Starting next Monday, we begin work internally on the Elemental combat system. It won’t see the light of day for months (tactical combat part anyway). But this is the place to discuss how you would like it to work.
Right now, a unit has Attack, Defense, Hitpoints, and speed. It’s very straight forward. When in battle, other factors come into play too (range of attack, height, and cover).
But obviously there are a lot of other factors that could be looked at. Blunt weapons vs. Cutting weapons for instance. My personal inclination is to stay away from damage types because they add a lot of complexity without really giving back a lot of fun (in my opinion). I’m sure there are those who will disagree but we’ll have to agree to disagree there and perhaps damage types can be made something available to modders later.
I would like to see experience be used more than as simply a modifier to attack and defense and HP. I don’t mean when you train your units (which gives them more HP) but I mean real combat experience causing them to simply be better at combat but we have not yet come up with a way to convey this well in the game.
I would also like to see Mobility be taken into effect somehow in combat. The Mongols conquered much of the known world because they were strictly a mobile army that could easily outflank their infantry-heavy opponents. How to convey this to players is again, a challenge that would have to be dealt with.
What would you guys like to see?
Damage Types... Plz plz plz plz plz plz plz!!!!
Honestly I think this game would benifit from damage types like in Battle For Wesnoth. I love that game and the way they have tactical combat modeled is amazingly fun. Not really appropriate to the scale of this game but still some really good ideas there.
Reading some of these posts, it looks like many of you basically want each individual unit to have as many or more stats than are typically found in actual RPGs... I want to be able to look at the infocard of a unit and be able to gauge its potential right from there (with the exception of special abilities and such, I suppose). If said infocard is packed with dozens of numbers and %s and god-knows-what, it will be a little overwhelming. If units were going to be pre-built, it wouldn't be so bad - you'd learn the units over time and relatively quickly get used to it all. But with fully customizable units, I think having half a dozen physical damage types, as many magical ones, corresponding resistances plus a whole slew of other things... It just seems like overkill. Most of it would probably just be averaged out as a result of large numbers, too.
I personally think the ideal would be something like 1 type of physical damage (and resistance/mitigation), as many magical resistances/damage types as there are types of magic (and possibly subdivided even further, but not really necessary), attack, defense, HP and maybe damage; then throw in the miscellaneous things like morale, speed, and maybe endurance/stamina.
Everything else should be done with traits and abilities; weapons and other equipment/training can provide traits to differentiate them further without resulting in a giant spreadsheet for every single unit.
Also, one thing I definitely do not want to see in Elemental is Holy/Unholy. It has no context in Elemental, and as such should not appear. Life/Death should be as close to Holy/Unholy as we get, but I'm hoping even that isn't so clear-cut.
A lot of the discussion already posted is very good. Some, or most, of what I will say has already been mentioned.
1. I believe tht the richness of different types of magical attacks should be included. It would add greatly to my enjoyment of the game. This would allow unit specialization and uniquness of units from cities, regions and empires based on the magic and production facilities in the city, the environment in a region (swamp, tundra...) and the Soveriegn of the Empire.
For example: If I am raising units in a city with a type of magic node, then those units would have some of that type of magic. When they fought units of the opposite type they would have greater damage, and perhaps take greater damage as well.
2. I believe that different typs of physical weapon effects can be modled with a single physical defense stat that is modified by type of armor. For example, ring mail could give less defense to a piercing weapon (epee or arrow) than it would to a cutting weapon (cutlass, sabre).
3. Experience gained in battle is very important. Training is insufficient to gain more than the lowest levels of experience. Experienced units ought to have better morale, damage potential and abilities. These abilities could be both offensive (types of attack) and defensive (new formations, such as forming a square against cavalry).
4. Technology advancement could open up both new types of items (epee instead of broadsword, platemail rather than leather) and improvements in tactics (longbowmen learning to place sharpened stakes in front of their positions to stop cavalry charges).
