Damage Types: Pierce, Slash, and Crush

[licker]

Originally posted by DominionsFAN:
[/qb]

I do not agree. Diversity and complexity is always better. Well maybe not for everyone. [/QB][/quote]

Diversity and complexity are quite simply not always better, its the old issues of absolutly no absolutes

The pertinant questions about diversity and complexity for this specific system are what we are interested in though. It should be obvious to everyone that the proposed system adds both, the question then comes down to how much value do those additions contain. This is where the differing opinions come in.

Thanks for your answers HJ, I accept them for what they are, but they still don't quite give me enough specifics to be able to provide anymore feedback on the system. My main concern really is how will the new system be divided among the existing units (national and independant). If there are no changes to the existing units, other than to reclassify their weapons and armor, there will be holes in all the nations. You are right to say that adding more imbalance isn't necessarilly a bad thing, but at some point it is, it makes certain nations completely untenable in certain situations, and that holds for both SP and MP. I actually play very little MP myself, so most of my concern with any addition to a game lies on the SP side, and as I've said before, I don't see this system adding much to my game playing experience, honestly, I can see several ways to implement it that would really annoy me. Thats why I posed those questions, I need more information on the specifics of the implementation before I can really decide if I think the system adds enough to the game play to make it worth while.

Furthermore, I still think that if we concern ourselves more with unit (weapon) diversity than with immersion or combat realism (which are unimportant to me for the most part) then the mechanism already exists in Dom to tweek units and weapons to achieve more diversity. I understand and appreciate the arguments about greatswords being less effective against skeletons than mauls, but to me its a reletively unimportant distinction that doesn't need a major rework of the weapons system to solve. Personally I don't think it needs to be solved at all, as the existing mechanisms seem to work fine, but minor tweeks to the existing system seem more reasonable to me than a total change of that system.

Anyway, glad to see more people voicing their opinions on this subject, hopefully the pros will come up with a balanced, interesting, and workable system that everyone can get behind. Its the job of the cons to ensure that that is the end result though

[HJ]

I have to go, so only a short answer this time around.

I don't think I can provide you with a more detailed explanation of the system. Even if I gave you all the stats for all weapons and armour, it won't be me who is going to do the coding and implementation, but the devs. We can discuss the nature of the system (will weapons only do one kind of damage, e.g.), but anything more detailed than that is impossible to ask from anyone else apart from the people who are actually making it work.

I also would like to address the "not adding enough to gameplay" argument. Well, not every addition has to be groundbreaking. If it adds to the gameplay, even a little, it has my vote, since it's going to make it a little bit more enjoyable (all caveats included). The strenght is in details, litlle things, that add up to be more than the sum of the parts. Hopefully...

[licker]

Originally posted by HJ:
I have to go, so only a short answer this time around.

I don't think I can provide you with a more detailed explanation of the system. Even if I gave you all the stats for all weapons and armour, it won't be me who is going to do the coding and implementation, but the devs. We can discuss the nature of the system (will weapons only do one kind of damage, e.g.), but anything more detailed than that is impossible to ask from anyone else apart from the people who are actually making it work.

I also would like to address the "not adding enough to gameplay" argument. Well, not every addition has to be groundbreaking. If it adds to the gameplay, even a little, it has my vote, since it's going to make it a little bit more enjoyable (all caveats included). The strenght is in details, litlle things, that add up to be more than the sum of the parts. Hopefully...

I don't really need specific numbers, I want a more general treatment on a nation by nation basis (oh and indies too). More along the lines of what holes and how many will nations have.

As to additions to games... I agree not everything has to be ground breaking, but any addition should add more gameplay than it takes away entertainment from being too complex or adding to micro, or whatever. I'm not saying that that is necessarilly the case here, just that I can envision that being the case, in which case the addition to game play had better be closer to ground breaking than not.

Again, this is a fine idea, just that it hasn't been demonstrated how this improves game play outside of adding more numbers for people to crunch. Sure sometimes thats fun, and sometimes it adds to game play, just to me, as this system stands right now, it doesn't sound like more fun, and it doesn't seem to add much to game play. Obviously others have a different opinion from mine, and that's the entire point of this thread (now) to discuss those opinions and see if common ground can't be found.

[Pocus]

Originally posted by PDF:
The proposed changes are neat in themselves and would be Ok for a RPG or small battles tactical system, but I don't find them very fit for Dominions...
It would create a lot of micro-optimizations issues and won't add much to the game. Let's keep Dominion a strategic level game with detailed yet simple combat mechanics (Attack+dice vs defense+dice, strength+wpn damage+dice vs prot+dice) rather than going into Combat Mission type discussion about the penetration of a hurled javelin at 23° angle under rain on a chainmail sloped 15° but previously repaired by a one-eyed dwarf having Earth 2 skill ...

with an hammer the dwarf, or without?

frankly, you already have this rock - paper - scissor effect in dominions. But many players (well initially, when they play more they start to see the details) dont see the triad. Some examples, which are totally overlooked when you discover the game, but which will be taken into account when you have played a bit:

- shielded infantry have an added bonus again missiles.
- flails and/or morning stars (dont remember if it is both, but I think so !) have a bonus against shields.
- against low morale units, it is better to have a longer reach weapon, even if it does less damages. On the contrary, against high morale units, shorter weapon, doing more damage will be more useful.

