Storm Ground Basics, Improvements and Bugs (It's a long read...)

[GeoJoe]

This is going to be long, so if you don't like reading I'd stop right here. It also focuses primarily on the Multiplayer portion of this game, I haven't put very much time into Single Player and don't intend to. But for those who are trying their best to learn this game with the limited information available I have compiled some here. I have also put together my thoughts on enhancements the game could benefit from and the current bugs I encountered.

The Basics:
I jumped right into Multiplayer so missed out on the initial tutorial provided in the Single Player experience. Without Tooltips to explain much I had to struggle along and figure it out on my own. I did eventually do the tutorial and the starting missions for all three factions to get the general idea, but even that didn't give me much. I'm not going to go into detail on each faction, I don't know enough to do that yet. So instead here are the basics.

When looking at your party you will see the Factions across the top, the Spearhead to the left, and your Reinforcements to the right. The factions are easy enough, just click the one you want. The Spearhead units are given to you on Turn 1 on your deploy list located directly below your resources in game.

The remaining units are randomly drawn from your reinforcements during gameplay. I'm not going to talk strategy here, but putting pricey units into your Spearhead may not be the best idea.

Returning to the list of characters in your Warband you will see two values to the bottom left and bottom right. The left is the amount of times that unit can be summoned, and the right is the cost in Power (the purple crystals) it will cost to deploy. You can remove these heroes from your Warband at any time by right clicking on them. This will leave an empty spot which you can fill with any soldiers you have in your collection that aren't already in your Warband.

By left clicking on the icon you will be taken into the Unit screen. Here you will see 4 values on the left. They may make sense to some of you, but others like me may question what they are. The first one (Red) is your Attack, or how much damage you will do to an unarmored enemy. The second one (Yellow) is your Armor, or how much damage you will mitigate before taking damage (armor is a bit more detailed than this and I don't fully understand the numbers). The third one (Green) is your Health, or how much damage you can take before you die. The fourth one (Blue) is your Movement, or how far you can move each turn. That's the basics, and honestly they really need to have a tooltip identifying each.

On the Right hand side you will see 4 additional slots. The top 2 are Weapon slots. If you have a two handed weapon it will occupy both slots. I don't know what the third one is for, I believe it is cosmetic. (I must not have progressed far enough to unlock anything for it). The final slot is for Unit specific spells like Traps, Curses, etc... You can click on each slot and cycle through any available changes, or you can Right Click on the slot and it will pull up a more usable list of all changes you have available.

In the top middle you will see Wargear (the tab you started on) and Skill. If you click on Skill you will change out the Equipment slots for Skill slots. Each unit starts with 1 Skill slot and as far as I can tell they all gain 1 Skill slot per level, maxing out at level 3. I do not have a hero maxed out so take that info with a grain of salt. Again either left clicking and cycling through available changes or right clicking and viewing all of them will allow you to swap easily.

In the bottom under the unit model is the Experience Bar. Units acquire XP by participating in battle. Just use them in combat and eventually they will max out.

When you are done customizing your unit, simply hit Escape or click the Unit Ready button in the bottom right to exit. You can do this with all of your units and honestly, this is a huge draw for me right now. The customization of the army can get pretty in depth.

Combat Basics:
Multiplayer is where I have the majority of my game time and as such I needed to learn everything about it. So I started at the very beginning, Resources.

You have two resources that you have to manage during gameplay, Power and Aethyr. Power is the Purple crystal in the top left (or right). Aethyr is the Blue swirling icon just below the Power. You will earn 1 Power Crystal per turn until you reach a maximum of 10. You will not earn any Aethyr on your turn unless you did not spend Power. Any remaining Power at the end of your turn is converted to Aethyr at a rate of 2 Power = 1 Aethyr. Aethyr can fill up in halves so you could have 1 and 1/2 Aethyr at the end of your turn.

When the game starts you are either Player 1 or Player 2 and will start with 1 Power and 0 Aethyr if you are Player 1, and 2 Power and 0 Aethyr if you are Player 2. Your first task is to place your Hero on the board. You are limited in the locations they can be placed so this isn't too difficult. But you should still consider the placement of Wellsprings of Power or Wellsprings of Aethyr. Each of these gains 1 charge of their respective resource each turn (Power or Aethyr) and if you claim this tile by placing a unit on it you will gain those resources. Be aware that if you are on Turn 4 and have 4 Power, but then you pick up 3 Power from a Wellspring to gain 7 your UI will reflect the new maximum but on your next turn you will still only gain 5 Power.

