MM6 skill emphasis mod (#74)

[Malekitsu]

I mean I'm still playing at 2x Damage and 1.5x HP/AC, I just turned off the 2x multiplier on monster spell ranks. I can deal with Rocket Tag Gameplay since that'll force me to learn smart pulling, the main problem in the very early game is "what the hell do I do now?" since all of the traditionally free quests are now dangerous to complete in one way or another (Fountain of Magic probably should be my next target but I chewed through all my food getting to Free Haven due to forgetting just how big the cluster of Mages camping the Free Haven <> Ironfist border was so now I have to spend some of my precious Water Walk money on food)

After reducing knight damage to about half in early game and nerfing sparks I'm thinking reducing enemy damage a bit.
I'm also thinking about increasing hp a little bit more.
Not sure what is your struggle but to win you just need to do the letter quest, then giving spear skill to knight and spark to sorcerer and use the cleric to heal.
I'm also not happy with the enemy range pull script.

[tnevolin]

The reason for extended pull is to prevent "engage just a single enemy from the group". Initially I was thinking for the group to be engaged together. I.e. one engaged member would shout others to follow and so on as long as they in some hearing range. Unfortunately, the notion of "group" is not well defined. Good examples are lizards and followers west of CI. They are staying in compact groups of 3-5 with these groups scattered across the whole field. Should only this small group be engaged? If not, then how many? A lot of questions.

So Instead I just extended range from the party. Meaning as soon as any monster sees the party the party engagement radius jumps and may even pull monster on the opposite side.

I agree that first approach would make more sense but I wasn't able to generate any sane idea on how it should work. Feel free to suggest.

-----

Update.

You see. Game is constantly checking whether monster sees the party. If I just change engagement radius, then it is easy to check every second. Whereas, if I use the concept of group engagement then checking every monster engagement becomes an exceptionally complex algorithm. Besides, connections between monsters may break as they move around which makes algorithm even more complex.

[tnevolin]

I mean I'm still playing at 2x Damage and 1.5x HP/AC, I just turned off the 2x multiplier on monster spell ranks. I can deal with Rocket Tag Gameplay since that'll force me to learn smart pulling, the main problem in the very early game is "what the hell do I do now?" since all of the traditionally free quests are now dangerous to complete in one way or another (Fountain of Magic probably should be my next target but I chewed through all my food getting to Free Haven due to forgetting just how big the cluster of Mages camping the Free Haven <> Ironfist border was so now I have to spend some of my precious Water Walk money on food)

Keep in mind that this mod is indeed more difficult to pass than vanilla. It is designed for people who are bored with using same tactic in vanilla over and over again. So such advanced player should be able to plan adventure properly and use all the features available. Otherwise, sure, there is a risk to run out of food/money/skills, etc.

[RawSugar]

The changes i made to damage so far seems perfect, i still feel like pushing them further but i run into exceptions like energy attacks or super powerful spells that i'd need to make exceptions for or change.
The issue really isnt the mod. all the mod does is to match knight damage to sorcerer, it doesnt make the party more powerful just makes noncaster classes playable. The issue is the vanilla game difficulty progression being bad, but increasing monster damage exponentially fixes the game.

I dont see the point of reducing both player and monster power, the change i made makes early game monsters do ~150% and thats enough that they no longer 1 shot your guys making the game playable.

To my mind the mod is more in a tweaking phase once monsterdamage is fixed; a few spells, a small bonus to archer/paladin...individual monsters/areas...stuff like that

[raekuul]

Not sure what is your struggle but to win you just need to do the letter quest, then giving spear skill to knight and spark to sorcerer and use the cleric to heal.

Letter, Candelabra, Goblinwatch done; Cavalier promotion just needs to be turned in (ate a TPK from the mages south of and archers north of the target inn). What's next? Fountain of Magic I either have to get Water Walk and go there from Temple Island or else deal with the Ironfist <> Bootleg border spawns. I couldn't even get close to Loretta Fliese's castle. My randomizer-brain triggered Nicolai so I need to recover him before I can return Kilburn's shield (but that's just a matter of timing). We've already been over what happened with Abandoned Temple.

[RawSugar]

This is basically the order i'd suggest. so unless you just didnt mention them; kill a bunch of monsters outside the dungeons in mist, ironfist and bootleg bay, thn head into temple of tsansta

1.sorpigal open, goblin watch, mist open, ironfist open, abandoned temple, bootleg bay open+tsantsta,
2. sorpigal island, ironfist dungeon, sewers, mist dungeon, free haven open (SE/wuzzies), bootleg bay dungeons (?)
3. darkmoor open, dwarves dungeons, ½ half werewolf dungeon,free haven open+dungeons, corlagon,silver cove dungeons+open (not warlord), white cap open+dungeon, (temples of baa when possible)
4. FORGE, alamos, darkmoor castle, werewolf 2nd half, blackshire open
5. kriegspire open +dungeons, dragonsand+valley+isles open, pyramid, warlord fortress
6. two endgame dungeons

[tnevolin]

Still I didn't plan it to be a chess game. Should be passable in more or less variable order. There still should be room for errors and wandering.

[RawSugar]

Still I didn't plan it to be a chess game. Should be passable in more or less variable order. There still should be room for errors and wandering.

then early game needs to be easier than you made it there's some wiggle room with a strong party but the monsters in abandoned temple are 2-3 times higher level than goblin watch. And from tsantsa to the next dungeon there is a significant jump in difficulty. When you double all stats that becomes an issue - especially because in vanilla the difficulty is mostly handled by skirmishing which your mod makes impossible in most cases
Using the formula i made the early game is easier and that makes for more freedom.

