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celebrim
06-09-2006, 02:27 PM
Again, the reason that I'm putting a bunch of units in one thread, is that I don't want to create a dozen threads. If you don't want to read this, then don't.

Likewise, I really don't care if someone can up with a similar unit or one with a similar name. After reading through some threads and using the search function, I did not come away impressed with alot of designs. I saw some interesting ideas, most of which anyone could come up with, but I saw alot of bad implementations and little constructive criticism. If you feel the need to tell me that you've seen a unit with a similar name, save everyone some trouble and don't.

Vampire - Life draining undead of doom
Race - Undead
Hit Points: 40
Power: 18
Block: 60%
Armor: 18%
Recovery: 1
Movement: 4
Range: 1
Special: Whenever the Vampire damages a target, it gains life equal to 1/2 the damage that it did, to a maximum of 40 hit points.
Cannot be in the same formation as the Cleric.

Skulker - Bestial master of evasion
Race - Beast
Hit Points: 32
Power: 16
Block: 20%
Armor: -
Recovery: 1
Movement: 5
Range: 1
Special: 'Burrow': When a Skulker targets himself during the attack phase, he burrows into the square he is currently in, forming a mound of soil over him - essentially transforming into a new unit the 'burrowed skulker'. When burrowed, the skulker loses the ability to attack, but gains 80% blocking in all directions (all directions are considered front), and increases his armor to 40%. When burrowed, the skulker's movement becomes a range 2 teleport.
Burrowed skulkers cannot move aside for friendly units. The also do not block LOS.
A burrowed skulker can unbury in the attack phase by targeting itself.

Dread Boar - Ferocious master of charging attacks.
Race - Beast
Hit Points: 34
Power: 18, 21, or 24 (see below)
Block: 30%
Armor: 25%
Recovery: 1
Movement: 3
Range: 3, straight line, line of sight
Special: 'Charge' The Dread Boar's ranged attack is unique in that the unit itself is the 'missile' weapon. The Dread boar hurls itself toward the opponent, following a straight line and gaining momentum stopping as soon as it encounters an obstacle. For each square that the boar travels (0-2) it gains an addition 3 power.

Harrier - Swift footed master of harrassment.
Race - Human
Hit Points: 32
Power: 18
Block: 70%
Armor: 8%
Recovery: 1
Movement: 4 (see below)
Range: 1 (see below)
Special: 'Nimble' The Harrier can move on the diagonal as well as straight lines, allowing it to reach a rectangular area rather than a diamond shaped one. In addition, the Harrier can attack any of the 8 squares adjacent to it, rather than just 4.

Lancer - Horse mounted master of the charge
Race - Human
Hit Points: 45
Power: 24
Block: 50%
Armor: 20%
Recovery: 2
Movement: 6 (see below)
Range: 1 (see below)
Special: 'Gallop' The Lancer moves better in straight lines and loses momentum whenever he executes a turn. Whenever the lancer changes direction during a move, it counts as a move of two squares. This means that the lancer has a 'cross shaped' movement pattern rather than a diamond shaped one.
'Lance' Whenever the lancer attacks a unit in the direction which it is facing at the beginning of the attack, it can execute a ranged 2 line of sight attack, by thrusting its lance forward. If the lancer attacks before moving, it is always assumed to face in the direction of the attack.
Lancers cannot move aside for friendly units.
Lancers cannot change directions after the attack phase. If they attack, they must skip the change facing phase of the turn.

Spictadon - Heavily armored beast
Race - Beast
Hit Points: 55
Power: 18
Block: 30%
Armor: 25%
Recovery: 2
Movement: 3
Range: 1
Special: 'Crouch': As opposed to an attack the Spictadon can enter a crouch, hiding its vulnerable parts beneath its thick armored and spiky hide, which makes it very difficult to harm. 'Crouched' Spictadon's are unable to move or attack normally. However, when 'Crouched' the Spictadon's block becomes 80% in all directions (all sides are considered front), and its armor increases to 35%. Furthermore, it's spiky hide automaticly makes a counter-attack on any enemy within range one that attacks it while crouched, with power equal to 1/2 of the power of the attacker. Spictodon's can leave the 'crouch' mode by targetting themselves in the attack phase.

[Explicitly stated the implied drawbacks of a crouch which I had by oversight left from the original description.]

