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Weapon Techs and the Problems They Cause for Custom Units

SavageBananaMan34

Join Date 04/2006

Weapon Techs and the Problems They Cause for Custom Units

Sorry for another thread about techs, but I think this is a very important and potentially game-harming issue that needs to be addressed ASAP.

We all remember GalCiv 2, where every new weapon/engine tech researched called for a manual upgrade of each custom ship the player designed. Whle Gal Civ 2 is a great 4X game, this was a serious blight upon its awesomeness (even with automatic upgrading).

What I'm asking for in Elemental is this: no upgraded versions of weapons derived from the same natural resources with drawbacks when compared with older versions of said weapons. Verbose, but bear with me for a moment.

So, let's say there's a tech for creating bronze swords. Using the Gal Civ system, and upgraded version of bronze swords (let's call it triple-folded bronze swords) would be more powerful but cost more money and time. Nine out of ten times, you will simply pay the extra money and take the added power, but that one time out of ten that you don't requires that each unit be situationally redesigned to either use the triple-folded bronze swords or stay with the old version of bronze swords. This is cumbersome. What I am proposing is that in the case that there really have to be upgraded versions of the same type of sword that there are no drawbacks to the new version. All future versions of a unit using that type of sword will carry the upgraded version of that sword. So all new bronze swordsmen, after the triple-folding upgrade, will have triple-folded bronze swords at no additional training-time cost.

Before you cry foul, however, hear me out. Equiping your swordsmen with steel swords, for example, could carry drawbacks as well as added power. So a "steel swordsman" could be a fundamentally different character than a "bronze swordsman," with drawbacks such as higher training time to use the advanced weapon or whatever, or the designers could decide that steel is better in every way than bronze and if you have the resources you will always want to equip your swordsmen with steel.

To reiterate, what I am trying to avoid is: a weapon that uses the same natural resources costing a different amount based on tech level.

I doubt many people here want to redesign their basic guard every time a new type of iron sword is researched, and have to adjust back in case of pressing circumstances. Managing your different resources is fun, but trying to weigh whether an extra turn of training time is worth the +1 attack is bean counting; it is 4X at its worst.

Of course, if the "sophisticated" economic model (camp #1 I believe) were used, and bronze swords themselves were resources, then there would be no need for this rant, because each type of bronze sword would be separately created from the unit.

Please feel free to post your suggestions and I will try to edit this post with some of them.

elemental

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SaberCherry

Unkown924, a significant exception to the call for making old techs obsolete is that old techs that require different resources would not become obsolete. In my original post, I stated that only improved versions of weapons derived from the same resources as the unimproved versions should make the unimproved versions obsolete.

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Quoting Unknown924,

reply 25

... What about making the resources for older weapons more common than the ones required for newer ones? Frogboy said that having control of more than one of a resources makes things that use it build faster. With resources more common for lower level weapons, units that use them would build faster as players would have more of them under their control.

That actually sounds like a plausible guess for how the beta build will work. Scott mentioned bronze swords above, and Brad has typed elsewhere about iron resources. Put that together with a requirement to have a given craft before you can even notice the resources, and you'd 'naturally' have the sort of older-builds-faster thing. Or so one might hope.

Quoting Aerion Istari,

reply 23

... That's the one thing I always hated about Gal Civ. Once a new technology became available there was no reason to use the older technology. ....

I trust the devs when they say the plan is to have a very different weapon system than GC2. But I agree folks like mrakomo that there are definitely times it is good to use an older tech in a GC2 ship design. For example, with very few exceptions, I use the last (smallest) engine of a given speed while I work through the techs for the next higher speed.

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I think I've seen this somewhat mentioned before but the upgrade aspect shouldn't only be about research but all supply. Unless you bring along a blacksmith with your army it should take time (any maybe effort) to get those newly desgined weapons and armor to your forces in the field. Of course, your home guard can be upgraded immediately - though now you need some way to prioritize who gets the supplies.

Also, sending your weapon cart off to join the army should have its own risks.

It would be interesting to see how a supply-demand system could be modelled into the game, al-la Oblivion but on a more generalized but larger scale. Towns have their own production, supplies, demand and will auto-trade with other towns and even factions. You can embargo/tax/restrict imports and exports (no selling super-cool weapons) setup supply routes with escorts.

To some degree I would like this to be AI-only where we can assume communication occurs every Nth day and then the army or town supply master will put together an order/supply-wagon based upon the amount of goods available and even the guard that can be spared.

The supply wagon can also send back booty from the army the town quartermaster can sell or stores any goods that were so marked. If there is too much booty it can be left behind, and optionally guarded, until the supply train picks it up - at risk of having it stolen and the guard overrun.

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1) in Colonization the number of wares was fixed from the beginning to the end of the game

2) the number of possible wares was low, so it was not difficult to automate the transfer

3) this system does not solve weapon improvements (ie. "guns" and "guns II") at all

(* I played the old MS DOS one, not the new one.

