Age of Wonders: Planetfall - Dev Diary #5: Tactical Combat

[Thrake]

And having 4 numbers in a row made it hard to quickly process how much damage you'd actually do. Removing 1 of the numbers makes it easier to parse, it also means we can have interfaces that tell players things like "If all 3 hots hit, the target will die", which is hard to do properly with randomized damage.

Could you add a little sign that says there's a chance that the attack will kill the target (bonus points if it conveys likeliness to kill, ie. you need all hits or just one hit)? Sounds like a little something but that would actually save some maths which I'm now used to has no game tells me that as far as I can remember.

 

[Tombles]

The current interface has a hit point bar over the target unit. When you target a unit, the amount of damage you do will flash on that hit point bar, so if the whole bar is flashing you know that your attack can possibly kill the target.

 

[Draxynnic]

There are several problems with AoW3's system:

1) Defense/Resistance are flat damage reduction, which works well when most damage values are in a tight range, but not when you have a wide range. A unit with 16 defense is good if everyone does 8-12 damage, but not against units that do 20+ damage. Against such high damage you need 20+ defense, but then normal attacks of 11 damage do nothing.

Honestly, I considered this as something of a 'hidden feature'.

Certain attacks really should be better at punching through armour than others. A barrage of arrows has a good chance of bouncing off heavy armour and shields, while a volley of musket balls (or a cannonball) probably won't care as much. Any armour a normal human-sized creature could wear probably isn't going to help much against a blow from a giant or a dragon, but may render them near-impervious to a halfling Nightguard. It also meant that, for all the confusion over whether defence/resistance or protection/weakness applies first, there is a clear delineation between circumstances where one or the other is more valuable. Against relatively light attacks, you want defence or resistance to reduce them to minimum. Against a Dreadnaught's machines, conventional armour might not help you much, but physical and fire resistance will take you far if you can get it.

Which all makes sense. Armour won't help much against a cannonball, but being incorporeal will help you about as much against a cannonball as against a halfling waving a sword through you. While for melee attacks there was a pretty clear-cut case that bigger numbers are better, in the case of ranged attacks, you did have a distinction between multishot attacks that usually did smaller damage numbers per 'packet', and thus were good for eliminating lightly-armoured targets but might struggle against high Defence values, and single-shot attacks that could only fire once every turn (or not even that!), but the large packet size meant that they still achieved a good proportion of their damage even against heavy armour. Coincidentally, the slower-firing weapons also tended to be the ones you'd think should be good against armour: a hail of bullets from halfling slingers probably won't do much more than rattle against plate, but a hail of bullets from musketeers is another prospect altogether.

That said, there are other ways to represent this sort of thing in this system. For instance, certain attacks might ignore certain components of the target's defences, or they might reduce the effect of defences by a flat value (something that will probably be more effective against a target with a high defence value than something with little or no defence due to the way the formulas work). However, I think the AoW3 system actually worked fairly well for what it was looking to handle: there are some attacks where armour makes a big difference, and some where it really doesn't.

 

[Tombles]

Honestly, I considered this as something of a 'hidden feature'.

You are perfectly correct, unfortunately it was completely screwing with the basic balance of combat and we were struggling to fix it. For example, sniper rifles became a counter for tanks, since they have high spiking damage, which was just weird. Also, high spiking damage is still very effective against things with low armor, so we ended up having to add armor bypass to weapons, so they would be better suited against armored units but less effective against low armored ones (like you suggested) and various other conditional effects (more damage vs armored units, double damage vs vehicles, half damage vs infantry, etc...)

It was very complex and started to become very opaque as well, and in the end we realized all the complexity was coming from us trying to force a system to do something it wasn't well suited to, which is when we flipped to a proportional system.

I do really like the AoW3 system though, especially how it interacts with multiple damage channels. I hope we'll use it in any future fantasy games we do.

