First off, I love this game. I love stardock. I love the developers. I have been literally obsessed with this game and the forums. Thanks to the devs for the hard work and this lovely game.
With that said, now it's time for some light hearted mockery of some design decisions.
I really don't understand how equipping a shortsword will allow my characters to move faster and cast more spells. Without a shortsword, I can move 1 square, but with it I can move two. So, a person holding a short sword can run twice as far as the same person without it? It seems a bit ludicrous and counter intuitive. So much so, that it took me awhile to clue into the fact that I need to equip all my spell casters with short swords. It's the best 216 bucks you can spend. Not a dagger, that won't make you run faster, obviously. But a shortsword, now that is where its at.
OK, some simple solutions:
1. Equipment should only reduce APs, never increase it. As an example, a shortsword should be great because it only lowers your AP by .25, where as a sword would be .50. Some exceptions could be made for boots (or running shoes), and canteens. As any sports player knows, a hydrated warrior is an active warrior. Magical equipment of quickness could be other exceptions.
2. Make the APs of movement based on your strategic map speed. It could either be a fixed amount of APs based on your speed. Something like 1/X where x is your overland speed.
3 If you want to ignore fix number one, you could have your base tactical movement equal your overland speed. The cost in APs is equal to the amount you use. For example, if you have a move of 3 and you move 1 square. It costs you 1/3 of your APS. If you move all 3 squares it uses all of the APs. I believe this scales well.
Thoughts?
You would nerf my Shortsword of Sprinting +1? What's next, you heartless villain? Tell me I can't fit 200 rings on my fingers? What if I'm *excellently endowed* ? Like, you know....with extra fingers. Maybe then?
"Janusk? Janusk...woah. Dude, what *is* that stuff? Cut me another line of that go fast powder with that wicked blade you've got there." <sigh> "Yes, my liege."
The game needs to make sense. And all paths the player can take (whether it be tech trees, weapon choice, buildings, spells, heros vs normal military) need to be overall balanced but with appropriate trade offs between them.
Right now the game is a mess. There is very poor balance between different paths and many things make no logical sense.
Champions that have taken hours of building up to be uber level should be able to handle a group of 10 well equiped soldiers which can be produced by the dozen. Spells should be powerful enough to make a difference, and different between them for choosing a spell to be an interesting choice. Monster level shouldn't scale with adventuring tech advancement level but rather with game stage. Shortswords shouldn't give +1 speed, etc, etc, etc.
The basic problem is that the game has been rushed out the door which is ironic given Frogboy stating a number of times that they had no need to hurry it and could afford to keep it in development as long as necessary.
Another 3 months of balancing and tweaking is probably all that is required to make a great game... pity we are trying to play it now.
Yeah, the OP, of course, has a good point. Aside from being an all around bad game mechanism, linking movement speed with attack speed and casting speed is simply ludicrous and anti-intuitive idea. Not sure who came up with that idea or how they came to a consensus on it.
I don't mind that they released it early. It means I get to play, and they got some cash.
I just hope they keep the development going as strongly as they do now. If that is the case, then I will be happy.
Also, it wouldn't hurt if one or two of my dare-i-say brilliant ideas that I have scattered around the forums eventually made it into the game.
No, I can see why they did it. The concept of having a single pool of APs that you can use to move and attack is really good. It's simple, it's elegant. I think the devs knew what they were doing there.
I just think they blew the scaling portion of it. I think with the tweaks I outlined, it would make their vision come to light.
Come on Frogboy, can I get a what-what?
and also they need to implement a no-move-once-you-take-an-action policy to prevent the kiting cheeze you can do now.
(a) You sir are full of win
(2) I'd much prefer to stick with negatives for heavier and more unwieldy items (you try lugging around a 15 pound hammer and tell me how much you enjoy the experience). I really like where they were going with plate armor though it's easily worked around by just going down the magic research path and getting equally awesome armor with no movement penalties... oh and a lower cost.
If I remember correctly, this was how it worked in beta 4. It was quite annoying being unable to move after killing an ennemy in one attack.
Does anyone have an opinion on option number three? After some more thought, I think this is the way to go.
Option 3 is my preference, and similar to suggestions we had in beta. But they really didn't want the overland speed to affect tactical speed.
It's magic, which trumps any attempt at bringing logic to bear on it.
agreed with everything that has been said.
people have been criticising combat speed since the day it was announced, and everything i have seen so far has proved them right.
personally i go for changing the cost of movement based on my mount (ie, strategic speed). however, i'd also limit my total movement in a turn to my strategic movement +1. ie, so someone with strategic speed of 3 can't move 6 squares in a turn, either 4, or 3 and then attack.
i also hate the fact that i can increase my combat speed on level up, because it's a totally different concept to the other stats, and really difficult for me to judge in comparison. i think combat speed should just increase, slowly, as you level (but still be affected by things like spells and items). weapons should not go anywhere near combat speed. attack and CS are totally different principles and i don't have the patience to calculate which is better.
btw, i can't think of a single creature in the game that i think needs vastly different tactical and strategic speed (intuitively), so i don't buy that argument. in fact, i think pretty much all of them can be covered by two categories, fast (cavalry, dragons, infantry with hasting) and slow (infantry, giants, elementals etc) and these remain consistent between strategic and tactical modes.
