Combat mechanics

[Catwalk]

End a unit's turn after attacking
This is partly to help the AI who probably won't be able to learn to take proper advantage of movement. It's also to reduce the tedium of micro management in combat.

Ranged distance penalty
I think there are two problems with how this works at present:
1) It means that high accuracy units can mostly ignore the penalty. With +5 to hit, a -2 penalty merely lowers you from 80% accuracy to 60% accuracy, a relative drop of 25%. I don't think this should be the case.
2) For low accuracy units, it makes no difference whether a unit is at -2 penalty range or -4 penalty, you're down to the minimum 10% accuracy regardless.

If it's possible, I think it'd be interesting to sidestep the accuracy system and have distance be an extra fail factor. Say, a distance x leads to an added fail rate of (x-1) * 10%, so a distance of 9 would lead to 80% fail rate which is applied after normal rolls.

[Catwalk]

Retreating
The penalties for retreating are rather harsh, to the point that it's almost never worth using. It's also pretty boring to have a straight 50% chance of escaping regardless of other factors. Suggestions on changing it are welcome.

Automatic retreat
Automatic retreat is very easily abused, and was the subject of vigorous discussion at Dragonsword. I'm in favour of simply disabling automatic retreat, since the AI won't abuse it against you.

[Catwalk]

Poison
Poison is a boring and underused aspect of the game. I suggest that poison is triggered each time you land a hit. This means that if you have poison 2 and inflict 4 hits, the target has to resist poison 8 times. It'd also be cool if a resistance penalty could be applied, or possibly use that to replace the poison strength.

[luddite]

automatic retreat- please don't remove it! I know it can be abused, but there's also a lot of situations where it's necessary. For example, you have a fast spellcaster hero who's out of magic, they have some slow melee units. They'll never retreat, and if you try and fight them in melee you'll die. But you can run away forever. Why should your hero be forced to die in that situation? The only way you can get rid of it is if you also change the retreat penalty so that fast units aren't damaged.

poison- what about making this into a damage-over-time spell? You inflict poison status on a unit, and it takes 1 damage per turn, per poison level, for the next 10 rounds or so.

[Catwalk]

automatic retreat- please don't remove it! I know it can be abused, but there's also a lot of situations where it's necessary. For example, you have a fast spellcaster hero who's out of magic, they have some slow melee units. They'll never retreat, and if you try and fight them in melee you'll die. But you can run away forever. Why should your hero be forced to die in that situation? The only way you can get rid of it is if you also change the retreat penalty so that fast units aren't damaged.

In the best of worlds, movement would be big a factor in survival rate when retreating. I don't know how much we can mess about with these mechanics.

An alternative would be to simply have a house rule (for tournament purposes) disallowing abuse of this feature. How should that be worded, though?

poison- what about making this into a damage-over-time spell? You inflict poison status on a unit, and it takes 1 damage per turn, per poison level, for the next 10 rounds or so.

I think there'd be a risk of making it a lot less useful, except for when used by ranged units. Most of the time the units will be dead long before the poison will have any impact. And I'm guessing it'd be harder to implement. But let's see what kyrub says

[kyrub]

I must say that this thread does not fill me with joy. Almost no big priorities for me here. Changing combat mechanics (like forcing an end of turn after the attack) is uneasy when you enter even a slightly unknown area, because these parts of code are incredibly complicated. And you have to do it twice: for human player and for the AIs. Here lies the advantage of no shoot-after-move, AI does it already = 1/2 of work.


For retreating I offer simple change of % (bleh), like 15% and 30%. If I find some variables are already used, like max speed of enemy units (unlikely), I will use it (speed of retreating - max speed = + % of escape). But I cannot be bothered to spend a day to determine it etc.. Maybe I can give you some extra % for every non-damaged heart unit has. That could be relatively easy and life-saving for heroes and big or elite units.


Distance penalties are worth thinking about, maybe.


