15 replies to this topic

[Prince of the Dark Forest]

A thread for discussions about unit upgrades.

Additional Upgrades
There are around 5 or so upgrades for units atm.
How about a 'Steel Horseshoe' upgrade that increases speed and adds crush damage to a mounted battalion.
'March Gear' upgrade that increases speed for infantry units.

Upgrade Diversity
I don't know whether players want more unit upgrades, but I for one think that a greater diversity of upgrades would benefit gameplay. A few games I've played have inspired me in terms of vast unit upgrade systems. One example like BMFE is the Settlers: Heritage of Kings. There the upgrades range from Arrow Fletching (for greater damage) to woodhardening (armour for seige and the like).

I'm not suggesting 20 or so upgrades, just options that allow you to customize hordes. For example, instead of flaming arrows, another option could be steel-tipped arrows. Upgrading a horde with flaming arrows gives them the chance to burn their enemies (even if the enemy's health has not yet reached 0) but is much slower (as the archers have to light each arrow) than the original projectile. Steel-tipped arrows would keep the rate of fire, and increase damage done, but would have some other drawback (such as increased cost) that would balance the two upgrades.

There could also be Heavy and Light armour upgrades where the obvious advantaes and drawbacks would be speed and defence.

Building Upgrades
Even for invidual buildings, there should be a few upgrades.
'Add Guard' to add a powerful Beserker, Black Uruk, Fire Drake, Fountain Court Guard, Noldor Warrior etc. as a slave unit to the building.
'Add Tower' to add a tower from which archers can shoot (like in a Lv3 Elevn Barracks/Battle tower)
'Numeror Stonework' to increase building defence
'Minas Tirith Stonework' as an alternative tot the above to increase the production speed of the building.

These are all just ideas and I would be happy for eveyrone to add to these. I know many of these would be a heavy workload but perhaps in the future, complex ideas like these could be considered.

-Prince

[khamulrulz]

i think upgrades are fine as they are, but i believe that sul wants steel-tipped arrows to be an upgrade, with fire arrows as a special timed attack.

[isledebananas]

I agree with your general premise. Especially with the siege I think there should be a few more upgrades to make them more effective in combat. Right now even buildings are pretty good at taking them out which isn't how it should be. Maybe some sort of armor upgrade for siege especially vs arrows.

I think there should be more weapon upgrades for sure. Maybe some sort of code that only enables certain upgrades when a unit has reached a certain level so as to limit the strength of those upgrades. I know we have a damage upgrade to weapons but what about a speed upgrade. A certain technology could allow the making of high quality weapons/armor which are lighter allowing for faster movement and attacks. However making these upgrades have several prerequisites met such as specific buildings or a certain amount of specific building.

The buildings need more upgrades for sure. Especially with Gondor and Erebor which were big on defense. Erebor needs some sort of thing like the stone worker which specializes in building upgrades. Perhaps various upgrades that increase either the hp or their resistance to the various attack types melee, range, siege. Also something that increases the natural repair speed of those buildings. Like if you had more stone workers the rate at which buildings repair increases. Also maybe upgrades to increase the damage, speed, or attack type of the arrows fired from buildings.

I'm not too sure about making slave units to buildings. That may work in some cases like the fire drake/treasure trove thing but not so in others.

[Gfire]

You could make the auto repair work entirely by upgrade, not happening at all until purchased. This would also less buildings less powerful overall, but still keep the realism. Then you'd be able to attack and the if you didn't completely destroy something, it wouldn't go and rebuild unless upgraded, or if it has been upgraded to be repaired.

Another idea would be to make it cost money to repair buildings each time, like gates on some fortresses. This seems the most realistic to me, and it would be pretty cool, too. Then if you buy the repair (which would cost more if the building was more damaged,) the little repairer dude pops out and starts working on the building.

[Prince of the Dark Forest]

I agree with the upgrade requirement for a building to rebuild itself. There is an usused Stonemasons model (I'm not sure if it has animations) that I've seen in WB. Could that be used as a research facility for buildings for Gondor? COuld also be reskinned and stonemason model changed to Drawven Miner to add this to the dwarves.

[Gfire]

Stoneworker from BFME1 has anims, but would need a bfme2 style portrait, but it wouldn't have levels.

[Nazgûl]

I like some of those ideas Prince =)
The Stoneworker will be added in Beta 4.8 when we split Rohan from Gondor. That has been planned for long, but there's no room in the base atm =p

[Eothialen]

As for upgrades, i'd like to see some battle formation upgrades, like some kind of "shields in front" formation, that prevents arrow and other small projectile from killing your troops (doesnt' protect at 100%, but more like at 90%), but it wouldn't let you attack. I know what the shield wall does, but it just isnt enough against archers (IMO). A triangle formation that would boost mounted units charge and crush damage. I had some other ideas but i just forgot, hope you got the idea.

[Arveanor]

As for upgrades, i'd like to see some battle formation upgrades, like some kind of "shields in front" formation, that prevents arrow and other small projectile from killing your troops (doesnt' protect at 100%, but more like at 90%), but it wouldn't let you attack. I know what the shield wall does, but it just isnt enough against archers (IMO). A triangle formation that would boost mounted units charge and crush damage. I had some other ideas but i just forgot, hope you got the idea.

