Invictus73

[Invictus73]

Sky wrote:

Mostly true. I have always 2 archers as a minimum. One of them is the commander-rally man with armor penetration-tohit chance from offense, having sidestep to escape enemy zones, vampires do not scare him at all.

Isn’t it counterproductive to have your Rally bots be archers? You want your Rally bot to do nothing else but Rally, I would think.

[Invictus73]

ManaSeed wrote:

Pros
==> provides low to moderate support, especially to dispatch targets with almost no hp, or light armor targets with immediate/high threats.
==> their real value are only shown when:
1) high grounds. One step higher provides more accuracy than one step closer.
2) terrains that requires enemy to take extra steps to get to you.
3) swamp terrain which greatly slows down enemy.
4) unarmored or light armor enemies, and enemies without shield.
==================================================

I initially started with zero ranged units after reading your post (I looked over the ‘net for game advice before I started to play), as well as Duungarm’s excellent Steel Cohort Guide on Steam. Since I do not like ranged units in general whether in TBS or RPG (too fragile mainly and thus requires too much babysitting). After intensive playtesting, however, I have changed my mind and incorporate them in small numbers (two, to be precise).

Now you’ve provided a good beginner’s list of when and why ranged units are useful, but your list is hardly exhaustive. Personally, the main reason is to counter ranged units. On the one hand, I run quite a few melees with low armor and/or no shield (six, to be exact, two Nimble Swordmaster riposte bots, two Nimble Captains, and two offensive melees who will ideally take out their two handers ASAP), so they will get ripped if they get focus fired. So to protect them, I have to hunt out the enemy archers first. On the other hand, as I’ve complained elsewhere, hit and run (mostly run) archers are annoying, especially during nights or on bad terrain, so I need my own ranged to deal with them quickly in mop up situations.

In addition, massed Perfect Focus archer batteries can be frightening if correctly used, even against heavy Orc formations. Archers with Perfect Focus can easily get four Aimed Shots off per turn with captain support, and if you properly pin your opponents with melee roadblocks (especially Nimble characters that fear no melee and can solo an entire melee army), then you can sit back and eliminate your opponents in a few turns. Even if you bring just two archers like I do, the initial volleys can soften up the enemy to the degree where your heavy melees can frequently one or two shot wounded units.

[Invictus73]

Anonymous wrote:

My main problem with the vision penalty for helmets is how it stacks/interacts with fighting at night. Either vision penalty for wearing helmets should be removed, or the night time vision penalty should only affect *max* vision range, not your actual vision range. At night, my characters with full helms literally cannot see anything unless it’s in the square next to them. They can’t even use javelins at night and that makes no sense whatsoever. Having the nighttime vision penalty say that the maximum vision radius is 5 tiles, before factoring in any traits, would be a significant improvement I feel. Alternatively, not having vision penalties for helmets would fix the problem.

I agree wholeheartedly; night battles represent another nightmare (pardon the pun).

[Invictus73]

Rap wrote:

Please report any such issues in the Bug Reports forum so they can be fixed.

Thanks; I just filed one.

[Invictus73]

Addendum: Another option to deal with the maddening tedium of mopping up ranged units is to enable autoresolve after you kill all the melees.

[Invictus73]

PsenBattle wrote:

3. Racial (lack of) diversity:
As others already stated there wont be elves, dwarves or orcs fighting for the player. Our plan is to include more human cultures in future add ons depending on their setting (Scandinavian, Eastern, Arabic, North Africa etc)

Thanks; that is a bit more reassuring, even if not completely satisfactory still.

PsenBattle wrote:

4. Character Development:
Regarding the perks there are so many different oppionions flying around, we have to do some intense playtesting and judge for ourselves. One person says: This Perk is the bomb! While the next one says: Its totally useless!

I think it’s really well done and innovative. I think it is the bomb! ;)

PsenBattle wrote:

5. Quest variety/limit/payout:
The contract system will get a big rework with our worldmap redesign and the event system and reputation system.

As I’ve posted above, I’d also like to see some XP gains as well, in addition to cash and reputation rewards.