 

[Draxynnic]

Mmmn, that does make sense. The fantasy setting is one where high damage usually means powerful attacks, and rarely the sort of precision attacks that can do high damage, but only if it has a weak spot to hit (like the aforementioned sniper rifles). So it's less that the mechanics are inherently problematic, it's that they're problematic in a postindustrial setting. (Okay, technically speaking you could call a dreadnaught empire "postindustrial", but dreadnaughts haven't invented sniper rifles. Yet.)

Keeping the AoW3 system for fantasy would probably work well, though. You could probably use the proportional system for an AoW4's equivalent to physical, magical, and elemental protections: this would have the effect of meaning that outright immunity is a separate ability rather than something you can achieve through layering enough protections, but that might be a good thing.

 

[Gloweye]

A set damage formula without randomization? Daring, but i like it. A lot.

 

[Elder Fogcrow]

I like randomness in combat, both chance to hit like in AoW/AoW2/SM, and a damage range instead of a fixed number.

 

[BloodyBattleBrain]

Looking forward to trying this out.

That sniper example makes perfect sense.

 

[Tanksy]

I hope to god you're including more than just "units killed" to the exp. I would hope for support ability use EXP, healing, etc.

That being said, I like the sound of it totalling up EXP and awarding it post-battle, because in AoW 2 and 3, sometimes a medal up would outright save a unit, or even turn a fight around.

Edit: The damage/armor changes sound good. I'm also glad to see hits/misses are making a come back, and that elevation sounds more important. In AoW 3 I don't think it really meant much, or was really present in the combat scenarios. AoW 2's elevation was pretty neat and worked as expected.

I also really like the unit card, with the abilities neatly in that menu.
UI-wise, will we still need to select the unit in detail to view all of its abilities if the unit has more abilities than fit on the hotbar? If you recall Tactical Combat in AoW 3, your selected unit had a "hotbar" of abilities in the top center of the UI, but if you wanted to use any other ability that didn't fit onto the hotbar, you had to manually select the unit to open the Unit card with all of the abilities and info listed, to select the ability you wanted. I much preferred AoW2's system where it was a straight up list when you selected the unit. Maybe a small list with a scrollbar could be incorporated instead of a hotbar of abilities.

 

[Draxynnic]

A set damage formula without randomization? Daring, but i like it. A lot.

Huh. I thought it was much like AoW3 - the damage formula with defences and protections and such calculates the expected damage, and the actual damage is randomised from there. But it's not stated either way (unless I've missed it).

Personally, I think there's such a thing as too much predictability. I recall one point where someone praising the original Starcraft's lack of randomness by pointing out that two hits from a Zealot couldn't kill a Zergling (assuming equal upgrades) but two Zealot hits and a Probe hit could, and said person proudly declaimed that (s)he mixed in one Probe per two Zealots in order to maximise Zergling-killing efficiency. Personally, I always thought that if things were so predictable that such counter-intuitive gaming of the system became optimal that it's too predictable.

That said, AoWPF might be safe from that because of its very different mechanics and wider range of possible battlefield conditions. For instance, the AoW games generally doesn't have 'worker units' with weak attacks on the field, so something like that particular example isn't likely to come up. As long as everything on the battlefield is something that's supposed to fight, then using a weak attack to finish off something that's been weakened by stronger attacks is just good tactics.

 

[mr_stibbons]

There's still miss and graze chances adding variance to the expected damage formula. It's not starcraft 1 level of predictable.

 

[Tombles]

UI-wise, will we still need to select the unit in detail to view all of its abilities if the unit has more abilities than fit on the hotbar? If you recall Tactical Combat in AoW 3, your selected unit had a "hotbar" of abilities in the top center of the UI, but if you wanted to use any other ability that didn't fit onto the hotbar, you had to manually select the unit to open the Unit card with all of the abilities and info listed, to select the ability you wanted. I much preferred AoW2's system where it was a straight up list when you selected the unit. Maybe a small list with a scrollbar could be incorporated instead of a hotbar of abilities.

