First off, I like your crusader, but he should look more religious.
Not a lot has happened on FPM in a while, but that's not a reason to try to take it over and fundamentally change its underpinnings. From what I've read, I don't think you comprehend the dynamics of the work that's already been done. Also, there is a thread somewhere around here where different ideas for the other two paths have been examined & discussed at great length. If you want to do work on it, your contributions are welcomed! But you can't take the project over and change it entirely, especially without ever understanding how it works in the 1st place! All work is licensed under the a Creative Commons license (I believe the share-alike, attribute & commercially friendly version), so if you want to start your own fork, that is of course within your rights. But if you wish to do that, kindly call it something other than "Four Path Magitech" so as to distinguish your fork from the one that wciow & I have done so much work on (even if it's incomplete).
The reason I haven't given it much work lately is because I need additional features in the engine to support what I want to do in FPM. These features are partially available in the 0.3 branch, but
not in sourceforge! Whenever hailstone created the 0.3.x_deprecated branch, he did not put the correct sources into it! So these features are on the 0.3 branch from codemonger.org. Lots of models & animations are needed or need improvement, but that's never been my area of speciality.
Then, I decided that the networking needed to be fixed and got side-tracked on that and hadn't made my way back to finishing 0.3, but c'est la vie.
As to the "fall down" and "get up" skills are the mechanisms used when an earthquake knocks down units. Earthquakes are supposed to temporarily immobilize units (presuming they aren't killed). I hate the way I have it implemented personally, where the skill specifies how long it takes them to fall & to get up and don't even get me started on the visual appearances, because that's terrible.
So here's some background on the FPM factions:
Path of EnlightenmentThis is a society whos path has gone quite differently than the typical Christian or Muslim societies of Earth's recent history (past few thousand years). In this society, the men are still the warriors, but the female is the revered gender. In this society, men can become priests, but they are not at the top of the religious food chain, that role is reserved only for women.
Priests (or Monk, I don't mind that name either)
The priests are the healers and they have another ability (not implemented) where they can create a "beacon of hope", or some such (some static object they create that uses most of their EPs, lasts some 30 seconds, and has an emanation that aids allies and slows attack & movement of foes). The intention of this skill is that you "spend" it when you have a big battle and if the battle moves, you loose the benefit of it.
They have weak (cloth) armor and are vulnerable to physical attack. The priests minister to the holy warriors, which cannot be produced without priests to minister to them (thus the "piety" resource). Also, they are selfless, so they can heal others, but not themselves (although they can heal eachother). So ideally, the priest goes into combat, right behind the combat units. I did a lot of work in the AI to make them stay in battle when there's somebody there to fight for them and flee only when they don't have a combat unit between themselves & the enemy unless you explicitly order them to do otherwise.
PriestessThe priestess is the center of this society. They do not have healing abilities. They are strictly offensive and, almost deity-like, are capable of awe-inspiring attacks. Their years of study, spiritual discipline and closeness to the spirit world renders them mostly invulnerable to mundane attacks. They can be killed by mundane means, you just have to beat on them a good deal.
AcolyteThe acolyte is, in essence, a priestess in training and support for the priestess. Using GAE from the old 0.3 branch, these are fully functional except for two things:
- When their priestess dies, they are supposed to disassociate and re-associate with another priestess who doesn't already have the max number of acolytes.
- They don't yet have a functional "Astral Travel" skill.
What they do successfully:
- Replenish the priestess' EPs with a skill that works automatically, just like a repair/heal skill. This makes the priestess more powerful because she can attack much more often in a battle. The acolytes act like manna batteries.
- They have an emanation that raises the max damage (and maybe some other stat) of the priestess they follow.