Bladestorm - Cloud of flying golem shards
Race - Golem
Hit Points: 30
Power: 15
Block: 20%
Armor: 10%
Recovery: 3
Movement: 2
Range: 4, straight line, see below
Special: 'Bladestorm' : The blade storm does not attack in a normal fashion. Rather, its components fly apart to form a lose cloud of whirling blades which then sweeps across the battlefield before reforming in a tight ball at the far end of its attack. The attack damages all targets in its up to three square path, and all targets immediately to the sides of and in front of its path. Thus, this attack sweeps out a maximum 10 square area and deals a 15 power (blockable) attack to each target in the area. The furthest point in the attack must be an unoccupied square, just as if it had teleported through the area.
No more than one bladestorm can be in a formation.
'All around sight': The blade storm is always considered to be facing forward. It thus has equal chances of blocking in all directions.

Wraith - Undead spirit of fear
Race - Undead
Hitpoints: 30
Power: 19 + stun
Block: 50%
Armor: -
Recovery: 2
Movement: 4, teleport
Range: 1
Special: The Wraith stuns opponents it hits for one turn.
'Incorporal' The Wraith halves the blocking chance of all non-ward enemies. It is relatively immune to non-magical attacks, and has the same chance of blocking attacks from any direction (it is always considered to be facing foward).
'Fear Aura': All non-undead, non-golem enemies adjacent to the Wraith suffer a 20% penalty to thier power when making an attack on any target.
The Wraith cannot be in a formation with any non-mage Human, including the cleric.
No more than two Wraiths in a formation.

Soul Blade - Master of arcane steel
Race - Human
Hitpoints: 42
Power: 22
Block: 70%
Armor: 12%
Recovery: 1
Movement: 3
Range: 1
Special: 'Magic sword': The Soul Blade binds his lifeforce to his sword, turning it into a powerful magical weapon, capable of cleaving through most any defences. The block percentage of any target the Soul Blade attacks is halved.
No more than two Soul Blades in a formation.

Archmagus - Master of mighty magics
Race - Human (Mage)
Hitpoints: 24
Power: 22, unblockable
Block: 20%
Armor: -
Recovery: 3
Movement: 3, teleport
Range: 3, cone
Special: 'Cone of Fire': The Archmagus attacks with a 3 square long cone of fire which is 1 wide at its origin and is five wide at its widest point (a total of 9 squares). While this attack is quite potent in scope, it is not particularly penetrating, and as such the base armor (before stoning and other enhancements) of all effected creatures is doubled before damage is calculated.
'Magic Resistant': One third of all damage (rounded down) from unblockable attacks is instead reflected back to the attacker.
No more than one Archmagus in a formation.

Cross Punisher
06-09-2006, 03:33 PM
Vampire - idea's been done many times. Not worth using since you can't use a cleric. Would you really give up the possibility to heal so this unit can gain at most 9 HP back? Any HP it gets back is immediately nullified by any opponent's attack.

Skulker - Again whats the point of this?

Dread Boar - In short it's a weaker knight.

Harrier - An altered Assassin

Lancer - For the "Gallop" you can't really decide how your units will get from point A to point B. Units will make more turns than would be deemed necessary. Example:

L - Lancer
X - Target

X O
O O
O L

------------------------------------------

Instead of going like this with only one turn:

X O
^ O
< L

------------------------------------------

It would go like this and take 2 turns:

X O
^ <
O L

Thats just how the units currently move.
And I didn't really understand the "Lance" part.

Spictadon - Isn't this unit just a better version of your Skulker? On top of that unlike the Skulker's special there is no downside to the Spictadon's.

Bladestorm - All Golems have 60 HP and no blocking (And the word "golem" somewhere in their name). Just to make it less confusing about the range why not show a diagram. This is how I understand it looks like:

X
X X X
X X X
X X X
B
This unit seems very difficult to use properly with it's wide area of attack and it's low movement coupled with it's now low HP and low blocking. You can't even hide behind a wall of your own units and attack.

Really did get tired again... just to many units that don't really look like they had a lot of work put into them.

Please (1)what is your obsession with equal blocking on all sides (2)Why do most of your units resemble altered knights (3)If you want me to go into more detail about anyone just say so.

celebrim
06-09-2006, 04:36 PM
Vampire - idea's been done many times.

I know.

Not worth using since you can't use a cleric.

Probably true, given that a cleric tends to get included in just about every formation and so much of the tactics of the game seem to revolve around killing or protecting the cleric. Do you begin to see the problem that I have?

would you really give up the possibility to heal so this unit can gain at most 9 HP back? Any HP Any HP it gets back is immediately nullified by any opponent's attack.