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One more thing about using old technologies - I had a problem in Civilization. I was building a protecting unit. The unit was cheap and good enough to be able to defend a city against an incomming enemy. In the meantime I invented a better unit. It made the original one obsolete. The newer was however pretty expensive. So I lost the city. It is similar to the town improvements. I like the possibility in GC2 - you have only the newest technologies in the menu, but you can set the filter to show all.

It is good in the late game - if you create a town, you may increase the production by building an older cheap production building and upgrade it later. It allows you to build the new improvements quickly.

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Quoting mrakomo,

reply 29

Very good system was in Sid Meyer's Colonization*). You needed a transport (a wagon or a ship) unit if you wanted to transport wares. It was possible to attack the unit and get the goods. If you wanted to cut suply lines of the enemy, you had to hunt theese units. I am not sure however, whether this system would be good in Elemental too:

1) in Colonization the number of wares was fixed from the beginning to the end of the game

2) the number of possible wares was low, so it was not difficult to automate the transfer

3) this system does not solve weapon improvements (ie. "guns" and "guns II") at all

(* I played the old MS DOS one, not the new one.

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One more thing about using old technologies - I had a problem in Civilization. I was building a protecting unit. The unit was cheap and good enough to be able to defend a city against an incomming enemy. In the meantime I invented a better unit. It made the original one obsolete. The newer was however pretty expensive. So I lost the city. It is similar to the town improvements. I like the possibility in GC2 - you have only the newest technologies in the menu, but you can set the filter to show all.

It is good in the late game - if you create a town, you may increase the production by building an older cheap production building and upgrade it later. It allows you to build the new improvements quickly.

As ling as the units upgraded in this way require additional training and such I see no fault with this system. What I do not ant to see is the possibility for upgrading that in anyway bypasses requirements for a certain unit so that you can 'cheat' your way into creating an army faster than you could actually build that army without upgrading.

In fact, building older units and then upgradfing them later should be slower than to actually build the more advanced units since you need not only equip the old units with old weapons but you then need to equip them with more up to date weapons later on. You need to produce more weapons this way. Sure you could defend a city faster because you may be able to produce old weapons faster, but you will in the end be left with old equipment.

If this system is put in place, does upgrading units then destroy old equipment? If your soldiers in the front line get upgraded swords, will the old swords still be available as equipment for town guards in some backwater province?

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You are not quite right. If you need to pay for the upgrade, it may be faster, but it will cost you something (money, resources etc.). If the upgrade is free, the value of the unit shall remain the same (otherwise you are right and this is an exploit). I hope the beta will be out soon, so we will se how the upgrade is implemented.

What I had in mind if I wrote about the old city improvements it was the problem of Civilization games. In the late time it was useless to found new cities, because the time of the creation even smallest improvement was terrible. Let us say you have a blacksmith in a city and research a factory (factory = the same as the blacksmith, but it improves the production more than the blacksmith, but cost much more).

It is not problem to build the factory in the cities with the blacksmith, because of the blacksmith production bonus, but it is the problem to build the factory on a "green field". The solution would be to build the blacksmith first, but in the Civilization game you don't have the option to build it because it is an obsolete technology.

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I think you could handle the updating process like this (use a+b or use c):

a ) Units in town(or units moving into a town):

They get their weapons reworked to the better version for only a small fee. (e.g. if Bronze Swords cost 5g, the update costs 1g). This way no old weapons will be stored in the warehouses.

b ) Units in the field:

b1) The troops have a smith in their ranks, who reworks everything to the better version. Since he has not the perfect equipment of a stationary smith, this will be a bit more expensive than option a) (e.g. 2g instead of 1g). This way no old weapons stay behind.

b2) Better weapons will be built for the full cost in a smithy, then a caravan is loaded with these and shipped to the field units. These units receive the better weapons and give their old ones back to the caravan, which then can deliver these back to a town to be stored or revamped for the small fee from a) to the better one (or even to another field unit which still has even older weapons). This way the older weapons are available for reuse. Also with this way the caravans can be attacked and plundered by your enemies.

b3) Instead of delivering via caravan just give the load of weapons to your channeler who then switches them magically for the field troops. But now you not only have the full cost for the new weapons, but also the mana cost for the used switching spell. This way the older weapons are available for reuse and your weapons cannot be stolen by a raiding party.

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c ) Scrap this idea and all the overhead for tracking which unit has which version of a weapon. Just upgrade every sword automagically whenever the next tech is researched. This is the easiest solution, but it can feel like cheating, especially for the old hardcore players.

What do you think about this?

P.S.: Although I always talked about weapons, the same idea naturally also applies for armors.

P.P.S.: I hate automatic conversion to graphical smileys.

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I like the original postings analogy of bronze swords and iron swords. You could have tech such as bronze working level 1 or steel swords. Bronze working makes it cheaper/faster to produce bronze swords. Or you could go for iron swords so that you can pack a bit more punch. That way you can choose to horde with bronze swords or go high tech with iron swords. So depending on how the balancing works out, it still can work.

