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IDProjectCategoryLast Update
0011669Skyward CollapseGameplay IdeaJul 3, 2013 4:54 pm
ReporterWinge Assigned ToChris_McElligottPark  
Status resolvedResolutionfixed 
Product Version1.002 Hunting Through Rubble 
Fixed in Version1.402 Man The Defenses! 
Summary0011669: Flowers Usefulness?
DescriptionIt could be just me, but do Flowers actually do anything anymore? It seems that units just kill them and move on. I recommend that flowers do one of the following:

1. Reduce the spawn rate of bandits by x%, minus diminishing returns.
2. Decrease the duration or frequency of woes.

Or something else...I'm open for other ideas.
TagsNo tags attached.
Internal WeightNew

Activities

Misery

May 25, 2013 1:31 am

reporter   ~0032618

Aye, I think these need to do more; currently there's no reason to make them. Defense towers are always a better choice.

One idea that I'd had was to have it so that the Flowers tile has a 1 tile radius around it; any non-allied unit standing in that radius (or directly on the flowers) has only 1 AP available to it while it's there. Could say they're mesmerized by the beauty of the nearby flowers and can barely act.

It'd be useful for slowing down things like rampaging giants, when they get into a city, but it wouldnt stop siege units.

zharmad

May 25, 2013 4:28 am

reporter   ~0032619

Last edited: May 25, 2013 4:41 am

They are useless! Hahaha...

"So your town is being sacked by a Greek army? Here, have some flowers. They're beautiful to look at and distracting."

Flowers could potentially do these following ideas:
- A melee unit that attacks the flower patch have lose all of their remaining AP, and is inflicted with Vanity so they can't attack next turn either.
- cannot give a unit vanity on two consecutive turns.
- Cannot be attacked from more than melee distance (like a Cerebus). The logic is that there is actually nothing to shoot at unlike all other buildings. :P On the other hand, automatically destroyed by arsonists.
- side effect: give a random unit in a 1-tile radius a 1-turn Vanity.
- additional side effect: Cerebii are allergic to flowers (poor dogs!), so they refuse to be in range of these flower beds.

This will then improve flower-beds against all melee units, effectively halving the AP of a melee unit or more, depending on their target. I would rather not mess with bandit spawns/woes using a spammable building.

Winge

May 26, 2013 10:23 am

reporter   ~0032636

Either of those ideas would work as well. I am a bit curious as to why Cerberus should not be placed next to Flowers (is he actually allergic to flowers? I'm not that well versed on my Greek mythology...).

In line with zharmad's mention that Flowers could not be destroyed by archers...I just had the most hilarious image of a Trojan Horse attacking Flowers (real life, not in-game)...

Mick

May 26, 2013 10:57 am

reporter   ~0032639

I like the idea of having them be bandit reducers.

Chris_McElligottPark

Jun 13, 2013 11:38 am

administrator   ~0032899

I think the bandit reducers thing would be too powerful. How about we make these produce the new Souls resource in (very) small quantities? Say 0.1 souls per turn. This would thematically be something that could be something like "These gardens are so peaceful that the contentedness of the villagers who come here leave small imprints of their souls simply from happiness."

Or something along those lines. ;)

Another idea: any mythological creatures of the same faction who are placed on flowers will come out at +1 upgrade level. I think I like this better, as it provides a cool positional purpose rather than just having mythos ALWAYS be something you place directly where you want them.

I think the second idea is actually really interesting. Thoughts?

Pepisolo

Jun 14, 2013 10:57 am

developer   ~0032910

The second idea is definitely very interesting, although thematically not as good. I would be a little worried about this making the Mythos too powerful, although I haven't put much thought into it yet. Seems like this Mythos home base idea might be something that you could expend souls for.

The flowers generating souls thing seems pretty good to me, you'd just have to tweak the souls generation to make them worthy of the AP cost to put them down.

Just some basic thoughts, nothing thought to heavily on. If you think that this second idea would be worthy of becoming a souls power then flowers as souls generators sounds good to me.

Chris_McElligottPark

Jun 14, 2013 11:35 am

administrator   ~0032911

In terms of mytho power... I think a lot of their power comes from the fact that you can place them where you want. If you're having to place them further from the front-lines in order to get what amounts to a resource reduction cost of 1 level's worth... is that really OP? It sounds like a potentially reasonable tradeoff to me.

Thematically speaking, it's a bit funky but I think it could be worked out. "Flower gardens are a place of peace and reflection, and placing a mythological creature here lets them absorb this positive energy and come out more powerful." Disclaimer: I don't believe any of this sort of junk IRL, just to be clear. ;) Healing crystals and whatever. But it works for this sort of game. ;)

The souls generation I'm worried might be too powerful, and might really break the uniqueness of that resource if suddenly there's just a way to plop down resource producers to get those. I think I'm increasingly inclined to not go that route. If the mytho approach isn't right, then I think something else needs to happen.

