Quoting Cruxador, reply 21Uh... So you're saying "it's often just fluff, and that's bad" and then saying "I don't need crunch". So what the hell do you want?
Are you misunderstanding on purpose? I say the gameplay adjustment of having height differences is meaningless to me, and the AI would have a hard time with it. So I don't feel there's any point in wasting resources to do it.
Were you being confusing on purpose? If that's what you meant, you should have said it instead of whatever the hell you were trying to say about fluff. Personally, while I agree it's not a huge addition, that doesn't mean it shouldn't go in. "Tactical" battles need a hell of a lot of help before they can be actually tactical. Right now, positioning amounts to "melee units go next to the enemy, ranged units go far away from the enemy" and that's pretty much it.
1 Complexity.
Quoting Cruxador, reply 21Look at the post again. He wants some super basic stuff. It's not a new dimension, it's a small addition that, together with a lot more, could make tactical battles worth caring about. As far as reach weapons, well, we should have some concept of that already. That we don't just reveals how bland tactical battles really are.
For me ideal tactical game has fairly simple mechanics and a broad spectrum of choices within this simple mechanics. Maybe you are right and the three layers can be done without spoiling the simplicity of basic mechanics of tactical combat, but I doubt it. I would add flying units instead of this. It's more simple (only two layers and no strange weapon modifiers, just ranged/non-ranged) and fun.
It sounds like you want to play Pokemon. That's fine, it's a good game and I enjoy it as well. But Elemental bills itself as having tactical battles. That means Elemental should have tactical battles in it.
I think we need flying units also. But flying units would also need altitude-based weapon modifiers (although they'd hardly be "strange", just as the ones for elevation wouldn't be). And that, like this, is just one more small step towards having good tactical gameplay. Although a well-implemented height system would be a bigger step then just fliers.
2. Graphical representation.
Quoting Cruxador, reply 21The two examples that came immediately to mind that do this pretty well are Lords of Magic and Final Fantasy Tactics. The latter is isometric, and has pretty much exactly what Climber describes. It works very well. Lords of Magic has deformed terrain, with non-incremental elevation. Speed on a slope is decreased, and you get combat bonuses for being elevated. City walls also use this; they have stairs in the back for defending missile units to ascend but otherwise can't be scaled normally, and thus you must use flying or missile units to clear the walls, or destroy the gate and go up the stairs. That's a lot simpler than a good siege system in Elemental should be, but it illustrates the value of height well enough.
Final Fantasy Tactics is too far from FE in terms of graphics and style. This is that I meant by Minecraft style (I know there are no ramps in Minecraft, but still). Please no!
I more like Lords of Magic's tactical battles. No odd cliffs, just hills, slopes, etc. And this could work: player would gain attack and/or defense bonus if on higher ground (like Obi Wan ), just like you said. But imo it should be done more nicely (less blocky, without those ramps) and still readable. (Like in Alpha Centauri?) But no different "reaches" of weapons, please.[/quote]Well certainly it would look more like LoM than FFT. I agree that FFT looks blocky and graphically is pretty dated. I mentioned it because it uses altitude well and its maps are very good examples of how verticality can be used very well in map designs, as well as because it's an example most would be familiar with. I do think we should have cliffs (albeit not "odd" ones) because some of the new wildland features include cliff formations, as do certain less dominant map features, and walls are essentially man-made cliffs.
[quote who="Sir_Linque" reply="25" id="3040177"]I've played plenty of FFT and Disgaea. They have a battle system completely built around height differences. They are both games that revolve completely around the tactical battles. If you say those kinds of systems are easy to implement, you are out of your mind. Both games use custom made unique tactical battle maps that are designed with very specific battles in mind. You can't just take the system from those games and slap it on another game with random encounters and a wide variety of units and think it'll magically work.
"Easily implemented" is relative, of course. But I'm not saying we should go to that extreme with verticality.
I never found myself thinking "man FFT and Disgaea are really good games because they have height differences!". It's not a requirement for a good tactical battle system.
Yeah, but if they took place on a featureless flat plain, I can guarantee you they wouldn't have been much good. Just because you don't think about a feature doesn't mean it's not important. It means it's been implemented well.
You also really need to understand that it requires a lot more than you think to implement your ideas. Requiring the AI to do fast pathfinding, line of sight calculations and proper decision making based on those variables is a crazy challenge. To give some perspective, Forgboy mentioned that having a line of sight system in tactical battle might be too much for the AI to handle properly.
That's a hurdle that Stardock will have to get past if they want tactical battles to be worth playing in their own right - and they seem to want to.
EDIT: As always, the quote system of Stardock's forums doesn't work.