5. Unit morale should be an important factor. It can be improved by experience, good leadership, Soveriegn traits, perhaps by magic, by success in the current battle, fatigue and other similar factors. It can be decreased if nearby units route, if leaders route or die, thru fatigue and most certainly by flank or rear attacks. Also, summoned creatures, undead, being outnumbered vastly and also enemy magic might influence morele. Units ought to be able to break and fell, perhaps rally and return, etc. Various games model this behavior different ways.
6. Terrain ought to be important to tactical battles, as has already been hinted at. High ground, defending behind a stream or swamp, hidden in woods or behind hills should all be relevant. Magic attributes would also be relevant, water blessed units defending in a swamp are better, fire units attacking across a river do so at a disadvantage.
7. Battlefield movement is important. Early in the thread the example of Mongol cavalry mobility was mentioned. One of the 'special' abilities of experienced cavalry could be not only additional movement but the ability to move, fire, and move again. Units ought to have directional facing, if attacked from the side or rear they ought to suffer disorganization and morale loss. If attacked from multiple directions at once it ought to be more severe. It ought to take time to change direction, though more experienced units ought to do it faster and leaders could incluence this.
8. Battle awards/medals. If units can be renamed, the player could add self-defined rewards to the name by adding * of ^ etc. However, I think it would be a neat feature to have different medals ingame that the player could give units, either through specific presentation to the unit or through user defined criteria. For example, if a small army wins against a superior foe you could give a 'Kings Medal of Valor' to a unit. And/or, each time one of your units has fought in five battles it might automatically be given a 'Chevron of Experience' on the sleeve of their uniform. These may not actually change unit traits but would add to immersion as the player becomes incrasingly fond of favorite units.
Summary: Whether optional or required, the ability to have tactically complex battles is probably a strong draw for a great many potential customers.
Thanks for letting us give so much imput!
It's one thing to let us Give Input. It's another thing totally to Actually Use that input. Any Game Developer can say "We're using Your Input to make the best game possible. Your Input counts so lets make the best game we can". Whether or not they use our input is up to them entirely. We can all go nuts writing long winded posts with great ideas for game design and balance and everything else but in the end they might throw all that out the window and go with whatever simplified system they already worked out which totally defeats the purpose of our Input. I've seen game companies do that in the past and get away with it every step of the way. All we can do is only hope and pray that Stardock isn't that kind of company.
I think at this point you really really need to sit down and play some board games. Computers are very good at doing lots of computation and book keeping, however i find playing board games, is a good way to test out simple rules and get a feal of turn based combat.
I suggest you guys take a look at Battlelore/Comand and Colors: Ancients. (Refining boardgame mechanics can be done quickly and visually, very easilly).
Before damage types you have to ask yourself about fundamental mechanics.
1) Turn Mechanics:
>Is this Igo yougo? With full turns with the ability to move all units
>Are the turns threaded (Final Fantasy Tactics, Final Fantasy X) where faster units get more turns?
2) Move - shoot; shoot -move; move-shoot-move
3) Targetting? Can you attack every adjacent unit or are the limitations? C&C:Acients has limitations like heavy infantry can not attack cavalry (they battle back and return fire, but not attack on their turn).
