Gazz_

Join Date 03/2004

+33

[Gameplay] Magic: Physical vs Magic resistance and damage modifiers

The magic in Elemental is somewhat lacking the "elements" bit.
Right now the shards (well, once that system is fixed/implemented) are only a damage multiplier for generic, physical damage.

That's so terribly wrong because it does not matter if you hit that fire giant with a 20 damage club or a 20 damage ice spell.
Even the manual says that there are multiple resistances. (Bet ya didn't expect anyone to look there!)

And it could be done, even now. All units need hidden stats for their Damage Vulnerability. And the spell damage needs to use them.
Simply a damage modifier to the existing physical defense.

Such as a fire giant having
Vulnerability.Fire = 0,4
Vulnerability.Water = 2,0

A normal soldier would have
Vulnerability.Fire = 1,0
Vulnerability.Water = 1,0

These can be used for the damage calculation (or debuff duration or whatnot) for elemental spells so a fire spell is always multiplied by the target unit's Vulnerability.Fire.

Of course the same system can be used to create "resist gear", like a really thick and fluffy cloak to protect from ice spells...

See? That would be even better and more variable than the old MoM system! Choke on that, MoM fans! =P

I'm not convinced that further differenciation of the physical damage types (blunt/pierce/slash) would really add much to the game beyond needless complexity and micromanagement.

The magic vulnerabilities could and should stay "behind the scenes" values for the player to figure out.
Some are obvious classics, like extinguishing fire giants with water spells, but enemy units should not pop up windows like
"Hi, I am a giant spider! My vulnerability to ice spells is 170% ! Please hit me with ice spells ! "
That would be so... unmagical.

Displaying physical defense is okay. You can see when the soldier is covered in heavy plate from head to toe.
While I really love statistics, they are not always optimal for "magical" issues. Reducing magic to a spreadsheet would be doing it a disservice.

You can have magic immunity or resist buffs/debuffs by having an enchantment that alters Vulnerability.Water +5 or * 1,5
You can have "magical creatures" that are very resistant to magic but weak physically. Beholders? Just give them low magical vulnerabilities all across the board.
Our magic-immune Roland the Paladin would have Vulnerability.whatever = 0,01
You want zombies that are easy to dispatch/control with magic but hard to hack down? Give them high defense but high vulnerability to magical damage....
Undead that disease you with melee attacks and make you more susceptible to death magic...
There could be unit buffs to give them flamig swords and let them do fire damage instead or in addition to physical.
Earth could be different because it would be the most "physical" magic book and very good for otherwise "magic immune" critters.
A big rock incoming at high speed is not very "magical". It just hurts a lot.
Vulnerability.Earth would almost always stay 1,0 except maybe for brittle things that are prone to... shattering. Crystal or ice golems come to mind...
Global strategic and tactical effects can be modeled if you allow like a tactical "Darkness" spell. It increases Vulnerability.Death and lowers
Vulnerability.Life, of all units on the battlefield helping your undead hordes. The default value, which all elemental spells would be multiplied in the spell.XML, would be 1,0.
So spells operate normally... until altered.
In some game systems, "healing" undead with life magic hurts or destroys them. So a positive buff/heal, hurts the counter element.
That's needless complexity to code but what can be done easily is...
For rare and "extremely attuned" cases like a fire elemental, they could have a negative Vulnerability.Fire, say -0,1.
A fire elemental hit by a fireball or standing in a wall of fire would take negative damage, effectively healing it. That would make for an interesting
"all fire" strategy where your frontline troops were elementals who would love nothing more than your (or their own) fiery AOE spells in their ahh... workspace.

Also see:

Attack and Defense, Damage and Resistance by Winnihym

Elemental Beta 2: Player Input #1s

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Of course, magic should not use the cookie cutter system it does now.

It's okay that every colour of magic should have direct damage spells even if Life is more on the protective side... they should just be different.
And I mean beyond fire checking fire resist and water against water resist. (oh, really?)

Fire is the obvious candidate for damage. There should be a chance (related to vulnerability?) that it adds a damage over time component and keeps on burning for a while.
It could also set the square on fire if it's a forest...
Air damage would have a chance to briefly stun the opponent.
Water (ice) damage would have a chance (?) to reduce the opponent's combat speed * 0,9 for maybe 8 turns. So multiple ice nukes would slow the enemy down more and more... until they are frozen solid. =P
An Earth nuke (a really really big rock...) could have a chance to move the enemy back 1 square from the impact.
Life nukes could do very little damage per spell so it's not an ideal choice for that.
Death nukes could do horrible things to the poor targets, lowering their morale.

These are just off the top of my head so I'm sure there are far better ideas out there to make the colours of magic unique and make it desireable to research more than one nuke spell throughout the entire game.

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The magic vulnerabilities could and should stay "behind the scenes" values for the player to figure out.
Some are obvious classics, like extinguishing fire giants with water spells, but enemy units should not pop up windows like
"Hi, I am a giant spider! My vulnerability to ice spells is 170% ! Please hit me with ice spells ! "
That would be so... unmagical.

Hmm... a quick thought on this: perhaps it could be another part of the "adventure" tech tree that you gain knowledge on enemy weaknesses through the tech. Like a quick check of adventure tech vs. monster level is a prerequisite for showing this kind of vulnerability info. Maybe if the level is equal you just get general info (weak, strong, etc.) and if you have a higher level you get more specific data (+1, -5, etc.).

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I fully support these ideas as they add richness to the magic which is really needed.

Couple more possible impacts of different magical attacks:

ice/water: slows movement/attacks/defense for x rounds (already somewhat in the game, amplify it)

fire: slows movement/defense and/or reduces morale more quickly; makes animals flee (and units on them are ???)

earth: slows; brings flying creatures to ground;

air: confuses directions (dust in the wind); slows;

I know these aren't too exciting but better than nothing.

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Nice. But can the AI handle this? so complicated with so many diff effects..

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We have no idea how the AI ticks so your guess is as good as mine.

If the AI is smart enough to realise situational demand for certain spell effects, then it might see the enemy cavalry unit heading towards it's archers in the rear.

It could decide that slowing down this unit is a good idea and try Air (stun) or Water (freeze/slow) nukes to achieve that.

It is very hard to define such situations but easy to parse spell "worth" based on their contribution towards a desired result.
The player doesn't really tell the AI what the cavalry unit is intending to do...

So the actual spell effects wouldn't be any harder to understand than the currently existing haste/slow/stun spells.
The real issue is that the AI has to understand tactical battles as a whole and needs to be able to formulate a tactic that uses troops, terrain, and magic to achieve a victory.
Randomly using Air spells to blow units here and there is not a tactic. Hindering progress of the enemy when I have a lot of ranged units is a tactic.
Having all melee units charge forward is not a real tactic. (well, usually) Sacrificing cheap/summoned/temporary units to soak up counterattacks of a powerful unit, then moving in the heavy hitters or expensive cavalry for the kill... that is a tactic.

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