Demons? Control Demon Spells that can fail? Thus, if you summon a demon your next spell you must try to control it if you fail then it has a chance to join your enemy or become indepenent with the ability to summon more demons on its own? Actual live elements in the game like rivers that can be flooded with spells and frozen as well? Storms and rains or barren terrain with spells? Music by REO Speedwagon? Electric Light Orchestra? and Enigma?
"Turn to Stone" fits the elemental theme.
Sure if by pregnant you mean too wide to fit through doors. But there are some situations where drafting women as well as men makes sense. The simplest example is when you have no choice.
You took the first one out of contest. I was refering as getting them as out of campaign content. Even if they are just humans whose shape can be molded and some props added to get results that look like them.
About the second one, I meant squad. And I would prefer not to depend on other modders too much, so the more Stardock can provide the better. (and what I ask is more or less broad enough)
And about the population growth, when your population is really big, maybe it doesn't have an impact. But when you can count your population with your fingers (exaggerating a bit here), it may count. In any case, I want to play with the population growth mechanics of the game to achieve different effects in the different civilizations I would be interested to create. The same as I would be very interested in alternate mechanics for population growth like kidnapping population from other cities/towns after succesfull attacks/raids, or cloning rituals/techniques/spells... If I'm to create an amazon civilization for example, those kind of details matters a lot. Or I won't bother making it.
It would be like the extra planes thing. I can design a mod that doesn't need extra planes. Yet being able to have one or more (3 extra more would be nice considering that I would be making non-random maps for it) would radically change my civilization setup (and all the story/background behind it).
And as it's a thread to ask questions for the next FAQ (like in someday somehow), I wouldn't mind some answers about Stardock plans about those topics (be it for release or post release).
-Will the game come with discarded art? Yes, I'm pointing to the discarded medallions or whatever falls during the process of creating the game. Discarded doesn't mean ugly or useless.
By "pregnant" I mean "going to have a baby in ≈8 months. Drafting women makes some degree of sense, but if they do egt pregnant (which is sort of a must for increasing population) and are anywhere near active combat or on a long march, they are going to have to be left behind or get killed by the enemy @ some point,along with the unborn baby.
Why would any general allow his soldier women get pregnant while on duty? (duty as let's say they serve for some years and then they go to the reserve if the squad is disbanded)
Because he or she lacked a means of suppressing fertility among the troops? Surely you're not suggesting that any officer corps has had serious success in regulating the sexual behavior of their troops?
Without medical or magical means of birth control (and their consistent, correct use), any sufficient mass of soldiers will generate pregnancies, and if some soldiers are female, some pregnancies will be 'in uniform.'
True, but if they did get pregnant, they would die in short order. I, personally have never been pregnant (I'm 15 and male), but the woman down the street had a baby recently, and belive me: there is no way that someone in that condition could fight or travel long distances. And, of course, if the woman dies, then so does the baby (remember, we're talking about a world before emergency c-sections here).
The number of cases should be minimal to be considered into population growth or combat effectiveness. I don't negate the truth (past, present and future) but if we can accept the weird use of time vs turn in the game, surely this won't (wouldn't) be noticed so much. And altough someone said one in this forum that he would like to control what his troops eat for breakfast, I don't think that many would be interested in factors like the period. (ok, an uber micro fan maybe but...)
The really neat thing about history is that even though it's all already happened, there's always more to learn. I knew you were not quite right here, but I had no idea that the first recorded maternal survival of a c-section was in freakin' 1500.
Also, while I agree that generally speaking, pregnant women are not going to make good soldiers, you really need to rein in your affection for absolute statements. Each pregnancy is unique, and the delicacy of the embryo/fetus and the mother vary over the full term. A very fit and well-trained woman in her second trimester could probably kick most teenage boys' asses in unarmed combat.