Or conversely, any attack of an opponent is partially nullified by the HP it gets back.

There are two important things about the 'vampire'. First, it doubles the advantage of an opponents armor. To me, that's particularly interesting. Without effects that are altered by armor, there isn't any real difference between 50 hit points and 20% armor, and 60 hitpoints. Heals are an example of an effect for which armor is important.

Secondly, its attack is somewhere in power between 18 power and and 27 power. It's obviously more powerful than 18 power, and obviously less powerful than 27 power - but exactly where in that spectrum it lies in an open question. Consider for example the Vampire trading hits with a Knight with no blocking.

Knight hits vampire, K: 50, V: 24
Vampire hits Knight, K: 37, V: 31

After the exchange, the Knight is down 13, and the Vampire is down 11. Effectively, the Vampire made the heavier hit, so can we consider the effective power of the Vampire to be greater than 22? And this was against one of the Vampire's most difficult opponents (heavily armored). Do you see the strategic complexity now?

Please, I'm alot of things, but not thoughtful is not one of them.

Skulker - Again whats the point of this?

I'm exploring the idea of a unit which can in effect, 'leave the battlefield'. The Skulker has something like its own built in Barrier Ward. When the Skulker gets weak, it burrows. Later, after some heals maybe, it comes back. I suspect that's a strategically powerful ability, hense I've been very conservative about how powerful to make such a creature. I'd consider however adding a 'poison' or 'acid' type ability to its attack.

Dread Boar - In short it's a weaker knight.

This strikes me as a really odd criticism. By the same measure, any melee attacker is either a weaker or stronger knight. Any blockable ranged attacker is either a weaker or stronger scout, and any unblockable attacker is a variation on the Pyromancer. Congradulations, we only need 3 units by your standard.

Harrier - An altered Assassin

*rolls eyes*

Lancer - For the "Gallop" you can't really decide how your units will get from point A to point B. Units will make more turns than would be deemed necessary.

The Lancer does carry some code burden I admit. It would be necessary to alter the code to generate the correct range of possible final positions.

[/code]And I didn't really understand the "Lance" part.[/quote]

The Lancer has an attack pattern that looks like this after a move:

0X00
X>XX
0X00

Where '>' is the Lancer and the point is the direction the Lancer is facing.

Spictadon - Isn't this unit just a better version of your Skulker? On top of that unlike the Skulker's special there is no downside to the Spictadon's.

My bad. I should have specified the implied imobility of the 'crouch' position. The skulker gets to move while 'crouched'. Otherwise, yes, this is another variation on 'leaving the board'.

Bladestorm - All Golems have 60 HP and no blocking (And the word "golem" somewhere in their name).

Fine, we'll call it a Vampire Bat Swarm, a Hornet Cloud, a Hell Locust Swarm or something else. The flavor isn't particularly important, and would really be a function of what sort of art that the graphic artist felt was best rendered to good effect. At this stage of design, flavor should be very flexible to latter needs.

Just to make it less confusing about the range why not show a diagram. This is how I understand it looks like:
[code]
X
X X X
X X X
X X X

You are correct. That wasn't too confusing then.

Cross Punisher
06-10-2006, 04:10 AM
For your vampire it actually does 14 damage to a knight, not 13 because the specific damage it does is 13.5 which gets rounded up to 14.

If the knight attacks first the results without blocking are:
Knight hits vampire, K: 50, V: 22 (I don't know how you got 24)
Vampire hits knight, K: 36, V: 29
Knight hits vampire, K: 36, V: 11
Vampire hits knight, K: 22, V: 18
Knight hits vampire, K: 22, V: 0
Knight wins!!!

If the vampire attacks first the results without blocking are:
Vampire hits knight, K: 36, V: 40
Knight hits vampire, K: 36, V: 22
Vampire hits knight, K: 22, V: 29
Knight hits vampire, K: 22, V: 11
Vampire hits knight, K: 8, V: 18
Knight hits vampire, K: 8, V: 0
Knight wins!!!

The only attack that requires lucky blocking is the first one, all other attack after that for the knight can bypass the possibility of a block. In either case the knight wins, and you don't have the possibility to heal ANY of your units after this unit dies. It's just not strong enough to warrant not having a cleric on your team.

