Making storm attack more useful

[Lewin]

I think we should try to make storm attack more useful, since it doesn't serve much purpose at the moment. Currently the distance traveled is randomly 8-13 tiles from the starting position (exactly the same as in the original game), which is a lot of variation meaning you can't reliably use storm attack to move a large group. I suggest we change it to maybe 12-14 (slight increase and much less variation).

What do you think?

I would also like to improve the way you start a storm attack so the player has more control over the direction, which can be especially hard to control with multiplayer delay. However, I don't have an idea for how to achieve this. Do you?

[kocsis1david]

It could be also bad if some soldiers go too far away without hitting any enemy. I think the problem is when there is a tree or any other object and it prevents the soldier from moving. He should be able to go past. Because of this I don't use often storm attack in a diagonal direction.

Improving the controll of the direction of every soldier would be nice. I have an idea: A group is sent to a place, and while they are going there, if the player presses the storm attack button, they would go fast to the original destination. But maybe it has to be made a bit worse, because that could be too powerful.

[Tiank]

What David wrote is very important. When unit during storm attack hits an object, it should still walk into pointed direction, not just stand there.

Also, I noticed, that when leader is behind other unit and when I press storm button, whole storms delay or even only one row storms:

After pointing that direction and pressing storm attack...


...only last row stormed, others were standing still:


I think it should be fixed to improve storming. It would be useful when you want to suddenly change direction and storm at someone.


Along with decreasing variation, I liked andreus' idea for different storm distances for each unit (longer distance for weaker unit): link

[Esthlos]

Improving the controll of the direction of every soldier would be nice. I have an idea: A group is sent to a place, and while they are going there, if the player presses the storm attack button, they would go fast to the original destination. But maybe it has to be made a bit worse, because that could be too powerful.

This could maybe be balanced by making it even more realistic, with the addition of a "fatigue" debuff: for X seconds, any soldier who just stormed is fatigued, and gets a hit to his (Attack? HP? Hunger meter?).

[andreus]

Agree with David.

Also, I noticed, that when leader is behind other unit and when I press storm button, whole storms delay or even only one row storms:

After pointing that direction and pressing storm attack...
...only last row stormed, others were standing still:

I think it should be fixed to improve storming. It would be useful when you want to suddenly change direction and storm at someone.

Agree. Atm row-by-row storm attack works like this: if group leader's row moves first in the group, storm attack works fine: leader's row storms and then after little delay 2nd, 3rd etc rows.
If leader's row is the last (like on Tiank's screenshot), leader's row storms but can't move cause of next row In this case last (N-th) row should storm first, and then (N-1)th, (N-2)th etc. Leader's row will storm the latest.

Also I'll copy my quote ;D

Less distance variations would be cool. For example, 12+-2 tiles for iron and 15+-2 tiles for leather army?

[pawel95]

About Tiank: Well yeah this "bug" is quite normal because the stormingsystem works like "First row storms, second, third, fourth...." In this case, the first 3 rows storm, but they stop exactly at this moment because of the row infront of them Just as explanation why (Probably you know even why )

So changing the way of storming would fix this problem. Not sure what we could go for else? The game has to notice that the first row can´t storm(from the view of the flag) but the last one can, so they are storming "starting from the last row" Would sth be possible Lewin?


About the tiles: Hmm I didn´t want to believe when you wrote that the distance is exactly the same as in TPR, because sometimes in Multiplayer I really had some few troops running threw the whole map (Coastel Encounter), while others just stopped after a few tiles(probably because of an object). Nevermind I believe you then

However I would suggest sth like: 10-12 tiles The difference is the same with your suggestion about 12-14. However I just imagine, that it could be better to keep the minimum distance lower than these 12 tiles (In my opinion even these 8 tiles are perfect ), because the stormattacks right now have the perfect distance! If your ally needs help, you can storm easily to the battle and help him.

The main problem about this storming system is that it doesn´t work in most of cases (objects, Tianks example, animals, elavation? ). From these 8 tiles in the original game, to the 12 tiles in your suggestion, this would mean that swordmen for example would be more powerfull again I don´t want to start here big considerations, but I just guess that horses won´t be that powerfull after you can storm with your swordmen, the bowmen of the enemies via clicking 3 times the storm button (3 x 4 (difference of the minimum disctance) = 12 tiles extra )


My opinion about the idea of andreus:

It sounds interesting, because players would make more axefighters again (maybe) and it´s also logicaly that iron units can´t run that fast like leatherunits. HOWEVER I think we will have more new problems. It´s just the discussion with "How to bring the scout back". There was also the idea with giving scouts extra speed, but just imagine you can catch bowmen with these scouts, run away and noone will get you with knights
Same thing with Swordmen/barbs/milita/axes. Just think about milita or axefighters having 2 times bigger distance than Swordmen. I doubt, this will work particularly with your example :

For example, 12+-2 tiles for iron and 15+-2 tiles for leather army?

[Tiank]

because the stormattacks right now have the perfect distance!

That's your opinion. I often felt that storm distance was too short .
I think, that when melee would have 12-14 it won't make them overpowered (however, maybe 10-12 would be better for iron units, it seems okay).

From these 8 tiles in the original game, to the 12 tiles in your suggestion, this would mean that swordmen for example would be more powerfull again I don´t want to start here big considerations, but I just guess that horses won´t be that powerfull after you can storm with your swordmen, the bowmen of the enemies via clicking 3 times the storm button (3 x 4 (difference of the minimum disctance) = 12 tiles extra )

Knights are way more practical in flanking, because they have high speed all the time. Also they can change movement direction any time, which can't be done with storming units. To effectively flank with swordmen, they'd had to be put in right position and start storm attack at right time. Also remember, that storm attack has cooldown, which makes it impossible to spam with and to make units move faster all the time. These 1-2 secs are enough to buy some time.

