Thoughts on the Ancients

[blackmagejw]

Firstly, Odd Realm scratches that DF Masterwork itch. I enjoy playing necromancers, and there are very few games that both does necromancy right and allows for empire building. So, thank you devs and keep up the good work!!

Some problems/solutions I've compiled with the ancients:

The Farsight Beacon does not work properly. Ancient will begin task and stop abruptly. I've taken them off of carrying to encourage their free time to be spent on the Farsight Beacon, but they only perform the task for a few ticks then go idle. A possible fix could be to set it to a workshop so players can activate/deactivate the beacon when needed.

Ancients are a bit lazy when tasks are presented to them. Either they will perform their tasks or lounge around while workers disappear. A priority system for workshops would be nice to add.

More summons. I know there is a lot of work that goes into summoning and I appreciate the work so far, but a tiered system will have to be done in the future to make the late game more fluid. For example: Low tiered summons (voidlings) who perform manual labor, mid tiered summons who perform crafting needs, and mid-late tier summons who perform combat. Summons seem a bit overpowered in combat. All the enemies I've faced have around 15 hp vs my 100 hp summon swarm.

A way to recharge summons like pylons. Make it a late game construct, but can recharge summoned creatures or make it mid-tiered cost, but has a set amount of summons it can interact with. For example: Player has 20 summoned creatures, 10 can be recharged at the pylon (have owner ship at the pylon) but the other 10 do not. This could allow for the tiered system through training, but preserve the simplicity of the summon feature.

A resource watch on summons would also be helpful. Much like watching the voidshards, but gives a number of summons on the field. Would be a bit more code, but could add an alert bar to summons below 2000 energy. We currently have to manually set work orders for summons and the auto work order function doesn't work, so this could rectify it.

Later development for ancients: A necromancer's domain is shaped to match its will and perform a function for the necromancer. The land is defiled as the corrupted energies spread from the source. In most fantasy tropes, the land would slowly lose its fertility. Trees would rot, the animals become more feral, etc etc. In this game, the land could become more like the voidlands. Replacing textures, etc etc. Wouldn't serve too much of a function, but is just fun for flavor. Could be done as a ritual.
Rituals: Ritual casting large scale events would give the player something to work towards. Such as a phylactory for ancients that would resurrect the chosen ancient upon death, but with a significant decrease in skills. A terraforming ritual would also be cool. Or, when the player is under a siege, a plague of insects that sweep across the map or a dark one from the void comes to wreak havoc on the aggressors and will either go back to its realm (with a successful skill check at beginning of ritual) or become hostile to the summoners as it likes it here.

This is just a compilation of thoughts I had on this race. Keep up the good work!

[Sleipnir]

Solid feedback and I wholeheartedly agree with you. This race has seen the least amount of tuning and polish. Most of these things you have mentioned are things that I absolutely plan to add or improve. Thanks so much for writing this up. :)

[blackmagejw]

No problem. I'd like to see this game go further than DFMasterwork.
I don't know if this is a possible issue or is intended. I equipped my ancients with the spellbook (cannot remember name, but made with copper) and they can now fire through terrain. I haven't tested with bows or through Z-axis, but this may be a bug.
In detail: I found a dungeon underground and used my ancients armed with spellbooks to clear out the inhabitants. The ancients fired through the terrain and killed them before they rounded the corner. They still have range limitations, but the spell bolt does not require line of sight/respect terrain blocking to target. I suspect this may be true of all projectiles, but the spell could be intended to do so/is not under same object class as arrows.

[Sleipnir]

The next patch will have a bunch of fixes for combat including one for being able to shoot through walls. Hehe.

[blackmagejw]

I'm excited to see what happens with the next patch! Necromancy is love, necromancy is unlife.

[Skar1ath]

Indeed! A colony simulation with liches has always been on my list of games to play.

I really like the idea of having a way to recharge summons, so you would have a reason to care about them and try to train them up. Or at least care about some of them.

One though - what if rather than having multiple different types of summons, you could make permanent equipment items to customize them in the chaos construct? As in, the equipment would only by allowed on minions, and once equipped you wouldn't be able to unequip it again. It would be a unique take on customization / equipment compared to the other kinds of creatures.

[Sleipnir]

Very cool idea. I like the sounds of it. I'll give it some thought when I'm addressing these issues later. :)

[PuckGoodfellow]

The idea of maintaining summons later in the game sounds neat. Only just started playing the game it and it's occurred to me that the Barracks is kind of useless for Ancients because summons aren't permanents. Unless I'm not privy to a recent patch that addressed that.

Would be neat to make barracks useful for Ancients or whatever is equivalent if you want to use a different type of room with some tweaks but similar functionality.