Wanted to start a post that discusses general changes for patch 1.03. I moved my other post to here so i could just add on to things i already started in the other post, but in a post that discusses changes for patch 1.05.03.
Here is the post:
Hi
A few weeks ago u said in a post that in a few weeks u would have real BFME1 style maps with custom build plots for each faction, and outside farms like in bfme1.
Now that all of the factions are pretty much finished, i am kinda hoping that u'll start on this. I will be traveling in about ten days to visit my cousins for a few weeks. I hope that some of these maps can be ready by then. I know that many people are busy during the year and that it will be harder for them to schedule days when they can play ur mod. That is why i hope that u r able to get these multiplayer maps done as soon as possible. There are only a few things that need changing from the maps that u've already done in order to make them like BFME1. Then i will add suggestions for ur mod in general.
1. Add custom build plots to the bases of each faction.
2. Farm percentage radius reduced to 0, so they are always at 100%.
3. Cap on farms removed, so that with every new farm purchased, the money produced from the other farms isn't reduced.
4. Stable command points: I dont think that any command point bonus's should be added for these maps (including farms, dormitory's, or heroes). And i think that the command limit should be reduced from 1000 for good armies (except maybe if it is 1v1). This is for balance reasons, which i will get into later.
5. This, is the least most important thing, and i wouldn't really mind if this wasn't in the next patch, although i hope that it is. In bfme1 it had set commandpoints depending on how many players were in the game, and when someone was defeated, it automatically changed based on the amount of players.
General suggestions
1. I have reported this glitch from patch 1.05.00, which is with gondor's, arnor's, and dwarven gates. They should be upgrading when the wall upgrade is purchased, but they are not upgradable in ur mod.
2. Another glitch is with men. In the blacksmith, they are able to purchase an upgrade that reduces the cost of upgrades for units by 25%. In the market place, there is an upgrade to purchase that upgrade. In ur mod however, the upgrade in the blacksmith is already purchaseable without the upgrade from the market place. The only problem is that u forgot to remove the upgrade from the market place.
I hope u understand this glitch. I tried to explain it as clearly as possible.
3. This is kinda a small suggestion, rather than something that i think needs immediate changing. I think that farm radius's in general should be reduced. How much at this point, i am not sure. One thing u could do is make the farm radius zero (as suggested above), and limit them to the inside base. I am not really promoting it now, just throwing it out there as a possibility of something u wished to change. If u changed this right now, i would not be happier or disappointed in any way. I have found with ur mod, that with some of the new things u add, such as heroes giving commandpoints, or the 2 subfactions that come with evil men ( haven't played 1.05.02 yet but read the changes as they come) give me mixed feelings (not sure whether i am happier or more disappointed with them). Wut i do is decide to give them a chance. I see how they are in the game, and if there are any problems, or anything i want changed, i post them here. Since u listen to feedback and consider it, i try to give a lengthy feedback (such as now) in order to get the changes i want in there. So again, i really dont care about whether u decide to do this or not, but i thought it my be a nice idea to test this and see how it goes.
4. I have found a few glitches for Rohan, such as a wall missing. U can go see my post in the Rohan thread of this forum, which has the full list of glitches i found.
5. I also found a couple of glitches with the Dwarves, such as typos and stuff. U can go over to the Dwarves thread to see those glitches. As said in the post, i lost the sheet that i had the glitches on so i forgot some. One that i forgot to post is that when I sent a hero up on the dwarven wall (the castle was facing southeast on Carn Andros map), when the hero went up on the left side, they got stuck. I couldn't move them. Only when i tried to use an arrow move on someone outside the wall did he move down the wall. This was the only way to get him free. I sent two heroes up there at the same time. He was the second to go up. Trying to send two people up at the same time might cause this problem, at this particular spot. Another reason for this problem, i think, may have to do with the alignment of the walls. This is not the first time this happened to me. It happened to me with another faction too; men. Since the Dwarven base is made from the same model as men's base, i believe that the alignment might be the problem. I have also seen this problem posted by other people in this forum.
6. Commandpoints:
K, where to begin.
I think that for these maps, flexible commandpoints will probably make the game a bit more interesting. Here's the problem though. With farms giving extra commandpoints, Dormitory's giving extra commandpoints, ranked farms giving more commandpoints then regular farms, and now heroes giving commandpoints, this creates a HUGE imbalance in the game. On top of that, when u changed the commandpoint system, this caused almost all units to be less than half of their original ROTWK commandpoints. For example: Gondor pikeman used to cost about 60 command points. Now the Fountainguard ( I believe this is their replacement) costs 25 commandpoints (dont get me wrong, i like that u made less units per horde).