The idea is not to make for example Militia storm twice as far as iron (which is too much), just increase it a bit (to 14-16 maybe?). It would be noticable and could be a nice boost for lighter units.
Also, giving longer distance is a lot different, than increasing speed (like you wrote about scout). Speed's the same, only distance changes. Not a big change, but could be relevant and it might make Militia and Axefighters more useful.

[pawel95]

Knights are way more practical in flanking, because they have high speed all the time. Also they can change movement direction any time, which can't be done with storming units. To effectively flank with swordmen, they'd had to be put in right position and start storm attack at right time. Also remember, that storm attack has cooldown, which makes it impossible to spam with and to make units move faster all the time. These 1-2 secs are enough to buy some time.

The idea is not to make for example Militia storm twice as far as iron (which is too much), just increase it a bit (to 14-16 maybe?). It would be noticable and could be a nice boost for lighter units.
Also, giving longer distance is a lot different, than increasing speed (like you wrote about scout). Speed's the same, only distance changes. Not a big change, but could be relevant and it might make Militia and Axefighters more useful.

You misunderstood me. I never compared Knights with melee units with storming function. I just said that the discussion about giving leather units longer distance to storm, than for iron units, is the same as the discussion with knights vs Scouts. You haven´t to tell me about the difference between speed and distance. The point is only that it is a distance / speed ADVANTAGE in comparision to the other unit, that´s all

"Not a big change" Well my expierence tells me that a few tiles can change the balance completely in a game like Knights and Merchants, maybe that are only rumours

[Lewin]

Ok, so it looks like everyone agrees that less variation would be great. So in KaM the variation is 6 tiles (that is, there are 6 different tiles a unit could stop on). I think we could reduce that to 2 (maybe 3, but 3 is still a lot of variation).

What about the maximum distance? I think we could leave that as 13, so with variation 2 they will end up going between 12 - 13 tiles (rather than 8 - 13 like it was before). Too much or too little are both annoying. If anything though we could make it slightly higher, like 14 or 15. What do you think?

Regarding running into trees and stopping, you can actually give a move or attack order during the storm attack and as soon as they stop running they will take that order. It's not like in KaM where you can't give any orders during the storm attack. Does that help? Unfortunately we can't make them run through trees because that looks really odd.

Making armoured soldiers run a shorter distance doesn't really sound that useful. What effect does it have on the game? It sounds like realism for the sake of realism. I'd prefer consistency so you know a storm attack will always go far enough to reach a certain target. Plus imagine a mixed group with militia+axefighters+swordfighters. It would be a real mess and make storm attack even more annoying to use. Lets leave all the units the same.

Regarding storm attacking when the group is facing the wrong way, that's not really possible to implement because we don't know what formation the group is in (they could be partially scattered or anything). However, thanks to the smarter rearranging system you can just tell the leader to stand on the other side of the group and only the leader's column will have to move (other units will just turn around and stay in place). So it doesn't take much time to make the group face the opposite direction.

Improving the controll of the direction of every soldier would be nice. I have an idea: A group is sent to a place, and while they are going there, if the player presses the storm attack button, they would go fast to the original destination. But maybe it has to be made a bit worse, because that could be too powerful.

I agree about improving the control of the direction. However I'm not sure how to implement your idea. Do you mean the units could change direction while running? That would look very odd in my opinion. I actually really like the way storm attack looks, with units launching themselves row by row at the enemy (an awesome sight when you have a massive group).

[kocsis1david]

Bumping into the object is a big problem in my opinion. Soldiers should be in the same line, otherwise you could loose more soldiers. If a soldier is farther than others, he will arrive to the enemy sooner, and even could be killed before others could help. If somehow they could be kept line by line, it would be nice. When I make a storm attack I try to do just that. But currently it is impossible with an object in front of the group. When you make a storm attack diagonally, they will bump into some object in the most cases and it can make the storm attack almost useless.

It's true that the current way of storm attacking looks the best. My idea was that they could change direction in the storm attack and go to the destionation like they would do it walking. It could be made less odd: if they stop at an object, pass it slowly and start rushing again in the direction of the enemy. And maybe there is no need to change direction while they are running in this way. But still this is not a proper solution to make storm attack line by line, it could only help if something goes wrong. I think it is an easy way to select direction by sending soldiers to the target before storm attack.

The funniest thing is when one soldiers goes to the left and the another one rushes to right. And all of the other members of the group stays at the same place looking at each other.

[Lewin]

For now I've decreased the variation to 12..13, rather than 8..13 like it was before (and in TPR). I also have plans to make units that hit a tree (or any obstacle) keep walking towards the final position.

[KaMRemakefan]

It will be really fantastic Lewin!

[andreus]

Nice Storm attack should work better now.

[thunder]

Hey!
Should be possible stop the storm attack anytime? Last time i lost12 swordsman because after the firt run square i start to stop them but they run around more 5into the death. Yeah i know gg. But stop is stop and the back is back. Or not? Well i hope the stormattack will be more useful in the future. And just a small idea. The first hits of the storm unitscould be twice stronger than normaly. Then more player will use this attack form and maybe the fighting mechanism also will be more colourful. /shut and halt is already out,or not as effective so maybe something new,just a weak idea./ bests!t

[Michalpl]

Maybe halt should stop storming?