Random Elemental journal: December 2009: 2 Damage Types

from Elemental Forums

I do not want any negative sentiment as in demonstrated in the thread.  But I do want to see if there is some smart dicussion on what I've preceived from what Frogboy has say. In this forum, there are a lot of people who shoot first before they think...

Mind you, that 'my understanding' of what Frogbay has proposed can be completely wrong, so I put it as an "idea" thread.

My Understanding:
A unit has the following stat:
Physical HP: 20
Acrane HP: 10
Fire/Ice/Lightning Protection: 100%/0%/-100%

When any one of the HP hits 0, it dies.
There are only 2 "damage types": Physical and Acrane.  Fire/Ice/Lightning are all considered as Acrane.

Turn 1. Sword has Physical damage of 5.   Physical HP reduced to 15
Turn 2. A Fireball has Acrane damage of 5, but because the unit has 100% protection, its Acrane HP remains 10.
Turn 3. A Lightning bolt has Acrane damage of 5.  Because the unit has -100% lightning protection, the unit receive 10 Acrane damage and die, despite the fact that it still has Physical HP of 15.

If 'my understanding' above is correct, I am happy.   If incorrect, please feel free to express what you think Frogboy said.

The Real Question (I have):

Frogboy:

In Elemental, if someone is equipping their side with LOTS of magical damaging items you can put resources into armor that defendsd against mundane AND have magical resistance.  So that +3 acid damage could get blunted.

What would not be fun is if you had to design units with "acid resistant armor" only to realize the other guy has units with maces with frost damage. "Oh great, now I need to send my army back across the world and re-equip them or re-design that particular army to have frost resistant helms or maybe I should create armies with an acid protected shield, a frost protected boot, a lightning resistant helm, etc."  Sorry but that sort of gameplay would cause me to lose sleep and not in a good way.
End of quote

For me, whenever the game has more than 1 elements to reduce HP (ie. physical/fire/ice/lightning/etc), gamer will need to re-deign/re-equip.  But where is the line that re-equip/re-design that particular army become tedious?  When will cause you to lose sleep?

To me, the 'line' depends on how the unit stats are balanced & it is too early to tell.   It will be quite a different story if most units has Acrane HP of 1 (a case of unbalanced)

8,352 views 12 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

I don't think they mean "Arcane HP" and "Physical HP" :S They mean "HP", "Defense" (against physical attacks) and "Arcane Defense" (against magical effects).

But it's surprising how the same thing can be read in lots of ways...

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

In fact the problem isn't that you have to re-design units, but the way it can be handled in-game. Maybe there's a two-click way to change equipment of your soldiers.

 

You design a unit with "options" : you can equip a unit with a sword and a bow. Beore battle start you chose which of the two will be used. Having more stuff in your "backpack" will reduce map-speed because of the logistics it involves.

You want a big army that have everything to fight against ? It will be so slow ...

Need some army for infiltration ? hit and run tactics ? You better equipp them right at first.

 

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Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

No I don;t think there will be physical HP and arcance HP either. It is much easier if you look at MoM Analogue of "hearts" = health, shields = AC or protection from physical damage and resistance, which is protection from magic damage. AS explained I believe arcane damage and physical damage will both simply subtract from your health pool.

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

Btw, they already posted the units stats in the Data-Driven post.

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

Frogboy Reply #75

You can't say that when we know you play Dominions. There are no 'party' combat system there, but armies of hundreds against dragons and such just like Elemental will give us. And there's nothing tedious launching your pikeneers boosted with earth magic against lava men radiating heat with fire drakes spiting fireballs. Having priests of Death casting Terror to make enemy milice run with fear, tedious?

ALL of those examples are still giving ONE type of damage.

Dominions 3 has ONE damage type.  A unit on fire or frying from acid or being electrocuted are all still suffering ONE type of damage in Dominions 3.
....
No where did I say or imply that battles woudln't end up with people being fried via acid or fireballs blasting away or fear spells or what have you.

But at the end of the day, they're just damage. 

