Orbis mod

Ahriman

Tyrant
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Jun 8, 2008
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Just tried out Orbis mod, on advice from PL and Opera.

Some nice features there.

a) I quite like the fort commander system. What I recommend we do is remove the ability of any faction to build watchtowers, but have the ancient towers generated as part of the map script, and have these uprgade over time into castles and fortresses. Steal the art too, the castle model is nice.
This makes sense to me lorewise to some extent; I seem to recall lots of stories of armies using old ancient fortresses built long ago, by technology they no longer possess. Some big forts up in Kislev IIRC.
WE could also place some of these forts in some key mountain passes in the WH world map (not in chokepoints so they block pathing, but in 2-wide sections, so units would have to move past them and be bombed in order to advance).

b) The ranged bombardment system is worth considering. In particular, allowing ranged units to bombard *and* move would make the AI use them a lot more. And having a "bombard strength" would reduce some of the problems where bombardment is too effective vs high-strength units; it shouldn't be as easy for a catapult to take 20% strength off a dragon than off a spearman. Catapults were imba in the old warhammer, and the

If we can balance catapults, we could remove their national limit.

c) The city ruins mechanic (for razed cities) seems interesting, and along the lines of battlefield mechanics that some people were talking about before.

d) I see no need for the minor leaders in the Warhammer setting, I see no real need for stronger animals and animal totems, and I see no real need for a bunch of guild corporations.
 
Yeah, on the nicer maps there are plenty of ruined towers all over the place. The only issue I have with ranged bombardment (at least in FF, haven't played Orbis for ages) was that auto-exploring units tended to run around archers and not run away when the archers started damaging them. Just requires a minimal amount of micro managing. Yes battlefields, yes yes.
 
a) I quite like the fort commander system. What I recommend we do is remove the ability of any faction to build watchtowers, but have the ancient towers generated as part of the map script, and have these uprgade over time into castles and fortresses. Steal the art too, the castle model is nice.
This makes sense to me lorewise to some extent; I seem to recall lots of stories of armies using old ancient fortresses built long ago, by technology they no longer possess. Some big forts up in Kislev IIRC.
WE could also place some of these forts in some key mountain passes in the WH world map (not in chokepoints so they block pathing, but in 2-wide sections, so units would have to move past them and be bombed in order to advance).
There is a similar system in FF IIRC. I'd support stealing the graphics. The castle, as you said, is pretty cool. I like the 2wide Mt. Pass idea. Definitely should add in Fort Commanders.
But I do think civs should still be able to build Watchtowers. Don't remove it completely. Move it up to Engineering maybe? Definitely find a way to keep the AI from spamming them. Prolly decrease the AI weight for watchtowers.

b) The ranged bombardment system is worth considering. In particular, allowing ranged units to bombard *and* move would make the AI use them a lot more. And having a "bombard strength" would reduce some of the problems where bombardment is too effective vs high-strength units; it shouldn't be as easy for a catapult to take 20% strength off a dragon than off a spearman. Catapults were imba in the old warhammer, and the

If we can balance catapults, we could remove their national limit.
I agree 100% with all this. It'd be much better than the current system. And making catapults balanced, definitely need that. We should prolly discuss seige engines in another thread.

c) The city ruins mechanic (for razed cities) seems interesting, and along the lines of battlefield mechanics that some people were talking about before.
Could you remind me what this does again? I've played Orbis. Been while. I'd download it now. But...download speeds are REALLY slow in my dorm. I'll prolly download it.

d) I see no need for the minor leaders in the Warhammer setting, I see no real need for stronger animals and animal totems, and I see no real need for a bunch of guild corporations.
Minor leaders ain't a good fit lorewise. Besides, it's just an add-on. Not needed. Same with the rest of this. We got enough stuff. We don't need add-ons, not unless we wanna have massive download times.
 
Could you remind me what this does again? I've played Orbis.

When a city is razed, city ruins appear as normal. These are unpillagable, and after 20 turns they turn into haunted ruins or something. Haunted ruins spawn a powerful 0-move stack defender, and occassionally spawn some weak undead (spectres). You can stop the spawn by killing the stack defender, and then exploring the haunted ruins as a dungeon.

Not a high priority.

I prefer this massively over some kind of battlefield effect.

However: this would be a big problem with the WH world map, which starts with a ton of city ruins, unless the undead spawns are weak and rare.
 
