An idea.

[Belial]

I were reading through the "Changes in GF4"-thread, and came up with a, in my opinion, at least, pretty neat idea. I didn't wish to derail that topic anymore, however, and decided to create a new one. Acceptable, I hope. :-/

 

So, ahem, people were talking about the NPCs that can join your party, but will act on their own, instead of being controlled by the player.

 

This idea of mine does not apply to this kind of allies only, but to normal creations and such as well, which means that no, I have not come up with a way of fixing the AI (Just looking at code and scripts and such almost brings tears to my eyes, so I perhaps am not the correct person to even try and do so. :-F). No, I have come up with a rather unoriginal and surely before-mentioned way of buffing your creations and allies up.

 

Since the allies usually can not be controlled in battle like creations, they tend to attempt foolish things, like attacking a spawner and a bunch of clawbugs all by themselves. And then they just die.

 

But here's an idea; Mr. Vogel could implement a system like in, for example, Heroes of Might and Magic, in the Wake of Gods (the unofficial expansion to the HoMM series), where the heroes can equip their troops with artifacts and other useful (or unuseful) objects.

 

In Geneforge, this could be done the almost exact same way, by giving all of the creations/allies inventory-windows of their own, with restricions, depending on the creature.

 

Say, a Fyora could (in theory, at least), wear a ring or a necklace, to add to it's resistances, while a thad/human ally could also be equipped with armor, weapons, and so on. You get the idea. :-/

 

So, while the AI controlled creations and allies would still be rather dumb, at least the player could equip them and his own creations properly, so that it would take more that one hit to bring them down.

 

Not being a code-wiz myself, I have no idea whether this would take too much time to implement, and whether it would be worth it, or not. But hey, one has always got to try! ;-)

[Randomizer]

You could do this in the other games (Avernum and Nethergate) because of the way that NPCs are listed. Jeff probably could add it by making the inventory system a two dimensional array instead of a one dimensional list.

[Belial]

I might understand you wrongly, but isn't the inventory-system of Geneforge 3 just like that?

 

Anyway, here's an examplary image describing my idea, since, judging by the lack of responses, my earlier writing was incomprehensible or something. :-F

[Lowbacca]

Lol, nobody responded not for the reason that it was incomprehensible, but because we hadnt wanted to. I actually kinda like the idea myself.

[Belial]

Heh, thanks, I guess. :-)

 

Anyways, I am afraid I still lack a solution to the unbalancing effect this kind of a system would have to the rest of the game. Because seriously, a heavily beefed up and well equipped a warrior ally could wreck the game pretty badly. :-/

[Rent-an-Ihrno]

i think its a very good idea, and works perfectly fine in diablo 2, patch 1.10, where it was implemented just like you meant.

i really dont think it would unbalance the game too much, it would only give you the extra edge a hero needs.

[Lord Safey]

prehaps to balance it out have it were your enemy is weilding/wearing what ever they may drop provided that the could use. They still drop the other stuff but it wouldn't count towards their stats.

[Alorael at Large]

In Avernum, at least, that happens. It can help make Guard A with a wand of painful zapping distinctly different from Guard B with an excessively large sword, but they both still need to be balanced for wherever they are. Increasing the difficulty across the board to make up for equipped companions raises the question of what, exactly, the inflation accomplished in the first place.

 

—Alorael, who really wouldn't mind being able to use a few creations as pack mules, though. It's not a necessary function and not even a particularly useful function most of the time, but he hates having to remember where he left which pods and what equipment.