[eMod/WIP] Armor / Weapon / Training Redux (0.92)

Potential thought here.

Make Civ Techs have wooden / leather.  I.E.  Clubs and Bows and improved leathers.  This with improved group sizes would be a competition to the Magic and Warfare Tree.

I also believe in the vanilla that chainmail shouldn't have had a 100% bonus to cutting, in fact it weak against it in real life.  Same for Plate vs Blunt.  If someone wanted to make it so they took 100% more damage from those types, fine.  But not double the armor rating basically against a type they should be weak against.

I hope you would take up this issue.  I like the idea of starting out with crude, having more tiers.  Interesting. 

Chain is much stronger against cutting that it is against blunt. And making it the strongest against pierce would cause problems for weapon balance. So the only other alternative would be to make each armor type have only a weakness, not an advantage. You would then use different weights to make up for the superiority of better armor. Overall I decided I liked chain as great cutting defense. It just works so well as a game mechanic. But my plate has no bonus against blunt. It's just very strong armor that weighs too much. You can of course get it enchanted to weigh less and do more, but then you are talking about only affording one unit in the kingdom.

I look forward to seeing new interpretations of the combat mechanics.

Update.

So I have compiled a list of all the different base armor types I want to make.  I have started working the numbers out and what you have both said has made some sense but the research I have done I have made a few changes to armor types.

Leather has a bonus to blunt defense as the leather padding acts as an absorber (+5 * Tier additional armor for a set).

Chain has a bonus to cutting as this is how it is designed to work, or put another way it has a weakness to piercing (it has holes) and blunt the force isn't stopped by the rings.  However because of the weight it has an inherent dodge penalty of (test version) -10.

Plate has a bonus to piercing as for every reference I can find says, it was designed to help deflect small blows, arrows and knives.  You could also say it is weak to cutting, while it deflects a blow that sword can meet a crevasse and cut through the straps and such holding it together and the person below, and blunt because plate unless it was very thick got crushed like a tin can along with the person below that piece of armor.  However because of the weight it has an inherent dodge penalty of (test version) -20.

Crystal I have made it lighter and it protects less along with the following bonuses.

Chain has a total of 10 additional MR, I have not decided whether to add other types of resistance or just leave it a flat 10.

Plate is 20.

I have not yet added in the different variant armors for Athican Leathers, Heavy Chain, and Light plate but have some good ideas how to implement those.  I have left enough room between tiers to plug them in.  I am thinking Athican Leather armor though is going to be very attractive after this though.

That's it so far.  Let me know what you think.

P.S.  None of this is coded yet, I am going through the number first then will start plugging and chugging the code.

One thing I am slowly doing is pushing magical armor off to a new tech that requires a warfare and magic tech to be available. In its place you will find defenses against elemental damage, more spell resistance, unique unit abilities and some of the out of place techs. Capes really belong under Arcane Armor. Arcane Armor and Armor should allow one to research Enchanted Armor. Heavy Armor and Arcane Armor would give you Legendary Armor to research. It allows trees to combine without forcing every player to research every tree every game. It also gives us some room to add our own stuff in the empty space and even get rid of some techs that are out of place.

It's certainly one way you could shape your design. Might help you organize all the new stuff you are adding.

So in essence create a 4th tree that is effectively a hybrid tree of warfare and magic.  Hmm.  Where would it sit though.  Currently you have to choose whether you have something in the warfare tree or magic tree and can be affected by trading research.  By having a heavy amount of research going into magic tree you can potentially set it up that you can advance allies in the magic tree heavily.  I like the thought as it is basically an alteration of what what someone else said that magic items should be robes and things like that, and also what you said, cloaks.  This seems like a GOOD idea.  Make the 4th tree unlock when you have unlocked basic magic arms and armor techs and have it only affected by itself but make the research times MUCH higher but the rewards better.  Would take time to balance those though.

Interesting.

There are two good ways to do this, but both have drawbacks. Since we are modding we can pretty much throw ease of use out the window. But in that respect, adding a new tree would look weird because all the prereq techs would be from another tree. Adding everything to the current trees is one option. It could be done, but you have to really get placement right. The other way would be to not have a new tech at all. Just make the specific new items require two techs. For example, Champion armor would require Heavy Armor and Arcane Armor, but once you have both techs, you get the armor unlocked. It's not ideal, but if we couldn't find space for the new techs, that would be one option. I am working on getting the new system up, but it's taking a while to get enough balanced content to make it happen.

I think an independent path within the magic tree will suit what I am looking for as if you consider what is being proposed, it is magical armor after all.  This way you can differentiate within the magic tree for which way you want go, do you want to go the magic armor with heavy emphasis on foot/cavalry soldiers or do you want to go heavy cloth wearing magic users who sling spells instead of wielding swords.  I am thinking it would fit around tier 4 for the initial crystal chain and crystal plate, tier 5 masterwork crystal chain and then finally masterwork crystal plate at tier 6.  Thinking of the crystal armors I might add a penalty to blunt armor since it is made of crystal.  A parallel independent branch would be the weapon tree, but I will work on that after I have the armor set up.  Once armor is done the idea for the basic weapons should be reasonably easy to set up, in theory.  

Oh yeah something I was wondering about, if all of these items are added within the game will they fit within the sovereigns store?

That might be a problem. But there are plenty of things in the store that could be cut. I have thought about also making the shop unlocks be based on whether it is a Fortress or Conclave or Town. So each one would have totally different items and you could have 3 times as many items overall.

Let me know if you figure out how to do that and I will add it in for mine as well, that way I can put leathers in a Town, regular chain and plate in a Fortress, and Magic stuff in a conclave.

