Abuse Or Intended – A discussion about possible exploits.

[GOD]

Woopsie. Yeah, that’s what I actually meant. I probably mistook the ‘spend’ for the actual AP pool in my head. All-nighters takin’ their toll. ;)

Rap wrote:

Not a bad idea at all.

Good to hear. I’ve been trying to think of anything obvious that I was missing that this would break, but it seems like a fairly decent solution.

[guidon101]

GOD wrote:

EDIT: Sleep deprived math error. Embarrassing.

No worries, GOD! To err is human :)

GOD wrote:

For example. A units spends 4 AP and waits. That unit then gets stunned. The turn they were about to receive is skipped and 4 AP is deducted from the AP pool of their next turn.

I like this solution.

[GOD]

This actually made me think of an earlier discussion we had regarding the shield bash perk and how it is currently rather weak. A buff to it that would be both thematic and useful would be have the perk add stun to the shield bash. However, the issue was that this might infringe on the niche of stun weapons. So, supposing that this idea gets implemented, how about if the shield bash perk made it so that shield bash did a partial stun? So, rather than the full 9 AP, it could do 3, 4 or 5 AP damage. A kind of mini-stun, if you will. It’s weaker than a regular stun, but still useful even when it doesn’t succeed in ending the target its turn since it does slow them down.

guidon101 wrote:

No worries, GOD! To err is human :)

Blasphemy!

[Binkus]

wooah hold on guys this is a single player game you can play how you want

essentially you are only stealing from yourself in single player games

forcing how we play onto other people is a real danger

[Rap]

GOD wrote:

This actually made me think of an earlier discussion we had regarding the shield bash perk and how it is currently rather weak. A buff to it that would be both thematic and useful would be have the perk add stun to the shield bash. However, the issue was that this might infringe on the niche of stun weapons. So, supposing that this idea gets implemented, how about if the shield bash perk made it so that shield bash did a partial stun? So, rather than the full 9 AP, it could do 3, 4 or 5 AP damage. A kind of mini-stun, if you will. It’s weaker than a regular stun, but still useful even when it doesn’t succeed in ending the target its turn since it does slow them down.

Yeah, we had that same thought. The thing is that the effect in many cases would be essentially the same as a character being stunned for real. For example, if I knock back some opponent, he’ll lose 4 ap from the shield bash and then 2 to 4 ap (depending on terrain) for closing in again on me, leaving him without enough ap to perform a skill. Of course, an opponent may not always be able to close in again on me due to Zone of Control, and an actual stun would also be better because it triggers the ‘Push the Advantage’ perk, but my worry is that the actual difference in gameplay between a character being stunned or shield bashed is somewhat negligible. That in turn may also render bludgeoning weapons somewhat obsolete, since their main advantage is the ability to stun. But maybe I’m missing something?

Overhype Studios - follow us!
Facebook Youtube
Twitter

[Sky]

No you are not missing anything. If the shield can stun then there will be no need for blunt weapons. For now only they can do stuns that are more valuable than the knock back of the shield since the enemy loses their whole turn instead of just a step back. While the knock is nice for tactical placement rearrangement it is situational, but a stunned enemy loses their zone of control and can be freely passed by anyone.

Tipps for new players
BB Wiki

[GOD]

You’re right, that would still make it too good if you could effectively stun an opponent by keeping them drained of AP. I think a solution to that would be to lower the AP damage, like having it do 2 AP or 1 AP damage rather than 4. With 2 AP damage, it’s like you knock the unit back an extra step, without the positional advantage of actually knocking someone back by two steps. A stagger, rather than stun. With 1 AP damage, it’s more like you throw them off-balance and keep them from going all-out. I don’t have the numbers ready, but I imagine that 1 AP would mostly kick in to keep enemies from swinging big weapons or using multiple abilities, which would translate to the enemy their edge being slightly dulled without losing their lethality. By comparison, a full stun guarantees that the enemy won’t be able to do anything and under certain circumstances can slow them down in their next turn. With differences like that, the AP damage of the shield bash perk would serve a very different purpose compared to that the stun of a bludgeoning weapon.

