Okay... I STILL think it would be best to add siege equipment to single player only... I haven't seen any arguments against it. But Krom said it's not going to happen, so I will respect that (he's lucky, my dog survived very heavy surgery and I feel like I can conquer the whole world now (although a Dark Lord like me can do that any day of course). Next time I'll be my old grumpy self and demand answers!
)
Then, we will have to come up with ideas how siege equipment can fit in KaM multiplayer (and assume that it will also work in single player; but balance in single player is easier to adjust, so that's not a big problem in my opinion). As we all know, there are two kinds of siege equipment:
Catapults and ballistas.
I am not going to lie; I kinda liked how they worked in TPR, except that they were so overpowered. I don't think it's bad that they can kill units in one shot; it's quite realistic. But we need to think how we want them to work. There are just so many possibilities!
Catapults:
Some people suggest they should only be able to only attack buildings. Regarding this, I can come up with the following options:
1. Make them indeed only able to attack buildings
2. Make them able to attack buildings and units standing on tiles next to the buildings (in the same way as archers can shoot your own melee troops when you attack buildings, so it would be just a miss that accidentily hits a unit)
3. Make them able to attack both buildings and units.
Regarding option 1 and 2: what should their range be? How much damage should they do? How is their accuracy?
Regarding option 3: I think it's pretty hard to aim for moving targets with a catapult, so maybe they should have low accuracy for units and high accuracy for buildings.
Ballistas:
1. Only add catapults, forget about ballistas
2. They can attack buildings only
3. They can attack units only
4. They can attack both.
Option 2 does not make much sense in my opinion. A catapult that fires rocks is much stronger against buildings than a ballista that fires an arrow. I will get back to this in my verdict.
Regarding both siege weapons: to make them more or less powerful, it is obviously possible to change their accuracy, reload time, speed, build time, costs, etcetera. Catapults fired multiple (3 if I remember correctly) rocks in TPR, this could be brought back to 1 or 2 if necessary.
My opinion: I think both ballistas and catapults should be added to the game, not just catapults. I also think both weapons should be able to attack both units and buildings. Since ballistas fire arrows and catapults fire rocks that are probably hard to aim versus moving targets, I suggest the following:
- Catapults should do a lot damage to buildings, thereby being pretty accurate at hitting them.
- They should have low accuracy against units, but when they hit, they should do much damage or maybe just kill the unit in one hit (maybe an exception could be made for knights and scouts, making cavalry more powerful? Very debatable, not sure what I think about that myself, since the low speed of siege equipment already makes cavalry more important).
- Friendly fire should be applied to catapults, so they will be used to tear down structures mostly.
- Ballistas should be very strong against units and not so strong against buildings.
- Reload time for both siege units should be increased significantly to not make them too powerful.
- Taking increased reload time into account, I am not sure about ballista accuracy. When envisioning a multiplayer battle in my head, many players have lots of sword fighters and bowmen. Having some militia would be good to take the ballista arrows that would otherwise slaughter your expensive sword fighters. However, a clever fighter would just keep moving his ballistas around until the militia are dead and then let them fire. This should not be too abusable, but how will we achieve this?
As you can see, so far my idea how it should work is very close to how it was in TPR. But to prevent players from making 20 ballista that just kill anything you send to destroy them, I suggest:
- Increasing build time of siege weapons dramatically: 5-10 minutes. Building cost can stay the same in my opinion.
All in all a catapult should be excellent for destroying buildings, while a ballista excells at killing units (while you can defend them long enough since their reload time should be pretty high).
So many suggestions! I feel like Jeronimo now. I only should have used some colours and italic text. ^^
It's no over yet. Now you have to experience the little to non feedback, after having thought and written for a minimum 30 minutes.
