Unit Stats for Erfworld Units

[depricated]

(am I missing an obvious stat? let me know)

I need unit stats(for game). Since there's no real outright rundown on what units have what stats, lets make em up and make them correct where we can. These will be base stats(for those who care, leveling is logarithmic - a level 5 is much stronger than a level 2 but a level 20 isn't that much stronger than a level 19)


Race: // the Race of this unit, such as Elf or Gobwin, could Uncroaked be it's own race?
Archtype: // the type of this unit - archer, swordsman, pike, footpad, nose-picker
Move: // the number of hexes a unit can move across. Some hexes take more move than others.
Hits: // the health of a unit
Combat: // the number of hits this unit gives
Defense: // the number of hits this unit negates
Vision: // the number of adjacent hexes that are visible from this unit. This is used to reveal enemy positions without spells
canFly: // bool - flyer or not
canMount // bool - the unit is able to mount. Horses cannot mount but Humans can.
isMountable // bool - likewise humans are unmountable under most circumstances, but horses are mountable
canTunnel // bool - the opposite of a Flyer, Gobwins and Marbits are examples of tunneling units

I want both 'real' units and fan-made units. Once I have enough these will all go into a database(excepting ridiculous ones) that the game will use for units. So, those of you who want to contribute but can't help with code, here's an opportunity.

Right now, all Special attributes are being made as boolean(true/false) switches.

[DevilDan]

There's experience points, loyalty, canLead, bonuses, a "roll stat" for spotting cloaked unit...

[Cmdr I. Heartly Noah]

You need to make canLead as a boolean and have a leadership bonus that is numerical.

[depricated]

As far as I'm aware, Warlords and Casters are the only unit able to lead, and they're separate classes which inherits from Unit.

[DevilDan]

As far as I'm aware, Warlords and Casters are the only unit able to lead, and they're separate classes which inherits from Unit.

Which brings up the question of which units can be casters or warlords. Can there be a warlord archon, for example? (Are they all under some sort of tele-warlord control under Charlie?)

I guess there needs to be a mechanism for paying to make a unit, say a piker, into a warlord.

[depricated]

Right now I have it set up that you buy the unit, and pay to make it a warlord.

A Warlord can be a Caster, but is always a Unit

Warlords and Casters will have different mechanics programmatically, they have special stats like a +% Combat bonus or Defense bonus for their stack, spells, etc.

I'm just trying to make sure I'm not missing any of the basic unit stuff.

[DevilDan]

Everyone has a chance at hitting someone with a ranged attack like a bow and arrow or a rock... right?

Wouldn't it then make sense to, say, allow an archer to have a melee attack, however inferior it may be in comparison to a dedicated melee unit's attack? (I know, I seem to poke into the most complicated of corners. Sorry.)

Is there juice for special abilities, or would only casters need a "juice" stat? Another complex question.

[cloudbreaker]

How about a canSwim stat?
or a siege stat.
Maybe a garrison stat? But I suppose that would be tied into the move stat.

[Lothmar]

As far as I'm aware, Warlords and Casters are the only unit able to lead, and they're separate classes which inherits from Unit.

Which brings up the question of which units can be casters or warlords. Can there be a warlord archon, for example? (Are they all under some sort of tele-warlord control under Charlie?)

I guess there needs to be a mechanism for paying to make a unit, say a piker, into a warlord.

Any unit 'can' be promoted as far as im aware, it just costs more then having a warlord popped, probably because the unit already has previous training, levels, etc that just increase the pricing formula (that and they've already gone through the 'high mortality' low levels). However, im fairly certain you cant promote things like, natural allies, heavies, siege, uncroaked, etc - the ridiculous stuff; though I may be wrong since the marbits seemed to have several luitenant like figures in thier ranks and at council positions...

However, im fairly certain even if you promote a 6'th level swordsman to warlord, I think it's just 6 - swordsman, 1 warlord. And the leadership bonus only goes up from supsiquent warlord levels. though I may be wrong and warlord replaces the entire class altogether to that specific level.