After you have decided where to deploy your unit you will then perform any actions available and end your turn. Your opponent will then proceed to perform their actions and end their turn. You will repeat this process until the objective is complete. There is actually two game modes that you will get randomly through matchmaking, Deathmatch and Soul Prison.

In a Deathmatch the only goal is to kill the enemy Hero. In a Soul Prison game there are two objectives. You can either kill the enemy Hero or kill the enemy Soul Prison. I feel like this mode gives the illusion of choice rather than an actual choice though. The Soul Prison has 2 Armor and 16 Hit Points. It also will deal 1 damage to all enemies adjacent to it and heal all allies adjacent to it by 1. This can lead to long drawn out games where both players continuously run back to their Soul Prison for healing while also being able to repel enemy attacks with ease due to the healing and damaging effects.

All units can move a set amount, the only thing that can change this is the terrain or obstructions. A unit will have to use 2 Movement to reach higher ground. A unit cannot pass through enemy units but can pass through friendly units.

On higher ground a Ranged unit will gain additional Range for their attacks, but not their Skills as far as I can tell. All units gain some form of combat bonus when they are higher than their enemy in the form of 1 additional Armor point. The high ground is definitely worth it if you can hold it.

If a unit is attacking an enemy and they have any Movement values remaining the attack will be a Charge. This is only true for attacks and not for Skills cast after movement.

Once either side has accomplished their goal of killing the enemy Hero or destroying the Soul Prison the game will end. Both players will be rewarded with experience, but only in a random matchmaking game. You are unable to make progress on your Multiplayer account if you strictly want to play with your friends or against the AI. I hope the developers reconsider and make some changes to allow players to earn XP while playing against friends as that is a core part of what makes this game fun.

That is it! That's the gameplay loop, of course I kind of glossed over a few things but its a bird's eye view of what is Storm Ground. Now there are a lot of things that can improved upon but I absolutely love the game as it is. I am hoping for it to improve as time goes on, however there are issues. The weakest element of course is the current UI, especially the lack of tooltips and information.

Improvements and Enhancements:

- Explain Armor a bit better. I still don't fully understand it. If I have 2 Attack and the enemy has 1 Armor I know that I can do 1 Damage, but if the enemy has 2 Armor then it becomes a chance to do damage. The chance decreases the higher the Armor the enemy has, but I don't know the percentages or if it varies unit to unit.

- Place a visible timer in Multiplayer matches. Time and time again I have run out of time while trying to manage all of my units due to waiting for the animations and not being able to find a unit that hasn't participated yet. Knowing the time remaining would be helpful in prioritizing actions and ensuring I'm moving at a rapid enough pace.

- Add Tooltips, add way too many tooltips, but have the option to disable them. I think having too much information is better than none. With the option to disable tooltips you please both crowds.

- Each unit needs an indicator letting you know if they are still able to perform actions that turn. You can cycle through your units with [ or ] by default but that only helps find them slowly. I want to identify a unit by looking at it on the map to know that unit can still perform an action.

- Due to the long animation times and the need to wait for the animation to complete before performing another action I think we should be able to queue actions. This would also allow the player to stay within the timer but perform the actions that are queued when the timer runs out.

- Right clicking on a unit gives you more detailed unit information, but some of the information in there could still use additional tooltips. Again, I want more information, not less.

- Some abilities can be used after moving, and others cannot. For example the Castigator can perform a Greatbow Shot or an Indirect Attack before moving. However if you move 1 tile you lose the ability to cast Greatbow Shot but can still cast Indirect Attack. If you move again, to reach the max movement of 2, you can still cast Indirect Attack. There is no indication as to why this is allowed but Greatbow Shot is not. Perhaps more elaborate ability explanations are needed.

- When looking at your Deploy list on the side during combat you cannot see the specifics of each unit. This may simply be a memory thing, but the icons displayed in the card mean nothing to me, and need to be able to be hovered over with a tooltip for explanation or somehow allow the player to inspect each unit before deploying.

- Sometimes I don't want my unit to "charge" into an enemy tile. Sometimes they are at a disadvantage in their current position and I don't want to lose my position of power by taking over their tile during Victory. There should be an option to attack without charging.

- Clicking on an enemy should target them when you don't have a unit selected and then allow you to hover over their ability bar without it dissapearing. As it is now if you click an enemy unit it does nothing and you need to right click to get the full unit information. This is simply a minor change that would make things just a bit easier information wise.

- A flying unit still takes damage from a tile that causes damage, this may be mechanically how it should be, but the idea that a flying unit takes damage from not touching the ground should be explained in some way.

