Latest Posts

Topic: B21 Empire Helmets

stonerl
Avatar
Topic Opener
Joined: 2018-07-30, 00:03
Posts: 327
Ranking
Tribe Member
Posted at: 2018-09-10, 16:49

Currently the empire has just one type of helmet; armor helmet. With the changes in the mines-worldsavio- branch (not merged yet) a second helmet production call was introduced, in the armorsmithy, since this is needed for balancing. The use for helmets are:

  • An empire soldier needs a wooden spear and armor helmet
  • In the trainingcamp a second helmet is needed for the first health upgrade.

This is illogical though. Since the Soldiers already has a helmet why does he need a second one? The barbarians' soldier only need an ax and receive new improved gear as they level up.

So I have 3 proposals in mind:

Option 1:

  • Normal empire soldiers only need a spear and receive their helmet with the first health upgrade.
  • The armorsmithy produces only one helmet per cycle

This step needs new animation for normal soldiers, since they have no helmet.

Option 2:

  • Normal empire soldiers need a spear and helmet.
  • For their first health-upgrade they just need food but no helmet
  • The armorsmithy produces only one helmet per cycle

This is the simplest to implement and does not need many changes, but would lower the costs for the heath upgrade.

Option 3:

  • The armorsmithy produces a second type of helmet; like armor_helmet_heavy for example.
  • Normal empire soldiers need a spear and helmet.
  • For their first health-upgrade they just need food and a heavy_helmet

This would need a new ware, with different design. Furthermore new animations might be needed.

Option 4:

  • Normal empire soldiers need a spear and helmet.
  • For their first health-upgrade they need food and beer/wine
  • The armorsmithy produces only one helmet per cycle

This would also be easy to implement and the first heath upgrade still has additional costs since whine and/or beer is used. (Also beer and wine seems to be underutilized in the empire)

My favorite would be Option 4.


Top Quote
kaputtnik
Avatar
Joined: 2013-02-18, 20:48
Posts: 2433
OS: Archlinux
Version: current master
Ranking
One Elder of Players
Location: Germany
Posted at: 2018-09-10, 18:43

I remember this was discussed some time ago.

You forgot:

Option 5

  • The helmet get destroyed during the training, because the soldiers are rookies.
  • So they need a new helmet

face-grin.png


Fight simulator for Widelands:
https://wide-fighter.netlify.app/

Top Quote
Nordfriese
Avatar
Joined: 2017-01-17, 18:07
Posts: 1929
OS: Debian Testing
Version: Latest master
Ranking
One Elder of Players
Location: 0x55555d3a34c0
Posted at: 2018-09-10, 18:51

I vote for 3, it´s the most logical and least intrusive IMHO (how clumsy are those recruits in option 5? face-grin.png ). Each of these changes (except 5 face-wink.png ) might cause balancing issues though.

This would need a new ware, with different design. Furthermore new animations might be needed.

Training-level-dependent animations for soldiers are something I´d like to have for frisians as well. Perhaps I´ll get around to coding this sometime soon (when my branches for new tribe-specific resource indicators and for a small bugfix in the stock menu are in trunk). But we don´t have graphicers for any tribe except frisians (that´s me face-wink.png ) at the moment.


Top Quote
stonerl
Avatar
Topic Opener
Joined: 2018-07-30, 00:03
Posts: 327
Ranking
Tribe Member
Posted at: 2018-09-10, 19:28

kaputtnik wrote:

I remember this was discussed some time ago.

You forgot:

Option 5

  • The helmet get destroyed during the training, because the soldiers are rookies.
  • So they need a new helmet

face-grin.png

You're killing me with your jokes face-grin.png


Top Quote
stonerl
Avatar
Topic Opener
Joined: 2018-07-30, 00:03
Posts: 327
Ranking
Tribe Member
Posted at: 2018-09-10, 19:46

Nordfriese wrote:

I vote for 3, it´s the most logical and least intrusive IMHO (how clumsy are those recruits in option 5? face-grin.png ). Each of these changes (except 5 face-wink.png ) might cause balancing issues though.

