Unit Capabilities / Combat Mechanics

[zitro1987]

• Resistance: Units generally start with lower resistance and gain only 2 resistance points after 4 promotions. Summons also have significantly lowered resistance.
  
  
• First Strike: This capability now works for both attacks and retaliations
  
  
• Stun: Unit receives lowered retaliation damage (to hit from retaliating unit is reduced by half, rounded up)
  
  
• Block: Unit negates first strike and stun effects.
  
  
• +to defend: The buggy overpowered feature got fixed. Some units may have +1 to defend. This is visible on interface like Insecticide
  
  
• Lucky: Heroes-only. Improves rewards from lairs.
  
  
• Weapon Immunity: Unit gains additional +7 armor against non-magical weapons.
  
  
• Large Shield: Bonus increased to 3 (from 2)
  
  
• Healing: Healing reduced to 3hp but can be cast twice.
  
  
• Flying: Unit has additional +1 to hit against ground units when attacking. Ground units attacking flyers receive -1 to hit penalty. Flying units also enjoy 3 scouting (with the exception of doom bats)
  
  
• Invisibility: Units can now be targeted with spells (including direct damage) when spotted. Original damage reduction replaced by a simple 1/3 hits being missed.
  
  
• Suppression Effect: Units temporarily lose 1 to hit for every 2 enemy blows during one turn. If attacks are ranged, units temporarily gain 1 armor per ranged attack during that turn.
  
  
• Extra Suppression: Orc units enjoy double suppression effect while Behemoths enjoy even further suppression that is heavily noticeable after 1 blow.
  
  
• Doom Gaze: Each blow automatically reduces unit resistance by 1 for the duration of combat.
  
  
• Destruction: Each blow automatically reduces unit armor by 2 for the duration of combat.
  
  
• Poison: poison only takes into effect whenever figure scores a hit reducing hp by at least 1.
  
  
• Stoning/Death Touch: each figure with this ability deals 5 or 8 automatic damage, respectively, if resistance fails.
  
  
• Stoning/Death Gaze/Dispel Evil: each enemy figure must resist or suffer 4 or 8 or 12 automatic damage, respectively.
  
  
• Magic Immunity: Target unit is immune to all elemental damage and direct damage spells. As you may see, this ability is weakened.
  
  
• Walls: 1/3 hits missed when defending behind walls. This effect is increased to 1/2 hits missed if mechanician guild is present. This effect does not apply against flyers and non-corporeal (which can also travel through walls). Ranged units protecting city gain long range.
  
  
• Wizard Fortress: Deals 2 + wizard skill/8 armor piercing damage to random enemy unit once per turn (strength capped at 30)
  

[zitro1987]

[saved for potential storage of ideas]

[Asfex]

First Strike: This capability now works for both attacks and retaliations

Stun: Unit receives lowered retaliation damage (to hit from retaliating unit is reduced by half, rounded up)


Lucky: Whenever damage lowers hp to 0 or lower, unit has chance of staying alive at 1hp.


Healing: Healing reduced to 3hp but can be cast twice.

Flying: Unit has additional +1 to hit against ground units when attacking.

Invisibility: Units can now be targeted with spells (including direct damage) when spotted. Original damage reduction replaced by a simple 1/3 hits being missed.

Suppression Effect: Units temporarily lose 1 to hit for every 2 enemy blows during one turn. If attacks are ranged, units temporarily gain 1 armor per ranged attack during that turn.


Doom Gaze: Each blow automatically reduces unit resistance by 1.

Destruction: Each blow automatically reduces unit armor by 2.

Poison: poison only takes into effect whenever figure scores a hit reducing hp by at least 1.

Stoning/Death Gaze/Dispel Evil:

Magic Immunity: Target unit is immune to all elemental damage and direct damage spells.

Whats reason you extend first strike?
Fly units seems overpowered.why do you need gets him spetial advantage over foot units? Do you loose 'balance' from your concept 'balance and speed'?
'Stan'- is it advantage or disadvantage?
What spell will protect units from Banish, or Posession? Shall the 'supersupress' bonus hidden in Behemoth? Any icon for it?
Poison is weak. What reason make it more weak?
Destruction reduces armor by 2. What period of time armor become reduced?
Healing..its about spell or unit ability?
How about web?

