Skaven development thread

[aaglo]

Rats: yes.
Skavens: who knows

 

[drzoidberg]

What's that? A nose? Looks stylish

And about those rats with tunneling (=paradrop) ability: how about making just a single animation, where dirt starts flying from a point in the ground, scattering all over - and that's all. This animation could be used with all skavens, which have the tunneling ability (without requiring to make unique tunneling tunneling animation for each unit)?

Spoken like a true do'er rather than a dreamer/requester. I don't think anybody will complain in the least even if I think we'd all loved an elaborate animation for every unit

 

[drzoidberg]

How about the implemantation of clans. That's something we haven't discussed at all. And I do realize this is all academic without units. But should we just ignore it and have them as units rather than clans. or should the clans be technologies that can be discovered that allow units to be reasearched. (ie Pestilen's discovery of Nurgle = chemical warfare, Eshin's westward migration = ninjas, Moulders animal breeding, Skryre's warp weapons).

CLAN PESTILENS
Followers of Nurgle, (and the horned rat).
Wearing very ragged brown robes with holes in them.

CLAN ESHIN
ninja's. Skaven from the East.
Black robes with samurai swords.

CLAN MOULDER
Animal breeders and trainers.
Having leather tight fitting clothes with plenty of animal skulls dangling.
http://uk.games-workshop.com/skaven/who-are/images/throt.jpg

CLAN SKRYRE
Plenty of warpfire heavy weapons and menacing contraptions.
Wearing plenty of bling-bling and colorfull adorned robes.

http://uk.games-workshop.com/skaven/who-are/

This ended up to be quite a long post. BTW, It's these four clans who sit on the council.

 

[aaglo]

How about the implemantation of clans. That's something we haven't discussed at all...

Spoken like a true dreamer/requester rather than a do'er.

 

[drzoidberg]

Spoken like a true dreamer/requester rather than a do'er.

well, what can I say. You got me!

edit: can you blame me for trying to inspire the do'ers!

 

[CyberChrist]

Preferred Government: Chaos

Without knowing what Chaos government looks like - aren't Skaven very Feudal by nature - with all the clans and all?

Civilisation Traits: Scientific, Religious

Industrious/Expansionist or at least Industrious/Religious seems to fit Skavens better imho. They may invent some aweinspiring crazy stuff but they can hardly be said to be serious and disciplined scientists(most often they are inspired in fits of insanity due to their regular contact with the otherwordly Warpstone), but they certainly breed and spread fast though.

...lots of the Skaven creations require warpstone: the warpfire thrower, the ratling gun, the warplightning cannon. so to make these units a source of warpstone would have to be first discovered and then exploited...this could be a serious handicap, especially if most of the skaven foot units are physically weak (less HP). any thoughts?

Warpstone should appear with a starter tech given only to Skaven - and non tradeable of course - so that only Skavens would be aware of the locations of Warpstone (unless other races will also get stuff that requires Warpstone now also that is). This would make sense as the Skaven was originally mutated from 'regular' rats after coming into contact with Warpstone.

Skaven Ogre Rats are mutated even further using Warpstone and are quite strong - but should probably be quite expensive also ... as well as requiring Warpstone to create - heh.

Another thing might be to give them a small wonder that allows healing in enemy territory (some Skaven in the top heirarchy eat Warpstone to heal themselves). This should require Warpstone to build also of course.

Conclusion must be that Skavens remain weak and in serious trouble, if they fail to gain and hold access to Warpstone. If Warpstone is only visible to the Skaven it will be hard for opponents to know where to block/pillage though.

 

[drzoidberg]

Without knowing what Chaos government looks like - aren't Skaven very Feudal by nature - with all the clans and all?

well, the govornements we can't mess with since Embryodead has done what he's done with that. Read about it for more info.

Warpstone should appear with a starter tech given only to Skaven - and non tradeable of course - so that only Skavens would be aware of the locations of Warpstone (unless other races will also get stuff that requires Warpstone now also that is). This would make sense as the Skaven was originally mutated from 'regular' rats after coming into contact with Warpstone.

There is only one problem. Warpstone is allready in the MOD and it is tradeable. Changing the whole MOD to fit "our" new civ I think is a bit much to ask since loads of uppgrades, buildings and units rely on it.

Skaven Ogre Rats are mutated even further using Warpstone and are quite strong - but should probably be quite expensive also ... as well as requiring Warpstone to create - heh.

I'm not arguing.

Another thing might be to give them a small wonder that allows healing in enemy territory (some Skaven in the top heirarchy eat Warpstone to heal themselves). This should require Warpstone to build also of course.

Being chaos I think they can get necromany which is just that.

 

[egroen]

"Warpstone should appear with a starter tech given only to Skaven - and non tradeable of course - so that only Skavens would be aware of the locations of Warpstone"

I love this idea... it brings such a unique aspect to this "tribe". I could accept it being a tradeable tech just to ensure the skaven can start with it. This is a such a great idea, I hope it gets picked up.

 

[Kyriakos]

So is this a mod?
I planed to make some nomad cities, but i could make skaven ones i guess, if i have a pic

 

[LMR]

this is just a development thread so we can put a skaven race into embryodead's warhammer mod.

since warpstone is already in the mod, we could add a new skaven-only resource called 'raw warpstone' or something that can't be traded and is available early.

