Lets talk about War Machines

[ThunderTitan]

No, the tree would belong to the hero, but it would only affect the WM, and he'd only get XP when a WM was in his possession during a battle. It would be more like a secondary skill tree just for War Machines...

[Kalah]

You mean that the experience gained during a battle would be used specifically to increase his WM skill? How would you measure how many of the points gained from a battle is given to the WM and transferred to the hero? And if the WM is killed during battle, but the battle is still won, what happens to the points?

[ThunderTitan]

That's what would be determined by testing it...

And the XP wouldn't be transferred to the hero, the easiest way would be to just have the XP gain only work when the battle is over that the WM is still in the hero's possession.

Basically it would represent how well the hero knows to use WM's. Maybe make it so on each level you would have to choose between 2 different upgrades.

[Roman]

No, the tree would belong to the hero, but it would only affect the WM, and he'd only get XP when a WM was in his possession during a battle. It would be more like a secondary skill tree just for War Machines...

Ah, I see - to isolate the tree from other hero skill trees and thus not make it compete for points. That would actually work, but I would prefer they keep it in the normal hero skill trees and balance it properly.

[ThunderTitan]

But that would mean that some heroes would have better WM then others... which would mean you would have to balance the WM against other skills the hero can get instead of against the creatures... Which will make it harder to make the WM useful for the whole game...

[Tress]

WM should just scale from level or primary skills(and i dont mean standart scale creatures get, but on par with spells), that of course complicates when it comes from which skill. That would make balistas useless for mages and tents for warriors.
In homm 5 they managed to make tents and ballista quite useful, although I disliked fact that everyone get some sort of triple balista/imbue balsita etc, but almost nothing for tent except for plague tent that makes it another balista.

[ThunderTitan]

The idea was that you would be able to customize the WM's so they won't all be the same for everyone.

[vicheron]

One way to make war machines more useful is to allow us to assign creatures to man them. That way the usefulness of war machines will scale with the size of your army.

This could also work in conjunction with multiple war machines where extra war machines have to have creatures assigned to man them to be effective.

[Nelgirith]

Why the hell should your ballista be stronger when you have 10 dragons than when you have 100 peasants ? It makes no sense ... unless you use the dragons to throw the ballista at your enemies

[MattII]

You don't have to scale the damage output with the size of the army, just allow the damned things to stack like the rest of the stacks. Do the same for FA Tents and the rest of them as well, because not only will it increase their effectiveness, it'll increase their overall durability as well.

[ThunderTitan]

If they're just gonna stack why not just make them into units, like H4 did for the ballista?!

[MattII]

I could live with that, especially if it meant that I could issue them an order without having to spend a skill-slot doing it.

[ThunderTitan]

But then they're not really WM's any more, but just units...

[MattII]

Yeah, immobile units with exactly one function, no retaliation, aren't affected by morale...

[vicheron]

Why the hell should your ballista be stronger when you have 10 dragons than when you have 100 peasants ? It makes no sense ... unless you use the dragons to throw the ballista at your enemies

The war machines wouldn't magically become more powerful when your army becomes bigger. You have to assign units operate them to make them more powerful.

For example, a war machine without anyone operating them would only work at 25% or 50% effectiveness and you would need to assign a certain number of creatures to operate the war machine to bring it up to 100% effectiveness. War machine skills could increase the maximum bonus.

The war machines could be either upgradeable or stackable to increase their power and the number of units you can assign to operate it. Upgradeable war machines would be dependent on the Hero's level and their war machine skill. There could also be special enchantments for high level war machines.

[ThunderTitan]

Yeah, immobile units with exactly one function, no retaliation, aren't affected by morale...

Besides being immobile that's not very different from any other creature.


Might as well just eliminate them and include them as troops then.

[Tress]

Might as well just eliminate them and include them as troops then.

One troop more or less hardly changes anything. Being under different rule sets and benefiting from special skill hoverer allows different play style.

[ThunderTitan]

Might as well just eliminate them and include them as troops then.

One troop more or less hardly changes anything.

Which was already my point?!

GO GET YOUR OWN!

[Panda Tar]

Siege/war machines and technologies alike can be more explored yes, mainly because they intend to have the economy system simpler. That must mean they are going to focus more on battles and all else? Either way, I like the fact of having siege/war machines going around with heroes as well as having defensive siege machines or technologies at towns, both general and faction-designed ones.

This is my 2 cents to this discussion.

What do we have until now?

1. Catapult
2. Tent
3. Ballista
4. Ammo Cart
5. Wall
6. Moat/trap
7. Towers

What are other known siege tecnologies and war machines?

