I noticed that I was not doing as much damage with my magic as I was supposed to, so I did a quick test. It's pretty simple, I attacked a group of 3 spiders (each had 0 defense) using the fire spell Infernal. I did this both before and after constructing on a fire shard, and I did it several times (more than 10 damage rolls) to get decent statistics. My sovereign had 15 intelligence. The results were:
Without shard: Average damage = 8.6
With one fire shard: Average damage = 7.6
Both results are what you'd expect without a shard. I've also done this for lightning bolt with an air shard, same result.
So has anyone been actually seen shards improve damage like they are supposed to, or are they completely non-working at the moment?
To Hit: Attacker Int vs. Defender Wis
I think Dex (mentioned earlier) makes better sense, because of the essence mechanic. (and because Magic v. Def just makes my teeth hurt)
If the attack kills the squad member, the next squad-member rolls to defend as well, and receives the remaining damage (modified by his defense roll). For example:
I like your idea of combat mechanics up to here. I think on a single attack roll, it doesn't make sense to carry that damage on to the next soldier in a unit. Jimmy has 5 hp left, but his friend Jack has 10. Slavering beastie chomps on Jimmy for 15 damage, but it doesn't follow that the bite is so powerful it kills poor Jack, watching nearby. Jimmy is just pulp.
a lot of great brainstorming in here, nice thread. I'd add support for:
Break up multi-soldier defense in the same way attacks work now - multiple individual defense/attack rolls, with perhaps a small bonus based on the total number of soldiers in the squad.
Magic v. Def is just not okay. Magic v. Essence seems tricky, because of the currency-like essence system. Magic v. Dex seems like the best approach without the addition of a set if resistance stats. Elemental resistance stats! Elemental! Says it right there at the top of the screen.
Obviously in-game references/documentation needs to be worked out too (no clarity on per-soldier atk mechanic, what the eff is wisdom, etc), but I'm frankly more worried about the system getting some sophistication (units don't get decreased atk/def for losing members, no elemental resists - Look a fire giant! Hit it with a flame dart!).
Thanks, KS
Whirlwind wins my favorite dev of the week award. Thanks for getting your hands dirty in a thread like this.
Personally, I don't think magic should be rolled vs. physical defense, at least not in all cases. Does a spell like "Mind Blast" really care if a guy is running around in plate or leather? You can freeze a guy in plate mail as well as you can in chain (or naked).
I really think the game needs either a generic "Magic Resist" stat, or my personal preference, a resistance to damage types: Physical, Fire, Ice, Lightning, etc. Earth spells could often roll against Physical, as plate will help versus a rock being thrown at you, but I don't think my Fire Elemental should be too concerned with a fireball being thrown at him.
Defense should definitely not be multiplied for stacks. It doesn't make much sense that the ten guys in back should make it harder to damage the soldier in front (unless they're a phalanx, I guess), and the current system just leads to huge miss-fests and totally random luck, as opposed to shorter and more brutal conflicts that value timing and positioning more. Also: the Lord Hammer is the one and only piece of weaponry I have ever seen whose attack value exceeds the defense value of a full suit of high-end armor, which is awful. Bows and swords become utterly useless once the opponent has magical armor researched because their odds of dealing damage above the single-digits ever becomes miniscule. Having defense not be multiplied would be a very easy and very significant first step in making combat more dynamic and reasonable. I think other issues (like the weakness of offensive magic and champions) will become a lot easier to fix the further you go towards looking at stacks as groups of individuals rather than massive, unified blobs of stats.
I dont know how true that is, in a recent fight (vr 1.0516) my sov was hit for 30 damage by a squad that listed its att as 37, started out as a squad of 4 but when they attacked it was only 1(i had killed the other 3 before he got within attacking range). and this was against a sov in the legendary magical armor set.
In an ideal world a party (3) of Swordsmen would would have the same stats as a swordsman with the following changes. Each level of grouping would add 1 to the Attack and Defense of each figure in the unit and reduce the upkeep of that figure by 10%.