Now about the problem of how to upgrade your hordes.

Personally i have never liked upgrading units individually. Shuffling units around to make sure they are always upgraded to the latest tech is not fun. If there is to be any upgrading it should be automatic and immediate much like how units are upgraded in Civ. The most i could tolerate is a tiny little global button that say "upgrade all units, cost: xyz"

I guess you could have 'designs'. So if i 'upgraded' a design, all of the units of the old design automatically needs to be upgraded to the new design. Then i can have a global button to upgrade all units of that design. That way i am not managing the upgrades of individual units but of template/designs.

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Dunno man, seems to me that with these design screens, that is, having no generic soldiers, we're going to need a little more than just a button press to do it.

Probably just upgrade a design, and then push an 'upgrade design' button that makes you produce the new soldiers rather than the old soldiers, and lets you upgrade the old units with the new equipment. If it's like from a bronze sword 1 to a bronze sword 2, there probably won't be any additional cost other than just providing the new equipment. Once the equipment is there, or even before, it could be just pushing a button.

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I hope the beta will bring some light to this. The question is: are bronze swords III an item, that can be carried or are bronze swords III the same as bronze swords, but have better attack value, if you have this technology invented?

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I think you guys are vastly over estimating the level of costumization that will be in the game, what the hell is a level 3 bronze sword? A sword is a sword, you got the short version the romans used to great effect in their shield lines because they stab well, you got the long version thats better for a general melee without well organized lines and a two handed version thats great for offense but piss poor for defending.

This isn't Galciv 2 where you gradually improve the focusing crystals of your laser weapons or make bigger explosives for your missiles, this is medieval times where you got sharp things and pointy sticks and the level technology needed for them is pretty basic. To me, improving a sword is purely based on the material, you can make a bronze sword which is great for stabbing unarmored targets but if they start wearing chainmail you're pretty boned because bronze is fairly soft. Upgrade to iron and you now have decent penetration but high grade steel is still better because it breaks less, thats how you upgraded stuff in medieval times.

As for how upgrades are handled we'll have to wait and see, I doubt cities are going to have elaborate storage slots for different kinds of weapons based on their type and material and we'll likely just have an upgrade button based on the industry level of the city and available materials.

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To me, improving a sword is purely based on the material, you can make a bronze sword which is great for stabbing unarmored targets but if they start wearing chainmail you're pretty boned because bronze is fairly soft. Upgrade to iron and you now have decent penetration but high grade steel is still better because it breaks less, thats how you upgraded stuff in medieval times.

Um, no. That is completely and utterly wrong. You don't just take a hunk of rock that has some copper and tin in it, wave your hands at it and it becomes a bronze sword. Likewise, you don't take a hunk of iron ore, wave your hands at it and it becomes an iron sword. First, you have to process your ore to get the metals you want - different methods of processing your ore will result in different levels of purity. To make things more complex, having trace amounts of certain impurities is often desirable. The time progression goes something like this:

- terrible at processing ore, results in poor quality metals
- mediocre at processing ore, mediocre metals
- good at processing ore, good quality metals
- very experienced with what processing methods result in stronger or more durable metals (even if you don't understand the science behind it - which is that trace impurities can result in a much stronger chemical structure)

So basically, the processing of your ore alone makes a huge difference. Then, there's how you actually go about forging your equipment. There are so many ways of going about making an actual sword (or anything else, really) once you have your processed ore. There are innumerable permutations one could make of folding, beating, heating, cooling.... The order, frequency, duration and method of each of the above can all make a tremendous difference.

So no. A bronze sword is not just like any other bronze sword, even of the same size and shape. There can be many difference between identically sized and shaped bronze swords and iron swords besides the materials used. Do you really think a bronze sword made 4000 years ago would be of even remotely the same quality of a bronze sword made using modern tools and techniques? If your answer is yes, then I am amazed and give up. If your answer is no, then you understand why your previous post is wrong.

Now, as a concluding note I'm not saying that this should necessarily be accounted for in the game. My personal preference would be that we are able to improve on our weaponry and equipment in general besides upgrading to 'better' materials, but that's not the point I'm making here.

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Might be fixed by auto upgrading them only once they reach a city under your control. Argue that the weapon itself is not the time limitation in producing a new unit but their time training them. As such a smithy will have a large stock waiting to replace the old stuff? I suppose the real question is what is going to have value. Is the soldier and the mount the expensive thing, or is the sword and armor? Are soldiers expected to pay for their own equipment out of their payment? If so all that is needed to upgrade a unit is a market for them to buy from. Do more experienced troops pay for better swords/spears whatever? explaining damage bonuses with time? Their chance to hit coming from training, resistance from personal armor? It is reasonably easy to explain soldiers in a fantasy setting upgrading when available

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