I realize to non-developers that something saying it does "+5 frost damage" somehow makes it special but it doesn't. It's just saying it does 5 mundane damage due to frost. It's just cosmetic.
End of quote

The way Denryu described in reply #3 here is same as what Frogboy described in #75 above, which is 1 damage type, because for any of your fire/ice/whatever damage you have, only 1 type of HP is reduced.

Frogboy Reply#75 said:
What we were previously discussing was the idea of frost or fire damage being a totally different TYPE of damage which we decided was way too complicated.
End of quote

The previously discussed idea was that there is Fire HP, Ice HP, Acid HP etc, corresponding the damage type.  A fire elemental will have infinty Fire HP, little Ice HP, for example.

Frogboy Reply#78 said:
...
Most games only have 1 type of damage protection - armor.  Elemental will have 2: mundane and magical.

When I play Dragon Age: Origins, and I have a sword that does 3 to 10 damage +3 acid damage it's still all damage. And what it means is that the # of HP you'll lose is between 3 to 10 plus an additional 3.  There's nothing you can do to prevent that last 3.

In Elemental, if someone is equipping their side with LOTS of magical damaging items you can put resources into armor that defendsd against mundane AND have magical resistance.  So that +3 acid damage could get blunted.

What would not be fun is if you had to design units with "acid resistant armor" only to realize the other guy has units with maces with frost damage. "Oh great, now I need to send my army back across the world and re-equip them or re-design that particular army to have frost resistant helms or maybe I should create armies with an acid protected shield, a frost protected boot, a lightning resistant helm, etc."  Sorry but that sort of gameplay would cause me to lose sleep and not in a good way.
End of quote

In Frogboy's reply #78.  He explicitly say there will be 2 types of damages.  So I think there will be Mandune HP & Arcane HP.

Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting VicenteC, reply 4
Btw, they already posted the units stats in the Data-Driven post.
End of VicenteC's quote

After looking at those stat, there is only one type of HP.  What does Arcane damage & Mandune damage he mention really means?

I guess 'my understanding' is wrong.

It seems to me that there will not be any individual resistance like fire resistance, ice resistance, poison resistance.   Magic Resistance will represent all of them... um....

Ok.  I decide whatever it means, I don't care.  It is too early to tell & Devs are not really asking what we want anyway.

Reply #7 from Elemental Forums Top

It means that you magic resistance will block arcane damage (or mitigate it) and armor will will mitigate physical damage.

Whatever damage gets thru subtracts from your HP.

Example, you might have a heavily armored knight with low magic resistance, and you might have a high mage with cloth armor but high magic resistance.

The mage you can firebolt, ice sotorm etc and it will have some effect, but it will have more effect on the knight with low magic resist. That's because he is well protected against arcane damage.

Vice versa with a weapon attack - not so effective on the knight but probably chop Mr. Wiggly fingers in four pieces.

Another consideration is typically our mage is going to have less health than our knight, so the knight is probably going to be a front line unit to "tank" or soak up the damage, and the mage is probably going to hang out near the rear with the archers and lob damage in from afar. Of course, he may have some spells that do a lot of damage but also require him to touch his target (very small range) so he may need to be risked at times. Or at least this might be a tactical choice for the player.

Reply #8 from Elemental Forums Top

Short answer is with spells the magic resists is your "armor" with physical damage your armor is your armor. :X

Reply #9 from Elemental Forums Top

I understand what you said (before your #7, #8 reply) as that is one of the simplest systems; 2 types of damages are reducing 1 type of HP...  So, I should just :X too.

Reply #10 from Elemental Forums Top

I'm pretty possitive there's only going to be one HP pool. Having two types of damage is two ways to subtract from that pool. I.E. a magical weapon will do X Physical Damage + X Arcane Damage = Damage subtracted from HP pool. Keeping the math simple is best from a coding perspective.

Reply #11 from Elemental Forums Top

For a TBS, generic hit points seem most appropriate to me. But if Elemental gets an 'RPG' spinoff/mod, it would be good to see something like the Hero System's Body vs. Stun damage--I've always hated RPGs that made it difficult or impossible to make disabling (knockout) attacks.

Reply #12 from Elemental Forums Top

Yeap "Hit points" and "Stamina" are two good things to get. As long as the overall efficiency of a unit is tied to it's remaining stamina and HP.