[chrono]

I wouldn't do the stats like that at all

I would say that HP, attack, defense, etc are a unit's actual stats, while canFly, canTunnel, etc aren't.
If you go down that road you'll end up with canMeleeAttack, canUsePoison, canEqiupMeleeItems, canTalkToCharlieTelepathically and down that road lies madness.

Here's an example of how I'd fix some of these:
I would give each unit landSpeed, flySpeed, swimSpeed, digSpeed. If digSpeed is 0, it can't dig. If flySpeed's 0 it can't fly. Possibly the same is true for leadership - it makes little sense for a unit with leadership 0 to be able to lead a stack. Same goes for melee, ranged, etc attacks (i.e. if your ranged attack is 0 you can't shoot). Hell, the same goes for being a caster - having no juice means you can't cast spells, so why have superfluous archetype or boolean values as further qualifiers?
The real benefit of the above scheme is that it makes buffs from spells and equipment much easier to handle. If a tanking soldier gets an artifact or equipment of some sort which is a bow, you can just change the soldier's attack from 0 to whatever attack the bow will grant him. Roughly speaking no further changes are needed. Same goes for many of the other abilities - if a caster gives a unit fly or dig speed which it previously didn't have, just change that value.

As for creature types (including things like Undead, which in DnD is a template) I really like how it's handled in the Magic TCG.
If you have a single "race" descriptor (like you posted above), then you can have "Elf archer", "Human archer", "Undead archer". So any archer that is uncroaked becomes "Undead archer" - effectively losing information about what the unit type was (in this example elf vs human) before it croaked. This info is probably important, as the units were different when they were alive and will probably remain different after they were uncroaked.

There are just too many possibilities for a basic race/archetype scheme to work - siege weapons, heavies, barbarians, warlords, elite versions of units all fall out of that categorization. What I suggest is a much looser arrangement where you can define all the qualifiers and string them together (with a little bit of restrictions).

To sum it up, I suggest a list with all the abilities/archetypes/modifiers that affect a creature, and then another list saying which creature has which. Some may need two fields (i.e. if your currentJuice is 0 then you can't cast NOW, but if maxJuice is 10 you're still a caster and it needs to be kept track of, so you know how much juice that unit will have next turn)

As an additional note, units totally need size categories of some sort. With the above stats (i.e. just a "can mount" and a "can be mounted") you can't account for huge units trying to climb up on much smaller mounts

Edit: also missing price and upkeep, but that's probably not as important right now.

[depricated]

I like you.

[chrono]

Hahah, that I didn't expect

Maybe I should have started by saying that I'm a professional programmer (though not so much in Java) with experience in design and optimization (though not games). So that's the right experience in the wrong fields
I did start to write something similar a year or so back - I ended up with more or less what you have now (though it was about a completely different game). So I've ran into some of the initial problems that you are just now starting to encounter.

I gave it up completely once I realized that I couldn't possibly finish what I started even if I had 5 years to work on it.

I'm honestly tempted to contribute to this project, however there's more or less 3 things that stop me:
1 - (that's my main problem) - I've got a lot on my mind and don't really have much time
2 - I haven't worked with Java since I gave up the game so it may take me a bit (week or two) to get up to speed
3 - I have to be sure the others are serious

So once I clear up a few things and get (1) sorted out, I'll think about it again. Until then, best of luck

[DevilDan]

You'd still need to collate all information needed and then start pruning and then start designing structures.... (programming and some system design background)

Elites could have an experience modifier: where normal units get a x1 modifier to their experience, elites could have x1.2 for nobles and a 1.3 for royals or whatever. That might eliminate the need for creating elite unit classes.

Undead would need some sort of counter that tracks their turn-by-turn deterioration.

Sounds to me like "type" should be the main class while it could inherit a few bits from "race" classes. (Of course, it could turn out that the other way makes more sense.)

Is_Intelligent would be useful... it determines whether a unit can be turned into a warlord or not or can be promoted or not.. "Is_humanoid" could work, but humanoid/nonhumanoid is not cannon...

[lathomas64]

http://www.erfworld.com/wiki/index.php/Unit

wiki has stats and abilities and such for units at this page.