Tamren

Darkstar 1 isn't worth it IMO. If you want something odd try ASCII Sector. Privateer remade as a roguelike.

I'm actually kind of wary. Those horrible HORRIBLE trailers don't help the situation.

The sword of truth was TERRIBLE. How can you include that? [e digicons]X|[/e]

It will be interesting at any rate. The finished game can only get better.

What version is on impulse? And what hoops will I have to jump through to get this all patched up?

[quote who="Scoutdog" reply="8" id="2312714"]Sins of a Solar Empire: The real-time engine. This would have been a great game if it hadn't been stuck as RT"S". I found the clickfest made it totally unplayable.[/quote] BUH?! This is like swimming in the ocean and saying "I would have enjoyed the salt more if hadn't been for the water".

Heh why not use fire magic to craft red-hot caltrops that never cool? Its hard to ignore one if just being close to it is enough to cook your feet.

Well alone it would not be very effective. But you could improve on its use in a variety of ways: Instead of just 1 spike use 1000 and force your enemy to move over it. Form a shield wall just beyond the trapped area. Place these traps in a location where they can't be seen such as behind a wall or in a ditch. Anyone vaulting over the wall will have no time to react. Load them into a catapult and rain them upon your enemy. When defending

Well, I would argue that it depends on how big the caltrop is. Make it a foot high and put it in a shallow pit...

[quote who="Scoutdog" reply="9" id="2310962"]So really all you want is a "decay" function used by some (but not all) terrains. That seems doable.[/quote] Terrains can decay too. But "traps" like caltrops are pretty much one-use objects. After all once a caltrop is stuck in someones foot its unlikely someone else will step on it too. Caltrops are just devices that impede movement. Specifically they are design so that no matter which way is up they remain effective. They don't always ta

It would probably be simpler than we think it is. A patch of sand for example slows movement. But you don't have to calculate anything convoluted to arrive that conclusion. You are either standing on sand or not. I think we need to separate traps and dangerous terrain. Terrain doesn't go away, but traps are expendable and break. Terrain will remain a threat until you modify it or it degrades. It could be anything from a moat to a river of lava. Traps on the other hand are objects, cal

Well yes. In the end you can sum up everything to be a % chance per crossing . But what would happen if you countercharged the enemy so that they were stuck and had to fight on top of the dangerous ground? The problem with having a visible formula for per-step is that it would have so many different parts. Too much to expenct someone to take in all at once. And once its calculated you have to plug the result into a whole different formula to see if that step actually h

Well lets see. As far as a blanked movement debuff goes. Sharp objects on the ground like broken glass, thorns and caltrops will force anyone moving over them to slow down. Assuming they realize the danger is there to begin with. So dangerous terrain like this could be used in two ways. An obviously trapped portion of ground will be avoided by enemies. Ground that doesn't *look* trapped may not be discovered until its too late. This "area" effect will slow down a hostile force, regard

It would be neat to go with the Erfworld model of undead. Basically the more energy and or time a necromancer spends working on an undead, the closer it will be to what it was alive. So a moderatly strong caster could raise one powerful champion or a whole horde of weak mooks.

[quote who="Scoutdog" reply="5" id="2309630"]Well, my first guess would be "no". Generally, militaries have rules against that, and a pregnant soldier usually becomes a dead soldier very, very quickly.[/quote] Sure if by pregnant you mean too wide to fit through doors. But there are some situations where drafting women as well as men makes sense. The simplest example is when you have no choice.

What unit in what game? We don't know anything about elemental's combat system yet. Units with multiple entities are nothing new. Of course they require extra code, but that always comes with added complexity.

That was just an example. When someone at the front of a group starts moving slowy it will not have any effect if the unit as a whole doesn't get ordered to move faster than that figures top speed. If that did happen then it has an effect on the rest of the unit. Faster members will move around them like water flowing around a rock which slows them as well. Eventually they will drop all the way back to the rear of the unit. This is the tricky part. What are you going to do now

A lot of this sounds extremely complicated, but only when it is on paper. Learning that bladed weapons dull easily against hard armour is a lesson you learn once. But if you were to explain it on paper you would have to talk about material hardness, sharpening techniques and all this other hoopla.

The developers pretty much declared this to be a clone of DoTA and at that moment I lost all interest. I had my fun with DoTA back BEFORE it turned into a bunch of elitist pricks.

[quote who="katabroc" reply="14" id="2308895"]Wouldnt it be easier to have pierce/bludgeon/slash/magic for weapon types and light/medium/heavy/arcane for armor types? You can make a "scissor-paper-stone" type of combination with those and could even have a morning star doing 70% of bludgeon and 30% of piercing damage. Then you can have slashing doing 60% damage on heavy armor, while pierce would do 90% and bludgeon 110%. Something like that would be good and would simplify things while s

[quote who="Scoutdog" reply="12" id="2308573"]There has to be an arbitrary cutoff.[/quote] I see what you mean now. Well we could add a rule that says at least 5% of the figures in a unit have to be affected before the unit as a whole will suffer a movement penalty. 20 elite swordsmen might be able to beat 100 mooks. But as soon as one of them takes an injury bad enough to make them limp the whole unit is affected. In this regard hordes are more "durable" to movement penalties. And it

[quote who="Frogboy" reply="12" id="2308516"]The fate of hedge walls will rest with the beta testers. [/quote] hear that people? Hedge walls or bust! [e digicons];P[/e] I think simple "hinderance" walls like this will be of great value at a tactical level. Have any of you played company of heroes? In the beginning of the game you have only basic infantry and no vehicles. One line of razor wire across the bridge to your riflemen might as well be the great wall of china to a se

[quote who="Scoutdog" reply="10" id="2308496"]So, basically, you want an arbitrary cutoff point of troop numbers after which your system no longer applies. Not only would that mean 2X the work for whichever poor dev codes the TCAI and TC calculation engine (a different AI and calculation system for deatiled and abstracted), but it would also throw the horde/elites system out of balance: since battles using hordes of weak soldiers would use a different system than battles involving a few well-

And, if they DO burn down the hedge. The spikes will probably be burning hot [e digicons]o_O[/e]

One great way to use the bushes is to dig a dry moat and grow a thorny bush inside it. It offers no cover to an attacking force. Can't be chopped down out of the way. And even if you burn the bush out you still have to wait for the wall of fire to subside before navigating the trench. If you want to be an evil jerk about the whole thing you could put metal spikes on the bottom before growing the hedge on top of it.