I can understand that. They are not always related.
At the farthest end of complexity, it would be a separate stat. Since we need to combine stats to keep the game manageable, what makes the most sense from a design/logic/esthetic viewpoint?
A. Combat Movement is more closely related to overland movement.
B. Combat Movement is more closely related to how fast you can swing your weapon.
Or, another way to look at it:
Are combat movement and attack speed related. Should it be possible to have slow moving units that attack a lot, and fast moving units that attack slowly.
If we want the above combination, then the abilities need to be based on different stats.
Let's look at an example of giving your sovereign a horse.
Should it effect overland movement: yes
Should it effect combat movement: yes
Should it effect number of spells/attacks per round: no
Is this a strawman argument? I don't know. Probably. Can somebody think of any counter examples?
As a side note, the overland speed doesn't have to directly correspond to tactical movement. There could be a multiplier in there somewhere.
overland speed is endurance, such as being able to run a cross country race. while combat speed is like sprinting. i do agree with you that this should be looked at. i like them to be separate. i like your idea of reducing as opposed to giving a bonus. i have also brought up during the beta to give spells casting time. example flame dart would cost 1 AP to use, while melt or whatever its called would use up 1.5 or maybe 2 AP. then balance how much everybody starts with.
like i said, i thought this at first, but when i think about it i really can't think of any good examples of units whose strategic speed is completely different to their tactical speed. can anyone?
You can move faster with your sword in moutains cause you can climb with it !
Why wouldn't a dragon have a high tactical speed? I can't imagine many creatures a dragon couldn't run down.
I actually think a dragon is a good example of a fast creature with a slow attack.
First it would fly,and that isn't implemented
Part of overland speed is endurance, for sure. That is a good point. I don't think it is the only factor.
Base speed has to be an important factor as well. A snail might have the endurance to keep moving nonstop all day long, but it is not going to beat me in a footrace, (even if I was the size of a snail).
So, again, what kind of creature/soldier are you thinking of that would have a really high overland movement, but a slow tactical one? A mule?
Or vice versa? The best example I can think of is a Cheetah. It would have really high sprint, but I'm not sure how much ground it could cover in a day (assuming it was motivated)
So, in those examples, it is not a perfect fit, but I think it is closer than if it was more related to how fast they could bite. At least it trends in the same direction.
Me neither .
On the one hand, it makes sense. You can stab multiple times with a dagger vs every long slow set up and swing of a great axe. A dagger granting extra attacks, makes sense. That's what the + speed boost is supposed to represent...extra attacks.
It becomes conceptually hazier when it also controls move speed and casting speed, but, if combat speed were being used properly, equipment speed could act as a *limiter* on those actions, which would encourage units to be built along conceptual lines that *did* make conceptual sense (for instance, no archers or spell casters in heavy armor, and providing a good reason why a spellcaster might choose not to wield a two handed hammer). But the game is not presently doing this very well.
I personally don't think combat mechanics have to make perfect sense conceptually, as long as they make for a good balanced game. You can't really model completely realistic combat with a complex set of table top rules in much deeper tactical role playing games...you certainly can't do it in a scaled down game like this. Everything is highly abstracted. Which is fine, as long as it's balanced and working, but presently, it is not.
It would make a great deal more sense for different weapons to have different AP costs for their use. So stabbing with a dagger costs 0.7 AP, swinging a short sword costs 1.0 AP, swinging a long sword costs 1.3 AP.
These costs should be modified by dexterity for edged weapons, strength for blunt weapons, in the same way that wisdom currently modifies the cost to cast a spell. Speaking of which, I'd like to see different spells have different AP costs too. It would help differentiate schools of magic. Also, if wisdom is going to determine casting speed, shouldn't we have the option to increase it when leveling?
As far overland speed being related to speed in tactical combat, the cost of moving into a square should take different amounts of AP depending on the terrain type being moved into. That cost should be modified by the unit's overland movement speed (for example grasslands base cost AP=4, swamp base AP movement cost=6). So if it takes 2 AP to move into grasslands for a unit with overland movement speed 2 (grasslands base cost 4 divided by unit overland speed), then it costs 1.3 AP for a unit with overland movement speed 3, 1.0 AP for a unit with a overland movement speed of 4. So the same units with overland speeds of 2,3, and 4 would have movement costs of 3, 2, and 1.5 through a swamp square (swamp cost 6 divided by unit overland movement speed). This allows units such as calvary to be faster without making them able to attack a greater number of times.
A nice unit special ability, if variable movement AP cost for different tactical terrain were implemented, would be the ability to move through all terrain types on the tactical battlefield at a fixed cost. It would obviously apply to flying units, but perhaps special abilities for other units/terrain combinations (swampwalking, mountaineering, etc.)
this.
and not only does it have to be balanced and work, it has to make sense in lore terms and help immersion.
read the title. presently, it does not.
Well, a cheetah should definitely have it's movement slowed by a short sword.
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