What could we steal from other fantasy games...
 

...implement it in this game in order to make dominions 3 even better? How about an item forge where one can choose the ingredients based on ones magic tech a la Age of wonders shadow magic and pay for it with gold/magic gems?

Re: What could we steal from other fantasy games..
 

Let's steal the peasants from Warcraft 2. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

Re: What could we steal from other fantasy games...
 

1) The ability to create and change events

2) The ability to setup planned events for a map

3) Allowing for a scriptable AI allowing the community to make the AI opponents more wise.

4) Improved diplomacy settings and official in-game agreements

5) Introduce a changing black market for the buying and selling of items lost in battle, gems, slaves, beasts, and secret spells.

6) Advanced Game Setting to increase/decrease battle turn limits. *important as computers continue to become more powerful*

7) Advanced Game Setting to increase/decrease unit and commander limits. *important as computers continue to become more powerful*

Re: What could we steal from other fantasy games..
 

Um Weimaar, we already have a very comprehensive magic item forging system.

Re: What could we steal from other fantasy games...
 

Not having designable magic items is a design choice.

Re: What could we steal from other fantasy games...
 

I dont really think that adding the ability to design items/units to a game really adds anything, anyway. In the end, everyone ends up building basically the same thing just due to the demands of the game.

Re: What could we steal from other fantasy games...
 

Does dominions really need to steal ideas from other fantasy games?

I think its the other way around really, other fantasy games need to look at dominions and embrace originality and individuality which dominions has in vast amounts.

Re: What could we steal from other fantasy games..
 

Seriously though, Dominions could stand to steal a number of UI improvements from other games that would make units easier to manage. For instance, being able to create "stacks" of commanders a la Warlords II that you could easily reorder would help a lot with mid and late-game micromanagement nightmares.

Re: What could we steal from other fantasy games..
 

Mid- and late-game I start renaming my commanders to their job titles. An indy priest who's supposed to go to province #49 and build a temple becomes "Build 49". The first thing I do on a turn after checking battle outcomes is to cycle through the commander list and do all the pre-determined moves. Build 49 moves one province closer to province #49, Forge-Boots forges another Earth Boots, Shuttle Fom moves a stack of units one step closer to my Fomoria stack, etc. All of this is done mindlessly before I start making hard strategic decisions like where to move real armies.

-Max

Re: What could we steal from other fantasy games..
 

Yeah, I've started renaming my pretenders that way as well. There's a few things I don't like about this system though. The first one is that it makes can spell out your intentions to other players which can be a bad thing. But the bigger problem is simply that you can't display that many characters from the strategic map. Also renaming your commanders every turn to keep things straight is a bit annoying since I also rename my mages according to their random picks. Finding a better way to organize all the various bits of information: magic picks, orders, battle groups, communion configurations, etc. would make the management part of the game more enjoyable.

Re: What could we steal from other fantasy games..
 

I think being able to desing items would just make SC even mroe powerfull.. which isn't really needed or a good idea.

I think dom 3 could use a feature that you can give orders to move say.. over half the map and that unless you change anything it will actually carry on with those orders.

Re: What could we steal from other fantasy games..
 

Note fields tied to units...

I just send a message to myself reminding me what to do.

Re: What could we steal from other fantasy games..
 

As far as content, Dominions is miles ahead of most titles. But for graphical, UI, unit management improvements (etc.) I think there's a lot of room for improvement. I would like to be able to recruit from the F1 screen, sort the F1 screen by the column headers, etc.

On the one hand, Dominions is like a fun little puzzle where after playing for 8 months someone tells you that you can press "N" it's the most amazing thing since sliced bread, but it's definitely a daunting and translucent experience.

It's so rare that you actually want a game sequel to be the same thing but with a little corporate polish. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: What could we steal from other fantasy games..
 

I agree with all who say fantasy could take things from dominions. 99.9999% of all other fantasy titles are just tired cliche drivel hacked together from overused mythology or Tolkien.

Re: What could we steal from other fantasy games..
 

I'm confused. How are overused mythology and Tolkien different things? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

Re: What could we steal from other fantasy games..
 

You know, as someone who actually plays games besides dominions, I sometimes find assertations that all other games are so much rubbish and the people who play them simple to be a little bit insulting.

Re: What could we steal from other fantasy games..
 

