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[Il Palazzo]

I can max out its upkeep, no problem.

[Gollor]

Maybe it should be removed or reworked instead? Even with high upkeep this vessel is highly powerful.

[Margrave]

I like the changes, for the Vorox Guard to Cybervorox we should consider though that when it dies it will revert to the Guard. I forget it's stats but to prevent accidental cheese perhaps we could change the regular Vorox so it acts much like the Gene Warrior from Nova in that it didn't hit very hard but took damage like a champ.

Basically once a Cybervorox dies it would lose its offensive advantage but become at least partially useful as a meatshield until it was rebuilt.

I am ambivalent about the Obun.
I am pleased by Kebooos sentiments about Nobles devolving into monsters. Last game I lucked out and captured a ruin filled with three plague bombs as loot. It took all my willpower to stop myself from launching them.

I get the feeling we won't have such moral qualms this game.

[Il Palazzo]

Maybe it should be removed or reworked instead? Even with high upkeep this vessel is highly powerful.

It's just a bit better dreadnought, and just one of it. Besides, every house (sans Li Halan) has some form of unique, powerful-ish ships.

I like the changes, for the Vorox Guard to Cybervorox we should consider though that when it dies it will revert to the Guard.

When it dies, it dies, iirc. Much like space Marauders - they don't revert to their input unit, unless you specifically disband them.
We could make a house rule that disbanding them is just not an option.

Although in seriousness, I'm not a big fan of this:

a shitty scouting vessel you can send into enemy territory, protected by diplomatic immunity. Won't see much, but can't be attacked.

Frankly, just trying to give it some role that'd jibe with the name, and wouldn't be just a cheaper casino liner.
Any counter propositions what to do with it?

[Gollor]

Maybe it should be removed or reworked instead? Even with high upkeep this vessel is highly powerful.

It's just a bit better dreadnought, and just one of it. Besides, every house (sans Li Halan) has some form of unique, powerful-ish ships.

Oh, I meant diplomatic vessel. I am fine with Decados flagship, probably it even requires a bit increased hit points.

[Margrave]

Excellent, as long as it doesn't revert then that is a-okay by me.
One thought on the Obun is that Symbiots, like Mel Gibson, won't respect diplomatic immunity in the Quarantine Cluster. Except they are even more hostile than North Korea.
Perhaps we could go the reverse and turn them into attackable, but slightly worse stealth ships with high camo, horrible agility and okay spot? Kinda like a transition unit to the good stuff as I believe you also need alien tech research for them?
Or if it is even possible turn it into a PSYCH warship with no cargo?

[Il Palazzo]

Or if it is even possible turn it into a PSYCH warship with no cargo?

Huh. That should be actually doable, I think. We'd have to be careful not to make it overpowered, though. Psych works in the first round of space battles, so it can be used to e.g. kill those pesky fighters before your capital ships start shooting. It would suck if we ended up with disproportionate amounts of Obun vessels making up fleets.
However, all you need right now is a carrier with some psych-capable infantry (e.g. maintou irregulars) to get the same result.

What would be the right psych attack to give them?



Any thoughts on assassins? Should we give them indirect? Somebody wants to figure out how to make them work as in Nova?

[Gollor]

I am afraid that if we give them undirect attack they will be able to destroy full stacks once again. But now the enemy will not even have the capability to hurt them.

[Gollor]

Exactly, I think that if we increase their build time to 5 turns, give them (20 biochems, 20 exotics) cost and indirect(100|10) and close(50|5) attacks and maintenance(500) and previous moveset they will work just fine.
I mean, they will get hard to enmass, and they will not be so cool after all. While in small numbers they still will be deadly to another small numbers, they will never get big enough stacks to fight with another.

[Il Palazzo]

I've a brief, couple of days long pause in work, so I should be able to get this done soon. Tomorrow, hopefully.
I've two questions, though:

1. does anyone know, or want to research, how did the guys who made Nova manage to make assassins attack ranks 5 onwards preferentially? I'd really like to try copying their mechanics in this respect.

2. does anyone remember and want to give me short reminder of how map crafting was done? I need to make a quick dummy scenario for some battle tests (the .dat files indicate that 'hover' movement type is not only immune to air, but also to close attacks - which if true, would require some fixing)


Re: the Obun vessel, would 1 move, 9 spot, 1 camo, 3 agi, 15 armour, 9/80 psych, 2500 upkeep, 20 gems, 3 turns be an acceptable alternative?
It would then be a specialist ship, good for spotting and providing psych support for fleets (good for whittling out fighter cover), but pricey, slow, and vulnerable when alone.
The idea is that it's essentially this diplomat's, or ambassador's yaht, whose crew happens to be highly skilled psychics.

[Margrave]

2. No idea.

1. I have done some brief research into this looking at the Nova page and the Unit.dat in the Nova mod and will now proceed to regurgitate everything into a semi-cohesive mess. I'm not entirely sure but it might be some combination of unit rank, Nobles being immune to certain types of attack and the "wheel' designation in the unit.dat.