I will add in the variants once I firm up the numbers.  I still have to build the numbers for the weapons as well.

You should really put your numbers into the FE Editor and set up a standard of damage you want to achieve. It makes it easier to build from a perspective of how efficient your armor is. 35-45 armor, for instance is not going to be a huge difference in damage. Spears go right through it and bows do 1-2 against both. I think in general the concept is solid though. Just maybe firm up your weapon numbers and assign all special weapon abilities next. 

How are you going to handle armor visuals? That is alot of new textures to add.

For some reason my office 2010 is not liking the editor.  I am attempting to see if I am missing some patches.  If this doesn't work I will break out my old computer and use it for modding as I know that one works.

I think I firmed up the armor numbers finally.  Not sure if I should jump into implementing this in the code or do the weapons first.  Here are the final numbers for the armors.

Basically if you devote the time for nice armor you get some pretty darned nice stuff at the end.  But as stated a while ago in many posts, the better the armor the more it will cost you.  I figured I could use the base numbers in the game for training times and shop costs for the mid grade armors, then 50% for the crude versions and 200% for masterwork versions.  Those numbers are still to be played with obviously.

Will these techs branch off the main warfare techs and dead end?

I was thinking crude leather armor would be a freebie for everyone.  Then remove the leather armor training tech and move guardian to the same tech as spearmen.  After that a branch for armor above for the initial chain and the initial plate so the different types would be available earlier in the game, make them a harder to research tech but available.  Finally for the upgrades attach to further up the chain for an improved smithing and finally a masterwork tech.  Both techs would unlock the upgraded versions of the metal armors.  The enchanted armors I was going to go with the magic tree but have a requirement that the initial types be researched first.  So you would have to do warfare to unlock chain and plate then go to magic unlock the enchanted (crystal based) versions of them with each type having its own research tier so on tier 4 say of the magic tree you would research enchanted chain after enchanted apparel.  Enchanted plate would follow after enchanted chain.  An intermediary research would be needed to space out the upgrades and then a final masterwork research to unlock the masterwork enchanted versions.  For the leathers I plan on just adding two new researches somewhere in the civ tree that unlock improved leather working and adding +1 production per material  and then a masterwork that unlocks the masterwork version and another +1 production per material again.

Once I get this fully done I will eventually look at the lairs again as I think there are not enough wandering things in the world and that lairs should spawn more badies earlier.  I plan on making it a separate mod.  Basically you need the armor / weapons to deal with a HOSTILE world.  Right now it doesn't feel like you really need that much at the moment.  Right now the only lair that feels right early on is the wolf lair that upgrades to the great wolf lair quickly.  That thing is pretty scary early on.  Though the wolf packs themselves are fairly easy imagine if you had packs of wolves running around with a great wolf with them and the Alpha great wolf at the den.  Leave a den too long and bad things come from them.

Alright, so I have been looking over weapons for the afternoon after finishing classes for the day and have noticed something that I think needs to get fixed or not depending on the direction I take.

I see it that there are effectively 8 types of Troops barring Armor.

1-Handed Blunt

2-Handed Blunt

1-Handed Cutting

2-Handed Cutting

1-Handed Piercing

2-Handed Piercing

Bow Ranged Attack

Magic (Staves) Ranged Attack

These are the standard types of attacks a set of troops can have.

 Krax is as far as I can tell the only one with access to 1-Handed Piercing and the damage is equal to 2-Handed piercing.  This is a HUGE flaw in this system.  I do not have a problem with them having exclusive access to a weapon but I do when it comes to having exclusive access to a LINE of weapons.  Also the fact that 1-Handed weapons having equal attack to 2-Handed is not acceptable.  I will be setting up a min of 1 of each of these types of weapons as close to the beginning of each tech tier as I can with the same of idea of two upgrades.  This combined with the armor upgrades gives the Warfare tree a great deal more variety similar to the Magic and Civ tree.  Eventually once I have the basic weapons down I will make the faction specific ones and then work on the magic ones.  The magic ones are easy as I am basically going to make them the same attack total but make it 50% regular attack and 50% one of the elements to be determined by the base damage type (blunt would do one type, cutting fire, piercing electric, something like that).

OK so now I understand why Krax is like this.  The defensive trait for the racial trait is for a super defensive build and still stay relevant with piercing.  So I think I would just adjust it down some for balance sake since Krax gets a shield along with a spear.  I am also trying to balance some of the numbers for which is considered high.  Also the spears are a special case as they bypass armor so they don't need to have as high of an attack.  So I think I will adjust the numbers so that 1-Handed weapons do 2/3 of what the 2-Handed ones of the same type.  Once I get all the numbers down I will upload all of this to the editor to do a balance check.

The more I crunch the numbers on the weapons I kind of like the way they are with a few changes and additions.  Like I said before lower Defensive version of spears attack but only slightly to balance them.  Add a hand axe to the first training type (low attack 1-handed cutting weapon), change regular axe to two handed (two handed cutting), change warhammer to two handed(two handed blunt), and change dagger to piercing damage.  This will give all access to make a base unit of all weapon types, just not access to the different unit sizes which require research.  So I need some help getting the game to recognize something as being two handed that was not previously.  Any ideas?

There is a tag for two-handed and a weapon type tag. Just take the ones from battleaxe and put them on the weapon you want. Should translate right over.

Alright will give it a go.

IS there a way to make a tech unlock from two different techs instead of two different techs being a pre req?  Or do I have to make two different lines of research, one for each tech?

Never mind I will have to do two different lines as the base material is different.  I am going to make the magic tree a LOT more full of possibilities

You mean you want to have a tech automatically unlock once two are completed? No. It would be nice for ease of use, but really just having the next tech cost 0 does the same thing.