Destroyer of worlds weapon slots

[calmon]

I'm not sure about this 'shield gives ranged weapon back'.

I've tested a 2-hander with intristic ranged weapon:

Give him a item weapon and he lose his ranged weapon.

Add a shield and he get it ranged intristic back.

For me that isn't real logical and a (minor) bug. But i've no problem with a WAD.

[Wish]

sounds like the bug, to me, is that the ranged weapons go away when only a melee weapon is equiped. (archers get both, after all.)

[lch]

Edi, I have no problem that he keeps his missile weapons when he carries a shield, but it is strange to me that he loses all his intrinsic weapons, missile and melee, as soon as you use one hand slot for a single-handed weapon and have three free hand slots remaining. Since you said that it's already in the bug list, whether it's a bug or WAD, let's see what the devs have to say about that.

[Blitz]

Plenty of dominions units incorporte a ranged weapon as well as a one-hander and shield. Good examples are all the infantry units for Ermor (javelin + tower shield + spear) or the crossbow infantry for LA man (crossbow, greatsword). Most knights also have a lance as well as sword and shield. Why is this significant? It shows that Dom3 units can carry more weapomns than they have hands, but not use all of them at once.

[Wish]

DoW definitely keeps his lightning in his pocket

[Kalin]

I think the point was that it was buggy for all of the weapons to dissapear when you equip a single weapon on him. There's nothing wrong with the fact that he can have 6 weapons at once, since they will only use melee or range weapon. However, if you put a single dagger on him, the only thing he will use is the dagger, what happened to the other 3 intrisic melee weapon hands, or the 2 range weapons? The bug is that these should NOT dissapear. It is also buggy that you have to equip a shield inorder to keep your range weapons. Why can't you use 4 melee weapons, and then switch to 2 range weapons when the time comes?

[Edi]

*sigh*

Most units on Dom3 have only one weapon unless they are something like the assassin or the EA Ulm warriors. When equipped with an item weapon, the intrinsic weapon is replaced. I don't know precisely what kind of checking is involved in that, but it generally replaces all melee weapons. Not a problem as such because most units only have one to begin with.

Missile weapons are bonus wrt melee weapons but most of them require two hands. This is probably why they disappear when equipping a single item weapon, since there is no flag to differentiate missile weapons from melee weapons as such. Adding range and shots is what turns a melee weapon to a range weapon, but here is no specific identifier flag. So if one hand slot is full, scratch missile weapon. Add shield and for some reason the check algorithm recognizes the difference and returns the missile weapons.

All of the above assumes a two-handed unit, not one with four, in which case the peculiar behavior starts. It's noteworthy that this feature has been around at least since Dom2, probably since DomPPP. DoW is the only unit that is significantly impacted, the closest followers being the Van and Hel commanders with javelin.

Altogether this affects only a few units and in very minor ways since something like the DoW is going to get a full kit of items anyway. Now we just know how to optimize it. So even if we get a consensus on the bug vs. feature, whether or not it's worth fixing (taking into account the possible amount of work and the possibility of something else breaking due to some unforeseen factor) is a determination only the devs and more specifically Johan can reliably make.

Edi