A Question for the Mizus..

[Khan7]

..or anyone else who has had considerable experience in Modding:

I'm just wondering what you thoughts would be on giving all the units, across the board, a +2 defense boost, for the purpose of slowing attrition and increasing the viability of disengagement from melee. I am speaking specifically of the Real Deal stats here, just to be clear.

I will go test this now, but I won't have time to do enough testing before I ship out for the holidays, so I'm wondering what info/thoughts anyone has on this.

Theoretically such a move would just slow things down, but I would think it might also fundamentally change the properties of certain units, or screw up the balance or something. I really don't know. Frankly I wasn't pleased with the effects of altering Engagement Proximity Threshold, though I haven't ruled out tampering in this area yet. And the thing about altering EEPT is that attrition pretty much stays constant because you lose guys cuz they don't realize the enemy is *right fricking there* and turn their backs or their side and get knocked.. of course this tends to be somewhat evenly divided between the two sides, and I haven't tested enough to determine if it is indeed necessarily as bad as it sounds.

Matt

[Kraellin]

in theory i'd say yer on track. testing will tell. one thing i did during the last stages of our modding was to multiply the charge, melee, and defense stats by 10. yup, by 10. this exaggerates the qualities of the units so that you can observe them better and thus tweak them tighter. hehe...you shld see a monk with 80 melee and a naginata with 80 defense go at it. it's quite amusing...at least for the first 20 minutes of the battle ;)

just as a side note, this is one of the mistakes that a LOT of game devs make; they set their scales from 0-18 or somesuch. this makes a stat change of 1 quite a large change, whereas if they made their ranges 0 - 100 or 0 to 1000, a change of 1 would allow for tighter tweaks. a value of 1 in a range of 100 is a much smaller percentage value than 1 in a range of 20. this eliminates the need for decimal numbers and keeps your coding cleaner. .... i've always hated D&D's use of the 0 - 18 range of stats for just this reason.

the prox stat, as far as we could ever tell in our testing, does nothing more than set the distance at which an attacker will start his attack on a defender. if you look at the cav stats in the 1.02 you'll see that we changed the distance at which cav start their charge. this was done more for an aesthetic value than anything else...it just looked better.

K.


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I'm sorry, but i never apologize.

[Khan7]

Well, then why not try setting the prox stat quite low, like 500 or less? You will see a difference, my friend, a big difference. Anyway, just had to clear that up, I may have more to say tomorrow.

Matt

[Kraellin]

hmmm, cool. i read your earlier thread about this. you were talking about how the units would charge, withdraw a bit, then charge again. i've seen other units do this, the kensai being the biggest example of this. he charges in, fights a bit, withdraws a few steps, then wades in again, but i'd never attributed this to the prox stat. i always figured this was a complete algorythm (sp?) given to various units. if the prox stat triggers different styles then that would be interesting.

K.


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I'm sorry, but i never apologize.

[Puzz3D]

Khan7,

I think the +2 on defense it will work as you expect and slow down the hth combat since the attack - defense calculation is just lowered by 2 for all combats. You could accomplish the same thing with -2 applied to the attack values or -1 to attack and +1 to defense.

It will also reduce the kills in the initial charge making that less of a factor in the outcome unless you boost the charge value. Ranged units will have more opportunity to use all their ammo if firing from behind the line which would remain stable much longer. I see ranged units becoming more important. Fatigue of fighting units will become a bigger factor, and might give the strategy of throwing in fresh units after a delay more of an impact. Definitely, you will have more time to exploit an open flank, and the timing of flank or rear attacks wouldn't be as critical.

I don't know about disengaging. It's pretty difficult to do that with any degree of success. I do try to disengage cav from YS because the cav is wasted anyway in that matchup.

Going too far with the combat slowdown could be counterproductive and lessen the advantage of a local superiority since the enemy will have plenty of time to respond. Cav could get eaten up by YS coming from a long distance to assist another unit for instance.

MizuYuuki ~~~

[Toda Nebuchadnezzar]

Ok high guys, I'm not a modding bloke but I do like a realistic battle. There was some thread in the MTW forum here at ORG about the possibility of when two units charge at each other they inflict/receive more kills just as they make contact then when they settle down and fight naturally. The Hype of the rush just adds kills because everyone is swinging swords and so on.

Is there anyway you can Mod STW or MI/WE to make this happen. I know it would probably be impossible because the attack factors would have to move up and down on a scale depending on whether the unit had been fighting for a while or whether they had just charged in.

This would give the possibility of the best form of defense...attack. I mean if you see all the films of for instance Medieval Europe its not attacker/defender its two or more totally beserk armies charging at each other. So if this mod was crafted then the defender would have to adapt slightly to camping because he would have a serious disadvantage in just sitting there and not charging back.

I don't mean just two armies pointlessly charging at each other, but it has to be timed to precision so that your men get to their full charging speed just as they hit the opposite unit. So defenders have to advance to become equal or the attackers get the slight advantage because of their charge. But obviously the charge would still not be a serious advantage because of the fatigue issue. If you've charged half-way across the battlefield your not gonna be able to run the other half with out falling over and dying from exhaustion (or is that just me??) so the fatigue issue makes it that the attackers probably wander slowly towards the defenders until just at the right moment they both start to charge at each other to get the full effects of the charge bonus and the fatigue issue.

E.G. 'Braveheart'. When the Scots have to fight against the British who have conscripted Irish and Welsh. THe armies slowly march towards each other then at the crucial sign from Mel Gibson the Scots charge.

I just think this would make the battles more realistic although I have no doubt its impossible.

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Grand Master of
The Knights Templar
"non nobis Domine non nobis sed Nomine tuo da gloriam"

[Puzz3D]

Toda Nebuchadnezzar,

What you ask for is already in the game. There is a separate charge value for each unit type added to the attack value for the first few seconds of the melee if the unit charges. It does produce higher kills initially, and a unit that just stands still doesn't get the charge bonus.

MizuYuuki ~~~
Clan Takiyama ~~~

[Toda Nebuchadnezzar]

well as I said i'm not a modding guy so i had no idea about that! thanx for the help.

Oh yeah one last thing... what goes well with potato wedges? TK mayo or BBQ?

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Grand Master of
The Knights Templar
"non nobis Domine non nobis sed Nomine tuo da gloriam"