1. Ram
2. Onager
3. Hot pitch
4. Trebutchet
5. Mine
6. Oil rift
7. Trap/hole
8. Quickslime
9. Plague catapult
10. Siege tower
11. Pavise and mantlet
12. Mangonel
13. Couillard
14. Petard
15. Siege hook
And others.

For what we have now, I think Ammo Cart is one to be reviewed, alongside Tent (Tent should attend for heroes, if they would get into battle. If it's not the case, perhaps having no tent should suffice). Ammo Cart is simply too overpowered and unlogical (unlimited ammo) and should become more like a hero battle support skill, like this: the more this hero is experienced in battle, the faster an additional ammo supply would be taken to battlefield (like every 5 rounds, 3 rounds, or else), restoring some of all ranged units ammo. That 'ability' could also depend on a certain Town structure that must be built to start giving support to the hero - in this case, the farer the hero is located from his town, the longer it takes the ammo supply to arrive. Having then the catapults paired with a Trebutchet/Onager, while catapults try inflicting damage upon units over the walls and onagers damaging walls, gates and towers.

So we have some common war machines/technologies all factions might share:

1. Ammo supply
2. Catapult (damages units behind walls and on field. It has a mininum attack range)
3. Onager (damages walls, bastion and other defensive devices)
4. Siege Tower (slow movement and extreme armour, virtually immune to ranged attacks, allows one unit to come over walls per time. It takes one round to get to it, another round to climb onto it and another round to get to the other side of the wall - it's pretty weak against mines, moat, melee attacks from non-flying ground units)

For buildings:

1. Walls/Gate
2. Bastion/Tower (you can place your ranged units there so they can the better attack foes with ranged bonus. Keeping them behind walls will give them more protection from flying units and ranged attack though, although they'll have awful ranged damage themselves)
3. Onager (can target any enemy target, but cannot hit them when they're behind the walls and within castle boundaries)

And then, there would have all other faction-guided war machines/technologies/buildings:

1. Haven:
- Moat (ground units cannot move over the moat - the moat gets filled with debris when walls start to crumble, making it possible to cross it)
- Ballistae (slow moving unit that hurls a great bolt on foes, and it can attack from behind a Haven Castle gate - not walls)
- Mantlet (moving unit that cuts down half of ranged damage taken on a friendly unit right behind it, taking and resisting that damage instead. Weak against melee attacks)
- Hot pitch (it attacks any enemy target that's in front of the walls and gate, dealing damage over time - damage can stack if enemy is caught more than one round in a row)

2. Necropolis:
- Plague mangonel (attacks units from over walls or on the field by sending diseased corpses of animals or units, dealing damage and also poisoning them. If this mangonel is attacking a city, it'll lower weekly growth due plague - to balance, it'll require a high number of attacks for such effect)
- Accursed marsh (a mix of moat and quicksand, units would lose morale, hp and movement points while walking on these marshes and the killed units couldn't be resurrected, given that they would have sunk into the marshes)
- Necromancy obelisk (right after killing a living unit, this tower would collect the total of HP lost and convert some to raise undead to help defending the castle - they would be raised from within the accursed marshes)
-

3. Inferno:
- Blazing rifts (surrounding the walls and some hidden places on the battlefield, randomly at everyround, a magma wave will burst out of these rifts damaging all targets direcly over it)
- Chapel of sins (borrowing this name a bit, it will deal a certain damage on a target everytime it damages or kills any defending unit)
- Nightmare (a moving exploding unit that will cross the entire battlefield until crashing on a target/obstacle, dealing fire damage on all surrounding targets plus a damage over time while the area is aflame. It's restored by ammo supply)
- Blazing mangonel (attacks units from over walls or on the field by sending fireballs that'll set fire on targets)

4. Academy (suppose it's a faction):
- Ivory tower (a warden will randomly cast a spell on a foe or on an allied unit right after the hero cast a spell. The likeness of casting stronger spells depends on how many times certain spells were performed by allied heroes. It also grants a small mana recovery every round)
- Sulfur Bombs (a hero can throw these devices on the field, decreasing drastically all targeted units sight - can even blind them for one round if they're melee fighters, so they are only able to move away from the sulfur smoke, or decrease their ranged damage if they're ranged units)
- Familiar (this support unit will channel spells cast by hero or any other spellcasting allied units, charging a magic power for a while, then releasing it at once to increase hero's spell casting effect; there's a cooldown for this)
- Mines (settled around walls and some hidden places on the battlefield, these mines will deal physical and magic damage on a target, also casting the effect of sulfur bombs on that place)

And let's not forget that we also have sea battles, where carrying war machines over the vessel might not be possible, but having cannons and hook ballistae at hand instead could be considered - greekfire too. It would work before battle starts, depending on each hero's navigation skill (if any), determining accuracy of cannon shots and damage upon all enemy units or initiative penalty ere engaging close combat.

Hum, that's all.