[1.0] A RimWorld of Magic

Started by Torann, November 24, 2017, 11:17:05 PM

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Harry_Dicks

Could we somehow make raiders always be split up into more stretched out groups? I know with Mehni's Sun Tzu mod, it makes raiders split up when they attack your base. Maybe if we could have something like this incorporated, maybe have it happen more often to mitigate the chances of players being able to AoE all of the enemies at once?

Torann

A lot of those issues, spell power/buffs/item costs/negative effects, will be addressed in the balance update, which is not too far off now. 
To give you some idea of what the roadmap looks like...

The next update will add about 7 unique pieces of equipment designed specially for mages and will be the most powerful equipment available to compliment a mage.  It'll be important for balancing since it will give the start<->end of how powerful a mage can get.  The update after that will fill in some of the missing components like master spells, stand-alone spells, enchantments, items, etc.  Following that, I'll be adding the Bard and Enchanter classes which will round out the final arch-types with the bard being a "social" type class and the enchanter as a "magical crafting" type class.  Well, the enchanter might come after a specific update for spell scrolls and items that have abilities, though I'll see if I can push that into one of the other updates. After that will be the balance update.  So best guess, about a month out from the balance update. 

I'll likely add a 'subclass' or some form of divergent class development at some point, but I haven't decided on how this will be implemented yet so it'll come after the balance.  There's also quite a few new classes I'd consider in the 'design' phase and a lot of those are listed on the workshop page discussion if you're interested in voting for one or adding to the list.

WitchLyfe

#557
Oh cool, thanks for the heads up.  Bard seems like it could be a fun class.  Social stuff has been pretty difficult with some of my mages.  I guess I'll just play around with my current team more and work on enchanting, then take a break till new classes or balance patch.  Most the only major issues I can find now are balance things, so not too much reason to keep testing until then.

Nice to have stuff pretty solidified to look forward to with this.

Lol, after posting this I tried raising a gladiator as an undead and they kept their skills.  I'm guessing that's not intended?  They lost the gladiator trait.  Stamina is regenerating too...well, this is useful.  They're also stuck with fortitude and Sprint activated (Says it needs to recharge) from when they were alive.  They have no "Might" tab though for leveling the skills up.  After using all their skills once, I keep getting the "Needs time to recharge", aww.

2/3 Upkeep on undead and 4/5 mp regen from skills is also not enough to maintain 2 undead without mana loss, good to know.  It seems close and is easy enough to keep up with consuming corpses though.  Wait, weird.  After a while my Necro started gaining mana with 2 undead up, no idea why.  There wasn't a mana surge or mana drain at either time.

Torann

Quote from: WitchLyfe on March 11, 2018, 08:59:42 PM
Oh cool, thanks for the heads up.  Bard seems like it could be a fun class.  Social stuff has been pretty difficult with some of my mages.  I guess I'll just play around with my current team more and work on enchanting, then take a break till new classes or balance patch.  Most the only major issues I can find now are balance things, so not too much reason to keep testing until then.

Nice to have stuff pretty solidified to look forward to with this.

Lol, after posting this I tried raising a gladiator as an undead and they kept their skills.  I'm guessing that's not intended?  They lost the gladiator trait.  Stamina is regenerating too...well, this is useful.  They're also stuck with fortitude and Sprint activated (Says it needs to recharge) from when they were alive.  They have no "Might" tab though for leveling the skills up.  After using all their skills once, I keep getting the "Needs time to recharge", aww.

2/3 Upkeep on undead and 4/5 mp regen from skills is also not enough to maintain 2 undead without mana loss, good to know.  It seems close and is easy enough to keep up with consuming corpses though.  Wait, weird.  After a while my Necro started gaining mana with 2 undead up, no idea why.  There wasn't a mana surge or mana drain at either time.
Arcane Weakness.  Remember, this kicks in if you use a spell that use a spell that costs 25% or more mana.  Raise undead costs (45% base) enough mana to cause the caster to enter a state of arcane weakness which has some debuff effects as well as reduced mana regeneration while the mage is in a weakened state. 

