All posts by Korokan

What am I supposed to do with this?

I don't know how to introduce it so I'm gonna explain directly.

By "ramping cost", I mean the price to hire units goes more expensive each time you recruit more troops. For exemple, imagine we give +1 silver coin in ramping cost to a NPC which initially costs 20 coins. The first recruit costs 20 coins, the second will cost 21, the third 22, the fourth 23, cetera, cetera...

So bigger is your army, more expansive it'll be to enlarge it over again.

However, this is not one ramping cost for any troops you hire. It's one ramping cost for each type of NPC. For exemple, By hiring gondor soldiers, you increase the cost of gondor soldiers, but the cost of gondor archers, levymen and knights stay at same price because you only hired gondor soldiers, not these one.

Then, for each troop you lose in combat, the cost of the class the NPC belongs dies decreases progressively until to fall at his initial cost. For exemple, the initial cost of Gondor Soldier is 51 coins and their ramping cost is +4. You decide to recruit 5 soldiers from the captain. Instead to pay 255 coins (because 5x51=255), you'll pay 295 coins (because 51+55+59+63+67=295). Then you go patrolling at night to slay some orcs and at dawn, you come back from battlefield with two losses. So the cost of gondor soldiers fell of 67 coins to 59 coins.

Do you begin to see the tip of all the mechanism of this ramping cost?

And the price of ramping cost depends on the type of troop you want to hire. For exemple, weaker NPCs like gundabad orcs, hobbits bounders or Dale levymen would have +1, NPCs with an average fighting skill like Rohirrim warrior or Gondor Soldier +4, stronger units like Dwarves warriors, elves warriors or black uruk-hai +8, and so on, and so on. And the very big threats of the battlefield able to knock out anything in a few seconds like Olog-hai would have a ramping cost of +100! To resume, rarer and stronger the troop is, higher is their ramping cost.

And of course, like the price by default, ramping cost would be halved by pledging (minimum 1 however. It'd be rounded to maximum).

So. Why to implement such a mechanic?

For two good reasons, I would say. The first one is I remember another suggest telling to add a moral or trust system where if you lose too much soldiers, captains would be more reticent to let you hiring more troops if it's just to let them go to slaughterhouse. To the end of his suggest, he said he suggest this because he's fed up of insanely huge war on servers where swarms of hired units just get slaughtered for finally not much more result than if it were less troops on the two sides. Furthermore, the game became more laggy, caused by the surcharge of number of NPCs. Not everyone was satisfied by his suggest. Maybe because it's just annoying, it has no really sense, too complexe or other some reasons; I don't remember everything.

And the second reason is I'm for a more balanced gameplay, where Ramping cost would foster the players to diversify their armies (and not just spamming olog-hai, I give an exemple). Making ever harder to build huge armies with elite soldiers would encourage players to not focus on one type of NPC just because it's strong, you see? Black uruk-hai are elite soldiers, a handle among the black legions of Sauron, and it's more obvious whith olog-hai. Swan-knight are a handle among dol amroth men-at-arms. And so on... You're not supposed to have complete armies of these soldiers if it's not thanks a colossal economy. These are champions, not soldiers!

Ramping cost looks like annoying in appearance but I'm sure the suggest will satisfy alot of persons. The idea to balance the all and dissuade players to just hire swarm of troops to naturally dodge problem of performance is a big plus.

I saw and voted to the strawpoll on facebook about porting or not the battleaxes because vanilla axes now work the same way.

If you ask, I voted for porting battleaxes but giving theme different stats and/or effects to differentiate them from normal axes.

However, it's not my real opinion. What I think better is just nerf vanilla axes. What if we let battleaxes for fighting and nerf vanilla axes and make them just a cheaper version of the battleaxes and which exist only to cut wood? (to explain less complicately, vanilla axes stay as good (or bad) as they were in elder versions) It'd be more simple.

No? Because teammod doesn't seem to consider it.

This suggest is a little tricky to explain...

I had a bit of fun in renewed by fighting mordor orcs in Ithilien or gundabad orcs in Lone-lands, or even Eriador. And I spotted a lot of difference between legacy and renewed in term of gameplay.

