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GOD wrote:

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 1 AP damage, there’d be very few scenarios where the perk actually makes any difference. Knocking a target towards an ally would still leave it able to attack normally with 8 AP. In most cases, a target knocked away and then closing in again would be able to make one attack afterwards – with or without a shield bash perk that drains 1 AP. The only scenario where I see this having any effect would be a target closing in again over difficult terrain or a height level difference if wielding a two-handed weapon. I doubt that this is enough to make the perk an attractive pick.

With 2 AP damage, the average target wielding a one-handed weapon would lose one attack. It could only make a single attack if knocked towards something it can attack right away, but would not be hampered at all in its ability if wielding a two-handed weapon. If closing in again after being knocked away, the target could in most cases still perform one attack with a one-handed weapon – but this is true with or without the 2 AP damage. On the other hand, it could no longer perform any attack at all with a two-handed weapon after closing in again, which in this case may make it disproportionally effective, close to a stun.

Just based on the way the whole system of Action Points works, I don’t see this working out in a balanced and even way, leaving it useful enough to make the perk an attractive pick, but not too strong against certain enemies to be easily exploitable. But, again, maybe I’m missing something?

GOD wrote:

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.

Exactly. We considered this as well, but as you pointed out, knocking a target away and at the same time debuffing it are pretty much two conflicting effects.

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It will.

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Well, the game has been released to Early Access just three weeks ago and has a whole year of Early Access ahead. Of course there is going to be a lot more added; that’s the point of having the game in Early Access for a year. As it is now, we consider the game a solid foundation upon which we can build a truly good game. It should be pretty obvious, however, that it is by no means a finished game yet. You can find more information about what is planned on this very website.

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Good find, thanks! It’s an oversight by me which I’ll fix for the next update.

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Good suggestions. So good in fact, that all of those are planned features already ;)

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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?

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It’d be immensely helpful in fixing some of the more elusive issues if you could also take a look and try to find a way to reliably reproduce these. Thanks! :)

I’m pretty sure there’ll be a period of time before the game’s final release where we focus on polishing and eliminating bugs exclusively. Still, the more we can eliminate now, the better for all of you playing the game already.

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Yes.

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Not a bad idea at all.

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guidon101 wrote:

First, you could say this is not a problem But if it is not working as intended, then I suggest: If I understand the mechanic correctly, a Stun is a type of buff/debuff. So, since you have other buffs that work properly through the turns (e.g. Spearwall and Shieldwall) — they last through one full turn into the next turn — I would recommend to borrow the same algorithm or logic, if that works. I think that may be a more consistent fix (the turn-based duration buffs all work consistently and predictably) than to make the stun duration circumstantially dependent on AP left.

Unfortunately this can’t be solved the same way as Shieldwall works because it is a fundamentally different mechanic. Reading your description again, I’m actually fine with the way you’re doing this and don’t think this needs changing. However, I think this can be exploited even more than you initially realized;

Being stunned makes a character lose their next turn. If a character would have already spent most of their AP and then waited, in essence already having concluded their turn save for 2 AP or so, and then get stunned, they’d lose that same turn at the end of the round which they already acted on. In other words, they’d actually lose nothing from being stunned. A possible solution would hence be to extend the duration of the stun into the next round in this case.

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guidon101 wrote:

Unit Turn/Stun mechanic: if I make a unit “wait” to move again at the end of the turn, and then that unit gets Stunned, then when his move comes up at the end of the turn, he doesn’t get to move due to the Stun effect, but then the Stun effect immediately wears off at that point, so it doesn’t carry over into the next turn. Therefore, this unit is no longer stunned in the next turn, and gets to use his full AP.

This is one of the “tactics” (exploit?) that I use against young orcs, not to nullify their stun, but to reduce its potency, since their stun would only last within the same turn, so I’ll still be free to fully retaliate on the next turn.

Interesting, I didn’t know about that one. That’s a tricky thing to solve, though. I guess I could have stun last another turn when the character hit only has 2 or 3 Action Points left?

guidon101 wrote:

Since certain undead creatures or with necromancers could indefinitely respawn more undead, one battle with them could potentially be farmed for XP, as terribly boring as that is. I think they may have “nerfed” this effect possibly, as it seemed to be more effective before (8-15xp in-battle per deathblow, versus 2xp now; although I’m not sure how the post-battle XP is calculated, if it takes into account the “re-kills” and gives XP as if it was a full kill, or not); I haven’t tested much or really done this much due to the potential to lock-up the AI turn, but I did think it was viable before, especially for a low level party, since recently-raised undead are pretty easy fare for them.

The XP gained for slaying resurrected enemies was at 50% before and has since been reduced to 25% in order to remove some incentive for farming this way. Not sure yet if that is a good number.

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GOD wrote:

Granted, I would like to see the AI make better use of the different perks and abilities in order to reposition themselves. They already do to some degree, but I think this is an area where improvement can still be made.

If you’re interested, I’d really like to know what you have in mind here in terms of situations the AI should make better use of their skills. Perhaps in another thread?

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RusBear wrote:

Suggestion 2.
I suggest not to forget to add the ability to reject changes in the characteristics at level up. Both individual characteristics and the level entirely. The player can change his mind or just misclicked. Now there is not this possible if you have already chosen some feature to improve to abandon it. So? Or am I just too old and stupid?

We’re going to change this together with changing the way stat increases on levelup are determined as discussed here.

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Obviously an ironman mode would be optional. As thenewromance said, it’s probably prudent to wait a while longer with adding it, though, until we’re reasonably sure there is no way for players to lose their savegames.

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Salperticon wrote:

But there is even more. If I understood this correctly, villages will prosper or degenerate based on the number of caravans that make it through, as well as how often they are raided. If drawing the enemy into a town to get help from their militia means that their losses will also affect the overall town wealth and their ability to defend themselves, I will surely think twice before I do that again. But at the same time, it still stays a valid option, especially for tough fights.

Yeah, that’s already the case. Militia is created based on the resources a village has, and when the militia is disbanded, the village gets back resources based on how many militia survived. A village can be drained of resources by losing a lot of militia.

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