CrusadersI don't mind them not having shields & wielding a two-handed sword, I'm not too picky about that part. I want them to probably have slightly less survivability than guards, so the chain mail look is a good choice! I do want them to wear (I'm not sure what you call it) a cloth shirt over their armor that has their religious symbol on it (the same symbol I want decorating the trim of the priests' robes). My concept for the crusader is that they are the anti-thesis of magic attacks seeing any magic not from their religion as inherently bad. They have an emanation that slows enemy EP regeneration and can even drain it in large numbers (since the effect is cumulative). They work very closely with the Priests/Monks who minister and guide them, and as such, are granted minor healing abilities (not powerful enough for use in combat, but good to reduce mana drain on priests between battles). So in brief, as compared to the guard, slightly more vulnerable, around the same damage output, minor healing ability and strong detrimental effect to enemy casters (as long as they can get fairly close range).
Seriously, if you have better ideas for what crusaders & paladins do, I'm most certainly open to it! I do want to make sure that the end product results in a "rock, scissors, paper" type of scheme and I'm not terribly unhappy with them now, except that they tend to die rather quickly against a large mob of corruption attackers (all of the AoE attacks).
PaladinsPaladins are like the horse units, except they are also supposed to inspire. I believe that even with the current 0.2.12a, they should be fully functional. Their emanation is also cumulative, so if you get enough of them, you can boost the fighting ability of other units quite substantially! They can also heal, but they can only heal themselves and they suck at it until you do some upgrade at the Abbey.
ShrinesShrines are required to produce priestess (one shrine allows one priestess) and also provide benefit when you are near them.
CathedralSounds like a good idea. Maybe Abbey should be the name of the advanced building and Cathedral the unit-producing building? I don't know really.
House of ServiceI've never liked the name of the building. Can somebody
PLEASE come up with a better name!?
It was all I could think of at the time and nothing better ever came.
This is supposed to be just like the barracks, except that it's strictly devoted to the training of holy warriors who will wage war and carry out the will of the church.
Path of CorruptionJust a few notes on this faction. And yes, I agree with all of the re-modeling & re-animation (no pun intended
). The current models & animations have certainly served well up to this point!
CryptI've never liked this unit a whole lot. In short, I want to make it smaller and make it where it can only be built within a graveyard. I don't mind the need for it to be built & required for Liches & such.
GhoulI like this idea from a theme standpoint, but Corruption is on the verge of being over-powered offensively. If this were introduced, something else would have to give, like the elimination of zombies. Maybe necromancers are required to make ghouls, but they can only make them at the graveyard? Maybe we leave the zombies, but require the necromancer to create each, but each must be created in the graveyard (thereby adding a little justification to its large size), but zombies are incapable of operating without a necromancer/lich telling them what to do (being their pet) while ghouls are capable of operating independently?
Either way, they would have to be a more advanced unit (requiring research, buildings, or some such), probably be fairly powerful and should have some unique ability to justify their existence.
Lich & SkeletonsI just want to note that they are especially resistant to piercing damage. Also, some upgrade somewhere (I forget where now) adds significant survivability to both and becomes quite important, especially for the Lich who requires so much to make and has so few hit points!
The awful thing about Liches (when you are faced by them) is that they can suck the life of numerous enemy units at once and I have the AI set up so that they will use their life-draining attack only when they are at less than 100% health. The result is that they can be awful hard to kill until they are out of mana! I played the computer once where a Lich had leveled up once or twice and they were fully upgraded and the damn thing took out a LOT of my units before he finally died! However, about one shot from the airship or catapult will do them in.
NecromancerI like your idea for how these will look! The only thing I caution is to not make them look too experienced. They are supposed to be just a tiny bit on the "green" side of dark magic (like the battlemage) -- not necessarily young (although they can be), just inferior to the Lich, which of course, is no longer an actual "living" person.
Path of ReasonJust a few comments for now. I don't want any gunpowder in this path, they aren't that advanced, so absolutely no tanks! The Trebuchet sounds fine. What I think this faction really needs more of is siege machinery. Replace the tank idea with siege sheds and towers. The engine wont currently support this, that's why I've been working on the engine so that it can. Scholars should be like the magic faction's initiates, very vulnerable and somebody you want to keep at home under all costs!
I'll write more on this later.