Thats just some examples on top of my head, but if you play Ulm, each infantry type differ slightly, but differ from an other, and will perform slightly better against a specific enemy. Perhaps you gain an overall 5% efficiency, but when you repeat the process on several subcomponent of the game, then generally you have more chance to win than your enemy

So the various damage types would not IMO be detrimental to the game. Many players would totally forget about these rules, as they already forget about some game mechanisms, and this dont detract them from enjoying the game. Then, when they know better the game, they start to take into account more and more parameters.

[ October 08, 2003, 19:19: Message edited by: Pocus ]

[licker]

Thanks for that post Pocus, it got at what I was trying (unsuccesfully I think) to say about the existing mechanisms existing in Domintions to handle the issue of diversity. I do think that the nubers on the weapons could be tweeked a bit to change your 5% to a 10% or something if that 'feels' better to most players, but for the most part those tweeks are not needed.

Something else lost in this discussion is that we don't even know how much has been changed stat wise in Dom2, so there may be more diversity 'built in'.

I conceed that if the more critical issues are game immersion and combat-mechanical realism, then larger change would be needed. However, I again question whether it is that important to make those changes *simply* for those reasons. The overall effect on gameplay is almost zero if you limit your efforts to addressing the Last two issues, the first is purely cosmetic, and the second is problematic to me in being able to pull it off without upsetting balances too much, or adding too much extraneous information.

Besides doesnt The Operational Art of War allow the user to customize all that kind of junk to his hearts content (or am I thinking of some other war game?) I don't think Dominions should bog itself down with those kinds of details as they don't feel like they belong in Dominions.

[Edi]

I don't really see a need for the SPB division for weapon types. I've read this thread all the way through, and while I initially thought that yes, it'd be cool to have, I changed my mind. The current system works quite well enough for me that the SPB division is not necessary. The added complexity increases micro-management more than I'd care to see really, and it also increases the coding effort required of the devs by quite a bit, with very little return on investment gameplaywise when you compare to some of the other stuff that has been bandied about as suggestions.

In the bigger picture, this issue is more of a nitpick while other, bigger things would probably require less work to accomplish and have a greater impact on gameplay without increasing the need for micromanagement. I'd rather that those got first priority.

Edi

[HJ]

All this reminds me of my students complaining when I give them extra homework....

[Mortifer]

Originally posted by Edi:
I don't really see a need for the SPB division for weapon types. I've read this thread all the way through, and while I initially thought that yes, it'd be cool to have, I changed my mind. The current system works quite well enough for me that the SPB division is not necessary. The added complexity increases micro-management more than I'd care to see really, and it also increases the coding effort required of the devs by quite a bit, with very little return on investment gameplaywise when you compare to some of the other stuff that has been bandied about as suggestions.

In the bigger picture, this issue is more of a nitpick while other, bigger things would probably require less work to accomplish and have a greater impact on gameplay without increasing the need for micromanagement. I'd rather that those got first priority.

Edi

Yes this system is not necessary, but IMHO it would improve the gameplay. You can argue what you want licker, this is my opinion. To me, this would add a lot to the game. Sure I can live without this system, but as I said, the game would be better with the system, than without it.
Yes this would bring more micro etc. but also the game would be lot more tactical, and that is what matters in a strategy game.

[licker]

Originally posted by Mortifer:

Yes this system is not necessary, but IMHO it would improve the gameplay. You can argue what you want licker, this is my opinion. To me, this would add a lot to the game. Sure I can live without this system, but as I said, the game would be better with the system, than without it.
Yes this would bring more micro etc. but also the game would be lot more tactical, and that is what matters in a strategy game. [/quote]

Hehe, I'm glad I'm allowed to argue what I want

Yes yes, it all opinion, its all personal preference, nothing wrong with discussing or arguing the merits of various ideas. I don't think anyone has said that it is a bad system or bad idea, just that it doesn't seem to fit into Dom all that well (in terms of advanceing gameplay in a *meaningful* way).

However I do not think that this addition would increase the tactics at all, it is in effect a much more strategic level implementation. Though before we go down that tangent it helps to define what we mean by tactical and strategic. However, I don't think that increasing tactical options in general is always an improvment to a strategy game, the tactical options need to be meaningful first off, that is to say that the number of reasonable choices must be increased, not just increasing choices while there remain only a few viable selections. I am not yet convinced that the addition of such a system does increase meaningful choices. I think its more likely that such a system creates more of a rock/paper/scisors effect, and in extreme cases that is a bad thing.

I think the take home message that most of the people who are against the inclusion of such a system want to have heard is that simply increasing complexity is not a substitute for increaseing tactical or strategic diversity. Complexity for complexities sake is almost always a bad idea, if you need proof of that take a look at MoO3

[licker]

Originally posted by HJ:
All this reminds me of my students complaining when I give them extra homework....

LOL!

If I were your student and you gave me meaningless repetitive homework that was more busywork than anything else I'd complain too