Mounted Combat and the Equip Menu

This is a post in associated with the main post for Orchold, located at: http://gamedesignproj.blogspot.com/2013/06/initiative-order-options.html

Mounted Combat

It has come to my attention that the previous way I was doing mounted combat is insufficient to capture the power of riding a horse, or warg, or pegisai in combat without being wildly overpowered.

Previously, to become mounted, any unit merely had to have a mount in their inventory, and thus there was no real reason to not have every hero mounted, unless they really want that extra item slot. 

So my solution to this is to make an ability “mounted combat” which allows a unit to gain the benefit of horses and other mounts, with the level of the ability determining which mounts the hero/unit can ride.  This ability currently has 3 levels, so if a hero wants to ride the best mounts in the game they have to purchase the ability 3 times instead of abilities relevant to their combat style. 

 

Furthermore if a hero wants to get a mount, they must choose so at level 1 (so heroes cannot get a mount in campaigns where they have present level-ups).  I however am toying with the idea of having an additional choice at a mid-tier level up, perhaps predetermined by the campaign or perhaps just at a point determined middlish, where a hero can make this choice again (and retain their level 1 choice, effectively getting 2 options from the list).

Now the real questions come in terms of how powerful a mount is: At current, all a mount does is give the character bonus move speed which is not effected by armour, and if the mount can fly, changes the unit’s movement type to flying.  

Here are some ideas for improving this:

1. Mounts count as fighting from the higher ground, so they grant a bonus fighting footmen on even footing or negate the footman’s bonus if he’s on higher terrain.  Also would allow the mounted unit to attack enemies that are too high to reach for a regular footman with the same weapon.
   
2. Grant a flat combat advantage to all mounted units in combat, and/or a combat advantage defense, which can be improved with the level of the mounted combat ability.  (Combat “advantage” grants a bonus to hit for all melee combat)
3. Grant combat advantage based on the mount, so a horse might give 1 combat advantage, and a warg 2, but the warg is likely going to be harder to ride (needs a higher mounted combat ability). 

The other problem with doing this is trying to balance mounted units if they get such a pronounced advantage.  Should mounted units just be valued more, therefore making it harder to field as many?  Should foot units just get buffed in a like way to try and balance this out?  Only foot heroes buffed, foot non-heroes just valued as less?

Equipment and battle

So It has come to my attention a couple times that having the equipment menu attached to the regular attack action is both confusing to new players and somewhat cumbersome for more experienced players.  To this end I am proposing that I move the ability to equip items away from the “action” (or attack) menu and to a new “Equip” menu that can be brought up from the main unit menu.  With this change a player that chooses “action” will only see the attacks that they can make with the weapon they have equipped, or any attacks that do not require a weapon to be equipped. 

The first question is about how much information should be displayed in the new equip menu?   

Here are some ideas

1. It displays only what it’s displaying now -> it tells you what hand you’re equipping the item for and the options for what to equip in this hand. 
2. It displays the above, and also shows what items the unit currently has equipped. 
3. It displays 1 and maybe 2, and also gives the attack, damage, defense and missile defense of the item the player is thinking of equipping. 

The second question is if I do things this way, how should I do spells, which are currently treated as a weapon that you equip, but have a cool down so the mage would have to equip a new item every turn.  Here is an idea

1. All spell users must have a “magical focus” which they cast their spell through, if this focus is equipped and the “action” is chosen, all of the mage’s spells show up on the attack type list.  Spell focuses could be such as a book or wand which allow the mage to cast spells but fairly useless, or could be a sword or bow which could also be used to fight if the mage’s spells are on cool down or to defend against attacks, but could require more investment (in terms of hero abilities) into the spell focus