Before, when the settings for the population was set to 1x in the game setup screen, u could only get up to 560-650 population or so. Now u have hordes which are at 25 commandpoints, and u can get up to 1000 command points. As u can see there is a HUGE imbalance here. Even if u wanted the game standard for ur maps to be on 2x, u have up to 4x the norm due to increased commandpoints per faction, and decreased commandpoints per horde.
Another way that this causes an imbalance is by this example. Say that i am versing someone, and at this point in the game i happen to have a small army, due to battles that took place where units were lost, or something like that. Now lets say that i have managed to accumulate 30,000 gold, and that i had a bunch of rank 3 farms which are now destroyed. Now my commandpoints were SIGNIFICANTLY REDUCED. Now say that i had 2 unit building structures (rank 3) building units, and that i have heroes on the way, and i have no builders at this point.
Now lets say, the person who i am fighting has not lost any heroes during the last battle, and no farms lost, but lost some of his army. Lets say that his population is 750/1000. It is simply taking too much time too much time to produce units, and he doesn't have enough money to keep them comming.
Now lets say that at this point the person comes to attack me. By this point, lets say i have 550/550, 2 heroes, and 2 farms, I have 7 batches in each unit producing structure waiting to be built. I am attacked and my units are lost (even with my defenses). Now my population is 0/500 with now heroes and his is 400/800 (he lost some heroes in the battle) which is 16 Fountain Guard Hores. 350 units= 14 Fountain Guard hordes. In BFME1, in 1v1, 14 fountain Guard Hordes=full population. Lets say i have 7 structures, and a fortress fully upgraded with full defenses (lets say im rohan). The structures are destroyed withing a matter of seconds, and the game is over withing a minute. By the time the game is over, no heroes came back to life.
Sorry for the long example, but i put this lengthy example to try to show u all the problems with the current commandpoint system.
a) Even though i had more money than my oppenent, due to the HUGE commandpoint gap, my army was useless. I took out 2/3's of his army, but due to the fact that we had too many commandpoints to start with, he still had too large of an army left over which could take out my base within a minute. In a balanced version such as BFME1, if he had full pop and i had half his army and he attacked my base, he should have 1/4 of his original army left (3-4 hordes) left. In BFME1, i would probably have a hero back by this point, and 1 new horde from each of my new buildings. Lets say in the end, he took out 3-4 buildings, my army, and my hero, before the rest of his units died off. This is a better balanced system.
b) Lets say that the BFME1 example went differently. In our first battle, all of my units were lost, and he was at 3/4 population. By the time he got to my base, lets say i have fully population, 1 hero back, and fully upgraded units. At this point he comes to my base with full population. I fight him and in the end he only takes out 1 building and now i have 1/4 population with more hordes on the way. This is more balanced then the example above. In ur mod, i had the full pop, and he didnt have full pop, but he still had more population then me because he has a higher commandpoint limit. This creates a serious imbalance in the game.
c) I threw in the heroe's bit in the above example, because they take a bit too long to build. In general, they should have 3/4 the times they have now for building/rebuilding.
d) I also threw in the bit about the time it takes to reach full pop. Lets say it takes 30 seconds to build Fountain Guards (rank 3 obviously). U have 2 barracks, so that is 4 tower guards a minute, which is 100 command points per minute. Now, theoretically it would take 10 minutes to reach full pop, but practically, it takes a lot longer, because u have skirmishes in between, and u have to upgrade units, and try to get heroes and such. Now lets say the same thing happens in BFME1, but u have 1 building which produces 1 horde every 30 seconds. In 7 minutes u have full pop. Lets say by 12 minutes they are fully upgraded. In almost every regular game in BFME1, there is a point where u are getting a lot of money, which u dont really need at the moment, where it is just adding up for u to use for later, to upgrade ur base, get heroes, or rebuild units in case they die off. In ur mod, it is VERY VERY HARD to reach that point. In BFME1, u can reach full pop relatively quickly, even with a few skirmishes in the middle. U can be playing the game for 45 minutes and still not have full pop. Not only that, but in ur mod u also have to get money to upgrade the main base, and there are more heroes in general, so this is much harder to do than in BFME1. And if u r versing someone who is a rusher, they can take u out wiht 350/1000 population easily. This sucks if u r a person who plays defensive cuz now in addition to trying to get full pop and heroes, u have to upgrade units and build defenses with money u might not have.
