Aoslare

Xian Trall?

 

The Vahnatai Creationists are gaining ground... I'd better double up my mooving prayers.

Because it does. While all the battle creations have standard melee attacks, the gazer and eyebeast have special melee attacks with higher dice and ancillary effects. They do 1-6, or 1-8, and cause fear -- something like that. I forget the specifics. You won't use them much as their missile attacks are still better, but they're there.

Quoted for paradox.

I think it's worth being realistic. The shaping system is not going to get drastically redone for G5. Fyoras will still be the first creation available. This is just the way Jeff does things.

Creation balance can certainly change though. There's been noise here about weak battle creations for several games now.

I had previously been hoping for non-combat, non-PC slot creations, like a bag of holding creation. Some of the engine changes in G4 make these less necessary though.

And in case anyone is still confused, there will never be a Blades of Geneforge.

It is worth pointing out that ALL melee attacks did nearly twice as much damage in G1 and G2. G3 reduced creation melee attacks from 1-8 dice to 1-4 dice.

 

It is true, though, that G4 has way more swarms of melee critters.

 

I'm not really sure what would make the best balancing factor, as it's a thin line to walk. I do think it would make the game a lot more interesting if melee and missile attacks both had strategic value, which would require making melee attacks a lot stronger to keep up with the missile attacks that ramp up to 1-12 and even 1-14 in the endgame. But increasing attack too much would be dangerous.

 

The other option is to increase HP, or resistances. But I fear that this would make battle creations annoying without actually making them interesting or valuable.

 

I like the double hit idea, and not in the form of Quick Action but in the form of bonus AP a la plated bugs. Battle creations with 10-11 AP then get a great increase in deadliness, but one that doesn't kick in until the turn after they reach their target. This makes them more dangerous as enemies, but they can be responded to before they kill things, and since their HP isn't getting bloated, they can still be dispatched with strong attacks, daze, and the like. It also makes them more useful as allies since it is easier for the player to manipulate how close they are to their target when combat starts.

 

I'd say Clawbugs, Battle Frat guys, Glaahks, Rots, and Tralls all deserve the extra AP. Give plated bugs high resistance. Give Thahds and Tralls additional HP. Give Alphas and Tralls some kind of neat ancillary effect. And let the Tralls have high Quick Action too. Why can't the biggest baddest battle creation be deadly close up?

 

The other thing this does is make stunning more useful, which is great in my book.

One other possibility that jumps to mind is that at some point in the code after the section you copied, you get stuck in a loop.

This is how Geneforge 1 dealt with NPC and creation armor. Geneforge 2+ use resistance 0 for armor. I would guess that cr_natural_armor no longer has any effect, but it's possible the code for it is still there. However, I'd recommend just using resistance 0 instead.

Not quite. Attack ability level is the equivalent of a weapon level or spell skill level. The basic formula for the power and accuracy of ANY attack is:

(Base Stat) + (Skill Stat) + (Specific Stat)

Base Stat = Strength, Dexterity, or Spellcraft
Skill Stat = Melee Weapons, Missile Weapons, Battle Magic, Mental Magic, Blessing Magic, or Healing Craft
Specific Stat = Attack ability level, item level, or spell skill level

Each level in this formula grants you one die roll (which die is used depends on the attack) and a 5% bonus to hit. Each attack also has base damage that is added (usually miniscule) and a base chance to hit (normally between 50% and 100%). Also the "+X levels to damage" ability adds die rolls, but not hit chance. Luck adds to hit chance at 2% a pop, but not damage.

Strength of ancillary effects is determined similarly, using the "effect_" part of the attack definition.

Quote:

Interestingly, I can't see any reason the ur-glaahk didn't have stun when the glaahk does.

Are you sure the Ur-Glaahk doesn't have a stunning attack? You're right, the definitions file gives it exactly the same attack as the Glaahk.