This.

I definitely think some structure upgrades for their repair rate would be nice

as for diverse unit upgrades couldn't we give barb-tipped arrows as some sort of upgrade to the haradrim, also in order to make these more realistic we could give the arrows a debuff on whatever unit they hit causing damage from healing, not a total reversal as this would be more devastating then I think it should be, but any healing(including auto) should damage the unit a bit and not allow them to heal for a short duration.

Perhaps their could be exceptions, like athelas, because when faramir is hit and they try to pull the barb-tipped out it screws him over but aragorn helps him out with some athelas, so that should work even if a unit is barbed.

also what about different kinds of armor? we could have plate armor, chain mail, and leather. chain mail and plate armor would eliminate stealth, but offer better pretoction. Chain mail would be weaker than plate but offer more resistance to arrow damage and allow faster movement than plate armor. plate armor would give the best protection against slashing, hacking, and bludgeoning, while giving a large armor boost and slowing the units down the most. Plate armor could also slow attack speed, while chain and leather would have little effect on attack speed.

[khamulrulz]

i think in bfme1 there was a wedge formation or smth like that for cavalry. that should be brought back.

as for upgrades, i have thought of the following in my 4.8 suggestion thread:

gondor would get numenor longbows (increase damage of archers) and horse shields in addition to heavy armor and forged blades.

rohan would also have horse shields, and their heavy armor upgrade is called "heavy mail"

for the dwarves, dale archers would be able to purchase black arrows as an actual upgrade, as an option instead of fire arrows

mirkwood units get elven cloaks instead of elven armor. these cloaks grant them a stealth bonus. rivendell lancers would be able to get horse shields. also, forged blades are renamed to reforged blades.

for rhun/harad, haradrim archers can get barbed arrows as an upgrade, and kataphrakts can get horse shields.

for isengard, flaming torches are actually researchable from the dunland tent, and aren't automatic for wild men.

for moria, some units can only upgrade poisoned weapons, while more elite ones use scavenged blades and flaming arrows.

those are just the changes. that's just adding a couple upgrades, which i think will make the units more customizable and unique, without overcomplicating and cluttering the game with lots of upgrades. that's why i wouldn't go with different types of plate or chain or leather armor, or special horseshoes.

i do imagine this would be a lot of new skinning work though, because there would be gondor archers with light armor, heavy armor, normal bow, numenor bow, normal arrows, flaming arrows, and all the combinations thereof.

[Arveanor]

Khamul, why do you have to go off and do things like make rational statements? soooo boring!

JK, at least about the thumbs down part, cause it is a bit boring until you actually try an overcluttered system and it sucks, but I think that very little has been done about individual customization if each individual unit has a set of upgrades available to it. It certainly makes it better than what we have now for different units to have different upgrades, and I like all your suggestions, but it would be nice to see various upgrade possibilities within each unit.

[isledebananas]

When I thought of armor differences I thought mostly along the lines of factions. For example Rohan and Gondor have mainly two different kinds of armor. Rohan has mostly mail whereas Gondor mostly has plate. One would obviously offer more protection but at the cost of weight. In game this could be reflected that while Gondor gets more armor they may lose some of their move speed. Both Rhun and Mordor would be similar to Gondor for their armored units. Moria would take more after Rohan because their armor while plated isn't so thick as others. Elves would have better armor bonus than Gondor with little negative effect since they should be able to craft such things. Dwarves I thought should have two armor upgrades. The first being the regular armor which while probably would give a similar bonus as Elven armor would have about as many negative effects as Gondor armor. However, the second upgrade would be Mithril armor which while extremely expensive gives the best armor bonus with no negative effects.

The other option is to start the units off taking into account the effect of the armor. Meaning since Gondor plate armor will make them slower than Rohan mail armor Gondor troops would be naturally slower than Rohan. This would also be the same for all other factions. However, that means most armor upgrades would do nothing beyond an armor bonus.

[khamulrulz]

with the factions having different-strength armor, i agree, although i think it is already in the game as part of the unit armor stats. i would probably have it as mithril mail > elven, gondor, rhun, isengard heavy armor > rohan, moria, mordor heavy armor. (although like i said i believe it is already in the game)

[Arveanor]

Like Khamul said, already in game, I think diverse armor/upgrade types would be much more interesting.

[isledebananas]

I still think the main problem is faction uniqueness. This upgrade system would make them quite uniform upgrade wise. Its like an RPG at the beginning the character you choose is relatively the same but the upgrades make them unique. However, if someone chooses a similar skill set as you then the resulting characters are similar. Or if the current armor stats are kept and then this upgrade system is added to that then. Either you get units from different factions becoming similar to each other(slow well armored units getting light armor) or even more distant from one another(slow well armored units getting heavy armor).

I do like the fact of a faction possessing various options, but each one should only have certain set amount of game plans otherwise they tend to overlap and become similar.

[Arveanor]

I'm pretty sure a more dynamic system would be in order than that, like one offering different resistances/bonuses, rather than just armor/speed. I honestly don't have a lot of examples here but something like that would probably work well, It's certainly something that would be nice to see.