As u can see from this Loooooooooooooong example, the commandpoint system in ur mod right now is VEEEEEEEEEEEEERY imbalanced. My suggestion for commanpoints for these maps, they should be flexible, but not too flexible. One idea, that i think might work is that farms give no commandpoints (including ranked ones). Dormitory's, i'm not sure of yet... maybe keep them as they are for now. I think that heroes should give commandpoints, but the amount they give should be reduced. A Really strong hero like Aragorn should give enough commandpoints to get an additional higher unit horde (ex. 25 commandpoints for Fountain Guards), where as a lesser hero, like eomer should give enough command points for a weaker horde (ex. gives 15 commandpoints for Gondor Soldiers). Dormitories maybe should have their commandpoint additions reduced to 15 or 20, or stay as they are. I think this would be a nice idea to try and test and see how it goes. If anyone has a better idea to fix the commandpoint system, feel free to post it, but the commandpoint system needs to be changed A.S.A.P. In general, i think that the commandpoints should be a little bit larger than BFME1 commandpoints for 1v1's. 350 sounds good, which is 14 Fountain Guard Hordes. With Heroes and Dormitory's, max pop should be no more than 450 which is 18 fountain Guard Hordes. The 1.5x pop for evil is fine i think
I also think that in the future that something like BFME1 is done in terms of a change in max commandpoints based on the amount of people playing. But the BFME1 system could use a change in this respect. I think 80 population is a bit too low in BFME1, but i think something could be done with ur mod in this regard which will create better balance. Anyway, i consider this a future item and on the lower end of the to do list.
Sorry for this long item, but i wanted to show u how really imbalanced the commandpoint system is so that it could be changed A.S.A.P.
7. In terms of ComboHordes, i stated most of this in another post. In general, I dont think that the same units should be able to combine with eachother. Rohan elves of coarse are an exception because the 2 hordes form a formation with 2 positions (swords and bows). I also dont like the idea of having a horde that combines more than 2 times. I am kinda against this aspect, however, i think it will be good to test this as there might be some good in having this.
8. Haven't retested Angmar Walls in .01, but in case this wasn't fixed, in .00 Angmar walls couldn't be rebuilt.
9. Shooting Towers and Catapults built around the base (such as Dwarven Axe Towers and catapults) should only be able to be attacked by siege (as i said i lost my sheet that had problems with the Dwarves, am not sure if this is already fixed, but i have memory of Goblins attacking the axe towers. Might have been the old patch. If this problem is already fixed then forget this item).
10. Base needs a bit of readjusting. The Cancel Button Should be gone. The extra toggle menu should be removed. When Base destroyed, "the whole" base is gone (walls, catapults, upgrades, everything). Read my Rohan post for further explanation of wut happened. I haven't really had a way of testing this yet, but spells should still be available when base is gone. Was a big problem in old patch.
11. There is a problem when summoning the Istari. There is a detailed explanation of this in the Arnor section.
12. Buildings that shoot should give experiance. I appreciate ur commenting on this in previous posts. I have already posted this question in the BFME2/ROTWK modding section. They usually respond pretty fast so i hope that it helps, it should probably have a response by the time u get around to reading this.
13. I've played mordor, but the Nazgul system was a bit confusing in the first place. It didn't seem to work. I had a mounted RingWraith on horse, brought the upgrade from the base, nothing happened. I brought a new RingWraith and mounted. Nothing happend.
Anyway. I believe I FOUND A SOLUTION TO UR NAZGUL PROBLEM (I think).
K
Once ur Nazgul upgrade works, he is wut u can do.
a) Clone it so there is 9 separate upgrades.
b) Make the upgrade so that it is a passive ability
c) Give it to each Nazgul (but make it hidden, so slot 7 or something, so it is not taking up space in the palantir).
d) Make the passive ability upgrade available at rank 7.
e) The upgrade should work like this. When the Nazgul reaches rank 7, u get the upgrade (like leadership) this upgrade does wut u made it do (or will make it do, hopefully) it changes the commandset of the horse form from 'mount to foot' to 'mount to nazgul'.
