Mod: Dominions 3000 v0.81 - lots of new indies, new map (using the brand new map commands)

[rdonj]

Two thoughts. 1) If anyone ever researches fire fend/warriors of muspelheim piria is pretty much doomed. 2) Their fire is going to have to be pretty good to overcome Jomon's oni right now with their 10an aoe1 fire attacks (which imo are way too strong).

I would also make the pirians immune to fire, and explode when they die. Make their attacks aoe armor piercing at best, aoe is too good as armor negating unless it's on something like a tank with a slow refire rate. If you give something an aoe AN attack make it a melee attack. I would suggest not letting their commanders wear any items... at all. Not even miscellaneous.

[Darkwind]

1. Well, their attacks won't be completely fire-based. A gun shooting bullets of +3 OH GOD I'M ON FIRE might have the "OH GOD I'M ON FIRE" part negated by those, but not the "gun shooting bullets" part. Of course, a gun that could be held by sentient flaming gas would be hard to find.

So yeah they're pretty much screwed. I've been planning to give them a Bane Fire-esque national spell which requires a bit of Astral (and a lot of research), with the effect of "OH GOD I'M ON FIRE" without the resistances the "FIRE" part would imply. And if they turn out to really fail, I'll give them a Blood spell that's essentially a nuclear warhead detonating over your skull, but with more "fiery death" and less "I have three arms now haha". Maybe even a low-Blood spell to summon "Lowblood"s who are basically Humanbred Abysians (ie, something that can wield Resistsfireium without melting it). I plan on giving them a fairly powerful Blood multihero, and maybe a mage that can break the Blood barrier (the same mage that can get astral?, by the way. Basically you can't go wrong with variants of "OH GOD I'M ON FIRE".

2. Wow you're right. I just checked Jomon, and those guys seem fairly cheap resource-wise, although that's a somewhat hefty gold cost. They'd be incredibly effective against Piria. Perhaps a capital-only unit with a Banefire-esque (minus the Decay of course) attack that checks MR instead of fire resistance? It could help solve the problem of the troops completely failing against Fire-resistant nations (they'd only mostly fail).

3. D'oh! Immunity to fire is kind of obvious. I might even give the Truebloods and higher, or all of them, some resistance to cold. They are sentient flaming gas, an iceball isn't going to touch them. Immunity, or resistance to, poison would probably be a good idea too. Maybe even darkvision or blind (they're fire incarnate, a little darkness won't do much, if they use eyes at all).

4. Fireball is AoE armor piercing, right? That's probably what I'll give my units. Giving commanders absolutely no items sounds a bit harsh, though. I'll probably give them misc slots, so they'll remain at least somewhat thuggable (or in Firstbloods' case, SCable).

5. Wow this post ballooned quickly.

[rdonj]

I like the idea of a cap-only unit that has a non-fire fire attack, it would definitely help them a lot. Perhaps even make it sacred, I'm sure that as a race of pureflamium(tm) they would revere those whose flames burn the hottest and brightest You could maybe even get away with making it non-mr resistable, just an ap attack with no fire effect. Or maybe an AN single target attack with high precision? And everything you said in three makes sense to me also.

Yes, fireball is aoe piercing. The reason I suggest no miscellaneous is because it would be really hard to give them equipment that wouldn't just melt, thematically speaking. But if the commanders had decent stats, casting something like body ethereal, personal luck wouldn't make for a bad thug, especially if it had a native fire shield. Though they might have fatigue problems....

[Darkwind]

First of all, a quick idea at what a Pirian's stats might be:

Pirian
10 AP, mapmove 1 or 2, size 2
11 attack, 9 defense, 11 precision (they'd be fairly good at throwing around fireballs)
11 HP, 11 strength, 5 protection (they don't have armor, they have poor defense, incredibly low protection would be icing on the cake of pain)
11 MR
10 morale
3 encumbrance
weapons: fireball, fire touch or somesuch
fireshield 10?, heat 5?, maybe #iceprot -1
50 poison resistance, 100 fire

Trueblood
9 AP, mapmove 1 or 2, size 3
12 attack, 10 defense, 12 precision
13 HP, 12 strength, 7 protection)
12 MR
11 morale
2 encumbrance
weapons: greater fireball, greater fire touch or somesuch
fireshield 12?, heat 6?, maybe #iceprot -1
50 poison resistance, 100 fire, 10 cold (as said before, their heat is going to melt some of the stuff before it gets there)

Firstblood
12 AP, mapmove 2, size 4
14 attack, 11 defense, 14 precision
25 HP, 15 strength, 11 protection
14 MR
12 morale
1 encumbrance
weapons: Greater Starburst (basically a big version of the AP non-fire attack), ultra fire touch or somesuch
fireshield 20?, heat 10? (these guys are epic heat-producers), maybe #iceprot -2
75 poison resistance, 100 fire, 25 cold (as said before, their heat is going to melt some of the stuff before it gets there)

So it's sort of an ascending order. The meh Pirians, the cool Truebloods, and the thuggable (at the least; the Firstbloods will probably all be a lot stronger due to being more awesome in general than the usual Firstblood who is already awesome) Firstbloods.

Feedback is welcome. I tried to make the Pirians okay (ie, not overpowering, but not weak either), the Truebloods great (ie, they have a higher resource/gold cost and deserve it), and the Firstbloods made of awesome and win (they'll be mid or high-level summons, capable of thugging out and maybe even SC status). Feel free to tell me why they are not what I meant them to be.

