I am a bit worried about....

Keep it simple stupid is the motto for great games. MOM had this same feature along with a magic resistance stat and it worked perfectly and nobody complained and the majority of gamers still hold it in highest esteem as the fantasy game all other fantasy designers should look to when making a fantasy wargame.

Weapons can have their base attack, attack speed, and any combination of enchantments (fire dmg, poision dmg, ice dmg, etc), and add in ranged options and the matrix of possibilities is actually really large.

We dont want to get into too fine of detail with battles since the war-game is only part of a much larger picture.

Very good Boogiebac. Just what I wanted to read.

Can we mod in new damage types?

How about boni for spearman against cavalry, cavalry against swordsmen etc. Is there anything like this planned for the tactical battles?

This is a good question also.

If anything I would expect more of a rock, paper, scissors type of combat as a core feature.

Yes, that was basically what i meant.

That would provide some kind of "abstract realism" or how you want to call it. Like in the total war games.

And my next question would have been about other stuff like that, flanking, morale, fatigue, terrain boni or malus.

I realise though, that it is most likely beyond the scope of this game to include total war type battles. But im kind of corious if the battles will aim more for a "realistic" feel or more for "board game" style gameplay, as in HOMM.

Well, maybe if it is not in the core game, these could be added in with mods. I hope combat mods akin to this are in already though.

In the last set of questions for FrogBoy I asked mostly about tactical combat. Maybe we can get some answers near or after PAX..

Could we use modding to add wisdom, precision, dexterity and others?

I see this as important for those which may pursue the idea of modding the game towards the RPG  aspect as described in the developer journals.

Since there aren't a lot of fantasy creatures, only humans, trolls, and dragons so far, hitting vulns such as blunt isn't a big deal.  It's not like we're going to have Gnomish anti-paladins running around screaming "EVIL EVIL EVIL!"

I'm kinda imagining it will be like Kohan where weapons/units have offense rating, defense rating, movement, hit points, and special modifiers.  Maybe a little more complicated like the AoW model which added in resistance, but that's it.

Well according to the lore ( https://www.elementalgame.com/beasts.asp ) page, there will be a number of types of creatures:

Of The Beasts

The world of Elemental is filled with many different non-sentient beasts that are recognizable to anyone. It is, however, also home to some beasts that are not just sentient but possess an intellect far keener than most men.

The oldest and most powerful of the sentient beasts are the dragons. Dragons come in many forms and it is said they were part of this world before the arrival of men.

Dragons are solitary creatures and powerful beyond imagination. Most dragons remain isolated in the wilds of Elemental but some will join a cause they believe in.

The powers that dominated the world before the cataclysm made great use of dragons and other beasts, using them as the basis for all manner of creature. Some are hideously dangerous, others are tame and gentle. None are natural.

 

There will be only 3 sentient types: human, fallen and dragon. (until the modders get to work! )

The question is, if units do not have different resistances to different elements, aren't fire damage, ice damage, posion damage etc essentially the same thing? The only way I see them making any difference is if particular creatures or units have specific resistances to those different elements.

Galciv analogy - having lasers, missiles and projectiles are not really unique without sheilds, ECM, and armor. If it is all just lumped together as "ship defense" then who cares if you are attacking with a missile or a laser?

Note: I realize I have used logic and reason, so fully expect to be attacked for thinking in 1 dimension...

Personally, I prefer the more complex system with different types of damage and resists on weapons and armor.  It forces (allows) the player to make choices.  For example, if you are raising an army to move into an area with volcanos and fire dragons, put fire resist on your troops' armor.  If you are exploring into the northren arctic wilds, freezing resist.

If your human opponent's favorite units use longbows and crossbows, then equip your armies with armor which is more effective against bows.  The fellow on your other border uses swordmen?  Different gear for your garrisons facing him!

I like the complexity, but it can also be abstracted so that those who do not want to mess with the details can play without getting involved with them.  Of course, that gives me an advantage, which I think is just fine!

I think that MoM and AOW have the right amount of abstraction -- no need to differentiate between physical damage types, first strike/negate first strike and similar modifiers provide enough distinction. I do agree that some form of elemental resistance/weakness system is needed, but I'd assume that the developers are planning on implementing that.

Indeed, which is why I've made this topic. Systems like those are enchancing the tactical elements of the game greatly.

One more question. What about resistances? Armors can have resistances? What about creatures [racial based resistances.]

AoW the attacks themselves aplied a debuff to the target. Ice damage might freeze you in place. Poison damage might drop your stats. Etc.

I like that idea. But at the minimum characters should have resistances or immunities to certain types of damage.

I was wondering how you guys are planning on doing the damage calculations.  As a statistician, I find it lazy to use a pure random number generator to get a value for damage or defensive rolls. 

Why not make the weapons have damage distributions?

Maybe a sword has a damage distribution of a normal distribution with a mean of 5.  So most of the damage values will be near 5, depending on how much you want these numbers to vary.

Then you might have a bow and arrow.  Maybe in this case you want the damage to be smaller, same mean, but every once in a while you will see an arrow do large amount of damage, but not very often.  In this case use a Poisson distribution or some type of geometric distribution for this type of weapon.

Hell make whatever distribution you want for weapons.  They don't even have to be continous, maybe just make a discrete distribution with probabilities of your own.

Maybe for a some flame weapon, it is very sporadic.

Might make a distribution that looks like (just as an example)

1 dmg 20%

2 dmg 12%

3 dmg 9%

4 dmg 40%

5 dmg 16%

6 dmg 1%

7 dmg 0%

8 dmg 2%

Maybe use a randomization on the probabilities!  there is all kind of things that could be messed with.   

Just some thoughts then the basic uniform distribution that people seem to keep using over and over from every game.

Lot of questions, and no answers... Devs, please give us some answers!  Thanks.

Personally, when I was sketching out the details on a RPG I was thinking about programming for class, I came up with something similar to the following:

1 1%

2-3.  5%

4-10: 50%

11-30 100%

31-36  125%

37-39 150%

40 200%

Random number between 1 and 40 and you knew how much damage was dealt.  (Applied to both magic and weapons systems).

There were plenty of other things I thought of doing before I finally decided not to bother.  It was too much work for something i didn't really need to do.  (Read:  I realized I could experiment with the rand() function for the programming half of the assignment )

You don't even have to use just the rand() option in programming.  R is an open source statistical program, which allows rnorm(),rpoisson(),rbinomial() as well as plenty of others.  In all of these distributions, you control how much the numbers will vary, where they will be centered and all that good stuff.  

But using a discrete distribution like you have above is probably the easiest route.  I just find you can probably make a fairly complex battling game with different distirbutions for different types of weapons.  The idea of doing 1 dmg has the same probability as it doing 2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9 and so on damage is outdated.

Not outdated.  The resource cost in terms of system resources doesn't force us into it, but it still works well.

Yeah, I just think it would be an easy way to add another dimension into the combat system if it could be implemented.  But I suppose the simpler system is sufficient for what the devs want to do.  

This isn't unique to this aspect of the game, but in topics covering many areas of the game, people are setting themselves up for some serious disappointment. Everyone seems to want their own particular interest area to be an incredibly deep and involved game in it's own right, and it's just not going to happen.

Very true. I read one thread about how the game needs a complex espionage system to even be decent, another one rambles about the complex naval sim that just has to be there. Diplomacy, AI, magic, etc... everyone want this game to be thier own little masterpiece and what there going to end up with is a spore repeat *shudders*