Think about #2 and #3 when thinking about why horse archers were such a strong force. Where mobility prevents counter attacks and ease of withdrawl. However horsemen tend to suck at siege battles
How you would like Tactical Combat (TC) to work
- Make TC easy to understand, hard to master- All TC should be finished in 12 turns, keep it somewhat short - Keep the total number of stats minimal; I suggest only ATT, DEF, HP, DAM, SPEED, MOVE, Weapon Reach, Cover%, Luck%, (and maybe Morale)- Allow dozens of effects that modify the stats mentioned above, e.g. exhausted, poisoned, paralyzed, etc- Allow only 1 type of physical damage; Blunt/Cutting weapons damage vs different armor type is very boring & complicated to represent- Allow a handful of mental, magical damage/resistance types- Discourage Kiting in TC and strategic mapHow to design units making a huge difference in Tactical Combat- High SPEED units can ignore/bypass opponent Zone of Control (ZOC), i.e. the Mongols- Stationary opponent ZOC can be bypassed, if their total HP is much less compared to your stack- Flanking mechanism; normal humanoid units are vulnerable at its back - Determine which party gets to strike first by adding SPEED, Weapon Reach and Height Difference together. For example:A fast Calvary (SPEED =5) carrying a sword (Weapon Reach =2) will be able hit infantry (SPEED=2) carrying a spear (Weapon Reach=4) first; only those surviving infantry will then response with a retaliation strike.However, if the same infantry is standing on higher ground, enjoying a Height Advantage of 3, the infantry will instead get the first strike, because 2+4+3 > 5+2- And it does not mean Spear is always better than Sword, because sword is allowed to strike twice in a combat turn, potentially dealing more maximum damage. - Weapons like Spear, lance etc will have a chance to dismount opponent, which drastically reduce opponent SPEED immediately- Flying units usually strike first, because they have natural Height AdvantageHow unit size affect tactical formation in TC
- Each TC tile can only hold a predefined number of troops, depending on the size of the individual troop. For example, a tile can only hold 2 Gigantic sized Dragon, or 1000 Medium sized Infantry, or 400 Large sized Cavalry.- When your stack has 2000 infantry units, the game automatically split it into 2 at the TC deployment stage. This provides variety because each occupied tile has its own ZOC, representing additional choke point that your opponent cannot easily bypass
(Refer to Reply #42, for some of the concepts mentioned above)
Age of Wonders was like that. You had 5 stats: Attack (chance to hit), Damage, Defense (chance to avoid being hit), Resistence (same for magical attacks), and speed.
Everything else was abilities. Have a unit with a flaming sword? They've got an ability "Fire Damage" that changes their damage type. It's not a new stat. You could also enchant units, so you could have Knights doing physical *and* magic damage, in which case whichever one would be more effective gets used.
It really got play with units having weaknesses, or world enchantments like Damnation that gave every enemy unit in your territory "Death Weakness". Units with "Death Strike" (ie: dealing elemental Death damage) would deal bonus damage in that case.
None of that requires a convoluted set of stats, but it changes the nature of combat substantially.
This is close to that I've wanted to say about this process. I would stress that the "simplified system" may or may not be the one they've already worked out; these discussions could provoke enough thought in the dev group that the simplified model is actually quite different than would have happened without the discussion. But it's very likely that they will still go with a fairly simple system for a wide variety of good reasons.
If y'all want to write longwinded treatises on the details of formations, terrain, weather, damage types, zone of control, unit deployment density, experience, training, medals, etc, etc... well, have fun. And to some degree it will impact the developers' thought processes. But they're not going to add whole new massively complex concepts unless they're really, really good. Chances are the resulting system will greatly resemble the original plan that was drawn up and hashed out before we ever caught wind of it.
But don't be discouraged by that, it's just the devs following good project and design principles. Think for a moment about the impact of significant complexity on design time, logic coding time, UI coding time, AI coding time, user comprehension, unintended consequences, etc... But they do listen to us, and will actually use some ideas and at least be influenced by others, so there is a point.
Oh yea. Some people use language primarily to communicate what they believe to be the truth. Others use language primarily to produce the desired changes in the reality around them, and the true/false value of the statements is irrelevant. In sales and marketing (and many companies view *every* communication with potential customers as a sales/marketing situation), the latter is far and away the common case.
They're not perfect, but they're not evil. Well, depends on your definition, I guess. But this whole "we want your input" isn't just a big ruse. That said, the use they make of your/our input on a given issue may be "that's interesting, but the original plan is better for the product overall".
If you really want to have a tremendous impact on a game design and try out your ideas, start a hobby game project, it's a lot of fun, and there's tons of tools out there that make it astronomically easier than, say, 5 years ago.
Damage types I'd give a miss to over all. In any game I've played they either seem to be trivial, or annoying. What I mean is they are either something that makes little difference, and thus you can just ignore and use what you like, or they are a pain in the butt, but make no real difference in gameplay over all.
As for experience in additon to being better at attack/defense I think there are a few things you could consider:
1) Better odds of survival if defeated. Part of a vetran unit would be knowing when to cut its losses, and being able to disengage in an orderly fashion. So as units get more experienced, they get better at backing off. This also helps counter the normal problem of elite units getting parked in a city and never used, since people are too worried about losing them.
