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No problem. About those stat bar lengths:
Three bytes control how long the status bars are:
0x385cb: 1a <– how much a "||" character is worth
0x385d9: 0d <– how much a "| " character is worth
0x3ea47: 14 <– How long a Stat entry is allowed to be in the status screen
The above are default values. The bar begins on character #12 of a line. For every 26 (#0x1a) points in a stat, a double bar is outputted. When subtracting by 26 yields a negative number, 13 (#0x0d) is added, and if the result is again positive, a final single bar is appended to the end. With this configuration, a stat's visualization can only be 17 bars long, hence only 9 characters are needed (11 + 9 = 20 total line length).
My changes were:
0x385cb: 14 <– how much a "||" character is worth
0x385d9: 0a <– how much a "| " character is worth
0x3ea47: 16 <– How long a Stat entry is allowed to be in the status screen
The one note about this is that the bar maxes out when an officer has a rating of 240+, not 250. If I were to make the line #0x17, or 23, bytes long, the last single bar would be colored white, and I didn't feel like messing with the PPU colors. Then again, maybe officers with a 250 in a stat deserve to look special…
When all else fails... manipulate the source code.
If I do this it seems to differentiate the 240-255 a little better:
0x385cb: 15 <– how much a "||" character is worth
0x385d9: 0a <– how much a "| " character is worth
0x3ea47: 16 <– How long a Stat entry is allowed to be in the status screen
Which means it would fill the slots (24 bars) once it hits 252.
Now you can see a slight difference between say Zhang Fei's strength (250) vs Lu Bu's strength (255).
I also thought of a cool possible future enhancement today. I remembered the battles in the old ROTK games where if a weak general attacks a strong one they might actually lose a lot of soldiers while attacking. That might be hard to do in DoaE but it would be an interesting twist in a mod if it could be pulled off. In other words, if Song Yong tried to attack Lu Bu, it probably wouldn't go well for Song Yong as he would lose a lot of soldiers in the process of attacking. That kind of enhancement would boost the value of strength vs all these tactic whizzes. It seems we've already boosted the INT and AGI attributes with more tactical options, TP, and AGI based attacks so maybe something like this would give STR more love.
Quote:I also thought of a cool possible future enhancement today. I remembered the battles in the old ROTK games where if a weak general attacks a strong one they might actually lose a lot of soldiers while attacking. That might be hard to do in DoaE but it would be an interesting twist in a mod if it could be pulled off… It seems we've already boosted the INT and AGI attributes with more tactical options, TP, and AGI based attacks so maybe something like this would give STR more love.That sounds awesome! Actually, I'd agree with this with a slight twist (although this would boost Int again), is that an officer's STR or INT would be used when combating an opponent, and checked verses the STR of the defender. If the attacker's STR or INT (whichever is greater) is found to be wanting, they take damage based on the difference between the attacker's and defender's stats.
For instance, Liu Bei (STR 180, INT 225) attacks Zhang Fei (STR 250). Liu Bei is a smart general, so his tactical acumen is transferred to his attack, but Zhang Fei is stronger still. So Zhang Fei fights Liu Bei back with an effective strength of 25 (250 minus 225). Thoughts?
When all else fails... manipulate the source code.
Unfortunately, it'll just help stack things in favor of high int officers; int and str probably should same separate. It's not like we saw Einstein becoming a four-star general for WWII; all he did was co-write a letter advising the US to build the modern, nuclear An Sha!
Quote:That sounds awesome! Actually, I'd agree with this with a slight twist (although this would boost Int again), is that an officer's STR or INT would be used when combating an opponent, and checked verses the STR of the defender. If the attacker's STR or INT (whichever is greater) is found to be wanting, they take damage based on the difference between the attacker's and defender's stats.For instance, Liu Bei (STR 180, INT 225) attacks Zhang Fei (STR 250). Liu Bei is a smart general, so his tactical acumen is transferred to his attack, but Zhang Fei is stronger still. So Zhang Fei fights Liu Bei back with an effective strength of 25 (250 minus 225). Thoughts?
That makes sense. So say if a Lu Bu attacked a Zhuge Liang, while Zhuge Liang can't match Lu Bu's strength he might find some clever way to defend. Maybe INT counts half in that situation? Err maybe this is turning into a complicated formula… :wink:
Actually what I had in mind was INT playing a part in allowing a smart general an ability to attack a very strong general in such a way that their reprisal is minimal. A tactical wizard who has less strength would never be able to strike back against attack, but they would be able to attack and lessen the reprisal of an enemy. In other words, INT would be important while on the attack, but not on the defense.
Just thought of this… Reprisal plus agility-based attacks… That could be a sick advantage… A weak general attacks Jiang Wei and gets crushed four times as a result. Oh. My.
When all else fails... manipulate the source code.
