Damage Types... Plz plz plz plz plz plz plz!!!!

Honestly I think this game would benifit from damage types like in Battle For Wesnoth. I love that game and the way they have tactical combat modeled is amazingly fun. Not really appropriate to the scale of this game but still some really good ideas there.

A lot of the discussion already posted is very good.  Some, or most, of what I will say has already been mentioned.

1.  I believe tht the richness of different types of magical attacks should be included.  It would add greatly to my enjoyment of the game.  This would allow unit specialization and uniquness of units from cities, regions and empires based on the magic and production facilities in the city, the environment in a region (swamp, tundra...) and the Soveriegn of the Empire.

For example:  If I am raising units in a city with a type of magic node, then those units would have some of that type of magic.  When they fought units of the opposite type they would have greater damage, and perhaps take greater damage as well.

2.  I believe that different typs of physical weapon effects can be modled with a single physical defense stat that is modified by type of armor.  For example, ring mail could give less defense to a piercing weapon (epee or arrow) than it would to a cutting weapon (cutlass, sabre).

3.  Experience gained in battle is very important.  Training is insufficient to gain more than the lowest levels of experience.  Experienced units ought to have better morale, damage potential and abilities.  These abilities could be both offensive (types of attack) and defensive (new formations, such as forming a square against cavalry).

4.  Technology advancement could open up both new types of items (epee instead of broadsword, platemail rather than leather) and improvements in tactics (longbowmen learning to place sharpened stakes in front of their positions to stop cavalry charges).

5.  Unit morale should be an important factor.  It can be improved by experience, good leadership, Soveriegn traits, perhaps by magic, by success in the current battle, fatigue and other similar factors.  It can be decreased if nearby units route, if leaders route or die, thru fatigue and most certainly by flank or rear attacks.  Also, summoned creatures, undead, being outnumbered vastly and also enemy magic might influence morele.  Units ought to be able to break and fell, perhaps rally and return, etc.  Various games model this behavior different ways.

6. Terrain ought to be important to tactical battles, as has already been hinted at.  High ground, defending behind a stream or swamp, hidden in woods or behind hills should all be relevant.  Magic attributes would also be relevant, water blessed units defending in a swamp are better, fire units attacking across a river do so at a disadvantage.

7.  Battlefield movement is important.  Early in the thread the example of Mongol cavalry mobility was mentioned.  One of the 'special' abilities of experienced cavalry could be not only additional movement but the ability to move, fire, and move again.  Units ought to have directional facing, if attacked from the side or rear they ought to suffer disorganization and morale loss.  If attacked from multiple directions at once it ought to be more severe.  It ought to take time to change direction, though more experienced units ought to do it faster and leaders could incluence this.

8.  Battle awards/medals.  If units can be renamed, the player could add self-defined rewards to the name by adding * of ^ etc.  However, I think it would be a neat feature to have different medals ingame that the player could give units, either through specific presentation to the unit or through user defined criteria.  For example, if a small army wins against a superior foe you could give a 'Kings Medal of Valor' to a unit. And/or, each time one of your units has fought in five battles it might automatically be given a 'Chevron of Experience' on the sleeve of their uniform.  These may not actually change unit traits but would add to immersion as the player becomes incrasingly fond of favorite units.

Summary:  Whether optional or required, the ability to have tactically complex battles is probably a strong draw for a great many potential customers. 

Thanks for letting us give so much imput!

I think at this point you really really need to sit down and play some board games. Computers are very good at doing lots of computation and book keeping, however i find playing board games, is a good way to test out simple rules and get a feal of turn based combat.

I suggest you guys take a look at Battlelore/Comand and Colors: Ancients. (Refining boardgame mechanics can be done quickly and visually, very easilly).

Before damage types you have to ask yourself about fundamental mechanics.

1) Turn Mechanics:

>Is this Igo yougo? With full turns with the ability to move all units

>Are the turns threaded (Final Fantasy Tactics, Final Fantasy X) where faster units get more turns?