This strikes me as a really odd criticism. By the same measure, any melee attacker is either a weaker or stronger knight. Any blockable ranged attacker is either a weaker or stronger scout, and any unblockable attacker is a variation on the Pyromancer. Congradulations, we only need 3 units by your standard.Yes, the assassin, mud golem, and beast rider are nothing but altered knights, and two of them were found to be sooo underpowered that they had to be given special abilities; the third is still largely considered underpowered. Actually you forgot one basic kind of unit. Sure theres the melee attacker, ranged attacker, and the unblockable attacker, but then there's "other"; other includes the cleric, enchantress, barrier ward, frost golem, stone golem, wisp, and furgon. "Other" is so much more unique and thats the type of units that I prefer to make, the units that bring something new to the table that doesn't already exist in the game. I challenge you to make a unit of this type "other."

*rolls eyes*:rolleyes:

The "Vampire Bat Swarm, a Hornet Cloud, a Hell Locust Swarm"s attack range was hard to understand because you said the range was 4 and then specified that it also hit any targets immediately to the side or to the top of its path which was a total of 10 squares, which would only happen if the original range was 3.. The way you describe it would actually make you think that the original range is 3 not 4.

Cuathon
06-10-2006, 05:58 AM
none are original. cross pretty much covered most of the problems with them.

celebrim
06-10-2006, 10:57 AM
If the knight attacks first the results without blocking are:

Knight hits vampire, K: 50, V: 22 (I don't know how you got 24)
...
Knight wins!!!

If the vampire attacks first the results without blocking are:
...
Knight wins!!!

Since the Vampire has move 4, and the Knight move 3, this result after a standup fight is not only not surprising, but the result that you would actually want. You wouldn't want a melee type with greater movement than another melee type, and also the ability to beat it in a stand up fight.

The only attack that requires lucky blocking is the first one, all other attack after that for the knight can bypass the possibility of a block.

How? The Knight can do 3 steps, which is enough to flank the Vampire each time. However, from the flank the Vampire still has a 30% chance to block. The Vampire can do 4 steps, which is enough to backstab the Knight each move - negating the possibility of the block. Hense, unless the Knight can find a way to negate the Vamp's mobility, there is a good chance the Knight will lose.

It's just not strong enough to warrant not having a cleric on your team.

By itself, yes and it was never intended to do so, but I'd be very very hesitant to introduce a unit as powerful and as important as the cleric, even with the restriction you could only use one or the other.

Actually you forgot one basic kind of unit. Sure theres the melee attacker, ranged attacker, and the unblockable attacker, but then there's "other"; other includes the cleric, enchantress, barrier ward, frost golem, stone golem, wisp, and furgon. "Other" is so much more unique and thats the type of units that I prefer to make, the units that bring something new to the table that doesn't already exist in the game. I challenge you to make a unit of this type "other."

Ok. If that's what you want to see, I'll do that.

You are however neglecting that I've already done so. Both the 'Dark Cleric' and the 'White Magic Witch' from the first thread are 'other' units.

One of the reasons I've not concentrated on units of this type is that if they are interesting at all they lend themselves to dominating the strategy of games that they appear in. Both 'gold' and 'grey' matches are dominated by the cleric. The enchantress and the barrier ward are critical to the strategy of high level 'grey' play, and the stone golem appears to be a dominating factor in the strategy of gold play.

Cross Punisher
06-10-2006, 01:22 PM
How? The Knight can do 3 steps, which is enough to flank the Vampire each time. However, from the flank the Vampire still has a 30% chance to block. The Vampire can do 4 steps, which is enough to backstab the Knight each move - negating the possibility of the block. Hense, unless the Knight can find a way to negate the Vamp's mobility, there is a good chance the Knight will lose.This happens prominately in the situation in which the vampire attacks first. Let me go into more detail:

The vampire's first attack should not be able to attack the knight from behind but rather from the side; lets assume it hits, K: 36, V: 40
instead of the knight going to the vampire's side and attacking, it rather just moves to the vampire's side and ends its turn thus allowing on its next turn for it go move the remainder of the way to the vampire's behind and attack it without and fear of a block, K: 36, V: 22
etc...
Actually the vampire would need to get only one lucky block to alter this outcome unless the knight as well gets one lucky block from the very first time it's attacked. Still this unit isn't good enough to warrant not having a cleric making it underpowered.

Your Dark Cleric shares the same burden as it can't be used alongside a cleric. It's not strong enough to have that limitation.

phoenixofflames
06-10-2006, 01:43 PM
yeah almost all these unit ideas have been done before..