I have a tendancy to use general statements like that out of convenience: it gets annoying having to type "largely", "almost", "usually", etc. all the time, and I am assuming that other people on the forum understand that generalizations are usually false. When speaking to someone who I doubt understands that concept (like trolls), I become much more specific.
Its amazing what crazy directions these conversations wind up going.
INdeed, next scoutdog will tell us he sees a variable like the effectiveness of pregnant women in combat...
Umm....please don't flame me for my "noobishness", but I have to ask.....
I have never played a game like this... (ie. RPG/Fantasy etc.) so I don't really have any idea what to expect.
You could ask, why would I even consider this game? Well it's a STARDOCK product and my experiences with them speak for themselves.
I guess I would just like to know wether I'll be "eased into the game" by tutorials or whether I'm fated to staying a fantasy/rpg nub because I haven't got the lore background down etc. etc.
For example: I thought (since I had tons of RTS experience) that not ever having played DOTA wouldn't be a problem for me with DEMIGOD, but that has turned out to be false. I only play on LAN now, and avoid the toxic online of DEMIGOD completely. I would just like to know if the same sort of thing is going to happen to me here....
the Monk
Well not having played prg games is not going to be that much of an isue I think. I mean, yu played demigod so you know something about leveling and such - even though from a purist point of view one could argue that leveling is not needed for any RPG and it is not even what makes an RPG an RPG.
The turn based minimap and such is going to be simple and straight forward enough I think. You will se what you can do and how to accomplish that soon enough. In my experience the documentation of these games is decent, and with in game tooltips and such the mechanics behind it all will be clear soon enough.
If all else fails it really helps to read these boards and to ask any questions that you may have. Only if you sink your teeth into the material will you get better.
Well, speaking as a guy who hadn't even heard of TBS for 14 years, then started playing GC2 only last summer, I can assure you that you won't have ANY trouble integrating.
Actually, my point is that after maybe the second trimester you would essentially be useless in combat (depends on the woman's condition and the size of the baby, but that's generally the way it works). Remember, she wouldn't be fighting forum nerds here: she'd be set against an opponent or opponents just as strong as she normally is, and just as mobile, except that she'd be much slower and have lower energy levels. Granted, in a few odd cases mother, chile, or both miiiight survive, but the vast majority of pregnancies would end in mutual death. Considering all of the probelms posed, I think that magical sterilization of all troops is the only game-viable outcome. Besides, I don't want to have to explain an M rating to my parents.
I lolled at the parents censoring your gaming habits. for making me laugh.
My point was that there is no need whatsoever to discuss how useful pregnant women are in combat. I was also referring to the 'hardness of the boots' variable you mentioned... Even if your armies had a few women in the, I highly dout that SD would even think about what to do with them if they got pregnant. There is no need to go there, so they won't. Drafting women? Why? Is there a lack of digitally duplicated men?
Problem solved.
Uhhhhh...... you do realise that I'm 15 and live with my parents, right? But seriously, they're hippies, and I'm not entirely sure how they'd react..... they've been bugging me to start dating random girls I go to school with for approximately two years now.
Generally speaking, turn based games have better communities because of the type of people who play them. This style of game isn't for ADD addled folks who want every game to be over and 5 minutes and can't remember what it was like when they were new.
I'd expect some tutorials in the release version, but probably not in beta (and certainly not in alpha). You can also play single player on varying difficulty levels, so start on easy until you get the hang of it.
I certainly don't think you'll need a lore background. Turn based games give you lots of time to look things over and make decisions, so its easier to ease into one.
The real point here is that people are debating something that is completely out to lunch.
The best solution to the problem is not to try to come up with magical troop sterilization. It's to not model pregnancy in the game. We're not really gaining anything by modelling it in terms of gameplay. We are gaining extra code complexity, bugs, information for players to deal with, processor requirements, etc.
Something this forum seems to have an issue with is that often times with software, the solution to complexity is not adding more complexity. It's just to remove the thing causing the problem, especially when that thing doesn't really add anything to the game in the first place.
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