Undead animals draw 15% of base mana regen, undead pawns draw 30%. At 5/5 Clarity, you gain 125% mana regen; 3/3 Cheating Death reduces draw to 10.5% and 21% respectively.
So without any mana efficiency boosts, you can maintain 3 undead pawns at once and still get 10% of the mana you would normally gain.  Maxing both skills turns this into 5 undead pawns with 20% mana gain (or 6 undead pawns losing 1% each iteration).  Assuming you have no other modifiers on the map or pawn.

Arcane weakness reduces -adjusted- mana gain to 25%, so even completely maxed out, you'll lose mana if you are maintaining 2 or more undead pawns and are suffering arcane weakness.

WitchLyfe

#559
Oh, I don't remember reading about arcane weakness reducing mana regen, that explains a lot.

Does reducing the mana cost of spells reduce the arcane weakness penalty percent or even remove it altogether if the adjusted cost goes below 25% mana cost?  Obviously noticed the arcane weakness penalty being higher on more difficult/costly spells.  Just dunno if it's tied to base, adjusted cost, or the spell itself.  Might be a good reason to go heavy into cost reduction...especially for Priest.

Edit:  Oh it is adjusted mana price, nice.  Better go heavy into cost reduction enhancements.  Tired of my Priest always being half dead.  Now if I can just find jade, better work on drilling next.

Canute

Most of us agree that Magic user are very powerful.
I just got an idea to give them another weakness (beside that they can explode).
At many magic concept's the caster can't use Iron/steel weapon's without weaken their abilities.
Or incompactible with modern tech.

The idea are to limit all caster to non-industruous/spacer tech weapon.
Similar thing toran allready did for Ranger/Sniper.
And they should be unable to work at powered workbenches.
(A lighting mage still could charge a battery, but if he would touch it, Zzzzzz. :-) )
I think this part would be harder to realize, special since it can be dynamic because some powered workbenches can work without power.
And ofcouse each bionic part would reduce their magic ability/regeneration.

What does other people think about it, or got own idea's to power down the mages abit.


amimai

Quote from: WitchLyfe on March 11, 2018, 06:50:34 PM
Yeah, probably my favorite class even though I don't use the death mark or corpse explosion (I might start testing them, just not really my playstyle.).  I do wish the Necromancer could bond with their undead, they must be so lonely, lol.  I really like their aoe too, one of the more balanced ones since it's hard to catch manhunter and moving enemies with it (I think it doesn't effect mechs either).  I wonder if the Necro can keep 2 undead up without losing mana now with the upkeep reduction.  I should test that soon, I almost have that and their regen maxed.

I have 3 zombies/necromancer at the moment with only 2x cheating death, i think regen is based on % empty since their mana dropped lick a rock then stabilised at 40-60%

Canute

amimai,
Toran just explain the Arcane weakness.
When you raise a undead pawn, you mana regen is temp. crippled to 25%
That's why your mana droped like a rock.

amimai

#563
On the subject on magic being overpowered:
I play this mod with combat extended, and that mod is brutal... for the most part with CE enabled magic is relegated to supporting roles, it's great to be able to lob a fireball or summon a elemental for a distraction but the longer range, suppression mechanics, and sheer deadlines of pirate shotgunners means getting in close is both dangerous and daring.

Most magic spells are surprisingly short range compared to CE guns and means you are well within range for rifles MG and shotguns to accurately kill you in 1-2 shots

also if the obvious solution to your restriction on magic users is MORE ZOMBIES! it is not a good solution @Canute

TL:DR play magic with combat extended, they mesh perfectly and balance each other well

Canute

Yeah, i refused to play with CE yet.
It needed to many patches for this and that and since i was trying out many mod-set it wouldn't be compatible with CE.

And that's prolly why you put the magic into the Support box, because of a missing CE addaption. But that isn't a bad thing either.


Harry_Dicks

Quote from: amimai on March 12, 2018, 07:44:18 AM
also if the obvious solution to your restriction on magic users is MORE ZOMBIES! it is not a good solution @Canute

TL:DR play magic with combat extended
No where did Canute say anything about more zombies being an "obvious solution".