PsenBattle wrote:

6. Tactical combat issues:
The range of weapons and sights plays out pretty well in my personal oppionion.

Here I will totally and strongly disagree. Sorry, but I feel really passionate about this issue. First, as a general matter, even in games, severe departure from reality or extreme lack of realism detracts when there is no compelling reason for such a departure. Here, the reduction of sight radius from some helmets is just ridiculous. I am a medieval military afficianado (not just Western but including, even primarily, East Asian), and I’ve worn military helmets. They simply won’t restrict your line of sight the way you portray. You lose some peripheral vision, but not forward vision.

Second, the biggest issue is how the low sight radius interacts with ranged AI behavior. A lot of times, ranged AI units do nothing but retreat, retreat, and retreat. They won’t even stand still and fire. So against ranged units, you spend all the time time chasing in the dark (literally!) in a game of hide and seek. It’s truly infuriating and made me give up fighting bandits altogether. Either the AI should be programmed to stay and fight more, or the sight of radius should increase (or more preicsely, “be normalized”). I bought the game to fight battles, not run a marathon.

I apologize for the blunt and harsh language (especially because I think the game is so well conceived overall), but I think this part of the game is really broken; and without future improvements, adding more ranged units (and an entire race to boot) will make a bad situation worse.

PsenBattle wrote:

7. Bugs/glitches:
I think you have to adjust the camera height level with “+” and “-” keys. When you lower the camera hills will get “cut off” and the characters standing on those tiles will be represented by small icons.

Cheers!

Could you explain this a bit more? I tried those keys, and they don’t work. But I do get those small icons quite a lot.

[Invictus73]

Holy.Death wrote:

Point is not to have more races, but have varying enemy factions that would be in opposition to the player. Game doesn’t really has to have all canonical fantasy races if what we have accomplishes these goals. By not shoving “racial diversity” and by trying to keep their design somewhat realistic – as well true to the real medieval time period they aim at – they have managed to create a unique feeling of the world. At least I get that impression. How they handled enemies is part of this. Another is restricting the use of magic. It’s quite rare so far and I like it that way. Mages and magic became so commonplace in other fantasy universes that not having magic users spamming spells left and right is quite refreshing.

I see your point, but I remain unpersuaded that “low” fantasy is so compelling. It’s a halfway house that has the virtue of neither realism nor imagination. I guess it’s ultimately a matter of taste, and there is no metric to adjudicate this debate.

[Invictus73]

PipBoy wrote:

Have to disagree. I think the Perk system is one of the things that needs the most work. It’s got a lot of great ideas, but needs a ton more balancing (the Defense tree is nearly worthless, for example)

I did point out that certain trees are really underpowered. And though we identified different weak trees, I agree that your choice is a valid candidate for the “worst tree” title.

PipBoy wrote:

Questing does need some work, and I’m sure it’ll get it. But also, keep in mind that you can run from one side of the map to the other in only about 2 days. So a 200 gold quest to go from one town to the next is generally a profit. It’s how I make money early game.

It is, however, a little boring. I can basically farm as much money as I want while avoiding fights I can’t win by running from one town to the next. So, I agree this system needs work.

In addition to greater cash award, I also think you should get some marginal XP award as well. You don’t want to fight every time; besides, some really weak toons may first need some level up anyways.

PipBoy wrote:

A. I agree that the “vision” system is a bit skewed. It seems like the penalty to fatigue for wearing heavy helmets is enough, and the “I can’t see more than 5 feet in front of me” thing just doesn’t make sense. Maybe it should become a penalty to ranged attacks, instead of sight range? That way an archer shouldn’t be wearing a heavy helmet, but the tank up front can still see.

It’s horrifically bad, and I am even more annoyed with it than I was now I’ve played a lot more. Combined with ranged combat, it makes tactical combat downright unplayable for me. So I now avoid fighting bandits and will likely avoid Goblins in the future, too.

PipBoy wrote:

Huh, I’ve never seen that one. The one bug I’ve gotten is the UI disappearing on the world map, but that’s easily solved by a quick-load or mashing escape a few times.

Tactical combat also freeze/crashes at times, especially in a longer combat.

[Invictus73]

I am really tired from typing one handed, so I will keep this short:

As I said in my introductory thread for game improvement suggestions, I find the Offense tree severely lacking and underpowered. In particular, most of tier 1 choices are either too underpowered or too situational: Other than the infelicitously named Fast Adaption and Sundering Strikes, there isn’t much that is universally good. This tree needs a lot of work.

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