Boy, a lot of whining about the wording of mystical versus arcane or lightning versus electric.  People, pull the focus back a little bit. We're interested in game mechanics, not exercising the thesaurus. They could call the damage types "ouch, painful, and boo boo" for all it matters at this point.

You're wrong.

First, your tone is inapropriate. We have a civil discussion about the topic, nobody is "whining" about anything.

Secondly, words shape context. The name of a damage category can (and will) decide what kind of spells fall under its category. Additionally the names of those categories and thus the area they are applicable. So, depending on the names they have and what kind of names, different kind and amounts of categories can be necessary. (See my post and my argument why I think a fifth category would be good.)

In other words, names define mechanics.

True. I am pretty sure, that the tactical AI will be decent enough. I am also pretty sure, that the tactical combat BETA period will be the longest.

I'm definately in league with the skeptics on this one.  For all of Gal Civ 2's virtues, the only thing I thought was meaningless in Gal civs was the various rock-paper-scissor style weapon types.  There wasn't any strategic planning involved and it just plain flat out came down to being busy work.  In response, I just kicked the difficulty down 1 notch and played the game as though it weren't even there.

Now, I'm fine with basic different damage types, but as long as their differences involve more than simple graphical effects.  Now, I won't get in to spicing up the weapon types, because some other people have already ellaborated.  However, I would like to draw attention to possible ways to spice up armor types.  Instead of having armor that only grants protection from a specific energy subtype, give the armor other attributes as well.  For instance, air armor gives defense against it's counter subtype, defense against missile attacks (wind deflecting arrows), and improves a unit's speed (the wind blows to your back).  Fire armor gives resistance to its counter subtype and defense against melee attacks (cautorizes wounds).  Mystical armor gives defense to all elemental subtypes, but nothing else.  These are only examples, of course.  

You get the idea.  You'd be confronted with decisions like, "Well, I need the extra speed, but not really the subtype resistance that I get from wind armor.  How does this play into my overall army composition..."  This way, you are forced to make strategic decisions instead of playing a tedious game of "connect the dots."

You're blunt response and equally poor tone certainly didn't aim to reduce any potential flame fest, but point taken.

A rose by any other name is still a rose. Names don't define mechanics. A mechanic exists outside of whatever name is chosen. Once chosen, a name provides flavor and something for the user to latch onto as a way to get some instinctive understanding. One of the common things I run into in software engineering is once someone "names" an approach, thinking becomes limited and funneled by the context of the name.

I've lost count of the number of times a coworker keeps saying "I need this real contact in our customer acceptance test database". I say, "OK, I'll put it into the mock database we expose to customers for that." He goes "No, it can't be mock, it has to be a real person."

*palm forehead* He's stuck on the word Mock, his thinking is thrown off by the context of that word.

You call something "lightning" and you've reduce your scope of what can be done with that mechanic. Debating "lightning" versus "electricity" at this point is losing sight of the design goal, which appears to be some sort of elemental (e.g. semi-natural)  damage mechanic.

A big goal, I'd guess, is the feasibility of the game mechanics? 5 elements, 10, 20? What does that imply for game logic and micromanagment. Some placeholder names are sufficient for now as general ideas to grasp the scope of the work.

When the game gets published, you want nice instinctive names. Debating that detail now is missing the point.

I like the direction it's going in. Well done. One question though.

Does Fire Defense protect against Fire Attack? It would kind of make more sense to have Ice Defense protect against Fire Attack. Just a thought. Keep up the great work.

I can't help but necro-post this thread for Frogboy to consider.  Maybe something good can come out of it.

While you can argue that mechanics and names are distinct, people do not think that way. First, names are the first contact users have with the mechanics they are assigned too. So a well chosen name allow a quicker understanding of what the mechanics is about. Second, when you want to define base concepts, such as damage types, you want their explanation to be as concise and clear. Using a common name is a great way to do that.

I would say that choosing a name (with its associated imagery) first, and then fleshing out the mechanics is actually a valid approach in a game. You may have the perfect mechanics in place, if the players are unable to remember all the non-intuitive details, you are not going to go anywhere. And trying to fit a name to an already existing mechanic can be very painful (an example would be how the "arcane" damage type got its name in Wesnoth).