[kyrub]

Whats reason you extend first strike?

First strike is very weak and situational in 1.31 as it works well only when both
- against multifigure units
- against much weaker opposition.

Other changes in Ziky make first strike even weaker (units get + to defend on second experience level). We wanted to promote the ability and make units with First strike a bit more fearsome. So First strike works both on attack and defense. It can be still overcome with breath, thrown, gaze attacks or with Block capability.

Poison is weak. What reason make it more weak?

The resistance of all units in Ziky will be lowered and there will be little increase with experience. Poison and other effects (stoning etc.) will be significantly more powerful than 1.31, therefore we think it's necessary to put limits to their effect. So stoning has maximum damage and poisonous bite can be simply blocked by the defender's armor.

Whats reason you extend first strike?
Fly units seems overpowered.why do you need gets him spetial advantage over foot units?

Yes, we want to make them special. Making different capabilities more distinct / special is one of our main goals. Flying units in 1.31 are good only for being less prone to Cracks call. Note that +1 to hit works only when Flyer initiates the attack (attacking from a superior position) and +to defend only when he defends (it's hard to hit something flying).

'Stan'- is it advantage or disadvantage?

Advantage: STUN halves the retaliation of the unit being attacked. It reduces the risk of attacking a powerful unit, for instance. It works a bit like "No retaliation" in HoMM, but we wanted to avoid exploits.

Destruction reduces armor by 2. What period of time armor become reduced?

For the duration of the combat. You may destroy a unit's armor, then attack it with another one.

Shall the 'supersupress' bonus hidden in Behemoth?

The information will be in the unit's description in the Spellbook. Note that "stun" reduces the retaliation only for the attacker himself, but Behemoth's and orcs suppression bonuses help other units too (in the same turn). Behemoth should be very good in combination with weaker army, it can totally suppress enemy unit opening the way for a massive charge of others.

[Asfex]

Flying units in vanilla is good:it can form a 'wall', behind it foot units become espetialy effective.also it can choose attack and 'rest' if damaged.
Its strategy for weak draconians.

And, is all units be less than 9 crosses?

[Catwalk]

Good start, looking forward to following this. Many ideas I really like here, too many to mention so I will leave those be and give you a thumbs up for that. A few questions:
1) Is a blow one attack?
2) I don't like coin flips and dice tossing much at all. I understand that Lucky strongly suggests it's all about coin flips and dice tossing, but it just rubs me wrong. The MoM combat system generally does great at producing results that are close to expected values, I fear this will push Lucky battles in the other direction. Is this supposed to replace the previous effects? How about giving Lucky units a bonus every 4th time they attack or defend instead?
3) Are you planning on changing Poison mechanics? The description offers little information. I assume you've read the discussion we had about it concerning Catnip, I think there are some good ideas there.
4) Ditto for resistance.
5) Are you planning on any other changes for fortress combat? How about making all enemy spells cost double normal mana? Either that or setting it to 4x normal mana regardless of distance.

1) Yes, my definition of a blow is an attack from a stack
2) This is one of the few we have not tested yet, but it mostly involves multi-figure units (halflings, unicorns). I see the concern but this is a minor unit ability that is shared among multi-figure units (unicorns and halflings), the type that doesn't do much with a single figure.
3) Let me clarify: you attack, poison is activated for each figure that deals at least 1 damage. So if 3 ghoul figures out of 4 fail at doing any damage, poison 1 is activated once.
4) Resistance mechanics are left unchanged. The difference is that units will universally have lowered resistance.
Asfex) No. There are several city-based units that can reach 9 resistance at elite and two that can reach 10+. Storm Giant has 9 resistance. Most 'very rare' units have 10 resistance or more.
5) No other plans were discussed but we can be open to new ideas. As of now, the lightning bolt attacks works well and is a fun theme.