Quote:

Hehe. Alwan and Greta's attack upgrades are still listed in the objmisc file, just commented out. I'm tempted to reassign them to different slots and use them.

SW games tend to not delete old material if it isn't necessary to. Most famously, a few dialogue panes from Exile II have been in nearly every SW release since then, hiding unused.

Quote:

I'm not sure exactly where the Rot's double-strike is handled. It may be internal.

It's handled with Quick Action just like for every other character. I forget what stat number QA is, but the rot has it, I believe 6 or 8 points, which is roughly a 1/3 chance of a second strike.

Damage type 3 is used only (AFIAK) by the Discipline Wand. It needs its own damage type since it only harms creations.

Damage type 7 is mental. Note that all the 4th and 5th tier creations have heavy resistance to it, as well as every boss type character.

The creation statistics, which work the same way as item stat bonuses, are listed out somewhere in the G or G4 forum, I think. They mostly go in the order on the character sheet, but there are a few exceptions. So 0-3 are Str Dex Int End.

IMHO, G4 is on the whole pretty decently balanced, and I don't think it's crying out for a mod. But hey, go for it. If nothing else you could make Battle Shaping worthwhile for the first time ever.

Yeah. All the creation/item/floor/attack characteristics are in those definition files, but everything else is hardcoded. So you can't add creation types, change the maps or the locations of characters and items, etc.

No line breaks? What do you mean? There are line breaks after every line. If you aren't seeing line breaks the problem is with your text editor.

 

Although there are no real comments, the definitions format and the names of the variables involved are all very simple to understand.

 

I don't know for sure which creature definition is which, but it's usually easy to guess. If there isn't one labelled as PC-created creations, it's probably the first definition. Just look for one that has the appropriate starting level (which is not multiplied by a fraction in G4) and stat bonuses and so on. Note that some differences between PC creations and NPCs are hardcoded in the game, so don't rely on those. For example, PC creations never drop items even though every possible definition includes item drops (I think Gazers are like that).

I made a modified defintions file like that for G3. It was fairly extensive, making numerous minor tweaks to creations, spells, and items to balance things. (G3 was much less balanced than G4.) It even included a symbiotic vlish arm melee weapon in honor of DV, which I believe I replaced Koerner's Blade with. Unfortunately, the computer died before I got around to uploading it.

Didn't most of the ungrateful Blosk people die before the adventurers got there?

That's an acid baton against a Brain Rat. Brain Rats don't have armor, and acid batons do 1-6. That ramps our damage estimate up to 84 with the normal formula, only 17 points below your result. Your sword strikes also did more than the formula suggested, so it's likely there is another element, maybe a random factor in the multiplier rolls, that pushes things higher on average.

 

(Meanwhile, the Oozing Sword would be expected to do 99 damage against a Brain Rat, from the formula.)

 

Missile damage ramps up faster because missiles ramp up multipliers and weapons don't, while missiles have significant base damage and spells don't.

Hmm. This is somewhat odd. Both Venom Batons and the Oozing Sword do 1-5 damage per level of damage. What's more, the sword is 6 levels higher than the baton and you also have 3 more points in Melee than Missile. And they both do physical damage. This is *really* odd.

Well, let's do the math the way we'd expect it to look:

Weapon level + str/dex + melee/missile

Sword: 12 + 9 + 12 = 33
Baton: 6 + 9 + 9 = 24

Multiplier average of 3
Sword = 99
Baton = 72

Monarch has 40% armor, so multiply by .6 average:
Sword = 59 damage
Baton = 43 damage

Luck, or some other factor, might push damage up a little, so the sword damage is about what we woudl expect. But clearly, something is making the baton do damage very, very differently. 43 damage is nowhere near the 125 or so average you're reporting.

I'm honestly a little befuddled, because I've never seen missiles do damage so drastically different. Certainly not in G3 when I ran a missile agent.

I don't think the thorns are a factor at all since you can fire a baton with the same results with or without a thorn item in your inventory, and without the thorn item, there's no chance of using its multiplier or anything else.

