UlmPunk MOD available
 

Bowlingballhead has made an Ulm Punk mod. I havn't had time to check it out yet, but it sounds fun.

Re: UlmPunk MOD available
 

Hmm, the names of the critters are missing. A bit annoying. Bowlingballhead, is it possible to fix this till tonight. I'll let the mod stay under completed and hope for the best. I'm of to work at school now.

Re: UlmPunk MOD available
 

Haven't actually tested it much yet, but sounds intresting and fun. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

About starting sites: The Steel Ovens, Ancient Forge or The Factory could be intresting... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Re: UlmPunk MOD available
 

'The names of the critters are missing'? What do you mean? The unit types are all named. I confirmed this myself. Maybe something is wrong with the copy of the file you got? I'm looking at a copy of the .dm file right now. #name "Artificer", #name "Steam Monstrosity", #name "Silicon"... it all seems to be here.

Of course, there's that danged hero I missed. Sheesh. I am so vexed that I overlooked him.

Re: UlmPunk MOD available
 

Why is it called "UlmPunk"?

Re: UlmPunk MOD available
 

Derived from 'Steampunk', the name for the genre of fanciful pre-electrical technology. Which in turn is derived from 'Cyberpunk', the genre of fanciful near-science fiction technology, with a dark setting.

Speaking of dark settings, the descriptions will probably be revised to meet with my taste for the grim. I was rather tired when I first wrote them, and I fear quite a bit about UlmPunk could use tweaking. I thought it was complete enough to show people, though.

And no forges! Don't think it didn't occur to me, but I'm already worried the nation is overpowered. Putting an artificer on one of those forge sites would be begging for exploitation.

[ February 03, 2004, 17:04: Message edited by: Bowlingballhead ]

Re: UlmPunk MOD available
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">You have names http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/confused.gif . That probably means that there are problems with the 2.07 beta Version (which I am using). I'll have to take a look.

Re: UlmPunk MOD available
 

Hmm, for some reason (no apparent one) only the Artificier has got a name when I try the mod.

You can all see the names of the units?

Re: UlmPunk MOD available
 

I believe so. I'm not at home to check. I'll see if I can't get confirmation from a friend.

Re: UlmPunk MOD available
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Kris: I downloaded the mod and started a game (with current patch, 2.06) and it works fine. I can see all the unit names. Must be the 2.07 patch?

Re: UlmPunk MOD available
 

The problem is that the #clear command works in Version 2.07. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif

You should not use the clear command in the midst of creating a new monster as it will clear all stats you have given it including the name. If you want to do a clear (not useful for new monsters) then do it right after the #selectmonster command.

Re: UlmPunk MOD available
 

#clear will work?! Oh, happy days! I will immediately move the #clear commands in my units' setups appropriately.

Re: UlmPunk MOD available
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Monday Tuesday Happy Days!

Wednesday Friday Happy Days!

Saturday, Happy Day... blabla oh I hate this song.

[ February 03, 2004, 21:53: Message edited by: Argitoth ]

Re: UlmPunk MOD available
 

This mod's pretty fun to play with, but in the interest of balance, I have a few suggestions

1. The starting Mongrels are rather good for starting units, maybe Contraptions should be used instead.

2. Multilaunchers are too good. Get 6 of them and a revenant to cast aim and you have the arrows of 78 experienced archers. Still only shortbows, but when a knight gets hit by 78 shortbows, he NOTICES. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif Not as sure how to deal with that. Oh, and you might give them some sort of close range attack, because right now they get fist by default which doesnt make much sense. Maybe they have metal claws or something crude so they can get a claw attack.

[ February 04, 2004, 16:16: Message edited by: LordArioch ]

Re: UlmPunk MOD available
 

Mongrels: Every race gets their own starting unit. Some are fairly strong, some are fairly weak - I think the contraptions are too weak, personally. But you're right, the mongrels are strong. I'll probably cut them down to 10.