Ahriman said:
When a city is razed, city ruins appear as normal. These are unpillagable, and after 20 turns they turn into haunted ruins or something. Haunted ruins spawn a powerful 0-move stack defender, and occassionally spawn some weak undead (spectres). You can stop the spawn by killing the stack defender, and then exploring the haunted ruins as a dungeon.
Ok. That sounds kinda cool. I like that.


Ahriman said:
this would be a big problem with the WH world map, which starts with a ton of city ruins, unless the undead spawns are weak and rare.
Unless we could add a limiter of some sort...where all city ruins that are there at start on the WH map, cannot turn into haunted ruins.
We could prolly do this by making another city ruins improvement. (We'll have to make a "Haunted Ruins" improvement anyway.) Call it "Starting Ruins" or "Ancient Ruins" (& call the ruins that CAN upgrade to Haunted Ruins "City Ruins"). This improvement'll NOT be able to upgrade to Haunted Ruins.

If anyone has any alternative ideas, please present them. This is a cool idea. I'd like to be able to implement it.
 
it should just be 'city ruins' -> 'ancient ruins' -> haunted ruins.

Why? What is the gain of having 3 stages? If you want it to take longer, just increase the time it takes for one to turn into the next.
 
I agree.
 
We could prolly do this by making another city ruins improvement. (We'll have to make a "Haunted Ruins" improvement anyway.) Call it "Starting Ruins" or "Ancient Ruins" (& call the ruins that CAN upgrade to Haunted Ruins "City Ruins"). This improvement'll NOT be able to upgrade to Haunted Ruins.


you hipocrite you :p i was just continuing RLAF's train of thought.

i do agree its easyer to just have 2 levels.

whatever.
 
Well, I was suggesting we have 2 levels. The Ancient Ruins is just on the WH Map to keep the AI (& the Player) from being destroyed by undead spawns.
 
will city ruins give a summoner buff? We are including summon undead right? MWA HA HA HA HA
 
FF doesn't have Fort Commanders, FF+ does.

Minor leaders is a point I don't like; I mean, I like adding leaders because it feels constrained otherwise but I don't like the Minor trait mechanic.

As for the rest, I don't care... I'm basically here to code things, so, well :p
 
FF doesn't have Fort Commanders, FF+ does.
I get those 2 mixed up.

Minor leaders is a point I don't like; I mean, I like adding leaders because it feels constrained otherwise but I don't like the Minor trait mechanic.
I don't find Minor leaders very WH. Also, with the amount of factions we have, minor leaders'd be rediculous. That's a ton more leaders.
And guess what? Except for humans looking for a challenge or deciding to cripple the AI, no one's gonna use Minor Leaders.
The whole concept of Minor Leaders IIRC came out of the FfH scenarios, where they had several leaders like "Braeden the Laconic" & "Duke Sallos". WHFB has no scenarios as of yet. And making new minor leaders for no purpose is useless.
Maybe scenarios'd be cool later. But, as I'm gonna harp on for while, we have an alpha to finish. Worry bout minor leaders til later. As in AFTER the official public release.
 
I'm not saying you should use it, I'm saying it's . .. .. .. . :)
 
Minor leaders make no sense for WHmod, the leaders available are the best of the worst. (Karl Franz gets killed by his mutated son in Warhammer Roleplay btw).
 
Yeah, maybe try chilling.

But, anyway, since my "bad word" has been written out of my post, I was saying that minor leaders are completely useless. They're called "minor leaders" because of two things: 1) they aren't part of the main cast of FFH; 2) they use a crazy system invented by notque called the "minor trait mechanic" which is what I don't like.

As for the 1), we're using this for them because FFH2 has already its lore, so we have to have a way to refer to non canon leaders. That's all, nothing to worry about minor leaders...
 
Guys, everyone agrees we don't need minor leaders for WH. Nothing to see here, moving on.

Also, if we do use the fort commanders, then I suggest strongly against making them buildable; they are very, very powerful, and they make defense vs the AI far too easy, since the AI doesn't understand that it needs to focus on the fort and take it out fast, or lose its stack thanks to massive bombardment.

Also, if we adopt the Orbis bombardment system, we need to tone it down a little (and/or remove defensive strikes); archers are too powerful in that mod.
We should make it though so that archer bombardment doesn't take up the units movement/healing chance.
 
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