Note: Units marked foot* are type W (Wheel), but move the same as foot units. However, they are immune to indirect and direct fire.

Officers, assassins, spies, doppelgangers, nobles and blademasters are considered a "wheel" type.

We use the name "undercover units" to refer to Spies, SEALs (new unit), Assassins and Doppelgangers.

With the exception of SEALs, they [undercover units] are immune to indirect and direct fire. They can only be hit by close combat and psychic attacks. [To achieve this, their movement type had been changed to "wheel". However, this is just a technicality. For movement and spotting purposes, they still have the same characteristics as "foot" units.]

Every other "wheel-like" unit such as tanks/artillery are considered "tread". Looking at the Target.dat from the two mods I'm pretty sure it has something to do with it. The only units in Reality Wars that use wheel from the Unit.dat are the Symbiot Arcer, Flak Battery, Arillery Battery and Anti-tank Battery.

Nova's Target.dat

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

// Weapon Target Table
// EFS Nova. Last modified by Richard Wein 27/10/98
// Note: The "wheel" movement type is now used only for undercover units (spies etc.)
// weapon types: water, indirect, air, direct, close, psychic, ranged space,
//               direct space, close space.
{
//               WIADCPRsDsCs
   "foot"       "0 1 0 1 1 1 0 0 0"
   "wheel"    "0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0"
   "tread"     "0 1 0 1 1 1 1 0 0"
   "air"         "0 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0"
   "naval"     "1 1 0 1 0 1 0 0 0"
   "space"     "0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1"
   "hover"     "0 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 0"
   "jump"      "0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1"
   "crawler"   "0 1 0 1 1 1 1 0 0"
   "lander"    "0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1"

Reality Mod Target.dat

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

// Weapon Target Table
// weapon types: water, indirect, air, direct, close, psychic, ranged space,
//               direct space, close space.
//               w i a d c p rsds cs
   "foot"      "0 1 0 1 1 1 1 0 0"
   "wheel"   "0 1 0 1 1 1 1 0 0"
   "tread"    "0 1 0 1 1 1 1 0 0"
   "air"        "0 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0"
   "naval"    "1 1 0 1 0 1 1 0 0"
   "space"   "0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1"
   "hover"   "0 1 0 1 0 1 1 0 0"
   "jump"    "0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1"
   "crawler" "0 1 0 1 1 1 1 0 0"
   "lander"   "0 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 1"

Nobles/Blademasters are also rank 7 to the assassins rank 9, maybe this helps, maybe it won't.

From Nova for those not familiar:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Each unit type has a rank (a number 0-10), which represents how close to the front line it stands in combat. You can find the ranks for Nova units in the Nova Unit Chart.Units with lower rank are selected as targets before units with higher rank. However, units never attempt to fire at a target type that they cannot affect. Units will not double up against a single target unless there are no more targets available. Once a unit is destroyed, targets are reselected for subsequent attacks in the same phase.

and then

Assassins and Doppelgangers have the ability to assassinate personnel units. [...] A personnel unit is any ground unit with a rank of 6 or more, primarily Nobles, Officers, Clergy and undercover units.

also maybe

Certain units, such as Special Forces, which specialize in covert operations, have been given an indirect attack. This does not represent artillery fire but a "first strike" capability. (Special Forces recon the area, pinpoint weak spots, and prepare the site for an attack.)

When attacking a stack containing a Noble, their close combat ability targets the Noble, to the exclusion of other units, in effect giving them an assassination capability. This ability can also be used against Officers and other personnel units, but any Noble in the stack will be the first target.

Note: unspotted Doppelgangers can only be hit by Close fire with an accuracy of at least 3 or by Psych attack; if your stack contains no such units, be very careful not to get ambushed by Doppelgangers -- send a single ahead to reveal them. Stacks containing only hover units or artillery are vulnerable in this way.

The Nova creator also dropped his email on the Nova page. Worse comes to worse maybe we can ask him?
Also if we do go this route we need to take into account there are alot more Nobles in our game, if we make them immune to stuff we should also hit them with the nerf bat. I also also just had the devilish idea of making Nobles target other Nobles in the case of two armies with Noble leaders in combat. Personal duels and all that, if we go the route of making them sorta immune to some attacks.

-----------------------------------------------------------
For the Obun: Holy crackers that is an expensive unit. But I can see where you are coming from with it, and that PSYCH ability combined with the SPOT make it into a worthwhile investment. Once or twice at least.

Now with psychics how many times do they attack during their phase? I'd just like to know how many fighters I'd probably lose if I attacked a fleet with one before the other ships get to fire.

[Il Palazzo]

Psych attack takes place twice each round, so it's not overpowering. On the other hand, sometimes might be easier to kill a high-armour ship with psych attack than with regular cannons.

Re: the assassins, you pretty much found out as much as I did. What I don't know, is how they made it so that the assassins in Nova attacked higher ranks first (i.e. targeting nobles preferentially).
I remember they attacked everything from rank 6 onwards, and only cycled back to first ranks when no valid higher-rank targets were present. This is how the dopplegangers worked - by having rank 6, they were the only units that could protect nobles in the same stack from assassinations by soaking the damage.
That's what I'm trying to find out how they did.