2) Move - shoot;  shoot -move;  move-shoot-move

3) Targetting? Can you attack every adjacent unit or are the limitations? C&C:Acients has limitations like heavy infantry can not attack cavalry (they battle back and return fire, but not attack on their turn).

Think about #2 and #3 when thinking about why horse archers were such a strong force. Where mobility prevents counter attacks and ease of withdrawl. However horsemen tend to suck at siege battles

Age of Wonders was like that. You had 5 stats: Attack (chance to hit), Damage, Defense (chance to avoid being hit), Resistence (same for magical attacks), and speed.

Everything else was abilities. Have a unit with a flaming sword? They've got an ability "Fire Damage" that changes their damage type. It's not a new stat. You could also enchant units, so you could have Knights doing physical *and* magic damage, in which case whichever one would be more effective gets used.

It really got play with units having weaknesses, or world enchantments like Damnation that gave every enemy unit in your territory "Death Weakness". Units with "Death Strike" (ie: dealing elemental Death damage) would deal bonus damage in that case.

None of that requires a convoluted set of stats, but it changes the nature of combat substantially.

Damage types I'd give a miss to over all. In any game I've played they either seem to be trivial, or annoying. What I mean is they are either something that makes little difference, and thus you can just ignore and use what you like, or they are a pain in the butt, but make no real difference in gameplay over all.

As for experience in additon to being better at attack/defense I think there are a few things you could consider:

1) Better odds of survival if defeated. Part of a vetran unit would be knowing when to cut its losses, and being able to disengage in an orderly fashion. So as units get more experienced, they get better at backing off. This also helps counter the normal problem of elite units getting parked in a city and never used, since people are too worried about losing them.

2) Morale boost for other units around them. I don't know how you'd want to impliment this, maybe just boosting the combat ability of all units in the same stack. Regardless, having elite troops in their mix helps inspire the others.

3) Unlocking new abilities. For example a hit and fade ability. So normal troops are only able to attack the other side in a standard fashion. However elite units figure out how to execute sneak attacks of sorts. They can attack an enemy quickly, cause damage, and then disengage before taking any real fire. So when troops reach a certian status they unlock a new ability that allows them to do a non-lethal attack against an enemy, but one that causes them to take little (or maybe no) damage.

When i played GURPS I really liked their damage system. It's similar to wesnoth. And you don't have half a dozen physical damage types you have three: Crushing, Cutting, and Piercing. Furthermore since most units will be basic humanoid units the resistances will be fairly easy to learn. All you really need to know is what type of armor your opponent is wearing. Flexible armor will protect against piercing and cutting normally while providing little or no protection against crushing. Rigid armor will protect against all damage types equally. However crushing type weapons will generally do more damage per hit while being slower. Cutting weapon get a multiplier to damage in flesh and piercing damage gets an even bigger multiplier however this multiplier is only applied after damage reduction due to armor.

Indeed I know that to be true for a fact. 6-7 years ago I was employed by Origin Systems. Maybe a little longer ago then that actually. I started as a Volunteer GM on a OSI Shard (Great Lakes Shard). From there I got hired on as a Seer. After Origin went out of business I went to a shard called TFL (The Forgotten Lands). When I was officially employed though I was personally responsible for the creation and implementation of numerous in game items and skills that I personally wrote the scripts for. This is even reflected at the top of the script in a addendum that says "This Script written and tested by GM Thanatos". I was the first to my knowledge to bring a "Faiths and Avatars" system into a video game world.

In order for me to get into the position where I was allowed to show scripts to the actual Dev Team it took about 3 years of being a volunteer and I had to teach myself how to script in UO code. It was not an easy process for a total newb who knew nothing of coding. Just in order for me to be able to pass a item script along I had to script it and test it myself on a private server and then make sure it could not be abused in any way shape or form. Then after that I was allowed to forward it to our department head for inclusion on the official test servers.

Honestly I believe even though many of us on these forums have Great Ideas to truly improve the game, the only way we'd get those included into Elemental from inception is to have a line of communication directly into Brad Wardell's ear, which sadly none of us have.

I think this may be another case where we have misunderstood what Brad meant.   I could be wrong, but I believe he was only talking about physical damage types not being categorized into slashing, piercing, crushing, etc.   I honestly will be very surprised if we don't have elemental type damage from spells, item effects, etc.

