LIFE Realm

[teelaurila]

It simply boils down to the game not having the possibility for the distinction in DnD rules about natural and manufactured weapons, but rather using "summoned" and "city made" units.
You can holy weapon / shatter a griffon's beak but not a unicorn's horn. Obviously we are forced to apply this, "the game's logic", rather than whatever we think would be "proper logic".

[Bahgtru]

Seravy regularly does do polls.

My point is, counting oneself out of the results.

I've also never seen a poll for a low level mechanic like this one, but I've not read so far back.

[Seravy]

I do polls only when I don't have a strong preference in either direction.
Otherwise, I have to go with my preference. If I don't, I'll enjoy the game less, lose interest, and stop working on it. That's bad for everyone. Exactly what I believe you mean by " But again, I understand that it's a difficult approach to take for anyone invested in a project." - I'm not paid for it, I do it because I like the game. However even i this case I'm open to discussion and it's possible to convince me that my preference is wrong - has happened plenty of time before. Not easy to do, but possible.
Furthermore there are coding restrictions - there is no point making a poll about something I can't make happen anyway, and I also prefer to avoid features that come with a high risk of introducing new bugs, or altering existing game balance significantly, unless there is a high demand for them.

[Bahgtru]

On having fun, I agree on that. It's for when you need to decide if something "makes sense", as when anyone is deep in the mechanics of something common understanding becomes skewed. If that goes against the fun then ok but I'd hope it be a case by case basis.

I abandoned the first idea. But, you seem more flexible on the topic of shatter. Didn't you just recently add several abilities with new mechanics? I remember the supernatural one for example. Making the "normal base unit" work like that would make several game mechanics rather more understandable, as it'd put them all together and give you the possibility to add proper help text.

I've realised that there's yet another way in which early chaos would benefit against death: the lowly fire elemental, as it has WI. Making it work well against undead would give a decent small boost against death. Sure, later on there's magic weapons, but the start is important.

I'm playing a chaos game and I'm surviving only thanks to getting up a death book and trading ghouls... I now have 2 drakes, several chaos spawn and efreeti... All of them undead ^_^' the start is just too freaking' slow.

By the way, other useful "abilities" that I can think of, and that would have helped with the learning curve are:
- fantastic
- the realm(s), if fantastic
- undead (took me forever to realise that there's a difference between undead and death, and that the undead can be healed... Still feels like cheating)

Other information that would be incredibly useful is, for spells, to have on top of the casting cost the level and the realm. Even you forgot about shatter, and no one else knows the new spells here.

[Seravy]

Aside from the other things we discussed, the main problem is that spell targeting is done in 3 different places : Human targeting, AI targeting, and human targeting initial check (the one that says "no valid targets" before you even start the actual target selection process).
None of these have abundant free space, nor are they easy to modify. Since we are talking about inserting a new "if spell=Shatter and overlandunit[combatunit[target].unitID].type<=$99" condition, which in assembly means about 20-30 instructions, I don't think I can do that for human targeting, and even if I could, I would not want to use up the precious space for that purpose. What if we want to change a spell targeting for a more important reason in the future?

All that for something as vague as how it makes more sense. Shatter working on undead/chaos channeled units isn't an important change that would significantly improve gameplay experience. It might (or might not) improve it, depending on whether you are playing Chaos or only playing against it, but even if you do play it, the improvement would be marginal.

Either way, I'm against these changes and don't feel like re-reading the past 4 pages to remind myself why. I feel I had adequate reasons to come to this conclusion and reject them, and at this point I could only repeat myself.

Adding ability icon display code is difficult and extremely space consuming. I might have room for one or two more but that's it. Note that there is no space for actual new icons in the LBX files (unless someone explains how to extract and repack LBX files in a way that the size of files, or number of entries get changed - the tweaker does not support that.) so it has to reuse the picture from another ability. (Supernatural uses Illusion's icon, Primal Force uses Meld with Node.)

Spells do show you the realm through the icons used to tell how many turns they take to cast. They don't show the rarity but you can look that up easily by hitting "New game", picking 6 books, and checking what's available there. If the spell doesn't show up, it's very rare, otherwise it's the rarity the game shows you.
Spells within the same realm are shown in increasing rarity btw so if you turn off the spellbooks categories and instead have it get sorted by realm, you can easily figure out the rarities based on the order.

[Bahgtru]

Ah ah that's rather different than

even i this case I'm open to discussion and it's possible to convince me that my preference is wrong - has happened plenty of time before. Not easy to do, but possible.

The point of shatter is also one of balance, I think that everyone agrees on chaos. But if it is too difficult then nevermind, I don't think that many newcomers are coming anyway.

[Seravy]

Being open to discussion, and eternally repeating the same arguments in a cycle are not the same thing. If you want to overturn my decision, you need to either prove my arguments were wrong, or present a new, stronger argument that can change the decision. Neither has happened so far and the latter is the "difficult" path because which of two arguments are stronger is often too subjective, especially on this particular topic.

You don't get a choice to produce undead with or without magic weapons, so penalizing that through Weapon Immunity is a bad game mechanic. Players should be punished for their own bad decisions, not the enemy's. Unless you can counter this argument, we aren't making progress.

[Bahgtru]

Yes, I've mentioned several times the matter of chaos vs death early balance, have I missed an answer?
On the weapons... No one but you expects the weapons to improve when the troop is brought back to life. So the decision actually penalises WI, it doesn't prevent a penalisation of undead.

[Seravy]

I expect them to be produced with magic weapons in the first place because that's what I do when I produce my own units. However the computer might not, and I have no way to force them to.

[Bahgtru]

Are you saying that you wait till the alchemist guild before producing any unit? What's the difficulty you play at?