(December 21st, 2021, 06:10)resnet34 Wrote: honestly I don't understand this feature. Missiles are a subset of Weapons, so if the unit bypasses Weapond immunity, it has to do it for the Missile too. I tried it on Demons with missile immunity, they are immune to magical weapons (slingers)
I think you should brush up on your fantasy lore =)
Weapon Immunity, as seen in Master of Magic, is not a generic immunity to weapons. It's a specific immunity to
mundane, or
non-magical weapons. This ability is most commonly known as a trait of werewolves and vampires, but it's actually much older than them, and is typically associated with incorporeal or otherworldly beings that simply can't be hurt by the implements of mortal men. Of course, you could say that Weapon Immunity is a misnomer then, and technically, you'd be right. However, there are three very important mitigating factors that allowed the developers to get away with this blasphemy of nomenclature.
First, there were the technological limitations. "Mundane Weapon Immunity" or "Normal Weapon Immunity" would have required extending a number of data structures dealing with the storage and display of abilities, not to mention having to code multi-line help titles, since this wouldn't quite fit in one. The amount of cases where this would have been truly useful simply didn't justify the effort and time required.
Second, there's the issue of the target audience. You see, when I see Weapon Immunity for the first time after playing a fantasy game for a while, appearing on a Werewolf or a Demon unit, my first question - without reading up on anything -, will be: how do I get magical weapons? Unless, of course, I know that already. I will make this association by virtue of experience - something that could apparently be reasonably expected from the players of the era, even if it may not be today.
Finally - and this trumps the other two -, the original designers implemented something called a context-based help, that players could turn to in case they found something confusing. All they had to do was right-click on the thing in question. In this particular case, two abilities, for which the help entries in 1.52.03 read:
Quote:WEAPON IMMUNITY
Weapon immunity grants a defense score of 10 against weapon attacks from normal units that do not have magical, mithril, adamantium, holy, eldritch, or flaming weapons. Weapon immunity triggers off melee, thrown, ranged missile, and ranged boulder attacks; but does not protect against magical attacks, heroes, fantastic creatures, or spells.
Quote:MISSILES IMMUNITY
Missiles immunity grants a defense score of 50 against all forms of missile attacks (bows, javelins, and slings). It has no effect on ranged boulder attacks, ranged magical attacks, and spells.
In contrast with the first ability, the second is aptly named and quite clear-cut. It raises defense (reduces damage) against missiles. This could be defined here as small projectiles, with an additional quality that is either having actual physical substance, as opposed to being made entirely of magical energy or, alternatively, having to be manually aimed, as opposed to being guided by magic. Protection from these usually comes naturally to beings surrounded by currents of air (which deflect the projectiles), creatures with significantly less volume than size (i.e. skeletons, the projectiles fall right through them without hitting anything most of the time), and magicians (for whom a simple kinetic barrier is often one of the most basic enchantments). All of these effects rely on properties of projectiles that are not affected by them being magical, mithril, adamantium, flaming, blessed, or otherwise enchanted. Hence, none of those improvements allow them to bypass the immunity.