What's amazing is that you are reporting damage three times above what the formulae predict. Doubling the impact of dex AND missile skill AND the item bonus doesn't cover it. Doubling the multiplier doesn't cover it. Maximizing the multiplier results doesn't even cover it. It would have to be some combination of these kinds of effects.

And I'm skeptical, because as far as we have seen, these parts of the attack are dealt with uniformly for every single attack in G4. They're handled the same in the item defs, too. Jeff would have had to hardcode in a different way of handling missiles.

Vlish, are you sure about those numbers?

There are so many different opinions... I think a wiki would be a disaster. A collaborative project might work great, but it would need someone to moderate it.

I'm not entirely clear how this stun exploit works either. I understand DV's math, but your opponent gets a turn right after you strike and will presumably attack you then.

 

That said, in G3 I used the Stunning Blade for a VERY long time with my Melee Agent. Under G3's system, it could stun twice (once for the ability and once just for being a damage-dealing attack), which with Quick Action meant up to four stuns per turn. Most enemies could be incapacitated in a single hit if they were alone. It stopped being useful late in the game due to most enemies having stun resistance or extra APs, or appearing in large groups.

The differences between the classes are actually fairly minute and usually come down to a couple levels worth of skill points; them seem different because they tend to promote different character development strategies.

The Shock Trooper and Warrior both suffer from the large extra cost to learn magic skills, however, which is much worse than the other 3 classes' penalties. Melee skills are for the most part easy to boost with items and shaping skill, as you observe, is almost irrelevant and also boostable with items.

Serviles are the most survivable, lifecrafters the most offensively powerful, and infiltrators the most versatile.

It just became quite difficult to take you seriously.

I suppose it's possible guilds/sects/whatever exist in some form. But if they had any relevance, power, or size whatsoever, I would expect to have heard something about them in G4, if not the earlier games. G4 does not take place in an isolated corner of the world, not by a longshot.

The word "guild" (including plural and possessive permutations) appears exactly once in all four Geneforge games (I just searched). There's a sign in Valeya (in G4) for a Woodworker's Guild.

It doesn't say "guilds," it says "sects." The exact line is:

 

"The Shapers are the oldest, most respected, most secretive, and most powerful of the magical sects."

 

That's the very first line of G1. Since we haven't seen ANY other human magical sects, I think it's safe to assume this has been retconned out.

20-30% hit after a curse?

What difficulty level is this?

Yeah, Cryoa are the new Vlish, in some ways anyway.

What, you didn't like the 50 gp Piercing Crystals?

But how does design/agency/whatever deal with those parts? With our current understanding of evolution, it isn't possible to explain the way things happen in sufficient detail for you. I want to hear an explanation of how design explains things in comparable detail.

I'm willing to let you off the hook for the nature of the design itself, because that's outside the scope of this discussion just like the origin of life is. My question is: once that design had been made, what actually happened in the world of physical objects to get from organisms without eyes (or whatever "irreducibly complex" characteristic you prefer) to organisms with eyes? Evolution doesn't explain those mechanisms in perfect detail, but it does attempt to explain them.

// IF your answer is "spontaneous creation of eyes" please give the evidence suggesting spontaneous creation happens. You don't contest that evolution happens on a small scale, so you agree there is an analogue for it, although you take issue with the mechanics involved in extending the analogy; fine. I contest spontaneous creation. I say it doesn't happen at all, on any scale. Prove that it happens. //

They're both handled by SDFs, so yes. Find a place you know reputation changes, look it up in the scripts, and you can figure out the relevant SDFs. IIRC the reputation SDF was 100,something.

You cut off the first part of my first sentence! That's why it seems like we're getting somewhere! If you put that back in, it's pretty clear that I do not agree with a statement like "They are the same." But if you feel they are the same in terms of observable evidence, why have you been arguing that the evidence better supports ID?