2. Add Charisma and Intelligence attributes, but put them on 39 by default. (This is because the skills they provide are still subpar)
3. Add a Tavern on the website, where you can hire hundreds of different mercenaries
4. Add a party screen on the website, where you can organzie your little warband
The whole things works this way:
Intelligence skills:
- Trade: each skill point allows you to increase your income per tick by 5%/2.5 gold per multiplier tick. - Looting: every point looting reduces your upkeep chance by a certain percentage, just like high WPF for weapons. It also reduces wages by 5%. - Engineer: every point reduces your calculated equipment value by 5%. So with 10 engineer you pay only 50% upkeep. It also improves the equipment of your mercenaries.
Charisma skills:
- Leadership: you can lead one NPC into battle per point. - Trainer: this skill increases the experience and skills of the bots you can lead - Tactics: you can lead one additional type of NPC into battle per two tactics points. (This is to prevent players of too easily using nasty combinations like shielders in the front, archers in the middle and pikemen in the back)
Mercenaries:
Mercenaries will work similar like items. Like the marketplace there will be a "Tavern" tab, and like the different item classes there will be different mercenary classes to click on. You just need to create a vast selection of different mercenaries with different skills, euipment and themes, like Vikings, Knights, Arabs and so on, to satisfy everyone's taste. Each mercenary has a few additional values, next to his equipment and skills listed:
- Recruitment cost: the price you pay for hiring a mercenary. It's like buying an item. - Wages: the wages you have to pay for using him EVERY ROUND. There is not a chance he will claim his wages, he just always does, even if he dies. - Type: this is the type of mercenary. You can only lead one type of mercenaries, unless you raise your tactics skill. Types are for example "Viking spearman" "Arab horse archer" or "Mailed hoplite infantry". Basically a type can consist of several different mercenaries, which will mostly differ in their experience (e.g. "Recruit Arab horse archer" "Regular Arab horse archer" "Experienced Arab horse archer" and "Veteran Arab horse archer"), but sometimes also in their euipment ("Experienced European plated glaiveman" and "Recruit European plated halberdier" will both be "European plated polearm shocktroops") - Requirements: depending on their skill level and their equipment, leading a mercenary on the battlefield needs both skills: engineer and trainer. If you don't meet the requirements, you can hire a mercenary, and he will stay in your party screen (without claiming wages, he doesn't fight!), but you can't assign him to an army setup in the party screen.
The party screen:
It basically looks similar to the quipment screen. But instead of nine you have ten boxes, and there is a dropdown menu above with 1 to 10. Perhaps you could rename the different points, if possible.
It's actually very easy: you can put your warband together there, and you can have ten versions of it, so you can switch in battle. If you could rename your setups you wouldn't have to keep in mind which setup stands for what.
Just click on the boxes like equipping yourself, and the mercenaries you can lead will appear there.
Next to every box there will be another dropdown menu with F1-F12, assigning the man to a certain group to lead ingame.
You can switch your setup ingame via escape menu, or simply "unequip" all mercenaries, if you are losing too much money.
Summary
That's it, basically. Yes, people would be allowed to wear better euipment with these changes, but they would have to sacrifice skill points on it. You can reduce your upkeep by 50% and put ten points in lowering the breaking chance by another 50% perhaps, but you would have to pay this with 20 skill points!
Depending on how well you can exploit the "economic" skills it would be worth reconsidering their percentage values, or even lowering the intelligence attribute start value, for example put it to 15 or even to 3. It's a matter of calculations and balancing, so I am in no way fixed on the values I suggested, they are first, rough orientation values.
I think having bots on the field could make the game more interesting again. You could have blocks of pikemen, shield walls, lines of archers or even complete charges of heavy cavalry!
Each bot that kills someone adds a kill point to your score, but so does every bot you kill, which is why bots, once discovered as NPC, will be the main target of kill hungry players. I don't think they will have a big impact on the game, and most players won't have more than one or two NPCs follwing and supporting them, but if someone decides to go full leadership/trader, he can lead a small army of ten armoured knights at the cost of himself being as dangerous as a peasant. It would even be fun to equip yourself like your mercenaries and hide between them. So players approaching the line of bots won't know which one of them will suddenly jump out of the formation and offer a proper fight :lol:
Tell me what you think about this not so serious suggestion, which is more like "wouldn't it be nice, if we had...?" :mrgreen:
Title: Re: New build directions (STR, AGI, INT, CHA) + commandable NPCs
Post by: TurmoilTom on May 29, 2012, 06:10:25 pm
Oh look, a Joker post.
Obligatory TL;DR.
(click to show/hide)
But seriously, I'd love to have a bunch of NPC throwers and pikemen following me around.