So if you had a Swordsman with an Attack of 6, a Defense of 4, and an upkeep of 1 gold a Party of 3 Swordsmen would have an Attack of 7 (with 3 attacks on the target), a Defense of 5 (If you do enough damage to kill one you hit the Defense of the next figure), and an upkeep of 2.7 gold.
AoE attacks would effect all members of the unit.
Sammual
Yeah, my Familiar (attack 6) did 10 damage once. Strange.
I think you're over complicating. As long as defense doesn't stack it's alright to have count against magic too, because we wouldn't have insane def. I agree it isn't logical though, dex is a better choice if you want to be realistic.
And again, the 10% bonus per squad member is making it harder than it has to be. A group with four units using broadswords already attack with 4d10. Which is perfectly logical. However, the defender only rolls one def roll against the combined attack value (I think???), and that's where it goes haywire. The defender should roll against every attack. If that's done, defense will NOT be underpowered, it will work like a charm.
And again, I agree with previous posters that this should be reflected on unit cards. The squad should have 4x10 attack, or perhaps 10(4) as was another suggestion.
Please tell me this makes sense, because I really think it does???
If I'm wrong and units get a seperate roll for each one of the attacks made by the squad, then this problem is even easier to solve. Remove the stacking of defense and get the attack value to display properly (4x10) and voilá, problem solved. Next please!
If a spell is cast on them it seems to damage the aggregate HP total not individual totals. As it was pointed out a 4 man 4x10 unit = 40 hp . Thus a 10 damage makes it "lose" a man and go to being a 3 man 30/40 unit. This occurs even if it is being attacked by another multi-man unit. Thus despite what the devs say it is NOT 4 individual units but rather 1 "superunit". This explains the def stacking and the way healing works. In theory ALL of the "men" in the unit should take and deal damage seperately but that is not happening.. The problem is that it is a shared mana/HP pool.
FR
MoM used a shared pool too, it tends to work better when you have 10 hitpoints removing one member of a unit, rather than the possibility of every man in the unit taking 2 damage each.
We found the issue with shards not calculating damage properly and it's being addressed. As to the question about damage * number of shards being just damage * 1 with 1 shard the stat actually equates to something like (number of shards + 1) under the hood. Of course LTW could be changing this as we speak, he's working his butt off to make the magic system more logical and fun. I think this makes sense (even if the name is misleading) because every shard basically increases the damage by 100%, with the spell still doing 100% damage even if you have no shards.
As for the uber stack defense, under the hood the calculation should only be using the base unit's defense, not the defense * number of units. If this isn't the case then it's a bug, and we're definitely going to look into it. Stacks should be a convenient way to have multiple units without having to manage a million things at once, not a wall of unstoppable schmucks.
As for the misses it does seem a bit odd to miss so much. Part of that will be solved by having spells do a minimum amount of damage as long as the spell should hit, and I think we can make it make more sense by saying something like "Resisted" instead of "Miss", even if the difference is only semantical.
Finally as for the max HP/Attack/Defense of a stack going down as stack members die it shouldn't make too much difference. The idea is that we display (number of units * defense/attack) but underneath we use the defense or attack stat of an individual unit to calculate the hits. This means that if I try to hit your stack of 20 with my stack of 20 I'm doing 20 attack rolls (to represent each living member of my stack) against the defense of any single unit in your stack. Displaying these stats as premultiplied by the number of units was likely just a bad decision. As for Max HP it actually makes sense to premultiply this number, as you can heal a stack back up to full health and you should get missing stack units back.
Good to hear on the magic part.
On the combat part i guess you need to take a long look at the code, because it doesnt behave as you say. But there are a great many posts about that over the forum, so i guess you know that.
I always giggle like a girl when my familiar (Attack 6) deals 10+ damage to its target. Shouldnt max damage be 6?!
Familiars can hit for more than their listed max damage on a counterattack. It's a feature listed under their abilities, not a bug.
I agree HP makes sense being displayed the way it is. I think it would be more clear to show Attack and Defense as a per unit value instead of displaying it as Attack/Defense*max units. This makes sense in the context of how it works under the hood. I think this is how MoM displayed it.
Sure, but sometimes they also hit for triple damage when attacking (not counter attacking).
Sorry for not being clear on that.
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