Yes, Zhuge Liang would have clever ways of defending… Ji Rou, Ji Mian, etc. But with jsut troops, not tactics, he wouldn't do so well.*
* According to the book, anyway, which all the games are based on. Historical Zhuge Liang probably commanded troops better than Lu Bu even without tactics, but nobody would believe that in DoaE!
Quote:Actually what I had in mind was INT playing a part in allowing a smart general an ability to attack a very strong general in such a way that their reprisal is minimal. A tactical wizard who has less strength would never be able to strike back against attack, but they would be able to attack and lessen the reprisal of an enemy.I always assumed that Str was for pure fighting ability and Int is for tactics use; we shouldn't really have Int cover everything, should we?
This retaliatory stuff might go against the entire play style of DOAE… just.. throwing that out there.
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If… INT could somehow be apart of a counter attack, then perhaps. I'd suggest the counter attack only being based on INT scores.
ie: Mr Strong Guy attacks Miss Smarty Pants. Miss Smarty Pants is possibly able to pull off some kind of tactic to inflict harm on the attack. In the book – this would be a feigned retreat to an ambush or logs/stones / etc.
Mr Strong still does his normal DOAE damage as intended. But… is there a way for a smart guy to also retaliate against the attack ? I suggest it being INT based because… the smart guy would lead a hot head ?
If it happens with every attack, you now have damage occurring much more frequently in the game, and not sure how battles would work out in that case. Cause then…. smarty pants get damage from their tactics AND from this counter attack stuff.
Next up — how do you determine when these counter attacks happen ? Constantly ? Only on 'defend' (which is not good, AI doesn't defend) ? Randomly akin to ambush / bei jie ? If random, how many of the battles would be decided more so by luck ? Can brigands / rebel forces do these counter attacks ?
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Quote:For instance, Liu Bei (STR 180, INT 225) attacks Zhang Fei (STR 250). Liu Bei is a smart general, so his tactical acumen is transferred to his attack, but Zhang Fei is stronger still. So Zhang Fei fights Liu Bei back with an effective strength of 25 (250 minus 225). Thoughts?Is this just the reprisal attack damage ?
Or is this the 'liu bei attacks zhang fei, but the outcome is only liu bei hurt by someone with an effective 25 str' ?
Instead of taking the greater of str/int, maybe sum them for the comparisons ?
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I dunno… this… is… entirely scary and prolly needs to have just a fresh slate rom with sand box fights that are easy to edit to test with.
It seems that everybody has a different opinion on how to implement this. When I first mentioned it I was thinking of the early ROTK games which I believe was only based on leadership/strength. If a weak general attacked a strong one it was likely to hurt the weaker general more. If we did something like that you'd have to really think about who's attacking who.
Someone like Song Yong might be relegated to only being allowed to attack random enemies (rebel force, bandit force, etc…)
In Nobunagas Ambition Lord of Darkness for SNES, it was impossible to take down someone like Shingen or Kenshin with 1:1 amounts of troops. You would either have to sacrifices 3x-4x as many troops or rifle them to death since their WAR stats were so obscene. You could essentially solo the whole country if yoy played as them.
Ya that's one thing about the DoaE battle algorithm that doesn't make much sense. That you can attack an army and not lose a single soldier. I'm sure you'd like that for your Lu Bu mod. You attack Lu Bu and lose a lot of soldiers in the process…
Anyway I haven't investigated how difficult it would be to make these changes. Just an idear for a future mod enhancement possibility.
I would make that an option MAYBE with defend, but only if the enemy would defend also.
Going back to mod topic.
Quote:* Make Huang Zhong generally more useful… it has bugged me to no end that he's not useful by the time Jing Zhou rolls around.Here are some officers I didn't use at all when I played:
Zhou Cang: I was killin it with tactics at the time and preferred a tactic guy.
Wei Yan: Loved his AGI but he would have had a Zhang Fei type role and I already had Zhang Fei locked into my group.
Huang Zhong: Had better options at the time.
Zhang Bao and Guan Xing: I couldn't justify using them vs who I had. At the time their soldier counts were much lower than my Wu guys or even Ma Su.
I ended up using mostly Wu generals at the end of the game because grinding was too painful in Shu/Wu/Wei. Ie…it seemed to take longer to gain levels than stock DoaE. If I had made it to level 45+ I probably would have ditched the Wu guys and gone back to some of the more standard guys (like Ma Chao over Taishi Ci or Gan Ning).
If you decide to start off with the Wu mod I think you should use this mod as the base. (kinda like James did with DoaE 2.0 vs DoaE 2.0: Cao Cao Edition) as the battle/tactic/weapon system in this mod rocks!
My only beef with the warriors not being able to use tactics, is that they nearly become obsolete compared to the High Int characters who can also fight, use tactics, and heal. The only way to balance this out better would be to make high INT characters have extremely LOW str, less than 100, and extremely LOW agility so they are relegated to using exclusively tactics while HIGH str + HIGH agi chars make up for lack of healing and multi-targeting over damage output.
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