I'm not sure yet! We just checked, and the current interface just breaks if you have too many abilities. We'll fix it though!

I hope to god you're including more than just "units killed" to the exp. I would hope for support ability use EXP, healing, etc.

Right now, there's only unit killed XP. The XP is equally divided between all participants of the fight though, so you don't need to do tricks to try and get your support people to get kills.

 

[Nerdfish]

You are perfectly correct, unfortunately it was completely screwing with the basic balance of combat and we were struggling to fix it. For example, sniper rifles became a counter for tanks, since they have high spiking damage, which was just weird. Also, high spiking damage is still very effective against things with low armor, so we ended up having to add armor bypass to weapons, so they would be better suited against armored units but less effective against low armored ones (like you suggested) and various other conditional effects (more damage vs armored units, double damage vs vehicles, half damage vs infantry, etc...)

It was very complex and started to become very opaque as well, and in the end we realized all the complexity was coming from us trying to force a system to do something it wasn't well suited to, which is when we flipped to a proportional system.

I do really like the AoW3 system though, especially how it interacts with multiple damage channels. I hope we'll use it in any future fantasy games we do.

Sniper rifles having high spike is questionable. it would kill one infantryman per shot. since infantry units come in squads sniper rifles would not realistically kill even the entire squad in one volley.
Damage and AP should be separate values. Something like DMG = WDMG - MAX(0, ARMOR-AP) There are fairly obvious situations where giant AP shells pass harmlessly through things without armor because the fuse does not go off.

 

[Leon Feargus]

I'm not sure yet! We just checked, and the current interface just breaks if you have too many abilities. We'll fix it though!

Good call by Tanksy. This is something that confuses newbie players and is annoying even for veterans. I remember that the argument was that too many abilities would compromise visibility on the tactical map but the solution, I think, was suboptimal. How about if the abilities are a single row (of 6 like previously or perhaps some more) but with arrow icons on the sides. The list (column) with scrollbar also sounds good.

Right now, there's only unit killed XP. The XP is equally divided between all participants of the fight though, so you don't need to do tricks to try and get your support people to get kills.

This should be great. I know this was proposed for AoW3 but can´t remember why it wasn´t implemented. It eliminates the problem of XP farming and probably benefits lower tier units because they are less likely to score a kill than higher tier units, which is another plus. I think the counter argument was that you could bring a unit into battle without actually using it and still get XP for it, but so be it.

 

[Jolly Joker]

Right now, there's only unit killed XP. The XP is equally divided between all participants of the fight though, so you don't need to do tricks to try and get your support people to get kills.

I'm going to play devil's advovate here and say that I actually like the general idea of the AoW3 system of XP gaining, and I'd have thought the next game could have rooted out the weaknesses. For example, units don't get XP for being hit by a ranged unit, which is a bit of a letdown.
I think there have been made a couple of mods that "fixed" the XP farming, simply by reducing the amount of viable contacts, and I would have though that a general fix would have been simple as in: in every battle a unit can get XP only ONCE for each "action".
I actually like the way AoW 3 (and I play with an XP mod as well) allows to pick which units to give XP. Maximizing the amount of XP you get out of a battle is not that different from minimizing the loss of HPs in a battle, the use of mana - or simply maximizing your hit chances and the damage you do. It's another part of the equation, a factor to keep in mind, something you CAN sink time and energy into to maximize, but don't HAVE to.

In contrast, if XP is given only for units killed and it's divided onto all surviving participants of a battle, we are at a very unsophisticated system that was used with the first Disciples game, which will simply lead to people finding other ways to maximize XP gain, for example by going into battle with minimum units.

It should be possible to find some system in between - for example, as mentioned, awarding each action only once in each battle - short of eliminating the whole process in favor of a quasi-automatic system.

