Board Thread:Suggestions forum/@comment-220.255.223.225-20170927121920

DISCLAIMER(ISH)

I am extremely horribly frighteningly excruciatingly apologetic if this has already been suggested, and I express my deepest regret for the redundancy, but I have searched the endorsed page for similar articles regarding the same topic, and I was unsuccessful. I am also not extremely familiar with the lore of Middle Earth and only knows the main story of the books and knowledge of a few more different regions thank to this mod. With that out of the way... here we go.

PROLOGUE

Right now, the commanding of troops seem fairly bland, in my opinion. Sure, you can lead huge armies of troops and storm all of Middle Earth and look cool while doing it. In Singleplayer, there is no real use for commanding troops other than roaming about tearing apart those small group of enemies you find roaming about... nothing cool. Even in Multiplayer, troop AI is still pretty stupid. Trying to storm a fort is definitely suicide. All there needs to be is another player sitting on the top of a tower shooting arrows at your troops and your troops are pretty much dead, because well, they don't fight back. But I (believe I have) come up with a solution! I shall first be talking about the Singleplayer view, then the Multiplayer view.

BUT FIRST!!

I would like to talk about another feature, which could be a seperate topic and discussion on its own, but I have put it in this topic because I have intergrated it into this topic. That being, Villages. Villages and Cities have already been added to the game, yes, but this feature involves putting the Villages and Cities on the map. What this basically means is that on the Middle Earth Map there would be small little icons stating the name of the village, as well as which faction it is from. This could be implemented from the white little flag in villages that you can see in creative mode, allowing NPCs to respawn near the village. A small feature could be added to the flag, adding a feature that can change the name of the village, as well as feature that allows you to pick whichever type of village it is, and the village, with its name, will show up on the Middle Earth Map.

Of course, right when jumping into Middle Earth, not all villages should be able to be seen. Only villages that have been visited by the player (by coming in close vicinity to the flag) will pop up on their maps. Or, if you reach an alignment of 100 to a certain faction, all villages of that faction will be available to the player. You may also fast travel to the villages.

Optional : The same could be done for camps, but I felt it was not neccessary since not all factions have camps and camps don't have the invisible flag (I believe) so it would not be convenient.

SINGLEPLAYER

Finally! The real stuff! The first main feature of this suggestion is to give use to hired banner bearers! Instead of just being there for show, now banner barriers assigned to a squadron will lead that squadron! You can now right-click banner bearers to command them. Commanding them can do a number of things :

You can access the map screen from the interface. The banner bearer of the squadron will be shown as an icon on the map. There is an option to make the icon public for everyone on the server to see where the squadron is.

You can send the squadron to a waypoint that is unlocked by the player.

You can send the squadron to create a custom waypoint at a location the player desires, by hovering over a location, and pressing the teleport key.

You can send the squadron to attack a village/city

If you don't want to send your squadron to do a specific activity, there are different modes to set them to. Changing the mode of the banner bearer will change the mode of the whole squad.

Normal - normal AI to that of normal NPCs

Attack - Higher Aggro Range (32)

Defend - Lower Aggro Range (8)

Siege - Extremely High Aggro Range, so will go and attack soldiers on tower (64?)

Guard - Extremely High Aggro Range, but will not go to attack, instead use ranged moves if have (64?)

OPTIONAL MODES

Pillage - Very High Aggro Range, will take loot from chests, loot will be in individual orcs inventory, for when attack villages (48)

Raid - Very High Aggro Range, will set stuff on fire, for when attacking villages or forts (48)

ANOTHER FEATURE

This might not be neccessary, but instead of random groups of NPCs spawning in an area, there could be chances of spawning NPC squads, with banner bearers, and like villages, will be seen on an icon on the map if encountered or has alignment with the faction. Players can also command allied squads to attack NPC squads.

MULTIPLAYER

Now we move onto multiplayer! There are some additions that are related to multiplayer, so, read on!

A type new banner could be implemented, creating a public waypoint for the server, so people could create fortresses, and place banners to make it a public waypoint for all, and other players can send squads to raid and attack the forts since they are waypoints on the map. But has to be hard to obtain, like only obtainable when completing certain achievements, because people can spam them.

Player Hunting! Player hunting quests have always been pretty annoying. But now, you can send troops to do it for you! You can select a player to target and the troops will relentlessly hunt for the player until he/she is dead, or they all get killed. Wondering whether it should matter if the player set their location to public.

If others squadrons are set to public, you can also send squadrons to destroy them! ALL OUT WAR!

POSSIBLE PROBLEMS

What if there are more than one banner bearer in a squad? - Two possible solutions :

(1) All banner bearers will be valid, each order overriding the previous one, but all the icons for the banner bearer will be shown on the map

(2) Only the first banner bearer will be valid, the rest act as normal orcs

Isn't it overpowered, because you can just send single banner bearers to make waypoints in enemy territories? - Not really, in my opinion, because if you just send few or little troops, high chance they will die on the way

What if the banner bearer dies on the way? - Tough cookie, this one. The other troops would still carry out their mission, but you would lose the map icon so you won't be able to track the troops on the map, so that doesn't seem very good. Still thinking of a better solution to this one

Laggy because many chunks to be loaded - This could be a possible problem, because as the troops move, chunks need to be loaded, resulting in lagginess, so might be a problem

What happens if waypoint is removed while squad is travelling there? - I guess they will still travel to the location and attack if anything is there.

If someone spams those waypoint banners? - There could be an option to disable those.

Doesn't this make the command horn useless? - Well, technically. But most of the features are different from what command horn does, so it might not be totally useless, but banner bearers could just be a silver replacement for the bronze needed for the command horn, I guess.



EPILOGUE

Thanks for reading my suggestion! I felt this was a really cool feature that could be added to the mod. Definitely not one of the most crucial ones, (I REALLY WANT BREE NOW) but still cool nonetheless. Many achievements for each feature could also be added, but I did not write any of that because I was not good at naming the achievements. Sorry for possible bad english or horrible organisation, I tried my best. Criticism is welcome!

  