Also, you can't just suggest people use Combat Extended to fix their balance issues. That is a total Comcast overhaul mod, people should only use it if it's something that they really want, and should fully understand ALL of the caveats that come with it, such as the huge amount of mods that it's incompatible with. Not as something that you just turn on or off to fix a minor balancing issue.

amimai

#566
Quote from: Harry_Dicks on March 12, 2018, 11:04:56 AM
Quote from: amimai on March 12, 2018, 07:44:18 AM
also if the obvious solution to your restriction on magic users is MORE ZOMBIES! it is not a good solution @Canute

TL:DR play magic with combat extended
No where did Canute say anything about more zombies being an "obvious solution".

Also, you can't just suggest people use Combat Extended to fix their balance issues. That is a total Comcast overhaul mod, people should only use it if it's something that they really want, and should fully understand ALL of the caveats that come with it, such as the huge amount of mods that it's incompatible with. Not as something that you just turn on or off to fix a minor balancing issue.

um actually : magic works perfectly fine with combat extended and combat is very fun and magic filled (bloody arcane mages...) in the last fight I nearly lost 2 of my starting 3 because (a) a (enemy)arcanist teleported my sniper into the middle of a mob of mele and (b) a fire claw killed 2 shotgun zombies, set off all their ammo, which in itself killed 4 invading barbarians and 2 other colonists...

thank god i have 2 druids and a priest, it sometimes feels like im runing a trauma unit rather then a colony with how hard i work to keep my people (and soon to be indentured mages) from bleeding out after battle.

TL:DR CE works perfectly fine with magic, not even a single error/behaviour issue in my 8hr long game!

Load Order(Core, HugsLib, JecsTools, Allow Tool, EdB Prep Carefully, Combat Extended, Mechanoids extraordinaire, CEguns, MiningCo ,Rimwords magic)
if you load it last it has no issues since its AI files supersede CE where nesesary

------------------

PS: he did not say it, but its the obvious solution... have some pride as a gamer, if someone gives you a class restriction, munchkin it to hell

Harry_Dicks

"um actually" I never said that CE doesn't work with TMagic. Now you've gone and put words into two people mouths for things that they haven't said. Do you have a problem with reading comprehension, or are you just trying to act smarter than you are and failing? Because you seem to have a lot of trouble understanding what people say, and then you go on to keep making wrongful assumptions.

Also to your, "have some pride as a gamer" is one of the lamest things I've ever heard. Maybe you feel that your life is that meaningless and you are that boring that you have to apply a "gamer" tag to help identify your personality, but that shit isn't for me. "Gamer pride", especially coming from someone like you, is especially cringey. If that's what you associate yourself with, then I would only ever want to distance myself from any of your associations.

WitchLyfe

#568
Well thankfully there are a lot of ways to balance or improve on how strong the mages are.  Arcane Weakness is a good start, beyond that the aoe range could be reduced or AI could be improved to work around it better.  Just gotta wait and see what the dev has planned for it.  It seems that Torann is already pretty aware of it and is waiting to see the max ability of mages before balancing all of them.

I like the idea that mages can't use most traditional weapons, but we'd have to wait/hope for mage weapons.  Mages would need some consistent damage, rather than just taking away their reliable weapons and not replacing them at all afterall.  A lot of the mage classes don't have reliable low tier offensive spells.

In my current heavy mage playthrough, I'm just trying to amass wealth to test mages against huge swarms of enemies.  It's pretty entertaining.  The tribals become really dangerous with common mage spawns with their high numbers.  They come with a ton of mages and fighter types, it's pretty interesting.  If I didn't have some of the aoe classes, I'd be toast.  Druid for example does almost nothing against that many enemies, at least if there aren't strong animals nearby to manhunter into them.  I just focused them on their support spells.  Poison is cool, but it's really only useful against thrumbos or something.

amimai

#569
(Looks at crazy rant)Mmm moving along...

Druids are probably better healers then priests, in terms of utility Necro>Druid>Summoner>Priest but combat is pretty much dominated by fire mages(fireball portable artillery strikes) with snipers and arcanist a close second for their capture spells

That being said I would hate to do a play through with no weapons on casters rule unless I got a source of shotgun zombies early on ingame(visit me tribespeople!)