Mod Dominions 3000 v0.81 - lots of new indies, new map (using the brand new map commands) - Page 8

Nikelaos · #71 August 31st, 2008, 06:36 PM

hmm you raise a fine point, maybe if we do ermor on pangeas number thing (so replace carrion beasts and manikins with my corpses) then we could atleast have a uniquereanimate command which reanimates our undead instead of the bog standard skellies and zombies, this was the initial plan anyway wasn't it?.

Pangea ofcourse would then have to go under another nations number thing but that works fine because i didn't wan't them to retain the manikin/carrion beast reanimating abilities anyway.

Aezeal · #72 September 1st, 2008, 03:18 AM

hmm then we'd loose the mannikins.. less of a problem.. but really we could just make them all regular summons, domsummons, makecreatures etc etc
there are quite alot of ways to get creatures without paying for them

I myself was kinda thinking about some orc/goblin race..where you don't need to pay for most troops since they are warlike bastards anyway wo flock to leaders to fight.. so mostly commanders to buy and then they can create their troops in a number of ways. Some spaceships would have to be bought maybe or summoned with magic. --> you could do the same thing with your race

Since you seem to prefer working on ermor above pangaea it might be best if you figure out some sort of structure for this: like which commander produces what etc etc

llamabeast · #73 September 1st, 2008, 06:58 PM

Unfortunately I can't seem to run this mod, because there are at least several upper case/lower case filename inconsistencies. e.g. a sprite may be listed as Ma_Rlyeh_icon.tga, but actually be called ma_Rlyeh_icon.tga, and so on. On Windows this makes no difference, but on Linux it's a killer.

Also, I think the idea of using forests for space (or vice versa) is genius. That should get over most of your problems and add a lot of potential for interesting things.

You should bear in mind that most things move slowly through forests, and forest survival is a skill things can have. Maybe forest should be the planet surface, and forest survival represents the ability to move rapidly over planet surfaces?

Panpiper · #74 September 1st, 2008, 07:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by llamabeast

Unfortunately I can't seem to run this mod, because there are at least several upper case/lower case filename inconsistencies. e.g. a sprite may be listed as Ma_Rlyeh_icon.tga, but actually be called ma_Rlyeh_icon.tga, and so on. On Windows this makes no difference, but on Linux it's a killer.

Ouch! Lower case everything, always! This is a law! ;-)

Aezeal · #75 September 1st, 2008, 09:03 PM

ehm I admit I never paid much attention to upper and lower case filenames.. never mattered, never knew either.. but I want llama to judge my mod dammit.

Is there a way to make all letters in a tekst file lower case (then I could manually edit all the sprite names.)

Anyway what I wanted to post: I put the forest form in.
I think I'll give all units #forestsurvival by replacing "#spr1" with "#forestsurvival #spr1" it will mess up my tidy mod (getting a lil less tidy already now my nations needed lots of extra forms and I needed to be creative with unitnumbers) a bit but whatever, troops do need to move through space fast.

I'm just thinking that making a land forest + mountain could represent a meteorfield/astroid belt which slows movement

forget that I think I got most cases right now.. I'm posting the next version anyway so then llama cn maybe tell me if it works for him then

Nikelaos · #76 September 2nd, 2008, 05:53 AM

thought i should let you know aezeal, i'm at school again so sprite production will slow, busy busy busy.

rdonj · #77 September 2nd, 2008, 06:03 PM

Not sure where you would like this sort of feedback so you get it here for the moment.

Bugs: I found a bug with jomon where sometimes enemies will become paralyzed at range when you shoot at them. I haven't tested exactly why, but it happens frequently and I'm pretty sure it's the Jomon Defenders doing it. Probably somehow related to the paralyze damage on their lightsabers.

The pirate space stations have a dual heavy blaster attack with only one shot. Since every other dual blaster attack in the game fires twice, I'm pretty sure that was unintentional.

Another one I'm not quite sure if it's a bug, but I played a game as ulm, one as jomon and one as r'lyeh (all on the solar system map) and in every game I encountered at least one independant province with 20+ guardians, most of them being oni dragons. Having oni dragon defenders in such numbers is a bit excessive. I've also run into a few provinces with normal independants such as heavy cavalry and crossbowmen.

Things I'm not quite sure are bugs but bug me: R'lyeh's Nautiloids are cheaper than Ulm's capital ships and are also better both offensively and defensively?

Ulm's capital ships are incredibly expensive and not really worth buying. They're really vulnerable to Jomon's AN guns and R'yleh's mindblasting, and have barely more offense than ulm's fighters do. They also have less protection than a black knight, which seems very strange. Suggestions for improvement- More guns. Possibly aoe weapons. Health similar to the nautiloid. Magic resistance for things like the capital ship and space stations should increase a lot too, because theoretically there are a lot of people on board and it should be harder to paralyze an entire ship of people than it is right now. I would suggest somewhere between 18 and 22 MR. The gold cost can increase if it gets strong enough, but right now they're really underpowered.

Pirate space stations are even worse off. Space eels are far more deadly against ulm and jomon. Neither is worth much against r'leyh due to mind blast spam.

Tasers are pretty much the best melee weapons (except for light sabers which do as much damage but with aoe paralysis). Since it's incredibly hard for melee troops to get to melee, pretty much the only things that can get there are monsters like the space eel or the oni dragon. And they have so much prot that tasers do as much or more damage as anything else. Making Ulmish Space Marines probably the most efficient melee troops in the galaxy, and some of the most effective.

