onomastikon

Reply to On Research and Technology in WOM Ideas Elemental Forums

I am worried that the way technology is working is currently too unilinear. If the number of choices I have are 5, this will make obtaining breakthroughs in these paths slightly more interesting, perhaps, the first five or six times I play the game, but will not give strategic satisfaction -- it will, in essence, remain the "guns", "diplomacy" and "shields" research paths we had in GC2, with some randomness strewn in. Forsake multi-path breakthroughs at the expense of strategic choice

Reply to Abilities are fun, numbers are not in WOM Ideas Elemental Forums

I disagree. For one, I do not see implementation being hindered by explicit graphical representations, firstly because I do not think that each different type of action need be represented with an animation; in fact, I would be perfectly happy with only one or two animations, that is, no matter what type of attack is used, the skeleton still swings its sword (or whatever weapon is equipped), and if it is a defensive maneuver, it holds its weapon up parallel to the ground, or whatever.

Reply to Regions/areas and victory conditions in WOM Ideas Elemental Forums

Your first two paragraphs describe well a phenomenon which the Civilization series did, as one of the few things it did, at least handle, if not particularly well. A little "corn" field, in the CivIV iteration, gave you a bonus without doing anything, and a bigger bonus if you exploited the bonus with an improvement, and a bigger one if your technology was later improved. I think this idea could be adopted for Elemental, with a few twists. I like your idea, and would merely like to ad

Reply to Abilities are fun, numbers are not in WOM Ideas Elemental Forums

I agree in general with the OP. That is why I suggested (in the Abilities thread) elsewhere a series of "feat"-like abilities, which I also called "actions" or "moves" or "icons" (as represented on a radial choice menu for units), at the very least in addition to increased "attack" and "HP" values -- e.g., a unit with an attack rating of 5 might be able to perform a simple default attack on its foe, but with researching the right technologies, that unit might be able to unlock special "moves"

[Gameplay] [Suggestion] Map move explicitness in WOM BETA Builds Elemental Forums

I am able to move my units across the cloth map, but I cannot easily see how far they can be moved in X turns, or even the current turn. I could have sworn that this was not the case earlier, that the pathing and turn duration was shown explicitly with different types of dotted lines. Was I imagining that? If not, was was this changed? Could there be feedback on the card itself as to destination and ETA?

Reply to On Victory Conditions: Old and New in WOM Ideas Elemental Forums

I agree. (Except that the really old school RPG gamers, such as myself, were dice only -- don't need no stinkin figures!) If possible, it would be nice if the faction-only victory conditions could be both personalized or personalizable upon game setup -- perhaps at a cost, even: by that I mean that you might be able to spend one or two "points" you would have otherwise spent on your sovereign or whatnot to tweak your victory condition a certain way -- and/or random or randomizable.</p

Reply to On Victory Conditions: Old and New in WOM Ideas Elemental Forums

I like the suggestion of "complete the palace" and see it as a single example of a typical type of quest completion, but with the added flavor of requiring a certain technology (say, Archeticture II (just making it up) in the Civilization path): find and gather items in the world, which might require a certain breakthrough in Adventuring, but you can only complete the quest if you have a breakthrough in a different field. Having quest "bricks" requiring certain technological breakthroughs to

Reply to Elemental: Go buy the February issue of PC Gamer now! in Elemental News Elemental Forums

Is it normal to proclaim a game to be among the Top 10 before it has even left Alpha? That seems -- by all sympathy for Elemental of course ;-) -- somewhat hasty. I wouldn't want to give a gold medal to a sprinter before I actually saw her run in the race. But otherwise, yey for Stardock.

Reply to Channeler Customization: Part 3 in Elemental Dev Journals Elemental Forums

[quote who="onomastikon" reply="71" id="2477506"]Wintersong: That is precisely what I mean. To illustrate: I cannot imagine a magic system which would have spells that would not rely on these statistics. For example: Quickness might increase movement rate and dexterity; if there is a powerful, battlefield-wide version of that spell, why shouldn't it have the same impact on your troops with the same mechanic? Casting a spell which increases Wisdom would, in most circumstances, have little affe

Reply to Channeler Customization: Part 3 in Elemental Dev Journals Elemental Forums

Wintersong: That is precisely what I mean. To illustrate: I cannot imagine a magic system which would have spells that would not rely on these statistics. For example: Quickness might increase movement rate and dexterity; if there is a powerful, battlefield-wide version of that spell, why shouldn't it have the same impact on your troops with the same mechanic? Casting a spell which increases Wisdom would, in most circumstances, have little affect on most standard ground troops under the curre

Reply to Channeler Customization: Part 3 in Elemental Dev Journals Elemental Forums

I hope that all troops HAVE these attributes -- that is, every entity in the game should have a dexterity or a strength rating (NOT of course the same ones the Sovereign has!), so that spells which affect the sovereign can also affect anyone.

Reply to It is time to talk about QUESTS! in Elemental Dev Journals Elemental Forums

I had written in a previous thread from August that I would like to see (at least some) quests have an overarching storyline possibility. This could branch out further and further to include the master Quest as a victory condition. The narrative elements itself could be dynamically generated from a pool of possibilities based on what has happened in the game so far, so th

Reply to Some quick battle notes in Elemental Dev Journals Elemental Forums

I think this is acceptable as long as there is some way of modifying "Mundane" in various ways, such as armor piercing hardened armor (resistance to armor piercing) differences between melee, missile, and siege flags etc.