 

[Tombles]

The core problem with AoW3's XP system was that, in PBEM games, it forced everyone to engage in weird and unnatural behavior in combat to try and maximize their XP gain. If a player didn't want to do that, they would be at a large disadvantage due to having weaker units to fight with, compared to a player who did. Now you can say that manipulating the XP system is part of the game, which is fine, but it's not something everyone wants to engage with; a lot of people want to have fast and fun battles without getting annoyed because they accidentally killed someone with an archer instead of a hero, or because they forgot to use one of the hero's support abilities during a battle.

When we were trying to fix this for AoW3 we came to the conclusion that the above problem isn't really fixable, it's inherent to a system that rewards a player XP for doing specific things in combat. If the game were single player, it wouldn't matter and we would have kept it, because farming XP like that is fun, but PBEM kind of forced our hand here. These kinds of compromises need to be made sometimes I'm afraid!

As for saying that people will maximize XP gain by bringing less units to combat, I'm fine with that, since they're doing something that makes the game genuinely harder and getting rewarded for it. There will probably be problems, like players favoring certain unit/mod combinations that make that easier, but no system is perfect here.

 

[Draxynnic]

Sniper rifles having high spike is questionable. it would kill one infantryman per shot. since infantry units come in squads sniper rifles would not realistically kill even the entire squad in one volley.

Depends on whether the sniper rifles are also being used by a squad.

 

[Jolly Joker]

The core problem with AoW3's XP system was that, in PBEM games, it forced everyone to engage in weird and unnatural behavior in combat to try and maximize their XP gain. If a player didn't want to do that, they would be at a large disadvantage due to having weaker units to fight with, compared to a player who did. Now you can say that manipulating the XP system is part of the game, which is fine, but it's not something everyone wants to engage with; a lot of people want to have fast and fun battles without getting annoyed because they accidentally killed someone with an archer instead of a hero, or because they forgot to use one of the hero's support abilities during a battle.

There could be a button, like, "advanced XP gaining system" to keep everyone happy - isn't that the way this is usually solved?

When we were trying to fix this for AoW3 we came to the conclusion that the above problem isn't really fixable, it's inherent to a system that rewards a player XP for doing specific things in combat.

Well, the reward players for doing THE RIGHT things (only). I mean, I'm pretty sure I fixed that problem (as much as it is solvable within the general rules of XP gaining in AoW3), which has been a problem not only because it's possible to farm XP, but also because it's so much more profitable to give XP to the heroes, no matter what.

I'll frankly say that if I go into a risky battle, end up badly damaged, but everyone of my team survived after a tough battle, and I get the same XP out of that battle than when I go in with a 10:1 superior force it will be a very disappointing experience.

I mean, the XP system in AoW 3 has been quite ambitious. It is a source of a lot of fun, but it could be exploited as it was. Is that really a reason to throw away the whole system for some drab system that AoW 2 had better (there the unit that did the kill got the XP).

How about adding some kind of multplier at least, based on the relation of XP worth? I mean, if I go in with an army worth 100 XP and kill a troop worth 10 XP, shoulöd that really give the same amount of XP to the participants than when I go in with an army worth 20 XP? Or 10 XP?

 

[Tombles]

I have to run now, so I can't answer in depth, but to be clear:

The system sums the XP value of all the enemy units you killed, and then it divides that sum by the number of units you and your allies entered combat with. The result is given to each of your surviving units.

So, if you enter a battle with fewer units, each surviving unit will get more XP at the end. You are correct though that the specific value of the units you entered with is not considered, though I'm not certain that would be a problem?

 

[Jolly Joker]

Well. Say you enter a battle against 3 (T2) tanks with 6 (T1) Inf with a Bazooka mod, kill the tanks, ending up badly damaged, but surviving - shouldn't that be worth more XP then if you enter battle with 5 T3 tank destroyers and blow them away?
In other words, shouldn't the XP gained in some way depend upon who took on what?