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This topic contains 55 replies, has 8 voices, and was last updated by 
Hiliadan 3 years, 9 months ago.
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Hi, dear devs!
There are touch strength modifiers in mod editor which let you increase working strength for different abilities, spells etc (in theory). Currently they’re not working. Yes, they present in editor, you can attach it to units, but without visible effects.
Can you make them working? Please. They will add some nice ways to balance abilities, which are very weak against top-tier units in late game.
We’ll put it on the list of things to look at, but it won’t really be high priority.
Cheers!
Please put it on higher priority, it’s a very important tool for the community to be able to create mod that balance the game. If Triumph does not patch the game any more, we need to have tools to do it ourselves.
Another request from modders: http://aow.triumph.net/forums/topic/could-we-get-the-full-leader-collada-rig
It looks like the “leader rig” (I actually have little idea what I’m talking about, just copying what Charlatan said) is bugged. Could you please fix this or explain how to work around it? It’s very important to add a new race in a community-made expansion.@touch strength modifiers
We added a new unit property that can be used to change the strength of resistance checks. See: AoW Unit Property: Resist Strength Modifier.
Just to be clear. We didn’t fix the properties like requested, instead we added a new type of property in code that can be use to get the same effect. I.e. increase the strength of resisted abilities.
Zaskow, please give this a go and check if this is working as intended. We did do a quick test, but won’t use this feature ourselves. So you are likely the one that will run into any non-obvious issues.
UPDATE: This just went live in the open beta.
@leader rig
Should be resolved by this post.
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This reply was modified 5 years, 10 months ago by
SikBok.
Thanks SikBok!
Other requests that would really help us a lot to balance the game since you do not plan to balance it any more:
– provide a way to give a property (I think it’s called a “requisite” in AoW3’s modding jargon) to a unit on strategic map, based on what happened on the tactical map. That would allow to give “Mercenary” for instance to units converted in TC and make their upkeep cost +25% gold. I assume this is pretty complicated for you to add but who knows?
– allow HP loss to be expressed in % of the unit current or maximum HP for spells and abilities. For instance, Invoke Death causes -40 HP if it fails. What I propose is to allow us to make it cause -75% for instance (we want to use that to make Last Rite of Winter cause -50% HP to Ice Queens or to make units affected by Death March lose 50% of their max HP for 1 turn)
– make it possible to remove an ability, and even better, make it possible to temporarily remove an ability. We would use that for 1/ replacing Lesser Reanimate Undead by Greater Reanimate Undead when a hero chooses GRU and 2/ remove Regrowth and Life Stealing for 1 turn for units affected by Death March.We had balance changes with broad support that we were not able to implement due to all the issues listed above. If you can solve just one of them, that would already be great!
provide a way to give a property (I think it’s called a “requisite” in AoW3’s modding jargon) to a unit on strategic map, based on what happened on the tactical map.
We can have a look at adding a requisite to units that have been mind controlled. I assume this is the intended use?
Unfortunately the other features are not feasible.
Ok, it’s sad for the other needs but it would be great for units that have been mind controlled. So these units would have this requisite on the strategic map AFTER the fight is finished, right?
Feature has been implemented by now, should be in a future update of the patch. The patch note for it is:
- Modders can now add a requisite to units who stolen from other players using mind control. The requisite is applied to the unit when battle ends.
That should do the job right?
That should! Thanks! That opens the possibility for a very different playstyle for converted units! Eager to test that!!
About setting things up with this feature [from the team member who added the feature].
Requisites cannot be removed, as that’s their raison d’être. So, if you have 2 requisites – for different types of mind control effects – unit could in theory end up with both. That might then result in a double bonus, penalty, etc.
For example: I could use Seduce to get a unit, giving it the “Seduced” requisite. Then my enemy could use “Convert” on it, giving it the Converted requisite as well.
Easiest way to bypass this is to only have one requisite for all these things, or to just not care.
For the use we want to have, 1 requisite “Mind controlled” would be enough. Because we want to give them +25% upkeep.
But you may want to distinguish them so that other modders can come up with other uses. However, I doubt many people will care if a unit has been seduced or converted. The key feature is that it has been mind controlled.Something that would be very very useful for users of mods (and indirectly for modders) would be if you could allow “shortcuts for bundle of mods” in the launcher interface. Right now, if you have a PBEM game with 5 mods and another one with 7 other mods, whenever you switch from one to the other, you have to click 12 times, to uncheck the 5 from the first and then check the 7 from the other. That’s a big hassle.
Some mods are also very often used together, e.g. Eomolch’s serie of mods, the future Shadow Realm community-made-expansion, etc.So the idea would be to have customizable “shortcuts” where you could for instance tick the boxes of 5 mods and then do “save as”, choose a name such as “Eomolch’s mods” and then, next time you can directly tick or untick the “Eomolch’s mods” box and the launcher ticks or unticks the 5 mods at once. It’s a kind of “parameters” saving.
Would it be possible?
Specifically for the Shadow Realm expansion, that would let us develop each mod (each Dwelling, each race, etc.) separately but then users would be able to configure it once, save it as “Shadow Realm” and then in all their next launches, they can play with or without it with one click.
That would also seriously boost the use of mods for Single player and PBEM as right now it’s very tedious to use many mods, especially if you want to switch from one config to another.And in case of conflicts between mods, it would work the same as now.
So the tool would just provide “graphical” (one box to tick instead of many) shortcuts, nothing else.-
This reply was modified 5 years, 5 months ago by Hiliadan.
Hello devs! What’s up with this proposal? Do you think you can implement it? Even if you cannot now but think you can in the future, it would be really useful for us to know now, as it will radically change how we build the Shadow Realm expansion.
