Arcen Idea Tracker (Bugs and Features) - Issues

0011665: Bandit Towns on Chokepoints disallow smiting of other tiles across the map

Fri, 24 May 2013 10:20:27 -0500

Twitch Stream Showing the Error
http://www.twitch.tv/jtw158/b/407447226 [^]

4:15:50
Shiobel Keep spawns interrupting the only path to a red city, cannot smite tiles anywhere on the map until a path around this keep is built.

Bonus:
3:50-3:51 shows a slightly different issue of a bandit city spawning on an isolated chunk of land and then not allowing us to smite until we built a path to that island. In this case it was only 1 tile but if it were many tiles this could have been a bigger problem.

0011664: Typo in Iron Mine Tutorial Message

Fri, 24 May 2013 10:06:03 -0500

In the tutorial message titled 'Build an Iron Mine', the word "be" is missing from the first sentence in the second paragraph.

Reads: Iron is a raw resource, so again is stored globally and can used in all towns for the same faction.

Should be: Iron is a raw resource, so again is stored globally and can _be_ used in all towns for the same faction.

0011663: Minotaurs from labyrinth can move into same square

Fri, 24 May 2013 10:00:40 -0500

Aside from being insanely OP (which has been fixed now), a red minotaur has stepped onto the same square as a blue one, causing only one of them to be selectable. I don't think the game is supposed to allow unit stacking, right?

0011662: Direct Action Command Military does not seem to work.

Fri, 24 May 2013 09:59:42 -0500

Twitch Stream Showing the Error
http://www.twitch.tv/jtw158/b/407447226 [^]

3:07 you can see a god with the attack command on him but the enemy units seem to be completely ignoring him.

0011661: Gods Spawn In Different Locations for Each Player In Multiplayer Games

Fri, 24 May 2013 09:57:07 -0500

Gods seem to spawn in different random location for each player in multiplayer games. This is only a minor issue until you issue a command that involves a god and the game tries to render this differently for each player.

Twitch Stream Showing the Error
http://www.twitch.tv/jtw158/b/407447226 [^]

Crash happens between 3:06 and 3:07 after crash

In this case the restingsound (host) issued a Direct Command Military Attack onto the Red god, which was in a different location for jtw158 (player 2) jtw158 crashed. When he rejoined the gods were in the correct location for both players. Also later gods in the game spawned in the same location for both players.

0011660: In Multiplayer Games City New Town Names Are Unique To Each Player

Fri, 24 May 2013 09:48:20 -0500

Towns that are loaded when the game starts have the same name but when new towns are created the names are different for each player.

Twitch Stream Showing the Error
http://www.twitch.tv/jtw158/b/407447226 [^]

3:06 you can see town names for jtw158 (player 2), he crashes a couple minutes later (separate error)
3:09 you can see the town names have changes to match restingsound (host)

0011658: Minotaurs are much too strong

Fri, 24 May 2013 09:07:34 -0500

Particularly considering that the Greek are supposed to have weaker myth units than the Norse, Minotaurs are way too strong and could do with a nerf.

First of all is their damage level combined with their splash damage, as well as their AP cost and VS building bonuses. I've seen these guys take out *seven* buildings in a single turn, by using two quick attacks (theoretically, these guys are capable of taking out a full 10 buildings in one turn!). And these were against buildings with full health! Even the splash damage is enough to just instantly wreck most buildings. Their extra attack range also means that it's easy for them to hit a full 5 buildings at once, and the damage multiplier means that even at level 1, they'll be doing this kind of ridiculous damage right away. Even buildings with huge amounts of HP, the Towers and bandit keeps, are nothing against a Minotaur, going down in a mere 3 hits or so.

On top of that, their splash damage applies to fighting other units as well; and with two hits (if they havent moved), again at a distance of 2, these guys can quickly out damage every other unit in the game, dealing huge hits with tons of splash damage that many units simply wont be able to handle. Their high health means that it's easy for enemy units to surround them without immediately killing them.... thus enabling them to do stupid amounts of damage to hordes of enemy units at once. AND, they have a very high auto-heal, so when they survive battles, they'll be unusually quick to heal.

And finally, the Greek have Labyrinth, which takes an already overpowered unit and makes it dramatically worse, while at the same time spitting out more of them.

And all of this for a rather low cost... 25 or so incense, and a small bit of steel. The cost doesnt even come close to making sense considering the sheer insane power of this unit.

And this is a unit on the Greek side, who are supposed to have myth units that arent quite as good as the Norse ones.... but this one is stronger than them all!

And even worse would be if the bandits got one of these guys out; that might be a bit too much of a threat from them. Dealing with these guys could be very frustrating indeed.