Poison... my only area of interest here. I would really want to give poison something more than it has - maybe even more than just another way of dealing damage. An old (and somewhat foolish) idea of my colleague Asfex (who wanted use it with Petrify spell, hehe) springs in mind:


Could the poison reduce resistance by -1 with repeated application?
(-1 per succesful attack + less damage than it does now (how?) )

effects

• With repeated attack the unit becomes more vulnerable to poison attack itself
  
• This would make poison surprisingly useful for certain spell schools even late in the game and, maybe, give the game another layer of depth.
  
• Poison is used in melee only, so it is not overpowered.
  
• Reducing resistance with spells is quite uneasy. Units with poison will have a nice unique-ness about them.
  
• Charmed will be slightly less useless.
  

This is just a dreaming, I have no idea how much this can be implemented.

[Catwalk]

Changing combat mechanics (like forcing an end of turn after the attack) is uneasy when you enter even a slightly unknown area, because these parts of code are incredibly complicated. And you have to do it twice: for human player and for the AIs. Here lies the advantage of no shoot-after-move, AI does it already = 1/2 of work.

I'll gladly settle for no shooting after moving, if that's doable.

For retreating I offer simple change of % (bleh), like 15% and 30%. If I find some variables are already used, like max speed of enemy units (unlikely), I will use it (speed of retreating - max speed = + % of escape). But I cannot be bothered to spend a day to determine it etc.. Maybe I can give you some extra % for every non-damaged heart unit has. That could be relatively easy and life-saving for heroes and big or elite units.

How about disallowing retreat for the first 2 turns (instead of 1 currently) and changing the percentages to 10% and 20%?

Poison... my only area of interest here. I would really want to give poison something more than it has - maybe even more than just another way of dealing damage. An old (and somewhat foolish) idea of my colleague Asfex (who wanted use it with Petrify spell, hehe) springs in mind:


Could the poison reduce resistance by -1 with repeated application?
(-1 per succesful attack + less damage than it does now (how?) )

effects

• With repeated attack the unit becomes more vulnerable to poison attack itself
  
• This would make poison surprisingly useful for certain spell schools even late in the game and, maybe, give the game another layer of depth.
  
• Poison is used in melee only, so it is not overpowered.
  
• Reducing resistance with spells is quite uneasy. Units with poison will have a nice unique-ness about them.
  
• Charmed will be slightly less useless.
  

I must say I still hate that idea Is either of my two poison ideas somewhat realistic? I think they'd work quite well to make poison interesting.

[kyrub]

Yes, probably.
Yes. Nice and very simple.
No problem here, less work, good news.

Could you please re-explain your 2 alternatives. I am lost once you start speaking about resistance penalties. What should determine the penalty?

[Catwalk]

Poison alternatives:
1) Poison x triggers each time a figure in the unit lands a hit. The defending unit then has to resist x times or take another hit for each failure.
2) Poison x triggers each time a figure in the unit lands a hit. The defending unit then has to resist ONCE at a penalty of x or take another hit

So with the first alternative you can take a whole bunch of extra damage each time you're hit, but it's easy to resist. With the second alternative you can only take up to one extra point of damage but you're facing a resistance penalty so you're more likely to suffer.

Oh, and it'd work for normal ranged attacks (if possible).

[kyrub]

Are you aware that both poison variants are weaker than the vanilla?

Poison alternatives:
1) Poison x triggers each time a figure in the unit lands a hit. The defending unit then has to resist x times or take another hit for each failure.

Vanilla: Poison x triggers triggers each time a figure attacks. The defending unit then has to resist x times or take another hit for each failure.

2) Poison x triggers each time a figure in the unit lands a hit. The defending unit then has to resist ONCE at a penalty of x or take another hit

This one is good for hitting the bigger foes, but it does absolutely unimportant damage. 1 extra heart per attack of a Great Wyrm. Pffft.


What about combining them both?
3) Poison x triggers each time a figure in the unit lands a hit. The defending unit then has to resist x times at a penalty of x or take another hit.

Then poison 4 with two figures = resist four times at -4, and twice for each figure, so 8 times at -4. Quite potent but you can change the unit poison stats.