Reply to Sovereign Attributes discussion in Elemental Dev Journals Elemental Forums

If you are talking about ATTRIBUTES and not special abilities (along the lines of "perks" or "feats"), which I am sure you will integrate at some point, then I would like to see the following added: - Agility (increases defense much, offense slightly, if high enough opens up special "feats") - Strength (increases melee damage much, if high enough opens up special "feats") - Intelligence (increases mana some, if high enough opens up special "feats")

Reply to Advice on new Laptop needed, thank you in PC Gaming Elemental Forums

Thank you very much. I ended up getting the sony, as I liked the display and keyboard, all things else considered. Thank you, thank you all. Can someone tell me: What is a "lojack", and does it really prevent theft? Thank you.

Reply to Advice on new Laptop needed, thank you in PC Gaming Elemental Forums

Thank you. (I love that name, Lord Pökelfleisch, that's excellent.) I like your advice, but am still wary, since I am really un-saavy. The people above mentioned getting "ripped off" if I don't get one of their mentioned cards for that price, and I have no idea what a 4670 is compared to a 4870M. I'm almost tempted to buy at Newegg, have it shipped to friends, and have them ship it over -- but am unsure about the power supply, US vs. European. Does anyone know if that will be a p

Reply to Advice on new Laptop needed, thank you in PC Gaming Elemental Forums

THank you, this is all very, very helpful. Newegg will not ship to Germany, however -- does anyone know a comparable site over here? Thank you!

Reply to Advice on new Laptop needed, thank you in PC Gaming Elemental Forums

Hey thank you so much for these quick responses. If I understand the last two posters correctly, (>> A 9500 GT with 8 Gigs of GDDR3 (never gonna happen, but just an example) is still way way worse than a 9800 GT with 512 MB of GDDR3.) that means that the serial number on the back of the *GRAPHICS* card is what I should be looking for? Another question: How do I see the resolution Zechio? EDIT: And how do I know if the memory is "dedicated"? Sorry. Thank you!

Advice on new Laptop needed, thank you in PC Gaming Elemental Forums

Hello all, last week our apartment was broken into and almost everything was stolen, including our only computer, a 1-year-old ASUS laptop. (I surprised the thieves and was thus able to keep them from finding and stealing my wife's jewelery, at least that was salvaged.) To make a long story short, I need a new laptop, and will be willing to spend up to 1,000 Euros. May I have your advice please? I know very little about computers or computing. I will not (be able to) buy

Reply to On Breakthroughs and Diminishing Returns in WOM Ideas Elemental Forums

Sorry, apparently what I was trying to say was not articulated very well. I merely meant to demonstrate that research, technology, and breakthroughs should, ideally, be set up in such a way so that being "very, very good" would require at least a small bit of intelligent, strategically placed diversification; an example of how this is NOT done is in GC2, where there was a technology for each function, e.g. "Lasers", which simply got ... "better" (e.g. "Lasers V" vs. "Lasers IV"). For this rea

Reply to On Research and Technology in WOM Ideas Elemental Forums

You've already mentioned a couple of "necessary" cross-overs -- but to reiterate again, I would like to see these "necessary" "prerequisites" as something you need to make a specific addition, but NOT something which blocks progress in that tree entirely (since that would be impossible anyhow with the current "breakthrough" system). In other words, the current way that Elemental is set up allows you only 5 strategic choices in how to spend your research resources

Reply to On Research and Technology in WOM Ideas Elemental Forums

Thank you, Fenhiro. I'd say that makes sense. It seems to address the concept of linear tech progression, however, and not cross-path synergy or cross-path requirements. I'd like to see more cross-path interaction (be it requirement or synergy), since that would make things more variable, and, more importantly, at least for me and, judging by the numbers of people who disliked the way that GC2's tech "tree" worked, more fun. I'm thinking of more examples from all 5 "schools" of research which

Reply to On Research and Technology in WOM Ideas Elemental Forums

I completely agree with you, Lambdaperson. That is a very good point. I hope to clarify, or perhaps modify, what I had originally wrote, in the following way, and also add one additional point. Additional point 1: I had imagined that what I had suggested would actually encourage just that: more choices, less no-brainers. I had imagined that by having a certain number of techs be interdependent on a certain number of other ones, that the number of true meaningful choices would increase

Reply to On Research and Technology in WOM Ideas Elemental Forums

Thank you for these replies so far. I am not sure I understood Fenhiro entirely, but that may be due to my suboptimal English skills -- sorry, sir (and to all those patient enough to glean something useful from my words). I thought I would elaborate on the idea a little more and give some more examples, if I may. First, I am unclear if the gameplay is currently headed in this direction or not, but I think it would be good if research and technology were quantified as a

Reply to Ritual Magic in WOM Ideas Elemental Forums

I like the idea. The general concept, if I understand the original poster correctly, is that there would or could be composite elements, or rather a composite additive mechanics system, to magic. In other words, there would not (necessarily) be a "Spell X", but rather a spell Template X, which has certain minimum requirements (for minimum effects), but that the effects increase (in length, power, duration, scope) or are augmented (to include other, related effects) under certain circumstances