2) Morale boost for other units around them. I don't know how you'd want to impliment this, maybe just boosting the combat ability of all units in the same stack. Regardless, having elite troops in their mix helps inspire the others.
3) Unlocking new abilities. For example a hit and fade ability. So normal troops are only able to attack the other side in a standard fashion. However elite units figure out how to execute sneak attacks of sorts. They can attack an enemy quickly, cause damage, and then disengage before taking any real fire. So when troops reach a certian status they unlock a new ability that allows them to do a non-lethal attack against an enemy, but one that causes them to take little (or maybe no) damage.
I agree with this. In addition, lots and lots of stats make it more likely (especially with customized units), that some sort of overpowered min-max strategy (or strategies) are lurking in potential unit designs. Certainly, from playing other games, I've noticed that games with simpler to understand mechanics often end up more fun and better balanced.
As for what I'd like to see in combat:
-Morale: Lots of people have argued for morale before, but it still seems like a useful stat to have. It's a mechanic that seems simple to understand, or could be designed ot be easily explained, at least. (The dominions system of "units run away at low morale" seems worthwhile, though the way morale is increased and decreased by combat might get complex)
-Spears/Shields/Special weapon types: These also seem that they could be desined pretty simply. (spears, for example, could attack from farther away, possibly attacking enemies as they approach, Shields can prevent hits)
-Units Facing different Directions: This mechanic seems like a simple way to build formations (As in, rather than say "form a shield wall", you just tell shield using units ot face the same direction in a line, and you automatically get an effect of a wall.) This would also be pretty simple to understand (although in real time might be hard to implement)
-Damage types: Physical and magic seem like they should be separate types. I don't personally care either way whether magic is diffrentiated, if it isn't, different types of magic seem that they would be diffrentiated by their non-damage effects, or ability at AoE vs. single target vs. over time, etc. Physical should not be diffrentiated.
-Special abilities: These seems workable in the age of wonders style.
-Mobility: I don't see mobility as needing anything more that movement points, as in many games, the effects of the movement points themselves are enough to give fast units advantages.
-In general, though, I'd like to see mechanics that are simple to understand, but still can be built up into interesting gameplay.
When i played GURPS I really liked their damage system. It's similar to wesnoth. And you don't have half a dozen physical damage types you have three: Crushing, Cutting, and Piercing. Furthermore since most units will be basic humanoid units the resistances will be fairly easy to learn. All you really need to know is what type of armor your opponent is wearing. Flexible armor will protect against piercing and cutting normally while providing little or no protection against crushing. Rigid armor will protect against all damage types equally. However crushing type weapons will generally do more damage per hit while being slower. Cutting weapon get a multiplier to damage in flesh and piercing damage gets an even bigger multiplier however this multiplier is only applied after damage reduction due to armor.
Also ,for another point on the complex combat systems, keep in mind that there's still an economic system to figure out (which may or may not be quite complex), the family tree system (That could have different levels of complexity, and certainly is something a bit unusual for a 4X game), various quests and such, anything else we do with the pretender, and other mechanics I'm probably forgetting, and that all these systems influence each other, and the game could easily get quite daunting to figure out.
(I'm sure other people do remember these systems, but it's probably useful ot keep the implications in mind when coming up with ideas for individual parts.)
Indeed I know that to be true for a fact. 6-7 years ago I was employed by Origin Systems. Maybe a little longer ago then that actually. I started as a Volunteer GM on a OSI Shard (Great Lakes Shard). From there I got hired on as a Seer. After Origin went out of business I went to a shard called TFL (The Forgotten Lands). When I was officially employed though I was personally responsible for the creation and implementation of numerous in game items and skills that I personally wrote the scripts for. This is even reflected at the top of the script in a addendum that says "This Script written and tested by GM Thanatos". I was the first to my knowledge to bring a "Faiths and Avatars" system into a video game world.