If u want to have 'mount to horse' and 'mount to nazgul' available at the same time, then u can do the following.
a) Clone Nazgul Upgrade 18 times
b) Make it passive ability upgrade
c) Give each form the proper mount specials in their palantir (ex. Nazgul on foot has 'mount to horse' in slot 5, and 'mount to nazgul' in slot 6
d) Here is how the buttons should work. Mount to horse is available at rank 1. Mount to Nazgul at rank 7. Now, I know that a unit can only have 1 mountable model, that is correlated with it. But with the upgrade u made here is wut u can do with it.
i) U have to change the way that the mount buttons work. Every time that a nazgul mounts to horse, it shouldn't actually mount. It should trigger ur upgrade. Wut ur upgrade will do is disable the nazgul mount, change ur mount model to horse, mount, then disable the 'mount to horse'. The reason for disabling is say that u have to mount to horse again, for some reason. If the upgrade is enabled, it will do nothing (i think). U have to disable the 'mount to nazgul' upgrade because if both upgrades r enabled at the same time, it might not mount, or it could cause problems. However, i could be wrong, and hopefully u will be able to mount without disabling anything. Hopefully triggering a re-upgrade will change the mount. Do the same thing with the 'mount to nazgul' button except when it changes the model to the nazgul, and disable's the 'mount to horse' or 'mount to foot'.
ii) Or, this may be better, u make ur upgrade triggered when clicked, and change it's picture to the Ringwraith's 'mount horse' picture. So when u click the mount horse picture, it seems like ur mounting to horse, but really, ur triggering ur nazgul upgrade. Everytime this upgrade is clicked, it switches the mounted model (from wutever it was before) to the 'mount horse' model, and then mounts to horse by triggering the mount to horse button. The same is done with nazgul and for the RingWraiths on foot.
These are vague instructions, but i think u now understand the general idea of wut u can do to make nazgul double mount. I think i even have the number of palantir buttons wrong that u need to add, but i am not sure. Just throwing the idea out there. Hope it helps. And obviosly u will have to adjust the code for each new upgrade in order to do this. Basically, ur making ur upgrade a clickable button and changing the way it works a bit.
14. I believe u may be trying to do this, but the first button in every units palantir has to disappear. Dont get me wrong, it is a bit useful, but it is not worth taking up the first slot of every units palantir. Many heroes need all six slots for their specials which is more important then their stance. For some units though, it should be kept. Like siege for example. It is basically the way they autoaquire targets or not now, and units that go invisible when still, like some elves, or elven heroes, then again, it is better to be consistent, and taking it away from everyone is probably better. 'H' or 'S' for 'Hold' and 'Stop' should do the job instead of the buttons.
15. I like the heroes u have added in the next patch. I think 3 more heroes should be added: Beorn, Grimbeorn, and Smaug. U can find detailed information on this in the main forum for this mod (not this subforum) where u asked me about the mounted Radagast Model. By the way i think i found one. Check out the post. The Beorings should be added as units.
16. I want to test the subfaction with evil men. I want to see how it is. I am not sure if this will be good or not, but i will see.
17. In general, i am no liking hero hordes. Some of them r good, like Rohan's Hero Horde, but others suck. I will do a bit more testing with them and see how i like them.
18. I read somewhere that there was a problem which didn't allow more than 8 CAH's to be placed in the game. I hope this get's fixed. Might place a post in the BFME2/ROTWK forum tommorow on it.
Suggestions for future Projects
1. When u start the patch for the campaign, i will probably add to this. I found some really nice maps on mevault.com that could replace maps such as minas tirith, and other maps. I found a really nice minas tirith map, which was completely made from scratch, is much much bigger than the mission minas tirith, has 5 levels of minas tirith, and has a grond that attacks at one point. It is a 6 player map. 2 defend, 4 attack, but can easily be changed. To a 5 or 4 player map. I will probably post more on this later, but just giving u a heads up for ideas for now.
2. Expand on the Mission. I know u r already hard at work at doing this, but i have some ideas. Now that there are units from 'The Hobbit' in the game, maybe u can make a mission with Bilbo or something. U could also infuse the Witch King Campaign and make it the ROTWK mission better. Or u can make a whole other WOTR mission map for this, but yea, definately a future project if this is the case.
3. The most urgent things i hope u focus on getting done is the BFME1 style maps at the top of the post. This next item is a future project; to have the bfme1 maps workable in WOTR. I dont know if this will be hard or easy. I hope it will be easy.
4. An expaned CAH mode would be nice. Some new powers, maybe a new units or type of unit. Definitely one of the last things to get done if it ever gets done.
5. Just a reminder, looking forward to the updated site with all units with their stats. U should also have a list of units/ heroes that are ur mod that work, but have just had thier commandset removed.
6. Custom intro movies, custom screens, and a proper stats screen for all 10 factions. Just another reminder
U mod is looking great, and u seem to be progressing well with this mod. I hope that u include these ideas in ur mod. This post took me a VERY VERY VERY long time to write. I look forward to playing patch .02. Please have the BFME1 maps listed at the top of the post by patch .03
Some of the art for .02 and the new views look great. I will hopefully have some feedback for it soon.
Edited by lotrfan, 03 August 2007 - 11:37 PM.
