Board Thread:General Mod Discussion/@comment-27200931-20170214212507/@comment-26172435-20170219135432

Gen. Grievous1138 wrote:

AlteOgre wrote:

Gen. Grievous1138 wrote:

AlteOgre wrote:

Gen. Grievous1138 wrote: Strength of numbers is completely unfeasible to replicate in game. If Mordor Orcs were cheap enough to give them the strength Mordor would have had in lore, they would be around fifteen orcs for a single coin. High Elves, on the other hand, would be so incredibly rare that finding a hiring unit for one would be near-impossible. Even if elves are made so incredibly rare, the amount of Orcs it would take to make an army of decent strength would crash the game. Furthermore, people don't seem to get that once a unit hirer is found, they can get an infinite (theoretically) number of hired units from them regardless of lore. This is why alterations to lore for balance is necessary. It's absolutely unfeasible to just make something incredibly expensive because it's incredibly easy to get silver coins. No matter how expensive you make High Elves if you buff them to hell and back, people will still have overly large armies of them. Alterations to lore to accommodate the fact that this is a game must be made.

Gen. Grievous1138 (LOTR Mod Wiki Admin) comlink 13:29, February 18, 2017 (UTC) I assume this in response to my hint in the preceding comment. If so, you appear to be exaggerating to make the potential added value of the mechanism I mentioned and you may not like look like nothing. I can think of ways to make many 'balance measures' that have been implemented look like utterly useless when exaggerating in a similar way*. Using terms like 'incredibly' and 'absolutely' to make your point doesn't help when you're using obvious exaggeration in your counterarguments. You either know damn well that what you insinuate what the point of the suggested mechanism is, is not in line with the arguments nor the concrete proposals that were actually made for it ... or you just don't know what the proposed mechanic encompasses and how it could turn out to work effectively, and you're only reacting from prejudiced / extreme assumptions (which to my opinion has become rather typical for a specific part of the community when discussing mechanics, balance, lore and realism).

* Example: "If it's so incredibly easy to get silver coins as you state, that mechanic just seems to be utterly pointless, so why the hell is that system used and is so much effort put in traders and items for that obviously so meaningless economy?". My answer to such questions would be: "That's not a meaningful question. Better focus on the objective on the mechanics, pin-point existing flaws, analyse them and come up with means to improve it or alternative/additional mechanics to improve the effective performance of said mechanics.".

''FYI: For 24 years I have earned a living from analyzing complex systems, their behaviour, mechanics and ways to control and improve their performance, and I've offered my help and thoughts to improve this mods gameplay, for free. If it's not needed I can live with that, but if I see opportunity for improvement and it's cast aside without clear argumentation, I must admit I can have a hard time to simply let go. :^) ''

~StubbornOgre

(No hard feelings!) Nah, that was just in general. My point was that if numbers of NPCs in the mod were accurate to the lore, orcs would be ridiculously common and cheap - there were millions of orcs in Mordor alone, if I recall correctly - and High Elves would be ridiculously rare and expensive, as there were only several thousand left in Middle-Earth. The point wasn't to diss a strength in numbers aspect in entirety, but rather to point out that the extremes I have seen suggested wouldn't work for the game.

Gen. Grievous1138 (LOTR Mod Wiki Admin) comlink 00:01, February 19, 2017 (UTC) Right, I see. Yet, that way of looking at mechanics that could improve the game in a more lore-friendly and realistic manner is meaningless and non constructive. It has now lead to diversion of the discussion to the numbers of people and troops that would have been on Middle-earth. All fun discussion, but it doesn't help us find better opportunities to improve the game. It only helps us get stuck in chosen paths, that may definitely run dead imo.

Everybody knows by now that exact lore and realism cannot be simulated in the game. Period. No need to use that perspective.

To get back to the topic and put my reaction to yours in perspective:

Hired units upkeep would put a mechanistic cap on the total number of units a player can hire and the upkeep mechanism and resources upkeep requires, if designed wisely, based on sound starting points, can enable:


 * more lore-friendly NPC unit stats (like weaker orc horde and even stronger trolls and wargs, as indicated in my contribution to the NPC Health blog page @LOTRmod),


 * more spectacular field combats (with less but stronger units taking on larger numbers of weaker forces: in ratios of 1 versus 4-5, instead of 2 versus 3 for instance),


 * more strategical planning and behaviour of players acting as commander of hired units (as they must ensure (s)he can afford the upkeep of units) and finally


 * put a 'natural' cap on the total number of hired units present on a server (as they need upkeep from players who put a little(!) effort in that: based on the mechanism of an upkeep chest that is used every in-game day for the units that are loaded and when the player is in-game: this may eventually lead to ensure chunks with hired units to become auto-loaded?).

Of course such a system needs detailed design and a serious testing and tuning effort and be made as simple as possible. The potential effects and side-effects are worth it in my opinion. As side-effect I wish to mention the starting point that especially food is relevant for the upkeep and food is in abundance in the game atm. It will help players find a better balance between hunting/gathering/harvesting/cooking for own consumption and selling it all to hire massive amounts of troops: that will look pretty different when hired troops require food to sustain them.

On the topic of a messed up economy and coins being to easy to acquire: 1) The mod team needs to make sure there are no items that can be bought from one trader at a lower price than that they can be sold at another trader at a higher price. 2) Commodity, renewable products like crops should bhave very low sales prices or growth rates should be adjusted: matter of tweaking. Overall, the system isn't bad (very nice imo) but could use a little tweaking. In the case of servers where there hasn't been a full reset for ages and players were able to gather massive amounts of stuff and coin by abusing historical exploit options, too bad for those. I strongly recommend the mod team to not let that historcial burden determine the decision making regarding gameplay mechanics. That would be so darn fucked up. Really. Be brave. Think out of the box. 1. Hmmm... I like the hired unit upkeep idea, with changes. For example, as Sinth has suggested in the past, different troop caps depending on the type of troop.

2. Ah, I see you haven't seen the discussion I had with Mevans about a functioning economy. ;-) I can't say what if any will be added, so I guess we'll have to see. If it gets implemented though, it will not disappoint.

Gen. Grievous1138 (LOTR Mod Wiki Admin) comlink 13:09, February 19, 2017 (UTC) 1. That discussion was held on several occassions and finally lead to one endorsed thread with a most viable proposal to implement it: not based on a strict cap per type of unit, but a mechanical cap, determined by the effort a player is willing to put in the upkeep of the troops he hires. A concept I warmly embraced as it offered a feasible alternative to mechanisms that were discarded because of either code restrictions or gameplay objections.

2. I'm very curious about that one and I'd gladly throw in some more small change if I have any. You know there was a period of 3-4 months in 2016 when I didn't read all that was going on in the forums right? ;)