Custom Army Design System (Very Rough Draft)

[DrPraetorious]

I'm opening this up for comments.

Once it's cleaned up enough that people can use it, I'd like people to try designing a few national armies with it, and see how very broken it is - most of these numbers are just what I made up off the top of my head so I expect the armies made with this rubric to be *extremely* poorly balanced.

If I can get it working at all I will finish up by including rules for national mages, national summons, etc.

[DrPraetorious]

I'm doing a major rewrite.

Instead of keep track of distinct lists for equipment availability and for race, I'm going to combine the two and give each race a tech level, access to chassis, etc., as part of the individual race description.

This rework will take some time.

[Zylithan]

i like this idea. i know nothing about balance and modding yet.

[Panpiper]

I am extremely interested in this project of yours. Expect to get some major feedback from me when you've posted your rewrite. Thank you ever so much for your efforts.

One thing I did not spot in your first draft was any mention of exactly how many design points one should have to spend in order to build a 'balanced' race. Obviously such a point recommendation is rather moot without the other sections (gems, pretenders, etc.) also being at least rudimentarily present, but it aught to give us a ball park.

[Huzurdaddi]

Damn, you are seriously productive. This and the compressed nations. Nicely done.

When you get the commanders done, I'll take a look at the type of nation I can make.

[DrPraetorious]

A new version, still very rough, is attached at the root.

I won't be able to do much more work on it for the next month or so.

[DigitalSin]

It looks like this is starting to shape up well. When you finish it, I'll be glad to do a couple of practice nations, and tell you if it balances well.

[Panpiper]

Ok, things are obviously pretty rough and much of what I can ascertain is largely guessing at your intent, but from what I can glean, the race I would construct out of what I am seeing here is:

A 'High' fortress pack so as to make the most out of capital troops and good use of all other resources.

For magic I would have only two mage types, a recruit anywhere wizard with a 'broad' [ABCD,100%] single magic pick costing 180 points and a recruit anywhere witch also with a 'broad' [ABCD,100%] single magic pick, except these would cover the other magic types not covered by the wizard. Because three of these are 'off-path' they would double the cost of the second mage type, costing 360 points. This gives me the ability to have all magic paths at at least a basic level that I can search with for sites and ultimately perhaps empower. Obviously they would have to have some sort of research bonus, not yet covered by the design system. No word yet on priests. If a holy pick is simply a magic path, then the witch gets it and the cost goes up by 180 points.

By picking such a minimal magic set, I would be able to have a huge number of points with which to design a seriously uber troop chassis and kit it out with mad stats, skills and equipment. The basic model would be recruit anywhere. The capital only unit would be my immortals, literally. They would have the 'immortal' special ability.

So my race wouldn't be magic heavy. However my troops would be magic resistance 18 and quite able to kill thugs all on their own given any sort of numerical superiority. They would cost lots, in gold and especially resources, but I'd likely need only a dozen to take most independents. Start off the chassis with size three cave dwellers riding lizard mounts and add from there.

I can taste the blood in my teeth already. ;-)

[DigitalSin]

One note, you may have already picked this up, but hey.. There's no mention for any sort of underwater fortress..

[DigitalSin]

Bumps.

[DrPraetorious]

Work on this is on hiatus until I finish my megamod *and* my black tome mod for the new patch version; I'm doing preliminary work now.

This system is intended to provide scrupulously internally-balanced units. The units in the vanilla game, and the units in the megamod, are not-so-scrupulously-internally-balanced (i.e. some of each nations units are better than others.)

[Zylithan]

boo....

but seriously, you can only do so much http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif
and all your projects sound cool.
have fun with whatever you do in whatever order, and thanks.

[Panpiper]

DrPraetorious said:
This system is intended to provide scrupulously internally-balanced units.


I am SO looking forward to this.

[Endoperez]

Personally, I think this project's is doomed to fail. Perfect] isn't a good target. Reasonably good balance would be MUCH easier to do, and would probably get used more. The fort lists, as an example, are great.

Some reorganizing would help a lot. HTML form would be good, and some kind of hyperlinks are compulsory IMHO. Example:
1) troops
1.1) races; if human, go to 1.2
1.2) technology: melee weapons
1.3) technology: missile weapons & mounts
1.4) technology: armor
1.5) units and chassises
2) commanders
2.1) mages
2.2) thugs
2.3) others


etc etc.

The idea is that if you're creating a new nation, you can do it in order, write down what you just chose, and go on to the next part. Also, everything should be named - this paragraph is about Non-priest Sacred Commanders, pass if you aren't interested. At the moment, there's no easy way to get past the race creation - especially as it ends on a list of weapons, and the next section is about weapons and armor.

Also, there should be rules for exceptions. What if my selection is a mix between two of your choices. Say, I want to use Bronze Armor I, but also Ice Studded Armor. The latter isn't worth 125 points on its own. What should I do? The armor lists are very good idea, but what about Super Plate and some cheaper type of armor, etc combinations? Do I have to pay for both?

[DrPraetorious]

Ordinarily what you'd do is: you'd have one "race" with bronze armor and another "race" with studded ice. It's kind of a book-keeping headache.

It isn't going to be "perfect" but it is intended to be *scrupulous* - meaning, if you spend more points on troops, *all* of your troops get better (cheaper, if nothing else.) Some nations get units which are bad-*** and don't pay extra gold for the privilege - how do I balance that? etc. etc.

The idea is that if you have one super-infantryman and a bunch of crap, you won't ever recruit the crap anyway, so it's free.

But obviously there need to be exceptions for this - for example, archers and infantrymen really do fulfill different roles, and some nations should have superior archers vs. other nations which don't.

Spearmen and swordsmen are *supposed* to fulfill different roles, but the extent to which they do so is not what might be desired.

So I'm thinking carefully about it http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[DigitalSin]

I didn't mean to be pushy about you continuing this, in fact I found it a good jumping off point into starting a mod that got cut down by a bad case of the lazies.

[DrPraetorious]

Well, anyone who wishes can feel free to modify it and post new versions, but I'm not going to put further work into it any time soon.

The original idea was a sort-of warhammer type thing were you would build your own army lists, pick out and/or modify the art you needed, and play the custom nations against eachother in MP; it would also be useful as a rough guideline for those designing mod nations, but that wasn't the *point*, as such.