Possible other ideas:

1. Maybe placing flower gardens make the workers more efficient and thus the placement of other buildings becomes cheaper in that town. So you can do a bunch of gardens to make it way cheaper to get a university there... but once you do that, of course you've really wasted a bunch of space in town. Yeah you can build over them, but that takes a lot of smiting and wasted AP. So the opportunity cost would be suitably high, although I'm not sure this is as tactically interesting as the mytho thing.

2. These could also just give yet another bonus to the humans produced in these towns, like the amphitheater and so forth do. That's less interesting, but would at least have a solid purpose.

Pepisolo

Jun 14, 2013 12:06 pm

developer   ~0032912

Last edited: Jun 14, 2013 12:12 pm

"In terms of mytho power... I think a lot of their power comes from the fact that you can place them where you want. If you're having to place them further from the front-lines in order to get what amounts to a resource reduction cost of 1 level's worth... is that really OP? It sounds like a potentially reasonable tradeoff to me."

Would you really have to place them further from the front-lines though? I'm bit a hazy on the mechanics (really need to start playing again), but couldn't you just smite a tile and place them where you want? This would cost 2AP, though. Or do they get destroyed by other faction units?

The thematic stuff could be worked out and it's of secondary importance to the mechanics, I guess.

"The souls generation I'm worried might be too powerful, and might really break the uniqueness of that resource if suddenly there's just a way to plop down resource producers to get those. I think I'm increasingly inclined to not go that route."

OK, sounds like you have serious concerns over this idea. Probably best not to do it then.

Hmmm, really not too sure about this at the moment. Probably just gonna sit back, think about it a bit, read a bit more discussion. The mytho idea definitely sounds like an interesting tactical option, but it seems like it might be powerful enough to warrant it's own place as a Souls ability to me. If other units destroy flowers or something ensuring that they have to be placed away from the frontlines then it would sound a lot better to me. Hey, it sounds a bit ignorant not to know the exact mechanics, but I just never used to place flowers.

Edit: actually this report write-up suggests that flowers do get attacked so yeah. Sounding a lot better and less OP to me now. It also gives people who don't like manually upgrading their units a way to reduce the amount of clicks.

Chris_McElligottPark

Jun 14, 2013 12:19 pm

administrator   ~0032914

"Would you really have to place them further from the front-lines though? I'm bit a hazy on the mechanics (really need to start playing again), but couldn't you just smite a tile and place them where you want? This would cost 2AP, though. Or do they get destroyed by other faction units?"

Not quite sure what you mean with that. I mean, sure, you could put these in the towns nearest to the enemy. But by even midgame that's pretty far away. And the main use for the mythos are for evening out some specific battle in a very specific place, or often right there at bandit keeps which could be anywhere (near the front lines or not).

So in order to make the flower gardens that useful in your strategy, it would take a lot of them all over the place, or a good amount of anticipation of what the mythos will then do once spawned. You're at a lot more risk of cursing their free will if they aren't in sight of the immediate target you want them to take out when you place them.

I'm not sold that the best idea has been come up with yet, but it's an interesting discussion at least. I don't think this is dire enough that we have to rush rush rush to an immediate conclusion.

Pepisolo

Jun 14, 2013 1:04 pm

developer   ~0032915

"I'm not sold that the best idea has been come up with yet, but it's an interesting discussion at least. I don't think this is dire enough that we have to rush rush rush to an immediate conclusion."

Yeah, maybe let the discussion for this one develop a bit. Definitely not an urgent issue.

Mick

Jun 14, 2013 1:37 pm

reporter   ~0032918

I think flowers should provide a small amount of auto-heal to all buildings in the town. Thematically, the town has more ambiance than others, so the citizens make an effort to ward off decay.

I think this makes them work as a good "defensive" structure that compliments towers well. To prevent abuse you could limit the number of have diminishing returns. Although, I don't think having some kinda indestructible super-flower/zero-production town would be very good for generating score anyway.

Chris_McElligottPark

Jun 14, 2013 1:40 pm

administrator   ~0032919

Ooh! That's pretty interesting, actually. If it was a low-but-flat amount, that might be best, not sure. Say 100 HP per flower garden? That would take like 30 turns to heal an almost-dead regular building (though of course it's doing all at once). Build 3 of those and it's 10 turns, but you've lost that much space. 10 of those and it's 3 turns... but that's a pretty packed town.