I am quite dubious about the "mystical" damage type, as it doesn't exactly mean anything. Isn't all magic "mystical"? Or is it only holy/unholy magic? If it is supposed to represented "raw" or unaligned magical damage, then its name should say so.

Now that you have mentioned it...the mystical dmg type should be split into holy & unholy dmg types perhaps? I think it's a good idea.

Referring to the OP, I'm not jazzed about the damage types. Frogboy, if you seek to make a spiritual successor to MOM, why would you take the essence of that masterpiece, the original assymetric magic system, and replace it with something generic?  

Granted, I don't have all the context of how this fits into the story or the gameplay. So perhaps I should reserve judgment and criticism for when I see it implemented in the beta. Maybe you have differentiated each magic type sufficiently to be interesting. I'm just concerned based on what you've presented so far.

-Your cautiously optimistic fan

I like the direction. I really like the idea of the kits to enhance weapons or defenses. It will be VERY nice if these can be equipped by experienced units rather than creating units specifically to have the certain attack type/defense. I could see it working either way though, it is all going to depend on implementation.

I agree that the mystical magic type needs renamed, but I also agree that is probably a quibble at this point, as long as it is designed to work well gameply wise we have many months to come up with a better name.

I would really like to see earth magic, and it could be the only magic type that deals regular physical damage (rather than having it's own damage type) This could be kind of the strength/weakness and unique thing about the earth element (i.e. aggressive spells would do things like toss stalagmites at your enemies. Defensive spells would harden armor and defend against regular physical damage (with possibly a psell or two to "ground" lightning.

This would leave you only four damage types and might present some balance challenges. It could work though. In fact there really isn't a need that all magic works in opposition to another. We have fire vs ice and life vs death (or the light and dark side of light magic if you wish) so why not have lightning and earth just neutral rather than opposed to each other? they just do their own thing.

I definitely think "Lightning" should be changed to "Air". Calling it lightning or electrical limits those spells to all being lightning damage. What about Wind? A spell that creates a tornado on the field of battle would seem to fall under the "Air" category to me. A "Lightning" spell would fall under the "Air" category too I'd say, as would rain or "Flood".

I concur Raven X, other than I would say flood is definitely water based and rain more water than air too imho (or perhaps a hybrid if there is such a thing.)

Hmm, that's true. Perhaps change "Ice" to "Water". A spell that would use a little water but still be considered a "Air" spell could be "Storm" or maybe even "Hurricane" which uses high winds to damage entire cities.

You know, now that I think about it, it would make a lot more sense just to have the names of the damage "Types" (I.E. Ice,Fire,Lightning,Mystical) to coincide with the names of the "Types" of Elemental nodes on the map. I.E. Water, Fire, Earth, Air, and Mystical/Magic.

Sorry for the double post.

That sounds logical but....Air damage? Lightning damage sounds good on the other hand. The same is true about Ice damage, since Water damage sounds weird imo.

Hm... I really don't think Air and Earth should be considered as 'damage type'.   When there is a Storm, Hurricane or earthquake spell, the damage they cause is really physical.     When you are wearing an armor providing high physical resistance, you suffer less physical damage when someone cast a Storm spell to you.   The tree that is going to fall into you just do less damage to you as your armor absorb some of the damage.

As damage type, fire/ice/lightning/physical is good enough.  There should be more types down the road, an obcious one is poison damage type.

The magic system of MOM is great, the dev should copy a lot of aspects from MOM.  While amage type is related to magic system, it is also a separate enitity.  They are not mutually exclusive.

Haven't playe Dragon Age or seen it played yet.

Agreed. Plus things like "Acid", "Holy" don't fit into the key Element structure ELEMENTAL has going.

Mystic works much better than most others as the mysterious fifth element. I'm glad at least nobody is advocating the Captain Planet "Heart" element yet! *shudders*

Please, stick with Mystic!