Could that I’m still overlooking something, though. Thoughts?

[iason]

I like the Idea of a 1 or 2 AP-Damage for a Shield-Bash a lot. This would make the ability more useful and also makes sense in the lore. You pushing someone back so he loses some balance and needs a bit of time to get ready again.

Another Idea could be to change the actual Shield-Bash Perk from the Perk-Tree so that you get the AP-Damage with this perk. This way this rather useless perk (at the moment) could become a good an viable option to choose (to make a Positioning- and Debuff-Char)

[GOD]

Yup, my suggestion is to apply this change to the shield bash perk in order to make it more viable, since it’s not very useful right now. It seems strong enough of a boon to make it worth using, while weak enough not to conflict with stun or requiring the perk to become tier 2.

[Sekata]

GOD wrote:

Yup, my suggestion is to apply this change to the shield bash perk in order to make it more viable, since it’s not very useful right now. It seems strong enough of a boon to make it worth using, while weak enough not to conflict with stun or requiring the perk to become tier 2.

Really? The bash seems to have pretty fair utility as is, like clearing enemies that get close to archers, or forcing them to lower ground.

[GOD]

The regular ability is great. The perk from the utility tree, however, is not currently worth taking. That’s the one I’m talking about. It’s a bit confusing, because we all tend to call the knock back skill shield bash as well.

[Sekata]

GOD wrote:

The regular ability is great. The perk from the utility tree, however, is not currently worth taking. That’s the one I’m talking about. It’s a bit confusing, because we all tend to call the knock back skill shield bash as well.

My mistake. The skill is useful, but I wouldn’t touch the perk with a 10 foot pole.

[Sekata]

Wolves wrote:

Greetings fellow Hauptmänners!

Wouldn’t it be of use for the dev team if we as community would discuss a bit about possible ABUSES and/or EXPLOITS in the game? I could imagine it would.

1) SAVESCUMING – Lost a battle / mercenary? A lvlup wasn’t as good as a roll as you wanted it to be? Well, you could simply save every time before something like this could happen and reload and try again. You can ALT + DEL and just reload the autosave currently. Hire a mercenary and if the traits are bad, just load etc. etc.

2) LURING – Just lure enemy battlegroups into the castle / city / villages / towers and using the milita / landsknechts to fight, tank and die for you. You get all the loot btw.
Any more YOU have encountered and / or thought of and tested it? Feel free to write it down here.

Happy pillaging!
Wolves

As far as re-loading to re-hire a different mercenary, i’m not sure that’s an exploit. I would imagine that the full game would feature the ability to let members go from the group, so reloading for a hire is more of an unfortunate stop-gap.

[RusBear]

Allow me to take part in discussions on the shield bash. As you look at it so successful shield lowered on some time attack and defense of the enemy. In principle, real – ringing in the ears and loss of balance. Then the sb will not be so useless and will not replace the stun from crushing weapon. It is technically possible?
however in this case I think orcish heavy warriors easily kill all party of mercenaries and patrols :)

[GOD]

With a debuff to melee and defence skill you’d get into weird situations though, like wanting to ping pong the enemy to another merc when you’re trying to make them easier to hit. Or having to chase down the enemies you hit away when you want to exploit their weakened defences. As a result, the enemy being moved away actually becomes a disadvantage, as its the debuff that you want and the movement only makes it harder to make the most of their temporary weakness.
I also personally dislike flat debuffs to stats, since they only slightly tweak an exisiting option rather than adding new ways of dealing with an enemy.

Sekata wrote:

My mistake. The skill is useful, but I wouldn’t touch the perk with a 10 foot pole.

Pretty much. It’s just not worth a perk point at the moment, since there are better perks to take if you want to reach tier 2 and it doesn’t have a niche of its own that still makes it useful.

[Author]

Posts