Making new components.bmp

[Ed Kolis]

Questband? Sounds like a variant of Angband
And not to bring politics into the mod, but isn't Crusade a bit limited to, umm, Christianity, not fantasy worlds?
Why would orcs be *smaller* than other races? Aren't they the big hulking brutes?

[Fyron]

In some mythos, yes. In others, such as Tolkein's middle earth, orcs are small and decrepid. It all depends on what you are trying to represent.

[Azatol]

I wanted to represent the idea of Orcish hordes, and the rarity of Elves. The KT doesn't represent their real size, but their hordish nature. Basically I'm just trying to say they come in bigger crowds and that Elves are more sparse.

As for crusade, can you think of a better name for larger, but not huge groups of people on an expedition? Things like squad/platoon, etc are a little too modern and not fantasy themed as much. I was thinking of Questbands as like the kind of questing teams formed in MMOs (8 people in City of Heroes, 5 in WoW, which is how I picked those two sizes).

If I wanted to go more warcraftish I could call the bigger vehicles Raids I suppose.

[Ed Kolis]

How about Party and Expedition?
For the races, consider the tractor-beam effect: only big ships can tractor-beam smaller ships. Assuming some unit is going to have the "tractor beam" or "repulsor beam" damage type (perhaps a Grappler, Wind-Mage, or somesuch?) you might want to have the vehicle sizes set up properly... how about something like this:
Orcs are 40kT components and their "party/expedition" hulls are 200kT - 2000kT (5 - 50 orcs)
Humans are 30kT components and their "party/expedition" hulls are 90kT - 900kT (3 - 30 humans)
Elves are 20kT components and their "party/expedition" hulls are 40 - 400kT (2 - 20 elves)

This way you get the benefits of large parties for orcs as well as the proper sizing of individual characters!

[Azatol]

I think I'd keep the normal ship sizes for the normal races and then do as you say with Elves and Orcs.

I also currently give some extra space in the ship sizes for horses (movement) and packs (supply and cargo). I never knew that rule with tractor beams.

I've play tested the Human set a bit and found combat to be a little slow, but also interesting. I had three big battles and all of them were grinding long battles that lasted multiple attacks and left lots of warriors on both sides dead. The tactical map is really a bit big, because archers can retreat for a long time before meleers and pole ranged fighters can back them against the wall. So I've uped movement speeds a bit and I'll see if 30 turns is enough now.

The balance between melee, pole, ranged and spellcasters (as well as speciality units like the Orc elephant) is pretty delicate. Pole and Melee units are both going to take plenty of weaker shots from ranged units, but I want things to work out so unsupported those ranged units will get mowed down once melee combat starts. That happened pretty much, already, but archers are able to fire and retreat rather well because of Se4's mechanics.

I still need to test how max range strategy works with the archers firing against meleers, and I suppose that will influence my balancing.

Pole ranged units, on the other hand, seem to do best in situations where the melee positions are filled up by other parties. Lots of meleers can get things clogged up whereas ranged and pole units can fire more effectively in big battles.

I've got Orcs designed and their components are included, now I just need to add them in, and I still need to test the human high tech warriors (Gunman).

All I can say for battles, is find out what mount your enemy is using before battle. I had 11 Small Questbands with regular unmounted archers and knights lose to 3 Medium Questbands with Heroic mounted knights (of course the 3 ships cost a lot more too). Number of ships doesn't tell everything with the way mounts are currently.

I may have to increase overall damage levels to make combat a bit more swift. Its not bad in strategic, except you'll need to attack more than once often in even battles, but in tactical the battles take forever and don't resolve a lot. Especially with lots of archers with their low damage attacks.

[Suicide Junkie]

SE4 shouldn't be played tactical. Especially if you've got large armies.

Having the battles take a long time is good!
That means it isn't an all-or-nothing thing, and you can retreat if you are outmatched.

[Kamog]

Is there a way in which you can retreat from a battle?

[Fyron]

SE4 does not support retreat.

[Suicide Junkie]

Which is why you need multi-turn combats.
If you attack on turn 1, and see that you're losing after the turn processes, you can order a retreat on turn 2.

For example, in CB3, I got into a 300 vs 400 ship battle. After letting the turn grind away that night, there was 600 ships left, lots crippled. Either of us could have ordered a full retreat at that point.

I pulled out a handful of weapon-less but still fast ships, my empty carriers and miscellaneous others. The rest of my ships I left there as cannon fodder to help the reinforcements I was bringing.
The other guy seemed to leave all his ships there by choice too. Maybe he thought he was winning, since he had more than me still.
By turn #3, it was too late for him, as his fleet was decimated over a number of combat events, and he only escaped with 10 or 20 ships.

[Azatol]

In my tests I had one with about 12 ships on each side, one side being mostly archers and the other with more spearman. Because movement was too slow when I did the test, it was a lot of turns of ranged attacks softening up both sides.

The main reason I like tactical is I have a hard time telling what happened in strategic since it goes by so fast and you don't know whether some strategic blunder was the problem or if it was simply weak units. I'm balancing for strategic though, since everyone seems to use that more. (Plus I want this Fantasy Mod to be AI friendly. May have to rearrange the order of the mounts in CompEnhancement so the AI doesn't get carried away with uberexpensive Mythical mount components late game.)