Items lost when a comamnder dies in a fort w/lab

[msew]

When a commander dies in a fort with a lab their items are not placed in the lab.

This is silly. If I get bLasted with a spell from afar, or my guy dies from a disease or what not. The items should go to the lab.

It is really frustratiing when someone puts up a Wrath of God and you start having your commanders drop and losing items.

[Duncanish]

Well, I assume it's because the guy wasn't really in the lab when he died. He was probably out frolicking in the fields or, worse, at the pub with a lady when he was mercilessly burnt to cinders due to flames falling from the sky and whatnot. Since he wasn't really in the lab when he dies, it's lost out in the field (think Isildur in LotR; he gets ambushed and the One Ring is lost).

[msew]

Sure you can think up a billion different semi rational reasons for why it is the way it is.

The point is: that the way it is now is whack.

In battle if a commander dies you have some probability of finding his items.

Commander deaths in forts (with or without labs) should be at least that. And imo: if they are in the fort their items should be returned 100% of the time.

That is one of the differences between being out in the dangerous field vs being at home in the safe fort.

[Gandalf Parker]

Logical or not, at the moment it is part of game balance. Do you feel taht other commanders in that province should have a chance to pickup just as it is in combat?

If you were to delete this completely then what would you add for a way to lose items from mages staying in labs? Equipment zapping spells?

[Etaoin Shrdlu]

And are you quite sure you want the item back when its recent owner was killed by the item or at least as a result of it? E.G. Items that give a horror mark. In this case the horror shows up, zaps the item holder and (presumably) takes the item back to... wherever it is Horrors "live"...
EG #2: Fever Fetish and other diseasing items. As it stands it's a lot of micromanagement pulling the thing off guy just before he dies. Instead you get to use it again no questions asked? I don't think so.
I could live with a limited chance (50% baseline: -2% for each magic level required to forge and -12% for each 2 levels of Construction research necessary to learn to make the thing, for instance).
Uniques should NEVER be recoverable though. No way in anyone's realm. Also no chance of recovery if the item was responsible for the holder's death.

[msew]

>Do you feel taht other commanders in that province should have a chance to pickup just as it is in combat?

It should be AT LEAST that. The fact that it doesn't seem to work the same as out in the field is a bit mind boggling.

Being out in the field is dangerous place. Being in your fort (with out without a lab) is a lot safer and should be reflected. Either by getting the items back at a higher rate or getting them back automatically.

There are at least four main cases:

-in the field
------your province
------enemy province that you just captured
------enemy province that you failed to capture
------indy province that you just captured
------indy province that you failed to capture


-fort without lab
------non sieged
------sieged
------storm castle and failed


-fort with lab
------non sieged
------sieged
------storm castle and failed


-lab
------your province
------enemy tried to capture province and failed
------enemy tried to capture province and succeed
------indy tried to capture province and failed
------indy tried to capture province and succeed


And then map that to terrain type if we want to.


And that matrix should give the base percentages for getting items back.



>And are you quite sure you want the item back when its recent owner was killed by the item or at least as a result of it? E.G. Items that give a horror mark. In this case the horror shows up, zaps the item holder and (presumably) takes the item back to... wherever it is Horrors "live"...

If you don't want the item back send the commander to a province by himself and let him die there with the item.

This is an edge case that exists in BOTH in the field and in a fort with or without a lab. If your dude dies in a place then what ever rules govern that place determine what happens with that item.

Hell if you are going to try justifying the current rules with cursed items, most cursed items are sentient in some way. So they WANT to be found and possessed. Therefore all cursed items should be automatically found an automatically attached to a commander when a commander comes into the province with the item.

This could be an interesting meta game of leaving cursed items for your enemies to find.



>EG #2: Fever Fetish and other diseasing items. As it stands it's a lot of micromanagement pulling the thing off guy just before he dies. Instead you get to use it again no questions asked? I don't think so.

This is a bogus example. The micromanagement for "getting the benefit of the item" is not the real cost there at all. The COST of using that item is that it will eventually kill off your commander.

And if you want to keep your commander around get an undead commander and slap it on him. Boom no micromangement.

To accept that gems creation items are micromanagement then:

a) why do not all gem devices eventually kill off the commander?
b) why is there a pool gems command? (should not the micromanagement of getting gems from your commander be part of the cost?)

So yeah the fact that you have to pull the item that is killing your commander off and it is sucks when you have hundreds of them for specific gems creators and not others is just an oversight of a neat roleplay idea(the heat of the fever gives the gem) resulting in people having to spend mindless clicking time to accomplish something.


The high level rule is: make the cost be within the game not part of interacting with the game through a less than optimal UI.

[Vynd]

I agree with msew, but I would take it a step further. I don't like that if a commander dies in battle you might find their items (if you have other commanders in the battle, and you win), but if he dies outside of battle the items are always lost. If a commander carrying items dies, I think any commander in that province ought to have a chance of finding the items, regardless of how the first commander died and what the other commander was doing. And I think that if one of your commanders dies while sitting around in a fort then your chances of finding the item again, or having it sent straight to your lab, should be even higher.