Tolkien is awesome because he was not only a successful fantasy writer, but he rewrote the mythology that his story was based on to the point that most people assume that Middle Earth lore is real and the original mythology is false. He ranks up there with Gary Gygax and Wikipedia as far as rewriting history goes.

I still think there are a lot of good fantasy games out there. I think the biggest change is my personal tastes towards games, not the games themselves. My little brother is 10 years younger than me and he loves all sorts of games I think are absolutely awful. But then I remember playing games in the 90s that were awful and thinking they were great at the time.

Re: What could we steal from other fantasy games..
 

Jedi, your ideas bring a new dimension to the game. Is there a possibility to implement at least some of the ideas via a mod?

Re: What could we steal from other fantasy games..
 

Hi Johan, what is the rationale behind the not-implementing of a magic item forge?

Re: What could we steal from other fantasy games..
 

There is a magic item forge. It's just that the players can't pick together anything.

Allowing forging of generic items would make them boring and less diverse in our opinion. Balancing is also difficult.

Re: What could we steal from other fantasy games..
 

From the Civilization series: I'll add a modifiable and expandable magic system, wherein new magic schools and new paths can be modded in, as well as new gemtypes/resources, and atleast the possibility of modding in new building types-just so that the feature is there to be used or ignored.

And please, more sprites per unit! I have no problem whatsoever with the graphics-the graphics we have now are one of the reasons we have so many excellent mod nations-but there's no good reason that the units themselves can't have the possibility of more movement, if someone chooses to put the work in.

Re: What could we steal from other fantasy games..
 

Christoffer, giving people the FEELING of them being in charge is one of the most addicting and fun features one can add in a game. Being able - as a player- to tinker with magical items is a very very "empowering" thing. If you remember, half the reason one played master of orion 2 was the possibility to (even if it was completely unnecessary sometimes) design the ships. It made a unique game absolutely fantastic. Dominions 3 has the same potential.

Re: What could we steal from other fantasy games..
 

I tend to agree with weimaar. I find item forging in MoM far more interesting and immersive than in dominions. Then of course there may be a lot of balance issues with this one approach.

I also think many items descriptions are strange for items you just created.

I mean, if I'm a quasi god and forge a relic I can't see why its description say its a legendary item someone else has made (what all artefacts description do). For me there is a thematic inconsistency here.

Anyway as designing items is a too big feature for dom 3, and changing all descriptions too much work for no gameplay addition... and as dom 4 isn't planned for the moment, I'm fine with items are they are.

ps : the best system for me would combine the two approachs...
- generic pre-made non unique items for low levels gear and boosters
- unique legendary items of the past not available from construction (they are already made) but from summoning schools
- designing some national non unique items (with a limited number of items models slots for each nation, and powers dependant on research in other schools) as mid-late game construction school power
- designing relics (with the pretender himself forging) as the endgame construction school power

And as soon a national item model or relic with done powers would be made, these powers would stop to be available for other nations/gods designed items, so item variety and race to endgame construction would be preserved.

Re: What could we steal from other fantasy games..
 

"The Sword of Elendil was forged anew by Elvish smiths...
...Very bright was that sword when it was made whole again; the light of the sun shone redly in it, and the light of the moon shone cold, and its edge was hard and keen. And Aragorn gave it a new name and called it Andúril, Flame of the West."

"The Summit was forged anew by Master Smiths... ... Very bright was that axe when it was made whole again; the light of the sun shone redly in it, and the light of the moon shone cold, and its edge was hard and keen. And Plaguetongue gave it a new name and called it Urist, The Hungry Dwarf."

Not being able to ACTUALLY rename them is a pity, but it isn't that important either.

Re: What could we steal from other fantasy games..
 

Elder Scrolls: Oblivion actually has a very good spell creation and item creation system. It allows for a huge variety of new content but hard caps the bonuses in such a way that very few items are actually overpowered. Dominions could definitely use a modified version of that.

Re: What could we steal from other fantasy games..
 

I quite like what NT jedi said, some point points I think.

I'm quite fond of the current system myself, I love MoM and AoW don't get me wrong, but I like the item of preset items you can forge, maybe just have more of them? I don't know though, I'm still new to it all, although I must say, if there was some sort of ingame option to remove spells you don't want in you game, I'd like that, I'm more of a troop/command player, once it gets into the "MEGA DEATH RAYS OF DOOM!" stuff I sorta loss interest, mind you that could be done with a mod or two, but I'd still like the option.