Not sure you're going to convince me on the multilaunchers, though. I may make them size 2 so they don't squeeze up enough that Aim can get a lot of them at once. Other than that, it's not really different from what you can do with other archers. You're getting more arrows for your buck, but they're less accurate.

'Fist' is ridiculous. I didn't want to give them a melee weapon at all and make them utterly helpless short-range, but the game apparently doesn't like that and gave them 'fist'. I'm going to revise it to 'crush'. It makes sense. They try and roll over you, they're just really bad at it.

Thank you for your opinions! I love feedback, and I definitely think about it.

Re: UlmPunk MOD available
 

It just seemed with their 40ish gold costs mongrels were a bit high level for starting units. Maybe they should actually be a little cheaper to build in general. And as for the multilaunchers, size 2 would help. But currently with 1 alteration you can get 1 revenant and 6 multilaunchers for 470 gold IIRC, and he can cast aim on all 6 at the same time.

You just got 78 archers for the cost of 47...and since each revenant can aim 2 Groups of multi's pretty effectively you could get 12 launchers for 156 arrows for the cost of 83. That's pretty signifigant, especially if you get fire arrows. Maybe raise the gold cost to ~80-100 or so, or lower the precsion even more.

Re: UlmPunk MOD available
 

If you can 'aim' 6 at once, that's bad. I definitely think that deserves a fix. I assume that if I knock it up to 2, only one at a time will be affected.

Once I do that, though, I feel pretty safe with the multilauncher. It's true that they beg for things like Aim, Wind Guide, and Flaming Arrows, but if I remove all effective combos from my nation I'll disembowel it. Everybody has something that works pretty well - and even with those aim spells, their precision will never get higher than 11! That's not very good. They'll still miss tremendously - whereas if you cast those spells on regular archers, they'd be nearly gauranteed to hit. Of course, as things stand a single fireball and it's good-bye multilaunchers, but I think it's more important to limit Aim.

You really may just be right about the mongrels, though. I'm giving that one a lot of thought.

Re: UlmPunk MOD available
 

Aim affects one space of units, and at size 1 6 fit in a space. Size 2 only fits in 3, which is much more reasonable, so that'll probably make them alot more reasonable. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: UlmPunk MOD available
 

I have submitted an updated Version of UlmPunk to the Illwinter board. I have no idea how long it takes them to process, or if they're even awake in Sweden. Or if they'll post any notification when the old one is replaced. But it's all done, seems to work on my end, and has been sent to them.

Re: UlmPunk MOD available
 

Playing around a bit with the mod - I had never used a Warbow before - I was shocked at how potent multilaunchers are! I thought that they'd be shooting backwards, like Abysian Demonbreds, but a cluster of 10 destroyed whatever puny indies I attacked with no problems. That was without Aim. I really do not understand this - the spread was very small, even though the precision is 6! It's as though spell and arrow precision are calculated differently...

A question, though. Why is the priest so **** expensive? At 70 gold, he's no better than indy priests, and thus worthless in the long run... or am I missing something?

Re: UlmPunk MOD available
 

Heh, somewhat OT but still funny. Ever seen archers trying to shoot arrows in darkness? They quite literally fire arrows sideways when trying to hit targets in front of themselves.

Note: Maybe the scatter between bow of war shots is independent of prec, and all prec does is target the scatter center. But on further thought from my eye of aiming/bow of war scouts I realize that's not true, so ignore it.
SC, you really ought to try the warbow/eye of aiming scout. Add boots of quickness if you feel really fancy and/or have a lot of water gems.
You also need to give 2 warbows, an eye, and the boots to a nataraja. It's so fun I'm tempted to do it in an actual MP game just to see people's responses. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Re: UlmPunk MOD available
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">1) Warbow only has 7 shots - sounds like it would be a waste of 10 water gems, since I would expect them to use all 7 shots anyway... do you find boots help a lot?

