WELCOME
Hello and welcome everyone to the first of our friday discussions, firstly I'm sorry that I haven't been so active the last few weeks but I've been super busy both in and out of Warsim.
COMBAT PLANS
So I've trawled through all of my notes taken over the past few years from Warsim fans and myself of everything combat related and broken it down to a few categories, before I get into this I don't want to do a Peter Molyneux and overpromise features that won't make it into the game, this list is a bunch of things I would like to attempt to add to the game but in all likelihood it won't be everything, it depends on how I can code it and what obstacles/limitations I come up against, so please take this as more of a concept list of stuff.
- Generals can be instructed to choose best option for combat including who to attack works best with spymaster giving info to you
ARMY COMMANDERS
To send an army you need a commander, their skill will decide the battle advantage
and army size, you can send as many of these as you want, troops on the attack should
not be part of the defence however
* A champion (based on battlescore * 25) ie 159 battlescore = 3975
* General (based on battlescore * 50) ie 159 battlescore = 7950
* Knight (Knight can take up to 1000 men)
* Soldier (Soldier can take up to 100 men) but will not fare well and be prone to issue
They can get up to things too:
* Your captain Ghoso Rhenson and his army of 200 men were defeated on their attempt to raid the Krut Lands
* Your captain Largak the Lofty and his army of 113 men succesfully captured a land from the Red Rovers bandit gang
* Your captain Erynar of the Sands and his army of 25 men have joined the rebellion
TROOP MORALE (credit Omer)
Troop morale being separate to normal public op could allow you to have strong army even if the people hate you
you will need to look at military events that are affected by public opinion and add the morale in it's place
a new variable that grows with victory, payrises, improved equipment. Decreases with losses, firings, etc.
BATTLE HEROES
Heroes can emerge, random units that turn the tide of a battle of complete a great feat
can be knighted and awarded high positions, enemy heroes should be able to be spawned too
it would be awesome to see an enemy champion/lord who was born of a battle where you
were humiliated.
ARMOUR & WEAPONS
Have possiblility of similar to the helmet, have armour and helmet that have aesthetic
and stat based differences, use random weapon generator, find a way to make this work
how much does it cost, how do you find/buy it and change it
BATTLE-LOOTING (all for men, split with men, only for you, no looting at all)
Gain direct gold from looting the battlefield, and decide how you go about it
PRISONERS OF WAR (AND CAPTURED ENEMY LORDS/LEADERS)
Capture prisoners and decide what to do with them, you can execute them to reduce
opinion of enemy, perhaps you imprison them, perhaps you try to hire them.
Also capture enemy leaders and lords in battle with effects
REBELLION
* Independent lords can have their own armies/income/goals/cultural modifications
* Add independent lords loyalty changes based on how well a leader leads (ie battle wins and losses) though some will be permanently loyal or hostile to their leaders based on pre-gen traits
* Lords can rebel and form their own faction (Ie Kingdom of Trog, new faction is Kingdom of Trog Rebels (Rebellion) but if they win they takeover the kingdom and can rename it or keep it same
LORDS AND KINGS IN BATTLE
Lords and kings should show up in battle and give their units perks and bonuses
- code faction leader aggression level and faction aggression (new variable used in the combat phase)
- Lords and kings should appear or flee when you invade
PRE-BATTLE SCREEN IMPROVED
The pre-battle screens can be more unique, Ie you enter the lands of Yagar the Mallet, he sends no envoy and
waits atop the walls for your attack, or you could have a lord who sends an envoy and offers peace, tribute
can be pushed to join you and rebel, can plead with you etc. (ROCK PAPER SCISSORS, TRIBUTE, DUEL)
PRE-BATTLE PLANNING
Choose who leads the army and consider calling on a friend (forts, militia, allies, blackmarket etc)
FLEEING AND SURRENDED
Chance that if a battle is significantly skewed, one side breaks off and flees
or surrenders (figure out how this works)
TROOP UPGRADING (can be enabled or disabled but some troops will rank up) (3 options Disabled, Disabled for peasants, Enabled for all)
ALTERNATE WAYS TO DISPLAY BATTLE (instead of just mash troops vs troops)
Try one screen showing the numbers of your men and theirs disolve
Try doing different coloured stuff
test and allow multiple different styles
WAR STRATEGY
Factions should be able to launch multiple attacks and should recognise weaker enemies to invade, they should
also be able to hire mercenaries and do things with their gold, would be helpful if you could tether
these systems to difficulty and have them far more intelligent at higher levels (ie always invading and sending their full army if it's big enough to ensure not losing all)
ALLIANCES IMPROVED
Alliances should be able to join you in battles, and attacking an enemy with an ally chance the ally will join
also if they are in a league, the league should fight together. You should also be given
alters when allies and vassals and fellow league members are attacked to offer you to join
POLITICS
Factions should be able to make peace, form alliances, go to war and do various things
with eachother and with you.
ARCHERS
RANDOM BATTLE EVENTS
* Lightning strikes (killing x, or causing one side to fully flee)
* Farmers passing decide to join
* Peasant falls on his sword and dies
* group of soldiers turn and join the rebels mid battle
* band of local hunters join the defence
* Big fire divides the battlefield and ends the fight
* Wild bear charges into the fight
ENVIRONMENTAL ABILITIES (NIGHT BATTLES, RAIN, FOG)
SEIGES INSTEAD OF DIRECT BATTLE
Seiges could require equipment built and could take some time (1 year or longer) some equipment could be used in non seige batltes too
POSSIBILITY OF 3 WAY BATTLES SOME HOW
SUMMARY OF COMBAT PLANS
In summary you can see what I mean, there's a huge list of stuff and I'm not sure it can all be done, but that being said I really enjoy playing Warsim and I would love nothing more than it becoming far more advanced and complex in it's core area and namesake (the war simulation aspect) so I will do my very best to deliver as many of these things as possible, but these features are large and intimidating and I'm a one man team so I will be taking my time and may require further feedback and help coming up with concepts and details of these features, still I hope you guys like the ideas here.
NEW STOREPAGE
Hey everyone, a little bit of my time this week was dedicated to pushing forward on the plans I made previously, I decided to rework the games store page 'about this game' section which was just a this block of text.
I wanted to have it themed and filled with graphics, the main drive was to be more gripping and interesting and to really show off what Warsim is about while also looking professional.
It's not perfect but It took a huge amount of work and during the week I had to take breaks as at least 26 times I couldn't test the store page beta due to http errors on steams servers.
Please check out the new store page about section and let me know what you think, do you guys think it represents warsim well? is there anything I've missed or that you don't like, Or do you like it :)
Your feedback on this is invaluable
https://store.steampowered.com/app/659540/Warsim_The_Realm_of_Aslona/?beta=0
DISCORD ISSUES
While making the new steam storepage I kept getting errors in chrome and cleared my cookies to resolve it, I resolved the problem but triggered some 2 faction auth thing on discord, discord support tells me without some weird additional code I don't have I'll have to make a new account so that's fun! (currently no discord)
FEEDBACK
I'm going to continue tweaking and working on the combat plans and get stuck into the more basic of the structure very soon, while I'm open to ideas about the combat plans, I'm most interested in feedback regarding the new store page so please let me know what you think. (or why not feedback on both :P)
Thank you for reading
All the best
Huw Millward (Warsim dev)