Anyway more on topic I loved MoM/AoW plane shift, although it wouldn't be possible with current dom (I don't think at least, maybe I'm wrong...) I'd love to see it, I always play huge maps, and it would make them that much bigger, mind you, the bigger the map the longer it takes and likely to get abit dull after awhile, but something I thought of when I first started up the game might come in use...

Age changes, now when I played my first game I went the snow giants in EA, and I thought "Damn, I want the design points from cold scale 3, but MA snow guys like cold 2, not 3, so I'll go with 2 so that mid game I'm not freezing.."

I honestly thought that as time went on, the ages changed, I think that might be cool though, set it as a option in game creation, play say 60-odd turns as a EA nation, then it becomes it's MA one, you keep your old units, but times change and you can't make them anymore, sorta add something to it, or at least I'd think so...

Re: What could we steal from other fantasy games..
 

I agree about official in-game diplomacy. Another good thing would be a possibility to save (at least) diplomatic messages for future turns. So players could remember exact terms of their agreements.
Another one - though I don't think it's possible under this engine - would be a possibility to order commanders to move into remote provinces which would take more than 1 turn...

Re: What could we steal from other fantasy games..
 

Weimaar,

Yes, you can do that with a mod. You can create new magic items in a mod, and in fact you can edit the mod while the game is in progress to add new magic items. However, you can't make magic items cost gold, and the cost in gems is always fixed by the path forging requirements. N4F2 items will always cost 25 nature, 10 fire gems.

-Max

Re: What could we steal from other fantasy games..
 

yeah but you forget you could design a ship that could single-handedly take out hundreds of all the best things the AI could throw at you. All you had to do was combine two pieces of technology (I can't remember what they were called now) and you'de get 10 free turns at the start of every battle.

with the ability to design magic items all the players would quickly find the most exploitable designs and the great diversity of magic items would collapse to just a few that had to be used in order to compete. in practice the diversity of the game system would actually be reduced by designable magic items.

I LOL'd. But hey, I love wikipedia! are you referring to the vandalism? Or simply the different perspective wiki offers on history?

Any _contemporary_ historian worth their salt will tell you history is subjective, and has commonly been written from a top-down perspective. There is a lot of effort today to capture history from other perspectives. Voices of the subaltern and all that. In reality, wikipedia is criticized for silencing subaltern perspectives, because it takes a certain expertise to use it that many of the "subaltern" (itself a subjective signifier) do not possess.

Re: What could we steal from other fantasy games..
 

I had a lot of fun with the Master of Magic system, but I didn't actually need all the variety because I was just going to either forge 1.) a cheap item to get me through the interim, or 2.) a top-line item with +4/+4/Invisibility/Flying to put on my thugs. As far as I know this is quite possible in Dominions. Just make more higher-path items that have combinations of powers, maybe Hydra Armor + Amulet of Luck. It won't be perfect (you can't control the cost separately from paths, and it can't cost more than two gem types) but you don't need support from the software so much as you need a set of rules for forging prices, and those rules don't necessarily need to come from Illwinter.

For instance, some item costs:

Luck costs S2.
Regeneration 10% costs N3.
Quickness costs W2.
+10 to damage and +4 to attack costs F2.
AP damage on a weapon costs E1.
AN costs D2.
Misc slot items deduct 1 from total cost.

So I decide to forge a FireSword which is built on a broadsword but has att 4 and dmg 16 plus Luck. F2S2. Throw it in the mod you're using for your current game (even if you don't want any rules changes it's smart to use an empty mod, so you can edit the rules if necessary later without starting a new game, for instance to fix a bug).

-Max

Re: What could we steal from other fantasy games..
 

Boosters would be the main problem with some kind of generic in-game item design system.

Just create a 1S booster for every slot...

Even for more combat oriented items, one of the main hassles with kitting out a SC is covering all the vulnerabilities while still having enough offense. With a design system it would be worth it to cover all resistances, boost Protection & Defense, boost MR sky-high, add luck, ethereal, etc

There's a reason there are only a few ways to get many of these traits and why you have to devote a whole slot to them.