Without talking about the fact NPCs now got useful shield (and not just decorative) and friendly arrows passing through ally NPCs like they were mist or fog (I will come back of it at the end), something's happening with health bar regen.

In elder minecraft versions, the healthbar always regenerated slowly, but you didn't need to permanently eat in combat because the slow regeneration gradually consume your satiety; opposing to new versions where you instantly regenerates in exchange to get starvish all the time when you fight mobs.

Each one of us will have their own opinion about this, and what regen system they prefer (I prefer the old personnally).

But...

The mod gameplay is very different of vanilla gameplay. Because vanilla mobs are not as dangerous as NPCs of the mod, zombies, skeletons and creeper are easier to check than orcs, Men or elves, archers and warg bombardiers (when they'll be ported) or even trolls. In vanilla, arrows shot by skeletons don't pass through zombies and other mobs. In vanilla, they don't have got shield, they don't have necessarly weapons to deal you more damage. And to conclude, I've the feeling orcs have a higher spawnrate than vanilla mobs in overworld at night (but it's maybe just me). And I don't even talk about trolls, poison effect with poisoned daggers and arrows, invasions, and the other things which will be ported in the future.

Yep, the mod offers a harder difficulty experience than vanilla and when you are permanently harassed at night by more dangerous enemies than usual zombies and skeletons, the old healthbar regen system is more adaptated to this gameplay because orcs are very numerous compared vanilla mobs and it's very (to not say extremely) hard to find respite to eat and heal you before return to fight. And because NPCs are more dangerous than vanilla mobs you're likely to always be wounded, which makes the need of respite to eat and heal more common.

To figure it to you, in the field of Cormallen at nightfall, I could even not travel because the swarm of orcs popping everywhere around. I was forced to stay stuck near a boulder and a tree to ensure me a safe place to eat and heal me whenever I'm too injured to continue without dying. Yeah. I was just stucked until dayrise. That sort of thing didn't happen in legacy. And all of them caused by actual regen system which compels me to ridiculously always eat and so prevent me to longly focus on the battle (which is necessary with the very agressive PvE the mod offers).

So I think we should keep and port the old regen system because healing slowly for eating occasionnally instead always eating is more adaptated to the mod gameplay (in addition to be more realistic, imagine yourself permanently saying "pax!" to eat a burger as you are in a raging battlefield, it's just stupid). Because when you're not hungry, you panick less and stay focus of what happens around you, what is primary when you're permanently surrendered by enemies in wild biomes at night. (It's the case in vanilla too, I don't say the opposite. The overworld is just... less brutal)

I don't have any problem with the shields and arrows passing through mobs. I think it's a good addition and I'll get used to it. It's just the regen system which is not compatible with the hard and agressive gameplay of the mod, undoubtedly more agressive than vanilla. Otherwise, it's the spawnrate of NPCs which needs to be reviewed.

And to finish, I come back of the arrows passing through other NPCs. I noticed they passed through neutral NPCs too. I think it's more obvious neutral NPCs would be hit by neutral arrows as much as enemy NPCs.

But I especially need your opinion about all of this. Maybe you survival experience in renewed (if you did it) have been different of mine.

According to the mod-lore of Taurethrim, their people used gold to build buildings and craft weapons. Their ancient pyramids have a small chance to be in gold, their ancient armours hidden in pyramids are made of gold too. Imagine the amount of gold needed to make these. It's represented in the mod by the high spawnrate of the gold in jungle underground, most importantly in jungle mountains, compared to the other biomes.

But hey! To extract this colossal amount of gold, ancient Taurethrim would certainly have dug tunnels and mines in the mountains to find gold in high quantity.

So I'm said to myself: why to not add old Taurethrim mineshaft or abandonned tunnels in jungle mountains with obvious loots, occasionnal scorpions jungle spawner and all? For the lore's sake!

I tested the new speechbank system in renewed 5.0 and there's something I've discovered and lets me confused. Look at what these orcs tell.

The first speech is normal but the "We shall break their bones and feast on their flesh!" line is supposed to be only heard if you have unless +100 alignment with Mordor. And I'm a stranger to their eyes! Is it a glitch or was it willed?

What happened to this chunk ? Why is the water white here ?

To more information, this was the chunk where I spawned by creating a new world.