The Dominions 3: "Wishlist"

[The_Paladin]

Sandman said:
As for decimalisation, I really don't get this idea that it makes things more 'precise' - the numbers are more or less arbitary anyway. Or is there a compelling argument as to why broadswords should be 5.7 damage, 0.2 attack, 1.1 defence and 1.8 length?

Well with helmets - the basic helmet gives a protection of 1 and no defence change. The full helmet gives a protection of 2 with a -1 defence change. Say you want to create a helmet in between. At present there is no way - you can't give something a protection of 1.5 and a defence penalty of -0.5.

This is a contrived example but still does show what I was talking about. The other example I already gave with AOW is perhaps a better example.

'Precise' I suppose is a bit of a poor choice of words though.

[ioticus]

Well with helmets - the basic helmet gives a protection of 1 and no defence change. The full helmet gives a protection of 2 with a -1 defence change. Say you want to create a helmet in between. At present there is no way - you can't give something a protection of 1.5 and a defence penalty of -0.5.

This is a contrived example but still does show what I was talking about. The other example I already gave with AOW is perhaps a better example.

'Precise' I suppose is a bit of a poor choice of words though.

No, but you could have a helmet with protection of 2 and no defense change, or a helmet with a protection of 2 or 3 and -2 defense, etc. See what I'm getting at? The change you're suggesting to the system to achieve what you want is simply not worth it at the cost of the elegance and intuitive nature of the basic system.

[Cainehill]

Either way, the helmet is a fairly minor part of the overall armor protection of the unit. Arguably the way to improve things would be having hit locations - a helmet is only looked at when the head is hit, thus you could then have helmets with protection 1 all the way to 10 or more. Of course, this would require a total rework of combat, thus a total rehash of armor protection values, weapon damages, etc.

And even as a sometime grognard, I would hate to wind up having to do indepth analysis of things with decimal values.

Furthermore : decimalization of things like weapon damage and armor protection would add little to the game. What difference does it really make if that short sword is 4 or 4.2 damage when the amount of damage it'll do can be quantified in the range of 0 to 30 most of the time, and against many armors it'll do 0 80% of the time?

[The_Paladin]

Indeed the helmet is a pretty insignificant issue on the whole - it was merely an example. I originally just commented on the subject as I believe that scaling the stats is superior computationally than decimalization and that scaling is also easier to understand / more intuitive. Where in decimalization you would have numbers like 2.5 and 3.5, in scaling you would have 25 and 35 which are easier on the eyes for many and not harder to work with really.

A lot of people have asked what is the difference between a short sword having damage 4 to 4.2, or having a broadsword having attack bonus of 0 versus 0.1. This got me curious so I did some calculating. There's a problem with the question being asked: You should not ask what's the difference between 0 and 0.1 but instead ask what's the difference between 0 and 1, as those are the limits imposed by the current system.

To avoid bogging down the thread with too much math I won't go into heavy calculation details (others like alexti and Saber Cherry already have on this forum anyway). Consider changing a short sword with damage 4 to damage 5. When that sword successfully hits, how much more damage, on average, will it do now? 25.6% by my calculations, averaged over reasonable values of protection and strength (0 - 30) of the units in question.

And if you increase broadsword attack bonus from 0 to 1, how much more often are your attacks going to be successful? 20.7% more often.

Both these calculations are rough numbers thrown together in a quick program but I believe them to be reasonably accurate barring any stupid mistakes on my part.

So the questions are: Do I really want my spearman to be 20% more effective at striking when I increase his attack by 1? And do I really want every unit to be 25% less effective against my knight because I gave him a helmet with 1 extra protection?

Ultimately I'll play Dom3 irregardless of whether these changes are implemented. There are other issues that are more pressing (like improving national troops, getting rid of the easy to obtain SCs and stuff like that).

Remember these numbers are on average - your SC's with 30 protection will not be affected much at all by a 1 point increase either way - but a unit with 12 will. So I feel that if national troops did play a more important role, these presently minor issues in a SC / magic dominant world would amplify significantly as more low-level troops would be involved.

Again just my two cents .

[Argitoth]

Any news on Dom3? Anyone?

[Endoperez]

There are things no mere man were meant to know. I weren't damned, when from the depths of history I managed to find secrets that tell of the future... But I can't forward that information, for the Contract binds me.

The development continues, and changes and progress has happened rather recently.

[Chazar]

Any (stealthy?) commander could be issued a "questing" command: The commander simply disappears for at least two turns. Then, each subsequent turn thereafter, there is a small percentage chance that this commander pops up in an assassination attempt with some enemy holding that item. If successful, the commander remerges at his owners captial with the item being transferred to the lab. Otherwise, the proud hero never returns from his quest, his fate unknown to its former lord...

Easy implementation: All that needs to be stored is the commander, the target item-class, the basic percentage chance and maybe the total number of turns the commander has been questing. The program should not keep track of actual province locations. The initial chance should be based on things like distance to closest enemy bearing the quested item at the time of command issue and movement rate of the commander. Each subsequent turn, this basic chance is slightly increased by a fixed value and maybe decreased by smaller value if the artifact is moved (in case of artifacts). Maybe any item above level 4 shoud be targetable amd maybe there should be a fixed chance for the commander to get lost...

FUN: I think it would be real fun to hunt for specially needed items, without hazardous micromanagement! This also might make SCs a bit more vulnerable by sending SC-Killers targeted to the enemy SC's items. There is a delay for balance and they might end up with the entirely wrong person and you never know when they will hit, but artefacts might then be really battled for!

[FrankTrollman]

Personally, I think people would send Jotun Scouts to go find Skull Mentors.

-Frank

[Sandman]

Yet another idea for improving Ulm: A mining bonus. Basically, for each Ulmish province with a fort or a lab, you get free earth gems for unused resources. Say, 80 unused resources would net an earth gem. The player would receive a message each turn saying something like: 'Our mining operations have generated 4 earth gems this turn, my lord.'

It would be nice if resources could be translated into something other than heavy troops.

[Argitoth]

Sandman said:
Yet another idea for improving Ulm: A mining bonus. Basically, for each Ulmish province with a fort or a lab, you get free earth gems for unused resources. Say, 80 unused resources would net an earth gem. The player would receive a message each turn saying something like: 'Our mining operations have generated 4 earth gems this turn, my lord.'

It would be nice if resources could be translated into something other than heavy troops.

Sit and Grow is not a strategy that Illwinter will ever agree with. No.