A lot of games use 1DN rolls, they are quick, easy to implement, and WRONG.Anybody played . . . any tabletop game, or sit down D&D ever, how many dice did you bring to the table . . . I'm going to guess more then 1. (like a small bag of them). Just one action on a tabletop game will take upwards of 5 dice easy. Why? Because multiple dice = somewhat predictable behavior.
You're standard 1DN takes 2 operations, + Random # generation or lookup. The generation of Gaussian Random numbers adds an extra 5 or 10 operations, more if you use a low efficiency algorithm, and then takes get this 2 operations. If you do your RNG in advance or during slow cycles with not much on the CPU. it's the same!!!So you've got a epic dude of Epic-ness kickass sword, expert training, Years experience. This guy is made of win.
This guy encounters a spider in the woods. Attacks, Rolls for 0 - 85 attack. gets a 3. doesn't kill the spider. Wait, What??
I understand there maybe should be some chance to miss. but then just say miss, don't embarrass . . . everybody . . . with a hit of 3.
If your TOP hit is 85. you aught be doing 60 - 65, reliably.
that's 20 + 17D5. which is a lot of operations, or Gaussian(62.5, 5) which is 2, and a Gaussian look-up.
Same goes for Armour, You're amour that gives 8 protection should almost never roll 0, unless the attacker has some special for a chance to ignore Armour.
1DN should be used exclusively when it is logically defensible that all possible outcomes aught be equally probable . . . which is in thermodynamics, or nearly never.
If anybody thinks 1DN rolls are a good idea, Speak now, or rally behind me in this crusade against the misuse of random damage, and all other occurrences of 1DN.
Robbie Price
I just wanted to state my vote for anyone SD listening / counting.
A) 1Dn kind of sucks and should go, as it makes things lame.
Give us standard RPG stats of chance to hit being seperate from damage, armour being different than magic resistance. Much more interesting game mechanics. You can make the AI do it frogboy!
C) Squad behavior: crib shamelessly from MoM for unit figure interaction and to hit roles. That kind of mechanic is extremely flexible and more interesting than having 2 sets of 2 rows in a spreadsheet wack each other.
One suggestion- how about x DN rolls, take highest. training levels determine the number of dice rolled. Maybe start with 2 or 3, then add 1 for each level of experience?
You'd still get the botches, but they'd be rarer on your high end units. The downside is reduced variance on high end units, but a critical hit feature could solve that. (also assuming to-hit and damage gets seperated, as it needs to be)
The real issue with the current system is the variance is just too high when you get into the late game, with high-end units.
You'll still roll a 1 occasionally, but the odds will be massively lower. the downside is you'll roll max rolls a lot more, but I think players would be ok with that.
We agree with you. It's going to be modified coming up.
Perfect timing. I just posted a quickfix idea. Maybe it will work?
THANK YOU! It almost makes me want to kiss someone.
Thank you! A lot!
Great to hear. Thank you!and also thank you for posting that you've taken the point on-board it's so hard to tell what the devs have and have not agreed with. One small request, any hint as to what method, solution, you're going to try? or what methods you're considering?
Thank you again. Robbie Price
Sounds good.
I personally hope its ( X + 1DN vs C ), where X is the constant variable "attack bonus", 1DN is the random factor (where N is a constant), and C is the constant variable "defense"
... and then a separate damage roll (based on weapon used), preferably either a smaller 1DN or a Gaussian.
while a "Strength Bonus" adds to base damage (where even a roll of 1 damage would give you "strength bonus" + 1) ... at least for melee weapons.
... random simple example of a strength bonus could be (Strength-10)/2
where 12 strength gives you +1 damage on all hits, 14 strength gives you +2 damage, etc. ... 30 strength would give you +10 damage ...
so assuming a weapon could give 1-10 damage, you'd be doing 11-20 damage.
Alternatively, if the weapon gave a Gaussian (10, 3) ... well, on average you would do 20 damage, while a normal 10 strength guy would be doing 10 damage on average.
and maybe your level naturally increases your attack bonus (even without any Strength Bonus to attack or Dex bonus to attack) ... so high level characters will hit more consistently, high stat characters will be LETHAL more consistently ... so basically leveled characters will be consistently more effective.
Good man.
The system works
EDIT: that is, the system of community feedback and dialogue. not the 1dN system, obviously.
I'll rejoice only when i see how they modify it.
And you have my shield!
But how? Any chance you'll explain the revised system before you start implementing it?
Since you'll have to do surgery on the mechanics and completely rebalance everything, I have a suggestion for you guys:
Make the "dice" two-sided so they can't roll anything other than 0 and 1.
Use the various unit stats as the number of dice the unit gets to roll.
Change the baseline value for all unit stats (except movement/action points) to 1.