Still not sure if that's OP or not. And a lot of units can knock down a building of that low of health in 1 turn. For a defensive tower, it's still 30,000 health and so even with 10 of those that's still 30 turns to fully heal them.

Mick

Jun 14, 2013 1:45 pm

reporter   ~0032920

Yeah, I'd imagine their use should be to heal up a town while it's not getting hammered on, but it's not going to do very much if it's currently under fire (maybe at best buy an extra turn or so).

And I think 3 for 10 turns doesn't sound overpowered. That's not just three squares, it's a full round of AP! I'd want to use them on key towns, but I wouldn't mindlessly place them everywhere.

Chris_McElligottPark

Jun 14, 2013 2:02 pm

administrator   ~0032921

That's a really good point, actually. Sometimes it's really hard to consider every last opportunity cost at once; and somehow I missed the AP.

Still, in the late game AP can be pretty plentiful, but I think that existing changes in 1.008 have helped mitigate that, and further ones with the villains and so forth should more or less eradicate it.

Anyone have any objections to going with this passive healing approach?

Pepisolo

Jun 14, 2013 6:30 pm

developer   ~0032926

"Not quite sure what you mean with that. I mean, sure, you could put these in the towns nearest to the enemy. But by even midgame that's pretty far away. And the main use for the mythos are for evening out some specific battle in a very specific place, or often right there at bandit keeps which could be anywhere (near the front lines or not)."

Actually I was just confused because for some reason I thought flowers were a land tile that could be placed anywhere. I seem to be in a derpy frame of mind today.

Mechanically speaking the Mytho upgrade and the slow Repair idea both seem decent. Thematically, neither seem amazing to me although Repair is slightly better, but that's a secondary issue I guess.

Misery

Jun 14, 2013 7:02 pm

reporter   ~0032927

The idea of a healing effect is a good one.

Worth trying out, I think. It's possible that there could be a bit of OP-ness to it, but as space in a town is so limited that might not be an issue.

Chris_McElligottPark

Jul 3, 2013 4:54 pm

administrator   ~0033063

All righty!

* Flower gardens, which were pretty useless of late, have now been completely redefined into something very strategically interesting:
** Gardens improve the overall health of your town. Every building in a town will be auto-healed 200 health per flower garden in the town.
** You can now place as many gardens per town as you wish.

Issue History

Date Modified Username Field Change
May 24, 2013 9:06 pm Winge New Issue
May 25, 2013 1:31 am Misery Note Added: 0032618
May 25, 2013 4:28 am zharmad Note Added: 0032619
May 25, 2013 4:41 am zharmad Note Edited: 0032619
May 26, 2013 10:23 am Winge Note Added: 0032636
May 26, 2013 10:57 am Mick Note Added: 0032639
Jun 13, 2013 11:38 am Chris_McElligottPark Note Added: 0032899
Jun 13, 2013 11:38 am Chris_McElligottPark Assigned To => Chris_McElligottPark
Jun 13, 2013 11:38 am Chris_McElligottPark Status new => feedback
Jun 14, 2013 10:57 am Pepisolo Note Added: 0032910
Jun 14, 2013 11:35 am Chris_McElligottPark Note Added: 0032911
Jun 14, 2013 12:06 pm Pepisolo Note Added: 0032912
Jun 14, 2013 12:07 pm Pepisolo Note Edited: 0032912
Jun 14, 2013 12:11 pm Pepisolo Note Edited: 0032912
Jun 14, 2013 12:12 pm Pepisolo Note Edited: 0032912
Jun 14, 2013 12:19 pm Chris_McElligottPark Note Added: 0032914
Jun 14, 2013 1:04 pm Pepisolo Note Added: 0032915
Jun 14, 2013 1:37 pm Mick Note Added: 0032918
Jun 14, 2013 1:40 pm Chris_McElligottPark Note Added: 0032919
Jun 14, 2013 1:45 pm Mick Note Added: 0032920
Jun 14, 2013 2:02 pm Chris_McElligottPark Note Added: 0032921
Jun 14, 2013 6:30 pm Pepisolo Note Added: 0032926
Jun 14, 2013 7:02 pm Misery Note Added: 0032927
Jul 3, 2013 4:54 pm Chris_McElligottPark Internal Weight => New
Jul 3, 2013 4:54 pm Chris_McElligottPark Note Added: 0033063
Jul 3, 2013 4:54 pm Chris_McElligottPark Status feedback => resolved
Jul 3, 2013 4:54 pm Chris_McElligottPark Fixed in Version => 1.402 Man The Defenses!
Jul 3, 2013 4:54 pm Chris_McElligottPark Resolution open => fixed
Apr 14, 2014 9:30 am Chris_McElligottPark Category Suggestion - Gameplay => Gameplay Idea