Re: What could we steal from other fantasy games..
 

Yup.

Compare, say, the Angband games -- which have detailed inventory, but a LOT of attack forms and properties, making inventory selection an interesting problem -- w/ something like MOM (where a hero can simultaneously be immune to practically all magic, near impervious to missile fire, invisible {bugged}, flying, hasted... with a bow that fires phantasmal arrows treating enemy defense at 0.)

Re: What could we steal from other fantasy games..
 

MoM has never been a game balanced for multiplayer. (hum not, in fact it could have been one.... as I doubt anyone would have been able to find the time to forge one uber MoM item against human opponents, remember the dozen of turns to make anything good)

Anyway, designing items doesn't mean no restrictions, and unlimited power for a done item.

Things like magic paths boost would have an hard limit with a limited number of cumulative effects no matter where the item is.

And there would be also soft limits, like different costs for the same powers on different slots, so if you want to enchant offensive items with defensive powers to cover all resist it's an huge investment ; and of course another soft limit would be research in appropriate paths needed to make each power available.

It's not hard to design a good and balanced system, just perhaps too much work for what it would add (and compared to the interest of UI improvements dom4 may have if its made one day).

Re: What could we steal from other fantasy games..
 

You could also institute a limit on the cost of the item based on your construction research.

Say that arrow fend and invulnerability for a chest slot item cost 50 gems (or something like that). For each level of construction you research you'd be getting access to a new "max cap" for the amount of gems in a given item you want to forge.

Level 2 might open up 10 gem items, level 3 15 gems items, level 4 20 gems, level 5 25, and level 9 would remove the cap entirely.

Jazzepi

Re: What could we steal from other fantasy games..
 

Couple things-


First, on customizable units, I find this to be one of the most intriguing and interesting facets of a game that allows it. First of all, you would only have a select few chassis to build off of per race, according to what they can make. Second, there is already a robust system of gold/resource costs per equipment. There is the point that this MAY have a complicated imapact on balance..... On the one hand, I don't think there would be a "perfect" gear set, some people would go for plate for high prot, others might go scale or chain for lower enc. But it would allow a bit of tinkering such as if someone prefers mauls on their units, or likes falchions. Where it becomes complicated, is at the point of making a DW unit for a nation that usually doesn't get one, or adding shields on a nation that is supposed to be complicated by their lack thereof. I'd think that if the customization were developed for an eventual Dom4 however, that each gear type could be flagged such that everyone's available gear is different. An example would be that Coral and Meteorite armors would only be available aquatically, and only Ulm could outfit with Blacksteel. By the same token, some nations could be barred from kite shields, some would not use polearms, or perhaps would only have one particular chassis available that was flagged for 2h weapons at all. There are a lot of ways to tweak the system so that it gives people a little bit of flexibility, and the ability to play by their own preferences even when it gives no overt advantage, but still add depth to the gameplay. Also, it might be worthwhile to tie modifications in to Construction research in some way. At least for the magic items like Caelian crafted ice, or Blacksteel, you would need Cons research before you could add those special items to your own designs.


Regarding the item forging, again I think that people aren't looking at the interesting ways that these items could be limited. The first thing that I would do, is limit items to one path period, unless there were a costly and time consuming system for artifact creation. These single path items, could ONLY duplicate effects that you had access to via research. So, they would give a little help to people who went for spells before working on Cons, but their items would only reproduce the effects of spells that they can already cast. For example if you wanted a regen item, you'd have to unlock Personal Regeneration first. As to artifact construction, I think it would take some brainstorming to work out a system that makes it compelling to players, while insuring that the items are no more powerful than artifacts already available, but are significantly more costly to create. Also, adding risks of different kinds to artifact creation, such that an item that needs 50 blood slaves to create, could fail and summon a powerful demon that attacks the forger, or an incredibly powerful astral based item has a chance to leave the forger Lost in Time and Space, that sort of thing.



One other thing that I think could be interesting, would be the ability to create free form mercenary bands. The idea being that you would be able to hire independant mercenaries in a province, beyond your natural resources. The costs would be significant, you would not get to choose your commander type or unit type (though having the units be randomly chosen from what is trainable in the province makes sense), you would get a number of men somewhat relative to the amount you threw down to create the company, but there would be a random factor to it as well, to add the element of risk to it. I think this could be an interesting system for multiplayer, so that people have more options to remain competitive at game start, as well as giving a little more flexibility in how you deal with surprises. Of course, these mercenary bands would have the same 3 month contract, with the ability to renew at the end of the contract.