Ulm can't really fight oni dragons in the numbers that Jomon can make them if they really want to. If you want I can show you a turn file where I attacked a swarm of them in early year 3, I killed one and the only enemy commander on the field in two turns, losing almost 60 space marines and planet guard in the process. With an army of 60 planet guard, 20 personal artillery marines, 7 space fighters and 155 space marines. Anyway, my conclusion is that Oni Dragons are too strong, too massable, too fast and too incredibly easy to research to be fair early on, as Jomon is the only one who could really hope to stop large oni dragon assaults anyway. For some reason they do a terrible job on space eels though. I had the oni dragon pretender with 35 strength and 300+ health lose to one and almost get killed.

Ideas: Ulm's transports, I assume, are meant for transporting troops. They have strategic move 3 and fly, and carry something like 80 men. But the only troops that actually benefit from this are the blood knights. What if you gave ALL ulmish troops three strategic move and flying, but left commanders how they are so you can only fly on the strategic map when on a spaceship? You might have to lower the ap of most of ulm's troops to not let them fly in battles, but it's not like they really need to be able to move that fast anyway as they're going to spend most of their time shooting. You could leave the planetary guards with 1 mapmove and no flying so they can't be flown around to keep them thematically as defensive troops.

I don't really like that some troops (and ulm's transport) use fists for melee weapons. The troops should at least get combat knives or something, and giving the transport a single ship blaster wouldn't be a big deal.

It would be nice if there was some kind of projectile art for the guns because if you want to see what happens in a battle you pretty much have to watch it twice to see what happened when.

Aezeal · #78 September 2nd, 2008, 06:46 PM

rdonj: this sort of posts are exactly what I need.

Quote:

Bugs: I found a bug with jomon where sometimes enemies will become paralyzed at range when you shoot at them. I haven't tested exactly why, but it happens frequently and I'm pretty sure it's the Jomon Defenders doing it. Probably somehow related to the paralyze damage on their lightsabers.

I knew about this one and I've fixed it already (it was the missing #end I was talking about. If it remains after next patch let me know.

Quote:

The pirate space stations have a dual heavy blaster attack with only one shot. Since every other dual blaster attack in the game fires twice, I'm pretty sure that was unintentional.

I'll look into this when I'm behind my own comp tomorrow

all the balance things
Lot of good suggestions, I've just started giving prices and not really comparing them yet your points will be a good start. Never noticed the taser being that good yet so I'll lower their damage I think (I kinda like the AN idea)

On Onidragons: did you get them that easily that early? I thought they where pretty high research and cost. I'll increase it all I guess.

The transport where intended to transport troops but I don't think the idea that started it can work anymore (carry other troops) on the otherhand I think I'll lower the GC a lot leaving only some resource cost so it will be a cheap leader. All spaceforms get mapmove 3 though so armies will move through space (forest really) fast.

I thought most troops had a weapon (often taser) except one of the mages which I really think doesn't need a weapon.. which other ones miss weapons?
I'll look into the transport I guess I'll give it a tractorbeam too

(I don't think you've seen them yet though since they are new.)

projectile art.. which one would fit do you think?

GREAT POST, I need more of those.. keep it coming.

PS could you give me a prov number on which prov has the oni-dragons and the normal independants?

rdonj · #79 September 2nd, 2008, 07:37 PM

In the version I downloaded yesterday, summon oni dragon was conjuration 1 and costed 4 death per dragon.

Personal Artillery Marines, Ulmish Planetary Guardsmen, Chief-Engineers, Navigators, and Jomon's University Professors all have no melee weapon. Strangely, Jomon's defenders have fist weapons as well as their lightsabers. I have the feeling that probably went away when you changed the #end on their light sabers though. Oh, also Dai Oni have javelins, that's a little weird. The taser is, for the record, so good because even ulm's 25 ap ranged weapons on the artillery marines do less damage per hit than one taser in melee to a space eel.

Definitely haven't seen the tractor beam yet. That could be cool.

I don't really know what kind of projectile art would be good. It's definitely hard to come up with something that would make sense for this game. If you were using bullets it would be easy to say to go for sling stones for the moment. You can't mod projectile art, can you? 'cause if you're envisioning the blasters being star wars-esque you could almost get away with making the shots smaller versions of the fire shot jomon uses.

It was a few turns ago in my game that I last fought dom3 independants so I don't know, but I think it's semi-random because in my ulmish game I had oni dragons in a territory that my jomon game has blue aliens in. I'll go compare maps a sec.

The following provinces have Oni Dragon PD in one or both games: 13 (oni dragons and space trolls in one game, blue aliens and space trolls in the other), 22 (oni dragons, thralls, vampires, space pirates, space station, vampire count), and 1 (heavy infantry, light infantry, crossbowman, space station). There could be more since I haven't explored the whole map in either. I saw a few provinces that had no independants as well, one of which I believe was that planet with every terrain type, connected to the center province of that large planet on the bottom. Also in my game as ulm it seems r'lyeh somehow managed to acquire upwards of 40 oni dragons, though I'm quite certain they don't have the spell to summon them. Screenshot attached, if not pretty.

Edit: Okay that screenshot doesn't really help. But if you look really closely you can see what appears to be the very top of the r'lyeh banner's star above the heads of the dragons.

rdonj · #80 September 2nd, 2008, 07:47 PM

Oh. Also, if you do change shield parry values they will start working in melee too, so keep that in mind. And needlers may want to change to AN damage, 1 AP damage isn't really enough to hurt anything (this only affects ulm's med-priests).

I think you're eventually going to have to make the entire magic system over, there are too many things, summons especially, that are going to be all out of balance in this mod. Like summoning longdeads on the battlefield, they're going to be completely useless without 20+ mages summoning them....