Unconventional adventure map travel

[Groovy]

This subject has been gnawing at me for a while now. I didn’t think it was important at first; in the Heroic design, I was just going to nerf the Town Portal and Dimension Door spells and leave it at that. But the more I think about it, the more it becomes clear to me that unconventional means of travelling across the adventure map are indispensible for alleviating potentially tedious elements of gameplay. Historically, this has included things like ferrying troops from towns to the frontline heroes, sending heroes back to towns to learn new spells, sending armies back to towns to defend them, and so on. In a hypothetical design that succeeds at having the player control multiple powerful heroes with armies, it might also include rapidly transporting heroes to allied heroes in order to exchange troops or artefacts, or reinforce them. Not to be overlooked is the sheer fun factor in being able to negotiate adventure map obstacles to a dynamic destination, and in the process surprise one’s enemies.

What I would like to explore in this thread are the potential solutions to the challenges posed by unconventional adventure map travel. How would you do it? What design principles would you follow? Would you take heroes places or would you bring what they need to them? What kind of locations would you teleport them to and why? How would you preserve racial or faction distinctiveness when it comes to advanced travel abilities? How would you ensure that they are not overpowered?

And lastly, but very importantly for me: How would you give heroes as much mobility as they need to prevent the gameplay from becoming tedious, but without enabling a single army to defend the whole kingdom (I’m trying to eliminate the superhero-and-errand-boys syndrome from the Heroic design)?

[Spin]

There was a feature in Wake of Gods that may help. It was a building which allowed a hero, when he visited it, to teleport creatures from town to him instantly, but it cost gold to transport creatures, therefore to transport an army it was very expensive.

Otherwise, a town portal spell with a 3 day cooldown or something may work. To create a cooldown will make you think twice when using the spell. Dimension door can also balance itself by costing a ridiculous amount of spell points (as well as a decent amount of movement points), as can fly. In heroes 3 the big problem is the low cost in movement points and spell points for these spells, mostly due to the way that the amount of heroes' mana becomes ridiculous due to mana vortex's.

[Groovy]

Thanks, Spin. Cooldown on these spells should definitely help.

I was actually wondering whether it’s a good idea to have global teleportation spells at all. It seems to me that restricting their range would be a good way to aid the player’s strategy instead of forcing him to remake his strategy around them.

[Naki]

What is a mana vortex?? Heroes games never had these, they are called mana wells...

[Pitsu]

Vortexes double spell points as do some adventure map buildings.

I am not a balance fan in each and every aspect and IMO the travels spells are needed. In my eyes they are kind of alternatives to logistic skill - might heroes get mobility from logistics, magic heroes more from the travelling spells. If we take Homm1, where spell casting was based on scrolls, a hero with low knowledge skill couldn't get much advantage from dimension door. These spells were the best for sorceress who was weak in might and spellpower, but could exploit prolonged casting without need to reload. In Homm2 town portal was very rare, town gate and DD a bit more common. however, the mana system made these spells more usable to everyone. In Homm3 they were too cheap.
I agree with those who see the cost of these spells to be the balancing factor. However, I would not make it cost much movement points or have very limited range (like in homm5). These are perfect spells to make low might, low spellpower, no logistic heroes more worth. A few ways to balance them:
1. have them as scrolls with weekly growth rate in magic guild.
2. have them as perks in H5-style skill system with prerequisites that block might/logistic skills for the same hero.
3. just increase the cost in mana or add rare resources as needed for cast (for instance 1 of each rare consumed by single cast.)