Well, if the enhanced helmet needs the same resources, but only the time to produce it would be a little bit longer e.g +5 seconds or so it wouldn't be that imbalanced.


Top Quote
WorldSavior
Avatar
Joined: 2016-10-15, 04:10
Posts: 2091
OS: Linux
Version: Recent tournament version
Ranking
One Elder of Players
Location: Germany
Posted at: 2018-09-10, 19:54

stonerl wrote:

Currently the empire has just one type of helmet; armor helmet. With the changes in the mines-worldsavio- branch (not merged yet) a second helmet production call was introduced, in the armorsmithy, since this is needed for balancing. The use for helmets are:

  • An empire soldier needs a wooden spear and armor helmet
  • In the trainingcamp a second helmet is needed for the first health upgrade.

This is illogical though. Since the Soldiers already has a helmet why does he need a second one?

I don't know why this has been designed like this, I consider this as a suboptimal design, too.

So I have 3 proposals in mind:

Option 1:

  • Normal empire soldiers only need a spear and receive their helmet with the first health upgrade.
  • The armorsmithy produces only one helmet per cycle

This step needs new animation for normal soldiers, since they have no helmet.

Since this (wooden) spear costs only one plank this could be a small revolution, because imperial soldiers would be suddenly even cheaper than barbarian ones (but stronger). So it would be reasonable to add the costs of a current helmet (one iron + one coal) to the costs of a spear (which isn't wooden anymore then), but an improved spear also costs 1plank+1iron+1coal. So maybe 1plank+1iron (+1 point for collectors) for the smallest spear could do the job? Then we could rename it from "Wooden spear" to something like "Light spear" (as Atlanteans also have a "Light trident).

Nordfriese wrote:

I vote for 3, it´s the most logical and least intrusive IMHO (how clumsy are those recruits in option 5? face-grin.png ).

If you look at the recruits closely, you will see that they are funny little guys, so why shouldn't they be that clumsy? face-wink.png

For me option 5 sounds like an option indeed face-grin.png

This would need a new ware, with different design. Furthermore new animations might be needed.

Training-level-dependent animations for soldiers are something I´d like to have for frisians as well. Perhaps I´ll get around to coding this sometime soon (when my branches for new tribe-specific resource indicators and for a small bugfix in the stock menu are in trunk). But we don´t have graphicers for any tribe except frisians (that´s me face-wink.png ) at the moment.

By the way - what about reworking the hit animation of Frisian soldiers? For me it looks rather like they are just slightly touching their opponent with the sword. And like I said: Frisian soldiers have a completely different style compared to the other tribes, they look like they are from another game...


Wanted to save the world, then I got widetracked

Top Quote
Nordfriese
Avatar
Joined: 2017-01-17, 18:07
Posts: 1929
OS: Debian Testing
Version: Latest master
Ranking
One Elder of Players
Location: 0x55555d3a34c0
Posted at: 2018-09-10, 20:50

Since this (wooden) spear costs only one plank this could be a small revolution, because imperial soldiers would be suddenly even cheaper than barbarian ones (but stronger). So it would be reasonable to add the costs of a current helmet (one iron + one coal) to the costs of a spear (which isn't wooden anymore then), but an improved spear also costs 1plank+1iron+1coal. So maybe 1plank+1iron (+1 point for collectors) for the smallest spear could do the job? Then we could rename it from "Wooden spear" to something like "Light spear" (as Atlanteans also have a "Light trident).

Then the result would still be that the empire level 0 soldiers becomes 1 coal cheaper, right? Empire already seems pretty advantaged to me, esp. against frisians and barbarians. -1 for that.

For me option 5 sounds like an option indeed face-grin.png

A few lines above you say you find it suboptimal, and here you consider not changing anything also an option?

Training-level-dependent animations for soldiers are something I´d like to have for frisians as well. Perhaps I´ll get around to coding this sometime soon

By the way - what about reworking the hit animation of Frisian soldiers? For me it looks rather like they are just slightly touching their opponent with the sword.