- I think there should be an indicator that if you are going to place a unit on a damage terrain that you are aware they will take damage, make it idiot proof. There is currently a small tooltip that displays the terrain type, but an active damage indicator showing the 2 missing health bars would be ideal.

- If no further actions can be taken, and no units can be summoned, go ahead and auto end my turn, otherwise I keep looking for the one unit I might be able to do something with.

This is but a small list of the improvements that could be worked upon, but I think these are my biggest issues. Finally, to end it all, here is a list of the current bugs I've encountered while compiling this list of information.

Bugs:

- Hitting ctrl/alt/shift/etc... brings up various hidden ui elements that can't be interacted with in the Unit customization screen.

- Occasionally I will get locked into a unit action and unable to tell which unit is selected and unable to choose another unit, wasting valuable time.

- Power crystals not updating correctly in AI match, must move at least 1 tile to get them to update. The values still populate the Aethyr correctly and you can deploy units, you just don't get the visual update until you move.

- Cancelling a channel spell seems to be hit or miss for me. I can spend a good 30 seconds just trying to get my unit to stop channeling, and even then I might not be able to.

If you've made it this far thank you for reading and I hope this is helpful to some and I'd like to know all of your thoughts. If I have something wrong, or do not understand something please feel free to correct me, I am always trying to learn and this is no different.

[Lonesome Wolf]

Nice summary of the core mechanics.

Stuff like this desperately needs to find it's way into the game - either via some sort of codex (where you can look stuff up) and/or (even better) via the use of a bunch of tooltips as you mentioned.

Hopefully they get some bugfixing & QoL improvements done in due time.

Liking the game so far (only some hours into single-player yet thou)

[Ragnar101]

Cool ! Make this like a guide. In order not to lose.

[ICrazySkills]

Thanks for this, should post as a guide!

[IJJusion]

Let me start off by saying - great post and has a lot of good points raised - I'll just add some points ~

In a Deathmatch the only goal is to kill the enemy Hero. In a Soul Prison game there are two objectives. You can either kill the enemy Hero or kill the enemy Soul Prison. I feel like this mode gives the illusion of choice rather than an actual choice though. The Soul Prison has 2 Armor and 16 Hit Points. It also will deal 1 damage to all enemies adjacent to it and heal all allies adjacent to it by 1. This can lead to long drawn out games where both players continuously run back to their Soul Prison for healing while also being able to repel enemy attacks with ease due to the healing and damaging effects.

One thing to note here is the soul prison destruction 'appears' to be a non choice until you level up your warband, after level 15 I started to experiment with destroying this and now I see it as a proper alternative - as your army is quite a bit weaker in the first 5 levels it 'seems' like something you should completely avoid - which is why it took so long for me to even attempt it later in my play experience.

- Some abilities can be used after moving, and others cannot. For example the Castigator can perform a Greatbow Shot or an Indirect Attack before moving. However if you move 1 tile you lose the ability to cast Greatbow Shot but can still cast Indirect Attack. If you move again, to reach the max movement of 2, you can still cast Indirect Attack. There is no indication as to why this is allowed but Greatbow Shot is not. Perhaps more elaborate ability explanations are needed.

This is stated in the tooltip, the greatbow shot says 'stationary' with the condition that the unit cannot move prior to shooting, the area attack does not have this condition, as such it can be used after moving (as with all other abilities without the 'stationary' condition

NOTE: Upon opening the game I found this restriction to movement only shows while in a battle, reviewing the card I could not find any entry about not being able to move first - so that should certainly be added

- A flying unit still takes damage from a tile that causes damage, this may be mechanically how it should be, but the idea that a flying unit takes damage from not touching the ground should be explained in some way.

I think this is more a verisimilitude issue where we think of flying as having all these benefits in the real world, and therefore it should apply in game.
The ability states how this works, as units with the fly ability have written in that ability 'avoid terrain movement penalties' which means that it makes sense they still suffer damaging effects from those same tiles as they simply damage anything that moves into that tile.

[GeoJoe]

Thank you IJJusion, now that I am a higher level I personally still see no benefit to targeting the Soul Prison. I will definitely keep looking at it as a possibility but for me it’s still not viable…yet.

I have never seen that stationary label. I will cetainly look out for it in the future. Thanks for pointing that out.

As for flying, I understand why it is the way it is. Perhaps it’s more the issue I had where I was placing a flying unit on a damaging tile without reading properly and assuming it would just not take damage. I know more now than when I wrote this so it makes sense now. Though I will say I think it needs to be more apparent when you will take damage from movement. With the wonky movement I still occasionally send some units to their death by accidentally maneuvering them through the damaging tiles.

Thanks again for helping me understand more about this game.