Split up the current Attack stat into Melee, Missile and Magic Attack stats.
Remove the Defence stat entirely and resolve attacks by comparing attack rolls instead, but prevent units without the relevant weapon type from counter-attacking.
Introduce a pile of new Damage Resistance stats, one for each type of damage in the game (fire, blunt weapons, etc).
A combat round between baseline human A and baseline human B, would work out something like this:
Despite having 1 Attack across the board, neither participant have missile or magic capabilities, so they can only attack each other in melee.
Human A attacks and rolls 0. Human B makes his opposed roll and gets 1. Human A has missed and Human B has made 1 counter-attack.
Since Human B is armed with nothing but his thick skull, let's assume his 1 damage die is Blunt damage.
Human B rolls his 1 blunt damage die and scores 0. Human A doesn't bother to roll his 1 Blunt resistance die, since no damage was inflicted.
This system has several advantages over the current one:
It is easily understood by anyone over the age of 10 (6 probably) and the bare basics of it can be explained in half a page (so you won't have to write any of that documentation you evidently hate with the fury of a trillion exploding stars... or something).
Its results are random, but predictable with a very high degree of accuracy (so it's both more fun to use and much, much easier to balance).
It has a fair amount of room for unit specialisation/combat specialities (so the unit designer can have a practical purpose rather than the purely cosmetic one it has now)
It allows many different kinds of modifiers (so magic can be more and other things than direct damage).
I'm not demanding you use this exact system, I'm simply trying to show you the difference between the current system and one that actually works. Please feel free to ask questions, Brad & minions. Regardless of whether the system you settle on is remotely similar to the one I just outlined. Because... don't take this the wrong way, but right now my faith in your collective ability to design a combat system is... well... pretty much absent.
You have my Gnarled Club!
LOL. He said will be "modified" not build from the scratch. Don't get your hopes up too much.
While I like the idea of separating attack stat into Melee, Missile and Magic Attack stats, different resistance types etc. . all he said was he will fix the 1DN rolls not add new stats.. could be as simple as adding +X to each roll for example..
This is a good question. Froggie, could you post more details about the upcoming changes regarding the combat rolls?
Pretty much beaten to death here, but I agree.
A single hit needs to consist of several things. We need different armour saves. There needs to be a true dodge based on speed and luck. Etc.
There's a small possibility he hasn't decided yet.. maybe looking at what people are posting. But I would bet he is looking for small changes. It's unlikely new stats will make it in.. at least not until expansion 2 or 3
Hehe, my hopes have been too high since falling in love with GalCiv2 and hearing him planning the spiritual successor to MoM. Right now, though, they don't really extend beyond hoping fan re-designs of the game mechanics become possible. And even that's probably not overly realistic.
I only read some of the first page so sorry if I'm repeating other people, but, I'd rather see combat & magic go more towards the way AD&D handled it. A fireball could, for example, do 4d6 pts of damage, plus 1d6 for every 3 levels of the caster, plus another 1d6 for each fire shard, etc...
Int could be used to decide if the caster succeeds in casting, or if he simply screws up and the spell fails, and he wastes his mana (or maybe half the required mana). Maybe int could also be used to decide if the caster is able to learn a given spell found in a goody hut, assuming random spells are added as findable treasures at some point.
It's funny how such a small number of words can make your day.
Got to agree.. But at least hopefully it will be a semi fun workable game where you occasionally made real strategic choices, and things weren't so random that you couldnt make proper choices... not the mess it is right now. As for being a real spiritual successor to MoM again I would guess it might be years off.. either in the last expansion or perhaps even in EWOM II.
No, no, no and no please. +X wouldn't solve the uniform distribution T__T
It wouldn't yes.. But it would shorten the range.. which is better than nothing.
X + 1DN .... (where X is based on level and how awesome the hero is)
vs C (where C is armor + how awesome the hero is)
...
in D20, people start with a C of 10 ... which would translate to a D100 while people start with a C of 50.
My proposition is to have "regular" soldiers with a C of 25 (based on D100), while Heroes have a base C of 50 (that increases by 2 per level)
//
and where 96-100 is always a hit, and 1-5 is always a miss
I haven't fully balanced my Dex and Strength bonuses vs Armor and Dex Bonus ... but basically level 10 would be like a MasterChief, level 20 will be like a demi-god/Kratos ... and then really high level will just be (very powerful).
(I'm thinking of making it so that experience is based on relative power, so you can't just kill a million sheep to become a demigod) ... but also it would only take killing 1 god to become a demi-god or more. Or a lot of dragons, etc.
maybe heroes should slowly gain exp till level 5 ... so that after 200 turns (assuming no battles) your hero is level 5. (just depends on how things play out)
Obviously Damage would be X + Gaussian ... where Gaussian is from the Weapon's power, and X is how awesome the hero is
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