Looks can be deceiving. But I can revisit them then…

And like I said: Frisian soldiers have a completely different style compared to the other tribes, they look like they are from another game...

Different artist, different style. Such inconsistencies are to be expected in open-source software. Every contributor does the best they can, but you mustn´t expect perfection. If you want something to be better, you can only wait for someone to improve it (and that can be a long wait), or put up with it, or do it yourself. But do not expect me to change my modelling style that much. That´s like asking you to forget all your playing tactics and imitate someone else´s gameplay instead.


Top Quote
hessenfarmer
Avatar
Joined: 2014-12-11, 23:16
Posts: 2646
Ranking
One Elder of Players
Location: Bavaria
Posted at: 2018-09-10, 20:58

+1 for option 3. An imperial soldier without a helmet won't look like it should be.


Top Quote
WorldSavior
Avatar
Joined: 2016-10-15, 04:10
Posts: 2091
OS: Linux
Version: Recent tournament version
Ranking
One Elder of Players
Location: Germany
Posted at: 2018-09-10, 21:03

Nordfriese wrote:

Since this (wooden) spear costs only one plank this could be a small revolution, because imperial soldiers would be suddenly even cheaper than barbarian ones (but stronger). So it would be reasonable to add the costs of a current helmet (one iron + one coal) to the costs of a spear (which isn't wooden anymore then), but an improved spear also costs 1plank+1iron+1coal. So maybe 1plank+1iron (+1 point for collectors) for the smallest spear could do the job? Then we could rename it from "Wooden spear" to something like "Light spear" (as Atlanteans also have a "Light trident).

Then the result would still be that the empire level 0 soldiers becomes 1 coal cheaper, right?

Yes - and you don't need the armor smithy for level 0 soldiers anymore.

Empire already seems pretty advantaged to me, esp. against frisians and barbarians. -1 for that.

Could you please explain why they seem to be advantaged against those tribes?

For me option 5 sounds like an option indeed face-grin.png

A few lines above you say you find it suboptimal, and here you consider not changing anything also an option?

Yes - it was suboptimal to invent the soldiers like that, but i wouldn't mind if they stay like this, because i don't know if changing them would be worth the work.

Training-level-dependent animations for soldiers are something I´d like to have for frisians as well. Perhaps I´ll get around to coding this sometime soon

By the way - what about reworking the hit animation of Frisian soldiers? For me it looks rather like they are just slightly touching their opponent with the sword.

Looks can be deceiving. But I can revisit them then…

And like I said: Frisian soldiers have a completely different style compared to the other tribes, they look like they are from another game...

Different artist, different style. Such inconsistencies are to be expected in open-source software. Every contributor does the best they can, but you mustn´t expect perfection. If you want something to be better, you can only wait for someone to improve it (and that can be a long wait), or put up with it, or do it yourself. But do not expect me to change my modelling style that much. That´s like asking you to forget all your playing tactics and imitate someone else´s gameplay instead.

Okay

So do you want to say that my playing tactics look like they would be from another game? face-wink.png


Wanted to save the world, then I got widetracked

Top Quote
einstein13
Avatar
Joined: 2013-07-29, 00:01
Posts: 1118
Ranking
One Elder of Players
Location: Poland
Posted at: 2018-09-11, 10:14

From my perspective, option 5 (current state) is fine. But if you want to make it perfect, option 3 is exactly what you need. But you can think wider (WIDElands face-tongue.png ) and see:

Option 3-b

  • The armorsmithy produces a second type of armor; like chainmail or breastplate for exampl (with the same costs as helmet).
  • Normal empire soldiers need a spear and helmet.
  • For their first health-upgrade they just need food and a new_armor

This would need a new ware, with different design. Furthermore new animations might be needed.

Edited: 2018-09-11, 10:15

einstein13
calculations & maps packages: http://wuatek.no-ip.org/~rak/widelands/
backup website files: http://kartezjusz.ddns.net/upload/widelands/

Top Quote