On the subject of mercenaries, I'd also like to see the mercenary bands that already exist, regenerate their numbers in some way. I mean if they take losses, they still demand the same amount of gold, you would think the excess would be used by the captain to replenish his manpower. They are mercenaries after all, if they're not really exotic like trolls or foulspawn or something, they should be able to hire more men, something like 10% a turn or something, which for most bands would only be 2-3 per month, rather slow but worthwhile if those mercs add something to your nation.



Just some thoughts, feel free to shoot some holes in them. <3

Re: What could we steal from other fantasy games..
 

Some nice ideas floating around.

One that has around 0% of being implemented, but is neat anyway, is the bounty system in Sins of a Solar Empire.

I would suppose one way of doing the dominions version would be a variant on the global Looming Hell, where instead of it targetting armies inside the casting nations dominion, it targets random commanders of target nation, and they get attacked by various indep. assassin units; demonbreds, empoisoners, ninjas, slayers, stalkers, star children, etc.

Each successful attempt subtracted some gold from you. Each unsuccessful attempt subtracted half as much.

Re: What could we steal from other fantasy games..
 

Full-fledged diplomacy in SP, as per MOM/MOO/Civ etc. Alliances, NAPs, trade of gold/gems/items/units/provinces, maybe even spells (that demands a slight change in spell research system, making not all spells per school available at every level but some random percentage of them). Works for MP too, but SP doesn't even have "unofficial" diplomacy.

Multi-turn movement orders via waypoints would be helluva useful too. And queuing (sp?) orders in general, like "move prov 1, move prov 2, cast summon something, move prov 2, move prov 1".

Re: What could we steal from other fantasy games..
 

I personally don't mind teh diplomacy in SP.. in all other games diplomacty is usually so easy to abuse and the AI so bad at it that as it is in dom 3 is to be preferred really.

Re: What could we steal from other fantasy games..
 

Diplomacy and scripted events are definitely what's most needed in my opinion.

Re: What could we steal from other fantasy games..
 

....There are several basic UI improvements that would make the game more accessible to newer players.

The first one that comes to mind is allowing the user to see what you can build in your national capital during pretender construction. Yeah after playing a game with a nation I won't need this, but that doesn't help me when I start. (What paths are available to my mages? what units are sacred? What kind of commanders/scouts do I have? What are my unit's strengths? What are capitol only builds?)

A system to save not only diplomatic messages, but maps and battle images for future reference. This would include messages to self as a reminder of what it was you were intending to do.

An editing system for in game diplomatic messages would be great for those of us who type like foo.

My mage has found a gem producing site by spell X. On a large map I now have to find my way to the nation screen and find the province and then mouse over what that site is. Ordering that province list would be a start. Hypertext from the message list would be even better.

I want to find that province that can produce wind riders....uh oh. Similarly, I want to find the non-castle provinces where I can build scouts. oops.

Simple path finding to move your stack/unit to province 31 would be a great boon, but I understand the objection, it would require some real coding.

Re: What could we steal from other fantasy games..
 

As a new player it is definitely the UI that I think could be improved, it can be very tedious handling a lot of the small things each turn. In turns of content and depth the game is great. Civ IV probably handles a lot of similar issues, if we’re talking about games to steal from. Maybe some better ways around them exist and I just don’t know how yet, but the repetitive tasks I’d love to avoid are:
• Movement – scheduling movement over a number of turns with waypoints, or alternately a pathfinding mechanism. Wouldn’t hurt to have someway of automoving troops recruited in a province to a different province, particularly where the place you are recruiting from is far from the battlefront. I understand there is an issue with commander requirements, but there must be a valid solution to it.
• Repeat build – setting a province to recruit the same units each turn until you change it.
• Repeat forge – as above, would be a great time saver with some of the mass produced items especially.
• Site searching – would love to be able to tell a mage to wander amongst friendly provinces and site search. Or even to assign his movement with waypoints but be able to tell him to search for a turn at each one. Could do the same with site searching spells, the caster casts the specific spell each turn on a province that hasn’t been tested for it before.
• Goto next active unit – I often find I forget to move someone. The difficulty I guess is units that have moved defaulting to Defend, so how would the computer identify active units you want to do something with? I’m sure there is an answer somewhere though
• Battle reports – More detail on the units present and numbers of each type killed, not just overall numbers. Watching every battle is time consuming, having enough summary information would reduce the number we need to watch. Also when capturing a fortress or an assassination fight, no detail is given at all in the sense of a normal battle.

