Obstacle penalty and other abilities

[Warmonger]

Hello, I’m hoping to implement all creature abilities by the end of this month. Actually there are only two left.

One of them is “no obstacle penalty”, which looks quite mysterious. I could barely find any description of this effect.
One source says that ranged damage should be halved when a stack is on the opposite side of castle wall. However, I did not notice such effect so far. Is that only application of this penalty?
Please give me some clues about how it should be implemented.

[yupsi]

Is that only application of this penalty?

I’ve downloaded some Russian fan’s compendium of HoMM3 mechanics and for archmages it states “no siege penalty” straight away, so that’s probably it.

Also, looking at the HoMM3 RoE manual:

1. Town walls in siege combat are “hampering the attacks”.
2. Broken arrow cursor comment: “Attacks are hampered by intervening walls and do half damage”. (range penalty is not even mentioned, but walls are!)
3. “Arch mage attacks penetrate cover and deal full damage to enemies behind siege walls”.

Of course, I don’t have expansions’ manuals right now… But I highly doubt there’s anything else out there. Unless the manuals lie

[Tow_dragon]

One of them is “no obstacle penalty”, which looks quite mysterious. I could barely find any description of this effect.
One source says that ranged damage should be halved when a stack is on the opposite side of castle wall. However, I did not notice such effect so far. Is that only application of this penalty?
Please give me some clues about how it should be implemented.

This name is an artifact of my wrong impression that shooting over battlefield obstacles gives a penalty. You can rename it and make reuse it for NO_WALL_PENALTY bonus.

BTW,
Warmonger, it’s nice to see battle mechanics is almost done. Did you consider full support for 4 types of antimagic (Anti-Magic Garrison, Cursed Ground, Orb of Inhibition, Recanter’s Cloak)?

But I highly doubt there’s anything else out there. Unless the manuals lie

My compendium of choice is Tribute to Strategists: heroescommunity.com/viewthread.p … genumber=1

[Warmonger]

Strategija does not describe wall penalty

Did you consider full support for 4 types of antimagic (Anti-Magic Garrison, Cursed Ground, Orb of Inhibition, Recanter’s Cloak)?

Last time I checked, Orb of Inhibition and Recanter’s Cloak were handled with same type of parametrized Bonus. As to battlefield influence, this one can probably be added to series of function “canCastThisSpell” in a nice way.

Some effects blocking catsing of certain spells make sense (like "level 0"spells), other do not. This issue is quite open to solutions.

Still, I’ve received very little feedback about last set of creature abilities for 0.86. More testing please!

[yupsi]

Last time I checked, Orb of Inhibition and Recanter’s Cloak were handled with same type of parametrized Bonus.

However, Orb is supposed to have a special message and to not let you open spellbook at all.
bugs.vcmi.eu/view.php?id=97
(I’ve just been scouring for some easy bugs to fix yesterday )

[Warmonger]

I think it’s advisable to make some generic, elegant handling of spell-block and only use some bonus source back-tracking in particular situations. I always design it with thought in mind that it will be possible to add artifacts that cause similiar effects.

[Zamolxis]

This is what I found on Obstacle Penalty:

Whenever most units tries shooting over Walls **into **a castle, they will only do half Damage. Certain units don’t have this penalty, and neither do units under the command of a hero with the Golden Bow or Bow of the Sharpshooter. This penalty is **cumulative **with the Range Penalty

I could have sworn that in my days of intensive H3 playing I discovered other situation where obstacle penalty applied, but that was many years ago so I could be confusing it with something else.

Anyway, the behaviour is best to be tested, but as I don’t have time these days, I’m just going to assume based on the wiki info that this applies as follows (and if tests will reveal something else, we could adjust it later):

• Fort wall adds 50% penalty
• It applies only to creatures outside of the walls (and I assume that includes the case of a defending creature which moved out, shooting an attacker which got in)
• It cumulates with the range penalty, leading down to only 25% damage when applicable
• It does not apply anymore if the trajectory line crosses a section of the wall which was totally destroyed

The last condition is probably the most difficult and debatable, given all the possible combinations of a hex grid. To take that even further, logically having broken down 2 out of the 3 levels of a wall section, should reduce some of the original penalty… but I guess this is really stuff for balancing tweaks in future mods.

[Warmonger]

All creature abilities from original SoD should now be functional
Let’s get drunk.

[Tow_dragon]

Nice, congratulations!

Just a few spells (and a lot of bugs) left to have 100% SoD compatibility.

[Tow]

All creature abilities from original SoD should now be functional

Sounds great!

Just a few spells (and a lot of bugs) left to have 100% SoD compatibility.

Town sieges are still missing many features (especially moat and drawbridge).