[tnevolin]

Yeah. Maybe I scrutinized it too much. As I said - relax the monsters you see fit and we'll test it.

[tnevolin]

RE: Joining Slack

I think there is another way to join Slack other than me sending invitation. Here. Try this link whoever didn't join yet.

https://join.slack.com/t/gamemodding/sh ... baTch7alfA

[tnevolin]

#68 is ready.

[Eksekk]

Just wanna say that your mod seems amazing! I've always (please don't come at me with pitchforks and torches ) thought that MM6 is the most feature-lacking part of MM6-8 (which is understandable, since it was made first). Lack of GM skills, no skill restrictions other than "can/cannot learn and master", 6 classes (it's not really low, but I more like MM7's 9 classes), lack of skills like armsmaster which make knight a viable choice, lack of spells like protection from magic (even on 50 lvl you're not safe from disease-causing rats ), invisibility is controversial but I honestly would only use it for Castle Darkmoor (and in Merge I use it like that) and even things like very weak healing spells compared to later games made the game less fun for me and I only played it once fully, once with Chaos Conspiracy (only part 1), and few times in Merge but didn't get really far. Your mod seems to fix most of these issues. I'll definitely give it a play soon, when you finish all balancing which is going on right now. Or, if you want my opinion or help, I'm open to that too! I love to support modders for easily my favourite games ever.

[Malekitsu]

Just wanna say that your mod seems amazing! I've always (please don't come at me with pitchforks and torches ) thought that MM6 is the most feature-lacking part of MM6-8 (which is understandable, since it was made first). Lack of GM skills, no skill restrictions other than "can/cannot learn and master", 6 classes (it's not really low, but I more like MM7's 9 classes), lack of skills like armsmaster which make knight a viable choice, lack of spells like protection from magic (even on 50 lvl you're not safe from disease-causing rats ), invisibility is controversial but I honestly would only use it for Castle Darkmoor (and in Merge I use it like that) and even things like very weak healing spells compared to later games made the game less fun for me and I only played it once fully, once with Chaos Conspiracy (only part 1), and few times in Merge but didn't get really far. Your mod seems to fix most of these issues. I'll definitely give it a play soon, when you finish all balancing which is going on right now. Or, if you want my opinion or help, I'm open to that too! I love to support modders for easily my favourite games ever.

There is a lot of work going on, we are thinking and rebalancing eveything while keeping the vanilla flavour, but harder .

[tnevolin]

Eksekk,

Thank you for chiming in and thank you for honest feedback!
All opinions matter. Don't hesitate to share them!

Please join Slack if you like to participate in (or listen to) implementation discussions. Otherwise, just enjoy it now and wait for new releases.

As for balance I think you got confused by recent posts. I personally believe game is already quite balanced. I fixed all major things those annoyed me year ago. I played it myself and found it exceptionally enjoyable.
Of course, we can keep changing things indefinitely making it (hopefully) even better and better. That is what is going on right now. Thanks to multiple fans having at it right now. Feel free to join the efforts.

[tnevolin]

Summary of future conceptual changes so far as I understand them.

• Cost of healing in temple is proportional to character XP level and to the amount of restored HP/SP. Meaning player does not need to wait until whole party is exhausted of HP/SP to get most benefit of healing and can pay per use. At the same time cost per one healed HP/SP grows with character XP making it more expensive toward end game.
  That should probably be synchronized with tavern room and food costs.
• Combat skill effect grows sharper with skill/rank/promotion. Same is for monster threat. Low level monsters will stay about same as in vanilla while high level one will become much stronger. That is supposed to encourage leveling up and skill advancement. However, magic skill advancement stays linear. So it is not entirely clear to me whether it will be able to keep up with accelerated monster toughness.
• Paladin and archer will be given some extra bonuses in different categories to bring them on par with knight-caster and make them more unique and appealing. The exact modifications are being discussed now.
• Melee weapons were previously advanced simultaneously to encourage easy weapon selection. It generally stays like that but now they are split into two groups: those usable in main hand only and auxiliary ones (sword, dagger). That allows to avoid dual wielding problem of simultaneous skill advancement for both hand weapons which was unfair.

[tnevolin]

I have created new branch "balance" due to intense modification and experimentation. Later on we can merge it to main as we stabilize it.
Here is the script in new branch.
https://github.com/tnevolin/mm6-skill-e ... ll-mod.lua

I have refactored it a little for ease of modifications. Please update.

• Sorted out all configuration tables: weapon first, then shield/armor.
• Renamed all configuration tables identifiers to be in form of: old/new then item then bonus type. Example: newWeaponSkillAttackBonuses.
• Standardized all incremental bonuses in tables by skill and then by rank. Dropped keys in most rank tables as Lua arrays are 1 based then these forms should be equivalent:

  Code: Select all

  {[const.Novice] = 1, [const.Expert] = 2, [const.Master] = 3, }
  {1, 2, 3, }
  

Also fixed equipped bow error and dual weapon error (previously).

Please use and test. I can add more standardization and extra tables as needed.

[Anubis]

Posting for someone: They're saying the Shrine of Electricity in Ironfist doesn't work at all. Any idea why?

[tnevolin]

You are right it doesn't. Let me have a look. Thank you for note.

[tnevolin]

#71
Fixed Altar of Electricity.

[tnevolin]

RE: bow damage.
I confirm that bow damage calculation function is not get called by program at all. So no bow damage from script will be applied.