Thanks! 🙂
Theoretically, probably. Practically, likely not for a good while.
Even if we do a patch with new features for AoW3, there’s a number of feature requests that would benefit more people than mod specific features.
Also, if I’m not mistaken there are ways to merge or wrap mods with the mod tools. I’d suggest pursuing that approach.
Ok, thanks for the answer, then we’ll try another way.
But as far as we know, there is no practical way to MERGE mods, you can only create dependencies or put one into the other but the users will still need to tick the boxes of several mods to launch them, whereas what we want is to launch several mods by ticking 1 box, which is much more user-friendly.Not tested this myself, but the system should allow the following.
Make a mod pack mod. In the mod, link all the mods you want as dependencies. The launcher won’t tick these as ‘will load these’ but the underlying content system will load all the dependencies.
Then the mod itself is either empty, or contains whatever you need to guarantee mod compatibility.
In function this is identical to the shortcuts system you described above, as it takes a single click to activate a set of mods.
Again, I’ve not seen this working but should be supported. It might be worth a go if you really want to have something like the feature you discussed.
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This reply was modified 5 years, 4 months ago by
Make a mod pack mod. In the mod, link all the mods you want as dependencies.
Do you mean click on ‘Packages’ and set needed? If I don’t tick needed packages with empty mod than game says about missing packages.
Do you mean click on ‘Packages’ and set needed?
Yes, that’s it.
If I don’t tick needed packages with empty mod than game says about missing packages.
Sorry, not sure what you refer to here.
Well, last question isn’t actual already.
I’ve found a completely different workaround for integrating Reskin visual pack into my mod fast and handy. Thanks for advices!BTW, devs, you should know, but editor doesn’t mark in red strings already edited by other mods…
BTW, devs, you should know, but editor doesn’t mark in red strings already edited by other mods…
@devs: please see how Zaskow managed to do the merging here: http://aow.triumph.net/forums/topic/merging-2-mods-into-one/#post-250838
As he said in the quote above and as I explained in the post there, it is made quite difficult by the fact that the strings modified by dependency mods are not displayed in red. Would it be possible to change that? (and maybe put them in another color, to distinguish them from changes brought by the “main” mod) That would significantly help our work for the Shadow Realm expansion and that would help compatibility mods in general.====
We try to keep our requests to the minimum that is strictly necessary as we know your time for AoW3 is limited and you need to focus on the new project.
With that in mind, I would like to ask if you could tackle this specific issue which we were not able to tackle with the mod tools and that are really problematic for balance:
– Units acquired during a fight (mind-controlled or ghouled) start with 0 MP on the strategic mapThanks! 🙂
EDIT: I removed one request (“Converted units” for Ghouled units) as Zaskow explained below he could implement it himself.
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This reply was modified 5 years, 3 months ago by Hiliadan.
Thanks for implementing this one! However, you did not include the units ghouled through Inflict Ghoul Curse (or Ghouling Strike in the case of the balance mod), would it be possible to add them? We also want an increased upkeep for them as IGC is clearly a form of mind-control which allow snowballing.
Yes, it’s possible. You can add any requisites while ghouling.
Units acquired during a fight (mind-controlled or ghouled) start with 0 MP on the strategic map
We’ll have a look at that one for the next patch.
For the sake of allowing for a stronger AI, what I would really like to see is an XP multiplier for AI players. Something like 4 difficulty levels, +33%, +67%, +100% +150%.
This would make the AI armies a lot more competetitive.
Since you’re still taking ideas, is there any way to cap experience at an encounter to a preset amount as determined by the defenders? I think something like this approach would help the most in neutralizing experience farming down by players. My simplest idea is that when the limit is reached, no more experience may be gained the rest of the combat. This limit would extend to using abilities, attacking/being attacked, etc. It is a hard limit across the board. Ideally, the limit would be determined by the defenders (e.g. higher tier units provide a higher threshold). I would love, love, love to see this and I think most players in the PBEM world would as well. Granted, the PBEM balance mod has made significant strides, but experience farming will always be an exploit if there is no hard limit, in my opinion.
Try MY mod instead. 🙂
On a more serious note, no matter the mod, I think that after addressing touch abilities, RANGED damage is the problem, because ranged damage is different in some ways.
To make it short – I thought a long time about this, since this isn’t, to my knowledge, in any way moddable – what I think is, that a limit would be good on how many ranged contacts for any unit against any specific unit on the battlefield should be counted, and that limit should be a) the killing shot and b) 1 full ranged attack, which means, 1 Crossbowshot or spear throw and 2 contacts with a bow or sling or bolt. PER SINGLE UNIT, mind you. So if you had a Longbowman against a force consisting of two Swordmen, your Elf would be able to get XP for two hits EACH.Guys, I think you hijacked our post. 😛
Farming of XP could be fixed pretty easy – just delete all xp income for heroes from attacks, abilities and casting, leave xp for killing blows only.
Well, yes and no.
For one thing, in my opinion and if I’m not completely wrong, you can easily mod a hard XP cap into the game – I think, I can do that in 5 minutes, and I will try to in my lunch break and then post it in the mod section.
However, if we want a more involved system, the available tools are not enough; for one thing, with autocombat being what it is, humans will get more XP as a matter of course, when there is no hard cap – so something like an AI multiplier for XP gain would be great to boost AI. For another, ranged XP gain is just too rewarding in terms of XP gain (the advantages of ranged combat are already enough of a reward), so with a complex system like we have, ranged combat XP gain should be separately adjustable.
I’m modding the game as well, mind you.
so something like an AI multiplier for XP gain would be great to boost AI
AI Exp multiplier isn’t hard to implement, because AI has already enough different buffs for its units.
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This reply was modified 5 years, 10 months ago by
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