[suggestion] MoM had it, FE needs it -> The Item Vault

I guess we could have a global 'item vault' that is attached to every city.

So you could drop of extra gear at any city, and pick it up later. Not sure if its needed (at least early game) but could reduce late game clutter

Need a global item vault, especially when an army kills an enemy and the items they are awarded just disappear.

They disappear? they yea, need a global vault (I guess may be accessed at any time, from any where?)

I want to capture my enemies' vault and take their goodies.  It would be a great thing to have built into the founding city automatically or as a tech that can only be built in your capital. 

"You have conquered Lord Markinn and the people of Gilden... your troops discover a vault in the Keep containing:  [insert item(s)]"

Personally I'm fine with trading between heroes, most games have that. What FE is lacking compared to those games is a spell that sends an item through magical means to another champion. Cost would be determined by distance and possibly rarity of item.

Yes, what heavenfall said.  And, a vault, like MoM, might be somehting built after much research?  - but not a standard part of the start game.

Personally not sure its worth complicating the Item Vault further than

A) existing from the start

B ) being accessible from any location

C) a convenient way to store extra items.

I mean, you can already store a TON of items for a single hero. I don't think its much further abstraction, and decreases on the tedium of a 'true' item vault.

There needs to be someway to transport items between heroes without having to walk them to each other. Self evident really, simply to avoid the potentially severe nuisance factor. Of course there should also be some sort of cost for this.

I like the idea of a magic item vault like MoM. However I also like the idea of it being a unique building (ie only 1 per faction) which has to be built, probably with relatively low tech requirements and possibly some other benefits to make it fairly much a no brainer to build once you have the tech so long as you can spare the build time. I say this because the cost of transporting the items will already be somewhat self balancing, if you make the vault building hard to build AND have it cost to transport items then no one will bother building it.

And of course that opens up the possibility that if you lose the city with the magic item vault building then you lose your magic items...

Along with a vault, which should be researched early on as a banking technology. I would also like to see a town portal improvement that can be unlocked in the magic tree. this would allow for instant travel between your cities at the cost of 40 mana per unit. 

Is say: vault nay,  spell yay.

I like the general idea. I'd like to see a couple features, anytime an army with no champion gets something it would automatically be added from anywhere (no limits.) For champions use, I'd like to see it setup where you have to be in your own territory to use it. I'd also like the need to research it, as long as it is a fairly early tech on the tree, or possibly combined with one of the other early recruiting techs.

edit: Hmm, yeah, I think I like Mistwraithe's idea of making it a one time building as well. Perhaps a cheap mana cost for access as well? That might help sell the "magic bank" story-wise.

I don't want more buttons and stuff and thingies, so I'm kind of hesitant to agree that we should add one.

MoM and FE are different games too. There are far more, far less awesome items in FE. In MoM I might have thought "This item NEEDS to go on my ranger" or whatever. In FE I'm like "Meh, that might be incrementally more useful than what he already had. I'll get it to him next time we meet." The instant need just isn't there, so this feature is not as valuable here as it was in MoM.

Indeed. Which is why I think a global 'free' vault wouldn't be giving players too much of an advantage, yet would cut down a LOT on micro

Remember, this is going to require another UI change, along with another screen/menu. It's may require adding additional functions to get access to data that's not currently available at a global level. It's going to be another thing new players are going to have to understand. Even if it's not a complex system, it is another system which is overwhelming when you don't understand the game yet.

So it's a question of resources and clutter. Do we need another mechanic that adds to the complexity of the game? Does it provide enough of a benefit to dedicate resources to implementing? For the benefit of cutting down on a bit of micro (not that much, in my opinion), my answer is becoming a more resounding "no" the more I think about it.

EDIT: The disappearing items is an important issue still though. If there isn't a cleaner way to solve this problem, I'll support this feature.

I've never run into dissapearing items myself ... how does it happen? I always give 'extra' items away from my Army leader to the other champions, so that there is space for new items coming in (just in case), but even so I've never seen it happen, so I'm not sure what causes it.

Winning a battle vs monsters without any champions, I believe.

I'm not sure if this is the only way. When fighting against enemies with no champion in your stack, if you receive an item at the end of the battle, you do not actually receive it anywhere.

No to a global vault.

Yes to a spell for transporting items (including those obtained by championless armies) at an appropriate mana cost.

You can't transport items from Championless armies, as without a vault, there is simply no UI to access said items (they are lost as soon as they are gained)

You could make it so that Championless picked up items are always transported to the vault, and Champions can pay mana (like in AoW) to transfer items between any allied champion or sovereign, based on distance and power of the transported item.  Note I am not necessarily saying that it should also allow trade between allies, though that obviously is a possibility especially if FE gets multiplayer.

Simply have an option pop up when items are discovered (obtained) by championless armies to transport these items to your sovereign for x mana.  Otherwise they disappear like they do now.

Depends on your definition of complexity of the game. If you mean complexity of coding and development then yes an item vault is undoubtedly more work than doing nothing from the current state.

But from a game playability point of view adding an item vault is likely to make it less complex by making the game easier to play and reducing micro. 

Like everything there will be a cost benefit analysis for Stardock to perform on whether the feature is worth doing.

Complexity does not directly relate to micro management. Making something take less clicks does not make it less complex.

2 ways to do the same thing is complex, especially for a new player who has to get inundated with a multitude of systems.

I disagree. Multiple ways of doing things does not equal complexity. For example having only one difficult or obscure way of doing something is much worse than having two easy and comlementary ways to do something. I'm not saying that my example describes the item vault situation perfectly but I see elements of it.

I also think making something take less clicks generally tends to make it less complex but it is quite possible to design counter examples.