Could go with "void" as the fifth element type. That's the fifth element in the orient (some areas have "metal" as the fifth element).

A thought I would like to throw in is having 'mundane' armor giving some partial protections against various magical damage types based on the material and overall quality/expense of the armor.  For me, even low values in the 10-20% defense value  would be nice. 

From a game play perspective, it adds something for players to think about. It also partially mitigates against 'cheap' magical means to destroy high quality mundane troops with excellent armor.

I haven't carefully evaluated the calculus behind this suggestion but in my experience with systems with various wards vs certain damage types:

1. Wards vs specific magic types are one of the last things I can afford to slap on to units.

2. It can be tedious and a bit 'unbelieveable' (ie. I think it's strange to have the entire army glowing with magic bonuses and protections - better if just a few are imbued) if most units need to warded or be completely defenseless vs magical types. It can be a UI headache too if most units have a long list of prot. vs lightning/prot. vs fire/prot. vs cold/etc.

Only if void magicians are voiced by Rie Kugimiya!

...as for "mystical" damage, it seems fine to me.  It could be named something else, but I don't see that it matters much; however, "ensorcelled" sounds nice to me, for weapons dealing damage through raw sorcery rather than elementally.

I very much hope there will be support for additional damage types - particularly, additional mundane damage types - via modding.  Also, poison damage seems to be missing, though that might be handled another way.

I do not like the current damage types since from the point of world building they look very ugly. We have some pretty basic forces of nature and everything else will have to be lumped into "mystical". So yay for dragons, fire elementals, fire demons, savage fallen barbarians with fire arrows and maybe some storms and blizzards. Those darkness-controlling vampires, poison-wielding assassins and mind-destroying eldritch abominations? Oh, they are all myyystical. Or not in the setting.

The original point of having elements in the cosmology is that all things form from these basic elemental forces. Sure thing maybe the classical fire/earth/water/air do not give us the most accurate picture of the world, but hey, they were invented more than two thousand years ago. And they are still somewhat usefull. Add life and death to them and you have a workable if generic solution. You can make your system very different for the sake of originality, asymmetrical for the added beauty, but please make it structured and all encompassing. Fire, ice, lighting is just not good.

I think we are starting to read way to much into the fact that they added some damage types.   Assuming more will not be added, Assuming they are all going to work about the same, assuming things that are not covered by the other elements will all be lumped into mystical,  assuming all spells from an air node will be electrical damage, and on and on.

When coding at this stage alot of stuff is just setting ground work.  Take the AI for example.  They've coded the structure to write an AI, and wrote one that just does random things for now.  I suspect it's the same for the damage types.  They went ahead and wrote up 4 quick simple damage types, and added them so they can ensure the asset they are currently building is functional.  Going back and filling in all the different types is something that will come later, and likely progress as the game does once we are much further along into the beta and they start designing spells.  Note I didn't say design the magic system, but design spells.  Odds are when magic goes live we'll have a limited subset of spells that will probably for the most part use these damage types.

There is a fair chance that when adding the magic system, someone will add one more type just to make sure thats working properly.  The thing to note is that they are going through and removing anything thats hard coded and replacing it with classes / functions to handle it.  This makes it very easy to change things later, but takes more time to code now.  

Anyway, I'm getting off topic a bit.  Don't get too worried about the limitations of the damage types.  Given the way his post was worded, and the content, I'd bet a dollar to your dime that it is just a short placeholder list for them  to utilize while they code more basic parts of the game.  Filling in assets like this comes much later, just like the options available in the tech tree.

Well, -like I've said- I think that mystical should be split into holy and unholy. [PS. Holy and unholy magical dmg types can be found in a couple of strategy games.]

You don’t research “magic swords” but instead would take a mundane sword and equip a fire magic kit with it. Players can equip multiple kits with their unit to make them increasingly lethal (but expensive) or defend against fire damage by using a defensive fire magic kit.

 

I don't understand this, does that means that we will get a seperat window to design weapons and armor or is this a kit like the the scouting kit currently in the game?

Are we going to see an overhaul of the design unit screen?

Warder