Edit: It's sort of only of all. I meant to reply to your post rdonj, but got a little carried away I guess. An AP normal attack sounds great, actually. I'll probably end up making it sacred (maybe both a Pirian version and a more powerful Trueblood version). I wanted miscellaneous slots since at least the Firstbloods were meant to be nice thugs/SCs, while the Truebloods could probably qualify as a thug (some of them, at least).

Doubleedit: Changed a couple things. More encumbrance for Pirians, more precision for Firstblood. Also changed my mind about Starburst (it's Greater for a reason).

[HoneyBadger]

Lovecraft is easy, and free on the web. http://www.dagonbytes.com/thelibrary/lovecraft/

Here's everything he ever wrote--feel free to print it out, it's legal.

Conan's a little harder, as it would, hypothetically, require you to go here http://gutenberg.net.au/search.html and do a search for Robert Howard. Ofcourse, I can't recommend that, as I'm not 100% certain how legal it would be to do so within the United States, but I'm not sure it's *not* legal, either, but ignorance is not an excuse.

[rdonj]

Hmm. Well, assuming for the moment that a pirian isn't going to be wearing equipment, the first thing that jumps out at me is that it could be awful hard for them to deal with the nations that do a lot of ranged damage. For example, I'll consider ulm.

Basic pirian stats:
11 hp
11 attack
9 defense
5 prot
11 precision
no shield or way to not take damage.

Ulmish space marine:
10 hp
10 attack
12 defense (10 + 2 from shield)
15 prot
9 precision (10 - 1 from weapon)
parry 2 shield with 15 prot

No idea how strong your race's ranged weapons are, ulm's blasters do 10 ap at up to 40 range.

So the basic ulmish space marine can take a lot more punishment than the basic pirian. Maybe even take multiple hits for a pirian to kill, potentially, depending on how strong their attack is. If it's an aoe attack sort of fireball that will mitigate the problem there a bit though. Meanwhile a good part of the time a pirian will die if it gets hit once. And even in melee an ulmish space marine has a better chance to hit the pirian than the pirian does to hit it, with a 4 AN damage weapon. Of course, if it does it has the fire shield to contend with... the fire shield value may actually be too high, it should be fairly low on the normal guys, ramping up for the higher ones. There aren't many units in dom3k with more than 20 hp. I would say start somewhere between 2-4 and go maybe to 10 for the Firstbloods.

So overall, statwise they are really fragile, but I guess if the cause enough burning it will work out. However, if they do get the aoe attacks they'd need to fight ranged nations, they will absolutely mow down the close combat nations (insectoids, commonwealth). If the pirians are basically thought of as chaff and the true/firstbloods the real damage doers that could work out better.

I think the firstbloods could use a little extra attack skill, I'm thinking of those accursed ice battle suits that jomon has with something like 18 defense skill, you have to be able to hit those with the firstbloods or it's a dealbreaker! I don't think they're worthy of being high level summons as they are though, they have the damage output (theoretically), but not the survivability to really be SCs. Consider the Jomon summonable SC, the oni dragon. Or ulmish capital ships with amulets of missile protection and a pendant of luck. Whatever the firstbloods end up like they have to be able to compare to those for SC quality, if you want them to be a high level summon. And they're just not survivable enough to be SCs imo. Assuming an amulet of missile protection and a pendant of luck, they still need either higher health, higher defense, or higher prot to make SC territory. Or perhaps an innate ability such as ethereality.

Sorry for being so wordy :P

[Darkwind]

I've decided to bang up a quick "fix" for the Firstbloods. Changed stuff in bold.

Firstblood
12 AP, mapmove 2, size 4
14 attack, 12 defense (starting with 10 for Pirians), 14 precision
25 HP, 15 strength, 13 protection(starting with 7 for Pirians)
14 MR
12 morale
1 encumbrance
weapons: Greater Starburst (basically a big version of the AP non-fire attack), Big Fire Sword of Doom or somesuch (my idea: sort of like the First Sword, but less super-powerful and a bit more fiery death. Still some normal damage, though)
fireshield 14?, heat 10? (these guys are epic heat-producers), maybe #iceprot -2
75 poison resistance, 100 fire, 25 cold (as said before, their heat is going to melt some of the stuff before it gets there)
By the way, they'll probably all have fire 1 or 2+.

Some of this stuff might make Prians/Firstbloods a bit too powerful, but oh well. I have to leave now, I've spent a lot longer than I intended. I'll get to the rest of your reply later.

[Aezeal]

nice nice another race I can't wait to see it finished
I'll see about lowering damage on the oni if it's so overpowered

Maybe the 3 of us (or others who are interested) should start a small game to test the game as it is now though just to check it out?

[Trumanator]

the Pirians sound a lot like the Faeros from Kevin J. Anderson's Saga of Seven Suns. Also, its great that you guys like Wheel of Time, I can't wait for the last one to arrive and FINALLY finish the series.

[rdonj]

The big problem with the oni is that it combines unavoidable damage (aoe can't be stopped by shields and automatically hits) with armor negating damage so you get no prot, and does enough damage to kill many units in 1 hit. And ranged damage generally doesn't kill things very fast in dom3k, so even if you had just militia standing in front of the oni it would take a lot of firepower to bring them down before the oni killed everything.

I would be willing to play a game. Hmm, I think I would rather play orks, but I can probably play anyone.