2) Warbow does 10 damage. That means that in a lot of situations (against Ulm, Abysia, Pythium, HC, Knights, Jotun heavies, etc) I would expect it to be worthless... though with a stealthy mage to cast Flaming Arrows, a party of 1 mage and 4 scouts could take virtually any (archerless) provincial defense stealthily...

Hmmm. Warbow and Lifelong Protection (for fodder) would be perfect.

Re: UlmPunk MOD available
 

I should mention that Multilaunchers do magic damage, and are obviously supposed to do nonmagical damage... makes them substantially better.

Re: UlmPunk MOD available
 

Aside from being able to hit ethereal targets - and my own experiences have always suggested that missile attacks hit ethereal targets anyway for some reason - what's the difference between a magic and normal attack? Not that I can change it anyway.

I think you're getting lucky with the multilaunchers. 10 of them will roll over independents, absolutely, but 500 gold worth of anything will generally roll over independents. Then again, you're talking about spread - I think sheer statistical grouping makes them not look so 'wild' - there's just so many arrows, they look like they're together.

I've never seen anything shoot backwards, no matter how bad its aim.

The cost of the priest is because the second they give me the command to do it, I'm going to give iron preachers vastly increased leadership, and lower the leadership of the mages. The priests are supposed to be your only real commanders, I just don't have the tools to code that yet.

Re: UlmPunk MOD available
 

Oh, I've seen backwards shooting -- e.g. a blind Marignon mage/priest blithely firing off fire flies NE/SE/NW/SW in a single cast. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif It does happen. A Cyclops firing Flying Shards may not fire backwards, but also can be hilariously bad at aiming...
Hm. Is it deliberate that the nation appears to have no scouts?
Other random note -- the Unborn hero appears to have no feet; I take it that he's based on a #mounted unit?

Re: UlmPunk MOD available
 

I can't remove the '#mounted' flag in 2.06, I'm afraid. He should have a foot slot in 2.07. So just think of him as being too big for boots.

He still won't have feet when the 1.1 UlmPunk is posted on IllWinter. I switched the heroes around, but it doesn't matter - they're all #mounted, and there's nothing I can do about it.

As for scouts, they'll have scouts when I think of an appropriate unit for the purpose, really! For now poor Ulm has to suck it up and deal with inexpert intelligence by rolling over the enemy with overwhelming firepower.

Or scaring them. I hear that multilaunchers will send low-morale units running. This I find funny.

[ February 05, 2004, 17:55: Message edited by: Bowlingballhead ]

Re: UlmPunk MOD available
 

Version 1.1 is up.

Re: UlmPunk MOD available
 

Sweeeeeet. Thanks!

I definitely had to far tone down the cost of Silicons. They're good units, but they're not 100 gold good!

Re: UlmPunk MOD available
 

I've been getting into this excellent mod, and I think Arachnoids are very cool.

This mod allows for a lot of very cool Gift of Reason situations. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

I do have a question, not neccessarily only related to the mod but brought up in my mind because of it: shouldn't mindless units lose their mindless status upon recieving Gift of Reason? Those cool black things that I gift a bunch nd deck out with cool weapons are "mindless", yet are also commanders and have been given reason by the spell.

Re: UlmPunk MOD available
 

Glad you like it. It's especially pleasing to know that units other than the multilaunchers are being used. Although truthfully, I haven't even tried the Hulks in battle myself! Been experimenting with Silicons.

I kind of figured somebody might Reason a Hulk and try and make a SC out of it. That's one reason why it wears armor.

As for the mindlessness thing... well, I've seen people discuss it occasionally. The best theory I heard is that when you Gift something mindless, you get a robotic, programmed sort of intelligence. It's still not capable of fear, and doesn't have anything for, say, mind burn to attack.

Re: UlmPunk MOD available
 

GoR'ing a strong mindless unit, incidentally, might be one thing to try against R'lyeh -- but you'd better deck out such a unit with magic-resistance boosters or risk instant death by opposition.