So, yeah, this guy could do with a fairly heavy nerf, to bring him back down to a sensible level more along the lines of where this sort of unit should be. Should still be a heavy hitter with splash damage probably, but... not the absolutely absurd level of damage he currently has. A bit less health and auto-heal would help as well. I dont have super specific suggestions on these numbers, that's up to you guys, haha.

0011648: Increase AP cost of Oxybelle from 3 to 4

Fri, 24 May 2013 09:03:52 -0500

Mainly because this thing is ridiculously devastating.

I know it's kinda SUPPOSED to be, but I think it could be toned down just a bit, to have 2 max attacks per turn instead of 3; that might make it a little more manageable. Just a rather mild nerf like that is all this one needs, I think. Other stats are all fine, to me.

I saw this one brought up on the Steam forums for the game, and from my own experiences in the game I agreed with it (to a point).

I dont think that AP change will at all hurt the unit's usefulness (it's still going to be crazy strong), but yeah, it's an easy to get unit that's unlocked from the start, and while the Greek human units are supposed to be stronger than the Norse, this one might be just a LITTLE much. So this small change might balance it out a bit, to not be as hyper-devastating, particularly in the early game. It'll still be one-shotting some buildings in the late game like it should!

0011624: Make Score Tooltip clearer that "Red Kills" means "Kills By Red"

Fri, 24 May 2013 09:02:07 -0500

When a red unit makes a kill the "Red Kills" counter in the score tooltip goes up by one.

Fair enough, but I received some testing feedback from someone who was confused when one of their placed mythological unit killing a bunch of bandits did not increment the "Yellow Kills" counter.

If it said "Kills By Red" (and Kills by Blue, and Kills by Yellow), that might help avoid this ambiguity.

0011659: Cerberus level-up does nothing

Fri, 24 May 2013 09:00:31 -0500

Same exact stats at every level.

The Unit Up action though still charges a high price for this.

0011652: Avoiding creating an unusable tile

Fri, 24 May 2013 08:56:10 -0500

Does it make sense that you can smite a building before it's destroyed to avoid an unusable tile? I know there's a big AP cost, but it seems like it's still to easy to do.

0011657: Wild Animal achievement broken

Fri, 24 May 2013 06:41:03 -0500

The achievement that's unlocked by getting 50 kills as Feralist doesn't trigger, neither ingame or Steam.

0011651: Smiting your building gives you points

Fri, 24 May 2013 06:40:48 -0500

This seems like an odd rule. Why would smiting a building give you points for destroying that building? Seems like an easy point exploit.

0011561: Exo-galaxy wormhole has cost, energy, and build time

Fri, 24 May 2013 06:40:22 -0500

The exo-galaxy wormholes (the ones on the AI homeworlds) have a cost, energy use, and build time displayed, even though it really doesn't make a lot of sense, especially given that they are fully invincible.

0011656: Music menu!

Fri, 24 May 2013 02:18:27 -0500

So much good music in this game, so I thought: Why not have a button that opens up a list of them in-game, so if I want to select a new track off of that list to listen to, I can do that? That'd be pretty nice.

0011655: Commandment does nothing

Fri, 24 May 2013 01:57:23 -0500

Units do not move towards the god that it's on or attack if they're in range. They just totally ignore it.

0011654: allow respec of champion experience path by sacrificing level up points.

Fri, 24 May 2013 00:50:31 -0500

I'm not sure what the ideal point loss to respec would be, but it would be nice to have that option, if the path I took early in the game turned out to be mostly useless later in the game.

0011653: Have tooltip on building ruins show what type of building it was

Fri, 24 May 2013 00:01:10 -0500

I've now seen this suggestion/request both on the main forums and also on the Steam forums, and I heartily agree with this one myself.

There's the after-turn report thing, but it's still not currently very easy to keep track of what buildings exactly were just destroyed, particularly when you've got lots of mayhem all at once. And knowledge of this can be very important.

So having the tooltip of ruins say something like "These are the ruins of a Smithy" or something like that would be super helpful.

0011649: Brokkr and Norns much too easy to use

Thu, 23 May 2013 23:49:29 -0500

Both of these are VERY strong effects, making many things free for the player. They're a bit like Palladium in that they're a beneficial effect ONLY, providing no downside, risk, or imbalance.

I'm thinking one of two things should be done here:

1. Give these a secondary effect that adds an element of risk, whatever that may be. Spawning bandits or exploding buildings or whatever. This is the most interesting solution, at least to me, heh.

2. Do as you did with Palladium, and give these both a strong negative score value, as well as a heavy cooldown time; currently both have a cooldown of 10 turns, which.... yeah, not nearly enough for this type of power.