@kinboat: fantastic! although would it be possible for the head to be more front-on like the other LHs?

 

[CyberChrist]

@drzoidberg: Ok, I am not currently familiar with the workings of the existing Warhammer mod (without Skavens it had little appeal to me, heh) but I am sure a little tweaking could be done to accomodate this wonderfull sneaky race .

I guess I better download the mod though and have a look at what is doable without too much tweaking .

 

[CyberChrist]

Mod downloaded and studied. Great work btw

I agree that of the goverments in the mod Chaos does probably fit Skavens the best.

Regarding Warpstone then the easiest solution would be to simply let Skavens have the Meteoric Iron tech as their bonus start tech. This should give them a little extra time to locate this essential resource and even though it also give them a headstart at building The Cursed Pit (which I actually find rather fitting) then it is a minor advantage at best and under most circumstances acutally a disadvantage since Skavens wont have any tech to trade right from the start.

As for the wonder Liber Mortis that already allows healing in enemy territory then it comes fairly late with Dark Arts and has no resource requirements as well as having to do with raising and destroying the undead which is not the same as drawing on the raw powers of a Warpstone. I still think a seperate small wonder available earlier, but only to the Skavens, would be a nice support for their mostly weak units.


I suggest the following:

Start techs for the Skaven race
- Chaos
- Disease Immunity
- Woodworking
- Meteoric Iron

Warpstone Affinity
Small wonder that heals units in enemy territory
Req. advance: Disease Immunity
Req. resource: Warpstone (not necessarily in city radius)
Req. building: Wizard's Guild
Obsolete with: Despotism (to disallow the Slann from building it also)

 

[LMR]

metoeric iron requires smithing. is it possible to give a free tech that has prerequistites?

 

[aaglo]

yes it is. with ten characters

 

[drzoidberg]

Regarding Warpstone then the easiest solution would be to simply let Skavens have the Meteoric Iron tech as their bonus start tech. This should give them a little extra time to locate this essential resource and even though it also give them a headstart at building The Cursed Pit (which I actually find rather fitting) then it is a minor advantage at best and under most circumstances acutally a disadvantage since Skavens wont have any tech to trade right from the start.

I'm cool with your suggestions Cyberchrist, except in the head start to Meteoric Iron. Loads of people have playtested the existing civs, (including myself) and a ballance has been found with the existing civs. Changing around stuff that might be essential for some peoples strategy I'm not cool with.

We could give them a starting technology called "warpstone forging" or something that works in combination with the "meteoric iron" discovery. I know it wouldn't make any sense until they've got warpstone, but for playability it would work. Then we could attach wonders and wotnot to the warpstone forging discovery. They would still be able to build the cursed pit but now on more equal terms.

 

[drzoidberg]

I planed to make some nomad cities, but i could make skaven ones i guess, if i have a pic

city apearance is defined by cultural group right? And there is a hard coded limit to 5 right? I'd regretfully say that all space for Skaven cities is used up.

There is another problem. They live under ground. If they would come up on the surface they would live in cities built by other races, (or their sewers). So I guess that a delapidated human city would work wonders, if ever it could be used, (considering the culture-group limit)

 

[aaglo]

how about using the dwarf city graphics - after all, don't they occupy many older dwarf strongholds?

 

[LMR]

in my mod i'm using the evil mountain-type of buildings.
@aaglo: what did you mean - 'yes it is. with ten characters'?

 

[Mr. Do]

The "ten characters" was just referring to his post, which needed to be more than ten characters (as in letters and spaces) before it could be submitted. try making a post consisting of just "yes it is" and you'll see.

the chaos evil buildings would work best for Skaven I think, too.

 

[CyberChrist]

I'm cool with your suggestions Cyberchrist, except in the head start to Meteoric Iron. Loads of people have playtested the existing civs, (including myself) and a ballance has been found with the existing civs. Changing around stuff that might be essential for some peoples strategy I'm not cool with.

I am not sure if you are misunderstanding what I am saying - there is no changing around of anything with what I suggest. You can assign Meteoric Iron to the Skavens as a start tech without changing the tech tree in any way. Meteoric Iron would still require Smithing as a prerequisite for researching the normal way for other civs. The Pro for the Skaven is obvious, but the Con is that they wont have a start tech to trade with other races (unless someone gets Smithing fast).

We could give them a starting technology called "warpstone forging" or something that works in combination with the "meteoric iron" discovery. I know it wouldn't make any sense until they've got warpstone, but for playability it would work. Then we could attach wonders and wotnot to the warpstone forging discovery. They would still be able to build the cursed pit but now on more equal terms.

The whole point is that Skavens need to be able to see the location of Warpstone from the start, as they were created by their contact with it.

If you think their early access to build the expensive The Cursed Pit wonder would make a serious difference then that could be fixed by moving that wonder to Smithing or perhaps Construction, but since Warpstone is required to build this wonder you would still need the Meteoric Iron tech before you could build it. This, of course, would shift the value of the techs affected in the AIs eyes.