In order for me to get into the position where I was allowed to show scripts to the actual Dev Team it took about 3 years of being a volunteer and I had to teach myself how to script in UO code. It was not an easy process for a total newb who knew nothing of coding. Just in order for me to be able to pass a item script along I had to script it and test it myself on a private server and then make sure it could not be abused in any way shape or form. Then after that I was allowed to forward it to our department head for inclusion on the official test servers.
Honestly I believe even though many of us on these forums have Great Ideas to truly improve the game, the only way we'd get those included into Elemental from inception is to have a line of communication directly into Brad Wardell's ear, which sadly none of us have.
I’ve been gone for a while but I have to admit this update worries me. So does this mean there won’t be any distinction between physical damage and magical damage? If yes I believe that is an utterly horrid idea that should be killed immediately. I could understand having simplified damage types but to have only a single damage type seems completely uninspired. I feel at the very least two types of damage physical and magical would be needed.
I would propose a few new stats and changes.
* = new stat category
Attack
Speed
Defense
Health
Magic Resistance*
Evasion*
Willpower*
I would break damage into two broad groups physical and magical. Every attack would be comprised of one or possibly both of these types. A unit could reduce physical damage with defense or evade it completely with evasion. Evasion would also apply to magic spells. Magic Resistance would reduce magical damage and Willpower would determine the strength of offensive spells. The system would still be very simple and straight forward but with a huge increase in depth. Personally I would still like a deeper damage system then just physical and magical.
I think this may be another case where we have misunderstood what Brad meant. I could be wrong, but I believe he was only talking about physical damage types not being categorized into slashing, piercing, crushing, etc. I honestly will be very surprised if we don't have elemental type damage from spells, item effects, etc.
Personally, I won't miss the physical damage variations, but I think it is important to have the magical effects and other types of damage "flavors".
I'm anxious to try the combat out, but for now, I expect we'll see some sort of clarification statement from FrogBoy soon. I have a feeling we're all worked up over nothing.
Here are a few of my random thoughts on the topics you brought up.
Damage Types: Definitely need some sort of magic resist type of stat at the very minimum. Distinguishing different element types would be a better route in my opinion though. As for different physical resistance/damage that may be a bit much for the basic game. I personally would like to see this but it's probably best to leave this for the modders especially since you don't like the idea much. I really do hope that different weapons though have some effects other than just +attack. I want to see spears/pikes give bonuses against cavalry for instance but maybe not be as effective in the woods or inhibit movement. Maybe flails would mitigate the effectiveness of shield. Stuff like that.
Experience: I liked the idea of morale that was mentioned earlier. One of the main benefits of experience would be increasing this or slowing negative morale effects. Beyond that I can't think of what else would be effected at the moment other than your base stats.
Mobility: Not sure exactly how to handle this but I agree it should matter more than you typically see in games like Mom. Faster units for once should be harder to hit with arrows assuming they are moving. Being attacked by a fast unit such as cavalry I would imagine would be a scary thing. If you add morale than fast units could effect morale more. Also I hope you add some mechanisms for flanking and rear attacks. I think that is the major advantage that fast units have. They can attack you where you do not want to be attacked or do not expect to be attacked. Depending on how complicated you get you could perhaps keep track of the direction a unit is facing. If that is too much that you could assume the unit would always turn towards the first attacker. Attacks after would be based off this facing so you could line up attacks in the flanks and rear.
Question: In the tactical combat screen, are the players going to have to take separate turns for combat? Or will speed reflect when a unit can be moved, thus intertwining turns with both parties.
I definitely do not want something like galactic civilization damages types (no blunt, slashing and piercing technology trees and defensive equivalent)
I would like simple physical damage split in melee and ranged and magical damage split by mana type.
-melee damage
-ranged damage
-life damage
-death damage
-fire damage
-water damage
-air damage
-earth damage
That gives us enough damage types to play and work with.
I would be nice if every creature had a “type” (living, undead, fire, water, air, earth) and many interactions are possible between damage and creature types, spells and equipment.
As for mongol like units/strategies I’m ok with them, as long as it doesn’t end up overpowered. It should be viable to win the game military without ever building a single mounted unit.
As for experience, simply making the unit better (more attack, defense, morale, etc) instead of having to manually pick promotions is good for keeping micromanagement low.