I actually didn't mean to make nobles immune to any attacks. Introducing assassins that can pretty consistently kill a noble hiding in a huge stack, even if they'll be certainly obliterated in the process, makes nobles more vulnerable than they are now, so a nerf is hardly required.

[joulupunikki]

Re: the assassins, you pretty much found out as much as I did. What I don't know, is how they made it so that the assassins in Nova attacked higher ranks first (i.e. targeting nobles preferentially).
I remember they attacked everything from rank 6 onwards, and only cycled back to first ranks when no valid higher-rank targets were present. This is how the dopplegangers worked - by having rank 6, they were the only units that could protect nobles in the same stack from assassinations by soaking the damage.
That's what I'm trying to find out how they did.

IIUC This could be really simple ... in EFS the spy unit type, that is the 49th unit type in UNIT.DAT, is hardwired in EFS.EXE to preferentially target higher ranks, "assassinate". You don't need to do anything, just have your assassins in the 49th. So, anything in the 49th unit slot will "assassinate", nothing outside 49th will "assassinate". Just like the 45th unit type is always considered a noble (can vote on Byz II, must have at least one to stay in game) IIRC assassins will always "assassinate", even if the target is a battleship with a high rank.

Hmm, maybe the confusion here is that in vanilla EFS the fact is that assassin units are vulnerable to indirect and only have close themselves, so tend to be obliterated by arty before they have a chance to assassinate, and to make assassins more effective the nova team made assassins only vulnerable to close/psych using the wheel trick, thus enabling them to always attack at least once.

[Il Palazzo]

Hey, cheers mate. I thought it might have been something like that, but was thrown off by my vague memories of how it all worked in vanilla.

[Il Palazzo]

Alright then, I've done the following:

Spoiler: changes to spy units (click to show/hide)

All spy units are given indirect as their main 'assassination/undercover operations'-style attack. It has high accuracy, but no higher than medium damage, to discourage substituting them for actual artillery units and allow nobles a chance at surviving assassination attempts. (artillery units made a bit better to compensate)
Higher tier units given weak, secondary close attacks.
Remember, that indirect shoots twice, whereas close shoots four times, so they'll be inherently not as deadly as in Nova.

Spy units cost more resources.

They retain all vulnerabilities. I thought of copying Nova's solution with close-only combat, but that would no doubt result in tank-only armies being routed and captured by a single Scraver informant.
Their main defence will be very high agility, but attacks on large stacks are going to be nearly always suicidal.

Genetic assassins are renamed to doppelgangers, and will be one of three buildable units able to shield nobles from other assassins, the others being House Xanthippe Retinue (which now takes longer to build and costs more for this reason), and the Vorox Guard (now 1500 upkeep, and less efficient at the job than other two by the virtue of having the same rank as nobles, so whether it does or doesn't get targeted should be random).
Upgrading Vorox Guards to Cyber Voroxes makes them lose the bodyguarding ability, while getting better stats and a bit lower upkeep.

Al-Malik Crystal Lantern Dancer uniques also guard against assassins - seems fitting for what they are, and helps offset the vulnerability of al-Malik's nobles being the weakest in game.

Combat-wise, Van gelder is the strongest unit, then dopplegangers, just slightly better than Slayer's guild and Eye operatives (wich are about the same), then spies, then Scraver informants (which I think is a waste of a slot, but removing them would be too much of a hassle).

Dopplegangers aren't that much stronger than Slayers, and are expensive, so you'll want to rely on hired guns (Slayers) and rare Van Gelders to do actual assassinations, whereas dopplegangers' main niche will be protecting your nobles.

Slayer's guild will get Gen.Assassins' old picture, while doppelgangers will get the Slayer's one.

tl;dr; spy units now attack mainly with indirect, targeting nobles; doppelgangers (replacing gene. assassins) and House Xanthippe Retinue only units that get targeted before nobles are. Vorox Guard targeted just as likely as nobles (so, less good at being bodyguards).

Generally, now it's easier to kill nobles hiding in large stacks, or on Byzantium, but there are also new ways of guarding against assassinations.

Remember, that all a player needs to do to ensure that a noble with a single bodyguard will be targeted is to bring two assassins.

In other changes, I'll also shave off 3 off Trusnikron's spot, camo and agility, to make them even less of a game-winner unit. They'll be good hitters, and highly mobile, but not also spies and tanks rolled into one. Now basically a better, less expensive to maintain Etyri War Wings.
With a v.good spy/assassin unit, a bodyguard unit, and a heavy combat unit to choose from, we should no longer see palaces building only Trusnikrons.

We'll leave the vulnerability table as it is, meaning that 'hover' units are not actually vulnerable to air as they were in Nova. Keep that in mind.

I'll also change Stealth ships' camo to 100, so that they'll remain stealthy no matter what.

If that's all acceptable, I'll submit the final .dat file and we can begin.