Both of these tokens are quite useful, but both are wayyyyy overpowered right now due to their ease of use and lack of downsides.

0011650: Scroll Speed Slider Needed

Thu, 23 May 2013 21:46:23 -0500

When playing zoomed in (which is fun to do because the artwork is great) it would be nice to be able to scroll the map faster. For that a scroll speed slider is needed in the control options, since right now the scroll speed is not adjustable.

0011647: Norse seem to lose their wheat for no reason.

Thu, 23 May 2013 19:28:29 -0500

My Norse faction seems to be losing all of its wheat for seemingly no reason I can tell. Here is a save that took place immediately after my wheat went to zero.

0011646: Minor room design error.

Thu, 23 May 2013 18:40:59 -0500

Level design seems to have improved greatly since AVWW 1 and I glad. In this case one small error, one part of inclined terrain does not face the rest.

An image of my character facing the terrain has been uploaded here:
http://www.mediafire.com/view/qbenfu6aomblg4j/minor-room-error.jpg [^]

A save file of my character facing the terrain has been uploaded here:
http://www.mediafire.com/?iunizs20bsxl1yd [^]

0011645: Missing animation frames for NPC

Thu, 23 May 2013 18:31:41 -0500

One of the NPCs viewed by me during a new game has missing animation frames. Possibly the second or third NPC not counting traps, in this case the Does not predictably occur every new game, seems to be specific to certain NPCs.Usually the NPC that represent the player’s 2nd in command.

Here is a video I captured of this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecPPb6o0b3o [^]

System Specs:
Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit SP1
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 @ 3.16GHz
RAM: 4.00 GB Dual-Channel DDR2 @ 400MHz
GPU: 1024MB GeForce 9500 GT (PNY)

0003080: Split Zenith, Spire, and Fleet starship lines into separate trees? (Response to knowledge costs)

Thu, 23 May 2013 18:13:35 -0500

The jump from Light Starship to Flagship is a logical jump to make, but the jump from Flagship to Zenith Starship? That's a little strange, especially since they are aesthetically completely different, which makes them feel a little out of place, considering it's the only research tree to function like that ever since the leech/raid split.

Propose throwing in a Battleship for Mk3 fleet starship, which will be a larger flagship - more damage, radar dampening, muniboosting, and linearize the light starship/flagship/battleship line. Light starship would remain unlocked by default, Flagship unlock cost should jump to 2500, and Battleship unlock cost should be 3500 (to match the progression of Riot Starship line, but shifted up one tier since mk1 is already unlocked). This line should be on the high side of hitpoints and armor, but lower on weapons (or remaining where it currently is), with the muniboost making up for lower weapons power. It should also be made faster, up to 76 across the board to be able to match with Fighters and Bombers.

For the Spire Starship line, this would make for an easy conversion to that Modular Main Combat Starship players have been asking for. Mk1 would start out locked (much like the riot starship) and would have research costs on the 2500/3500/4500 line much like Riot Starships. This would also give a tie-in to the Fallen Spire campaign and make the Spire Starship feel less out of place with regards to that. Certainly don't give the Spire Starship the proton beam weapon, and give it only a few modules (maybe 3, with different mark modules for each or whatnot, selected from Laser/Beam/Sniper). This would perhaps be a bit on the long range side, a bit lower hitpoints, middling speed (somewhere between 50 and 68; 56 like the other Spire capital ships might work well).

The Zenith Starship line would probably stay as it is now, as a mini fortress (remove the muniboost though), and add in the mark levels. This starship branch, because it's alien technology, would be locked at mk1 as well, with the same 2500/3500/4500 unlock costs. To distinguish it from the fleet starship line, it should be significantly slower (missile frigate speed?), hitpoints could be a little on the high side, and it should have high damage across many targets as it does now.

These research cost should also be normalized across at least Siege and Bomber starships, so that their mk2 and mk3 are 2500 and 3500 respectively, to promote more usage at higher marks. Raids and Leeches might be a different story, since they're more abuseable.

Edit: as an extension of this, there could then be Mk4 Starship fabricators instead of mk4 bomber starship fabricators, which would function as Advanced Factories, but for those starships a player has unlocked mk3 in. These would not be guaranteed in-game, and as a result there would not need to be an excessive increase in knowledge costs because of the extra stuff one would be getting. Also, because players will prioritize fleet ships over starships regardless, I'm guessing.

0011644: Ranches could probably stand to produce more per turn

Thu, 23 May 2013 11:43:29 -0500

Ranches seem to produce at a very slow rate compared to other military resources. Now that marauders need them, this stands out even more.