Creatures Battle skills/attack system overhaul?

[Danimal]

After some thinking, woulndt it be better to have a "fill up" system instead of a "cool down" one?; creatures unlocked/learned skills are normally at zero charge out of combat, they only start filling up its skills when it enters battle, when it gets out of battle its skills "fill up meter" starts dropping or goes to zero.( a casting time of shorts i guess?)

Why? skills cooldown means a warlocks enters battle with all the spells charged, ready to unleash hell a few turns and be picked up again to safety. Having a fill up system makes units stay for a while in battle until skills are charged, and a powerful skill will never be used from a just dropped fresh creature, it will have to stay for a while exchanging blows until it can use it (if it survives).

A dirty trick would be to "trigger" all creatures skills/attack cooldown (like they had been used) when entering battle so it has to wait for it to cooldown before using them; same result as filling up but less programing involved

Pros:
more strategic and somewhat more realist figths

Cons:
programming?

[Bertram]

Hi Danimal,

I do think spells should remain the only stuff you can trigger by yourself. So, I wouldn't make it so we have to trigger skills ourselves, except in the future first person mode, maybe?

Using warmup times instead of cool downs is fine to me, and isn't that different from cool downs in fact.
Some game, like Valyria Tear, even use both. Hence, I see no cons in the programming time as for this.

Let us see what the others think.

Regards,

[Danimal]

Sorry , i explained myself bad. This is about creatures skills.

[hwoarangmy]

Yes, I don't see any problem with code either. And you are probably right about the fact players will have to play more strategically to allow powerfull skills to be ready instead of picking up ASAP.

[Bertram]

Heya,

Sorry , i explained myself bad. This is about creatures skills.

I was actually speaking about creatures skills, but as you proposed to optionally trigger their skills by ourselves, I was just pointing out that manual triggering should remain a spell stuff.

And we can add support for both creature skills warm ups and cool downs.
While on it, I do think we should only add support for spells cool downs.

Best regards,

[Akien]

Sorry , i explained myself bad. This is about creatures skills.

I was actually speaking about creatures skills, but as you proposed to optionally trigger their skills by ourselves, I was just pointing out that manual triggering should remain a spell stuff.

I didn't understand it as a proposal to have manual triggering of creature skills, but only using warmups instead of cooldowns so that creatures can't spam all their skills at the beginning of a fight.

And we can add support for both creature skills warm ups and cool downs.
While on it, I do think we should only add support for spells cool downs.

Agreed. Cooldown would be needed for simple attacks for example, while warmups might be wanted for more powerful skills.
And yes for keeper spells, cooldown seems like the best solution.

As was said though, warmups and cooldowns are not that different in the logic, so maybe we just need to implement warmups, with a different parameter for some skills that make it possible to warm them up out of battle? For example a basic attack could very well be a "warmup", if it's warmed up when out of battle: when a creature engages, it can deal a first blow directly, and then its attack has to warm up/cool down again (such that if you pick it and drop it on another creature, it won't be able to fight directly).
The only practical difference would then be that keeper spells can't be used right away at the start of a game, because they have to warm up first. But maybe that's better?

[Bertram]

Hi Akien,

As was said though, warmups and cooldowns are not that different in the logic, so maybe we just need to implement warmups, with a different parameter for some skills that make it possible to warm them up out of battle? For example a basic attack could very well be a "warmup", if it's warmed up when out of battle: when a creature engages, it can deal a first blow directly, and then its attack has to warm up/cool down again (such that if you pick it and drop it on another creature, it won't be able to fight directly).

i must say it's because I don't really know what is the best option yet that I proposed to implement both warmups and cooldowns. A simple attack would be an attack with 0 warmup and X cooldown values, while a more powerful one would have values >0 in both. That's what I had in mind.
My main concern was to let the possibility to Danimal and other mapper/modder to play with the values more freely.

The only practical difference would then be that keeper spells can't be used right away at the start of a game, because they have to warm up first. But maybe that's better?

Warmups or not added for spells, I do think it would be interesting to start the new available spells "unloaded" in game, making the keeper wait a bit before dealing the first cast.

Best regards,

[Danimal]

While i think warm up for creatures skills is the way to, i do believe that keeper spells should have a cooldown. You want to cast them when you need, not only when in battle (who havent zapped enemy imps in the other side of the map just for the kicks?) and then wait for cooldown, its not like they are free,they have a mana cost, so we shouldnt limit then even more.

i must say it's because I don't really know what is the best option yet that I proposed to implement both warmups and cooldowns. A simple attack would be an attack with 0 warmup and X cooldown values, while a more powerful one would have values >0 in both

It should be just one of the two, i support "warm ups" because it will make animations more realistics, we are used to creatures attacking like crazy now without any rest , but a real attack takes some time to prepare and land. That warm up time will be acumulated anyways while creatures march to the enemy or worse when they are on front of him. This way we can use longer attack animations, since they can still be playing while the next attack is still warming up.

[Bertram]

While i think warm up for creatures skills is the way to, i do believe that keeper spells should have a cooldown.

We can always start with that and see how it turns.

I'll update the issue about spells and creatures stats for attack warmups.
Note that I won't enter the skills area yet, since we don't have actual scripting support atm. (And I'd rather fix normals and add particle support first. ;])

Regards,