It's quite possible to implement things like fire / magic / lightning damage etc without actually having separate damage stats for them all. This has been mentioned in a few variations above, and is similar to the way Warmachine and Magic the Gathering work, but I'll just outline my take on it here:
- Typically a unit has one stat for damage, so when they attack this number is used. Doesn't matter how you're hurt, it still hurts.
- They may also have various abilities / skills (flying, first strike etc). Some of these abilities will be, say, "Fire Damage" or "Magic Damage", which on there own do nothing to affect the amount of damage done.
- However other creatures may have 'abilities' such as "Immune to Fire Damage" or "Susceptible to Fire Damage", and so a unit that is susceptible to frie damage that is attacked by a unit with Fire Damage will take more damage than normal.
The nice thing about this system is that it's super easy to extend and modify, and doesn't lead to a combinatorial explosion of things to keep track of.
So we could have our cake and it too, without driving the dev team to despair.
Naw, it's not that bad. Have patience, and don't take the response to any one issue as a big disappointment. As I understand it, the whole starbases part of GC1/2 started with user ideas, as an example.
I think this is actually quite a good idea. Instead of calling them all abilities we could simply call them properties and give modders the ability to script the effect of each property.
There's a lot of nice stuff in here, I hope the devs use some of it. Still fits in the current system but adds a lot of depth without making things complicated.
I like the Age of Wonders system, where damage types were different.
This allows -
(i) Special damage types had a chance of an additional effect depending on the type. For example, Life damage might cause Vertigo (a serious stat penalty to the defender) whereas Fire damage might cause additional damage over time due to the target being set on fire.
(ii) Special damage type resistance. For example a fire elemental might be immune to Fire damage whereas a knight might have a magic shield giving some level of resistance to Death damage.
(iii) Special damage type vulnerability, for example a fire elemental might be vulnerable to a spell like (say) Geyser that doused it in water.
Ya everything stated here is what I would want. Freaking great input guys!
Please Stardock! The more the better the game will be, you can keep adding in stuff little by little and slowly keep expanding combat. Make the beta longer if ya have to, we dont care.
Agree with a lot already said. To recapitulate a few important points in my view:
keep the overall system rather simple (not loads of stats and damage types), but include "special attacks"/"combos" so that you can actually make choices and DO something in most battles also with common footsoldiers (and not only heroes and very rare units). I mean attacks that can counter certain enemy types and let you make up new tactics in each battle. E.g: a swordsman can get (through experience or spells or items) several types of slashing attacks but maybe not use them more than once a battle or every fifth round etc. Cavalry could learn especially deadly charge attacks etc. This would also make battles more unpredictable and thrilling (e.g: you have to keep your knight alive two more rounds so he can get the chance of dealing a special death-dealing blow to the unit he is fighting ... the battle can turn around at the last minute and is not only a cannon-fodder, count-down of HP thing with the highest number winning in the end.)
- I agree on damage types: different types of magical and elemental damage but not piercing-slashing-bludgeoning
- weather should be a factor (especially for archers), this is hugely important in real life. Also: climate and overall "alignment" of place should definately influence units (the Inquisition of the burning flame should be in trouble when moving up North ...)
- retaliatory attacks (automatic extra attacks not counting against initiative) could be one improvement to learn
- if fleeing is used, don't make it into an all decisive thing (there is certainly an annoyance factor in seeing your troops flee in a game where you want to see heroism or black evil). Fleeing could be countered with Leadership (and good morale). One thing I really liked in AoW was that your morale dropped if you included races/factions that don't like each other in same army
- siege battles are a must (please do like AoW)
- be careful with the archers so they don't upset the balance like in some games
- size of creature should go with attack speed (a purple worm can deal horrendous damage but would be difficult to move in battle and attack last)
- when leveling up: possibility to choose between a few improvements so you can specialise like YOU want
- one special ability could be to lock an enemy into melee (he can't attack someone else before winning or breaking free), which could be decisive if used in a smart way against powerful opponents.
Most imortant of all: it should be fun to play, not necessarily realistic.
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