Title: Re: New build directions (STR, AGI, INT, CHA) + commandable NPCs
Post by: Joker86 on May 29, 2012, 06:11:59 pm
I tried to keep it short and to use pregnant headings, so everyone who only glances over the text knows roughly what it's about. And if he wants to know what a single point has to mean he doesn't need to read more than four or five sentences :cry:
Title: Re: New build directions (STR, AGI, INT, CHA) + commandable NPCs
Post by: Dezilagel on May 29, 2012, 06:23:54 pm
tl:dr
Title: Re: New build directions (STR, AGI, INT, CHA) + commandable NPCs
Post by: sF_Guardian on May 29, 2012, 06:26:33 pm
Da fuck shall Bots be good for? Go DTV man :D
Title: Re: New build directions (STR, AGI, INT, CHA) + commandable NPCs
Post by: Vibe on May 29, 2012, 06:26:51 pm
why buy sleeping pills if you have joker86
Title: Re: New build directions (STR, AGI, INT, CHA) + commandable NPCs
Post by: Joker86 on May 29, 2012, 06:28:39 pm
Seriously, I thought you were intelligent enough to come up with some better trolling that that, especially since you write it with semicolon, not colon.
Title: Re: New build directions (STR, AGI, INT, CHA) + commandable NPCs
Post by: sF_Guardian on May 29, 2012, 06:32:20 pm
The problem is that noone wants to fight bots in normal battle, maybe expect of some but not in general. A player with a bunch of shielders and x-bowers with him would be terrible annoyin for example. But a sort of commander battle like in NW would be nice for the ones who wanna play it.
Title: Re: New build directions (STR, AGI, INT, CHA) + commandable NPCs
Post by: Joker86 on May 29, 2012, 06:42:41 pm
First proper reply on the topic. I guess I have to thank you for this :?
Well, I think you can't generalize "fighting bots" like you would do in other gamemodes. First of all, it will most likely be only a few bots among mostly real players, and second, in difference to DTV for example, those bots won't attack you mindlessly, they will most likely wait at an advantageous position or charge you right in the moment when you need it the least, which adds a totally new dimension to fighting bots.
It also enables the possibility of more "battle like" behaviour appearing on the server, for example heavy cavalry gathering at a flank and charging together, supported by the lighter player cavalry. Because nobody has to fear to get killed too early, a combined cavalry charge is possible again. And even if performed by bots, I am sure they will be able to inflict quite some damage to the enemy team, if they don't take some countermeasures, like placing a line of pike bots at that flank. And suddenly the game becomes more about tactics than before.
Of course one could try that on special servers where this feature is activated, but I would guess it adds a lot of fun. I can't think of a reason which could make bots unpopular. Sure it's not nice if an enemy is followed by ten axe throwing vikings, but on the other hand you know the player himself must be a really weak fighter, and you know that ten throwing bots are not as horrible as ten throwing players. Bots throw as soon as you come in range, and they don't wait until you lower your shield or the like. Bots don't pick up ammunition. And they lack awareness, so it's easy to kill them from everywhere but the front.
Seriously, I think it could be tremendous fun. I can be wrong, of course, but that's at least what I imagine it like. And I think it's acceptable for players if one of ten enemies they fight is a bot. It's not like it would be MORE difficult than fighting real players, if anything it's a lot easier.
Edit: okay, one or two weeks after the release of this feature there would be like 90% bot population on the according servers, but this would even out quite fast, as soon as most players figure out that they still prefer fighting by themselves with good character skills, instead of leading a bunch of bots who do all the work and don't even do it as good as a real player would.
Title: Re: New build directions (STR, AGI, INT, CHA) + commandable NPCs
Post by: Dezilagel on May 29, 2012, 10:42:10 pm
tl.dr
Title: Re: New build directions (STR, AGI, INT, CHA) + commandable NPCs
Post by: Ragni_Bross on May 29, 2012, 10:43:54 pm
I find this idea very interesting and would like to see it implemented.
Title: Re: New build directions (STR, AGI, INT, CHA) + commandable NPCs
Post by: POOPHAMMER on May 29, 2012, 10:51:32 pm
Title: Re: New build directions (STR, AGI, INT, CHA) + commandable NPCs
Post by: ArchonAlarion on May 30, 2012, 01:46:32 am
Separate game mode.
Title: Re: New build directions (STR, AGI, INT, CHA) + commandable NPCs
Post by: Rebelyell on May 30, 2012, 01:59:05 am
sorry but noo for bots in crpg
Title: Re: New build directions (STR, AGI, INT, CHA) + commandable NPCs
Post by: Wraist on May 30, 2012, 02:09:32 am
I think I understand why you chose that handle :D
Title: Re: New build directions (STR, AGI, INT, CHA) + commandable NPCs
Post by: Froto_the_Loc on May 30, 2012, 02:22:52 am
What if you barely have enough skills for combat, let alone all this trading and looting? Would I have to sacrifice a shield point or a riding point to have a chambering lord of spam follow me around? Or increase me monies
Why am I always on a new page?
Title: Re: New build directions (STR, AGI, INT, CHA) + commandable NPCs
Post by: Miwiw on May 30, 2012, 11:50:15 am
No thanks to bots, fps drop is already too high on certain maps. Otherwise some interesting ideas.