Personally, I won't miss the physical damage variations, but I think it is important to have the magical effects and other types of damage "flavors".

I'm anxious to try the combat out, but for now, I expect we'll see some sort of clarification statement from FrogBoy soon.   I have a feeling we're all worked up over nothing.

Question:  In the tactical combat screen, are the players going to have to take separate turns for combat?   Or will speed reflect when a unit can be moved, thus intertwining turns with both parties.

It's quite possible to implement things like fire / magic / lightning damage etc without actually having separate damage stats for them all.  This has been mentioned in a few variations above, and is similar to the way Warmachine and Magic the Gathering work, but I'll just outline my take on it here:

- Typically a unit has one stat for damage, so when they attack this number is used.  Doesn't matter how you're hurt, it still hurts.

- They may also have various abilities / skills (flying, first strike etc).   Some of these abilities will be, say, "Fire Damage" or "Magic Damage", which on there own do nothing to affect the amount of damage done.  

- However other creatures may have 'abilities' such as "Immune to Fire Damage" or "Susceptible to Fire Damage", and so a unit that is susceptible to frie damage that is attacked by a unit with Fire Damage will take more damage than normal.

The nice thing about this system is that it's super easy to extend and modify, and doesn't lead to a combinatorial explosion of things to keep track of.

So we could have our cake and it too, without driving the dev team to despair.

I think this is actually quite a good idea. Instead of calling them all abilities we could simply call them properties and give modders the ability to script the effect of each property.

I like the Age of Wonders system, where damage types were different.

This allows -

(i) Special damage types had a chance of an additional effect depending on the type. For example, Life damage might cause Vertigo (a serious stat penalty to the defender) whereas Fire damage might cause additional damage over time due to the target being set on fire.

(ii) Special damage type resistance. For example a fire elemental might be immune to Fire damage whereas a knight might have a magic shield giving some level of resistance to Death damage.

(iii) Special damage type vulnerability, for example a fire elemental might be vulnerable to a spell like (say) Geyser that doused it in water.

Agree with a lot already said. To recapitulate a few important points in my view:

keep the overall system rather simple (not loads of stats and damage types), but include "special attacks"/"combos" so that you can actually make choices and DO something in most battles also with common footsoldiers (and not only heroes and very rare units). I mean attacks that can counter certain enemy types and let you make up new tactics in each battle. E.g: a swordsman can get (through experience or spells or items) several types of slashing attacks but maybe not use them more than once a battle or every fifth round etc. Cavalry could learn especially deadly charge attacks etc.  This would also make battles more unpredictable and thrilling (e.g: you have to keep your knight alive two more rounds so he can get the chance of dealing a special death-dealing blow to the unit he is fighting ... the battle can turn around at the last minute and is not only a cannon-fodder, count-down of HP thing with the highest number winning in the end.)

- I agree on damage types: different types of magical and elemental damage but not piercing-slashing-bludgeoning

- weather should be a factor (especially for archers), this is hugely important in real life. Also: climate and overall "alignment" of place should definately influence units (the Inquisition of the burning flame should be in trouble when moving up North ...)

- retaliatory attacks (automatic extra attacks not counting against initiative) could be one improvement to learn

- if fleeing is used, don't make it into an all decisive thing (there is certainly an annoyance factor in seeing your troops flee in a game where you want to see heroism or black evil). Fleeing could be countered with Leadership (and good morale). One thing I really liked in AoW was that your morale dropped if you included races/factions that don't like each other in same army

- siege battles are a must (please do like AoW)

- be careful with the archers so they don't upset the balance like in some games

- size of creature should go with attack speed (a purple worm can deal horrendous damage but would be difficult to move in battle and attack last)

- when leveling up: possibility to choose between a few improvements so you can specialise like YOU want

- one special ability could be to lock an enemy into melee (he can't attack someone else before winning or breaking free), which could be decisive if used in a smart way against powerful opponents.

Most imortant of all: it should be fun to play, not necessarily realistic.