I’m sure there are others – basic theme is to take mundane tasks out of the game to save more time for the interesting stuff! I’m sure it would make multiplayer games faster and more viable too.

One other is with regards to save games. At first I thought it was great not to have a save option, no incentive to cheat a little to go back. That is until I sent my Pretender alone into a fight a couple of hours into a game, not realising that the other commander with the army hadn’t:
- been selected,
- couldn’t fulfil the move but it wasn’t flagged when I click
- picked up all the troops sitting in the province due to a retreat or commander death

Those little mistakes that happen because you aren’t spending a heap of time checking everything can ruin a long game due to the save system. I fully understand having the ability to save as an option only, especially in MP, but I find the level of checking required in a SP game when I’m trying to learn pretty tiring. I want to spend my time making interesting decisions, not micromanaging detail. I can only imagine how much work there is playing larger maps – I’m only on medium so far!
That said, very interesting game with a steep learning curve, which is awesome. I’ve already convinced one other friend to buy so we can MP.

Re: What could we steal from other fantasy games..
 

"Goto next active unit – I often find I forget to move someone." Do you want something more than the 'N' key shortcut that currently exists?

Re: What could we steal from other fantasy games..
 

like i said, I'm sure some things exist I don't know about yet http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif will try that tonight, cheers

Re: What could we steal from other fantasy games..
 

Dragar, this has already been incorporated in patches. Set mage to cast monthly ritual with shift-m and select radar spell. The mage will keep casting until there are no more gems of that type left or there are no more provinces that have not been searched for that path OR all provinces left already have 2 or more sites in them. See the site searching threads linked from the strategy index for details.

Re: What could we steal from other fantasy games..
 

A waypoint system would be great both to reduce microgestion for long strategic moves over several turns and to allow interceptions inside a done turn (if each commander do one mapmove, then another, etc... someone moving to a friendly province just having the initiative for each of the strategic impulses ; so an unit going 2 or 3 provinces away can be stopped before the destination if a province it crosses is attacked).

But waypoints may pause problems with the huge number of commanders in late game as for each several provinces numbers would have to be stored. It would be sad to make commander caps smaller when one of the strength of the dominions engine is to allow massive games with 50+ players (a feature that must be kept for dom4 if it's made).

Re: What could we steal from other fantasy games..
 

The only improvement I'd like to see with the "N" next commander handling is some way to mark a commander as done.

Late game it becomes frustrating to cycle again and again through all the scouts and commanders I don't want to move trying to make sure I haven't missed anyone important.

Re: What could we steal from other fantasy games..
 

Repeat Commander Recruitment.

Fleeing from assassination is not fatal in your own territory.

Re: What could we steal from other fantasy games..
 

Making fleeing from assassination non-fatal would make assassination pretty useless, wouldn't it? Only flying assassins would ever kill anybody.

-Max

Re: What could we steal from other fantasy games..
 

Well, attacks on commanders in the field could still work.
Mages aren't much use in battle if you script them to retreat.

Re: What could we steal from other fantasy games..
 

1st -
Assassination is almost too powerful as it is right now. Please note i said "almost".

2nd -
Retreating because of a lucky hit breaking morale is frankly the most frustrating thing in Dominions. Nothing ruins a game like a horror causing your Pretender to retreat, even if the horror can't actually beat your Pretender in combat, or your assassin just running away to his death because of a lucky shot. If it's a fight to the death, they sure don't act like they know it.

3rd -
This would probably break the Deathmatch minigame.

OTOH, i'd like to see recruitable assassins be allowed to use a few stealthy troops during the attempts as well. It would make recruitable assassins a whole lot less sucky, and give new life to marginal units like shades. Of course, as a band, they would be easier to find and kill with patrollers...(i'm not a big fan of the +10 scout stealth buff recently either).