Oh man, I just edited your post instead of replying to it. I'm so sorry. I gotta be more careful from now on.

[Asfex]

What spells you recommend to protect units from confusion,banish,holy word, items with -4 spell save? Resist elements seems too weak for this.

Iet limit summoning sickness only units by spell. Reason: demon lord.it must be weak itself,but capable to kill
fast sorcery summons.

[kyrub]

What spells you recommend to protect units from confusion,banish,holy word, items with -4 spell save? Resist elements seems too weak for this.

• First rule: Total protection is almost impossible to get.
  
• Elemental armor, Righteousness are best protectors (note that these rare spells were disapointing in 1.31; now they have good value).
  
• Charmed and Prayermaster traits will have very good value.
  
• some units (summons!) have natural high resistance, use them if necessary.
  

We have not yet spoken about -spell save. For me, this is the single overpowered resistance trait in 1.31. Resistance spells are mostly useless, but with items they are suddenly golden (terrible conception). So - to save will be reworked or its cost will be massive.

2) I don't like coin flips and dice tossing much at all. I understand that Lucky strongly suggests it's all about coin flips and dice tossing, but it just rubs me wrong. The MoM combat system generally does great at producing results that are close to expected values, I fear this will push Lucky battles in the other direction. Is this supposed to replace the previous effects? How about giving Lucky units a bonus every 4th time they attack or defend instead?

In fact, Lucky is yet to be decided. Like you, I wouldn't mind some deterministic bonus, something like "every 1st attack/counterattack in combat deals double damage". This could lead to nice tactical consequences.

[WhiteMage]

In fact, Lucky is yet to be decided. Like you, I wouldn't mind some deterministic bonus, something like "every 1st attack/counterattack in combat deals double damage". This could lead to nice tactical consequences.

I vote for a nondeterministic solution: dice throwing if you will.
Reasons:
1. Luck is a fundamentally unpredictable concept. You are not supposed to be able to predict it. You just enjoy it when it comes or pray for it when you need it.
2. MOM is a nondeterministic game with unknown outcomes. I believe that spells like dispel magic, disenchant area, confusion, black sleep, etc. with their probabilistic outcomes thoroughly contributed to this game's success. This is not the case for HMM, where a magic spell is 100% to hit target with known outcome, with only a handful of exceptions from it - terrible.
3. I would personally increase the randomness in MOM, not decrease it. This will also lead to higher replay-ability, diversity, and competitive gaming in the far future. Otherwise, there will be boredom, repeat strategies, and more deadlocks when 2 opposing armies stare at each other no-one wanting to make a move waiting for the other side to make a mistake. With random outcome, as you get weak in the game, you will be encouraged to make more risky moves, which may pay off big time.

[Asfex]

I am with you, Whitemage, about 2 and 3 point.

About mod: your magic solution may be good: realy low resistance for all units will good idea with this idea:
1.All units must be<9 crosses, 10 crosses treat as total magic immunity.
2.All spells have no possibility to change crosses
by spellsave. The 'spellsave' treat like 'increase chances spell success' almost linear.
3.all spellsave bonuses treat like 'this increase spell chance by 10-20%
3.'rare' creatures may have bonus, like 'charmed', this mean 'charmed creatures have reduced chances to be charmed low-tech spells'. High tech spells are: banish,death wish,holy word,dispel evil,warp creature... Confusion and disintegration is low tech spells, all spells with low spellsave in vanilla treat as low-tech.Confusion have big spellsave,but lowtech.
4. Resist elements give this 'charmed' bonus, or immunity-(your choice). Prayer and holy bonus do not increase crosses- just increase spellsave(even make it positive). Righteousness and other resemble give immunity.
5. Direct cross-damage spells (life drain) may be realized by warp-lighting mechanism...10 hits(1 damage each) with decreased spellsave bonus.(cumulative,if success, discutable)

In common: the natural unit resistance must not be increased, each resistance spells increase spellsaves or give immunities. 'charmed' abilty is the 'high resistance for -spellsafe of low-tech spells'.
Spellsave just increase the chance of each cross to fall the spell.