Insane Difficulty: Stage 6 (Deneb's Garden) Development - Insane Difficulty

I've started on designing Deneb's Garden, beginning with enemy movement paths. It doesn't look like I'll need to do any more coding on enemy movement AI for this stage, so that's definitely a good thing! Hopefully that is a trend that will continue!

For this stage, the main things I need to take a closer look at:
-Enemy Kiss targeting
-Enemy Charm targeting
-Enemy Undead targeting
-Pumpkin and Werewolf promotion items
-Defense stat on armor

Most of these have been looked at some already, but could use a bit of review for this stage.

For all the targeting stuff, I pretty much just need to make some judgment calls. Undead targeting is 90% figured out, I just need to make a couple decisions on how the more merciful tactic settings will handle undead. Charm targeting is pretty weird. It seems pretty clear that prioritizing large monsters is ideal, but beyond that things are pretty unclear, generally because most of the best Charm targets (backrow mages) also have the highest resistance to Charm. It may be best just to do large monster > random. Kiss targeting I think will just be unit specific.

For Pumpkin and Werewolf promotion items, basically I need to decide how I want to handle these. There are a few options:
1) Make the Pumpkin+ and Fullmoon items required to promote into Halloween/Weretiger.
2) Same as above, but also have a level requirement on using the items.
3) Have Pumpkin+ and Fullmoon items allow for early promotion into Halloween/Weretiger, but a level-based promotion is available later.
4) ???
I'd be interested in hearing some opinions/ideas on these.

For defense stat on armor I just need to commit to a formula and then make the actual equipment changes. The functionality has already been added. Right now, I'm mainly deciding between two possible formulas:
1) Have Defense be a straight reduction to damage received. 2 defense = 1 less damage.
2) Have Defense function the same as 1 point of Str and Int, but only for defensive purposes.
I prefer the first one mechanically and the second one thematically, so it's kind of a tough call.

Of course, there could be more stage 6 considerations that come up based on stage 5 feedback, so this list could wind up growing a little. This will also be the first time the player has access to undead, so balance and design concerns could arise there, as well.

A possible #4: Remove them as promotes to the next tier, and make them promote to Pumpkins and Werewolves from Fighters. Maybe Fullmoon could become CLAW: "The preserved claw of a Lycanthrope. Perhaps if you used it on a Fighter...?"

The next tier could be by level, and maybe ALI 10+.

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What's the end result of that? I'm probably for #1 anyway.

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I really wouldn't want to come up with special character palettes for pumpkins, etc.

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The first formula would be of the form: damage = attackStat - (defenseStat * elementalResist/100) - equipmentDefense/2
The second formula would be of the form: damage = attackStat - ((defenseStat + equipmentDefense) * elementalResist/100)

Where defenseStat is either Str or Int depending on the type of attack.

equipmentDefense, of course, might be scaled different in each scenario.

Update: Enemy Kiss targeting has been completed (player Kiss targeting had already been changed to obey Tactics settings). Kiss targeting was actually the most complex of these changes I listed, so it was nice to get that out of the way. I also smoothed out some more enemy movement issues and bugs.

Haven't made a decision yet on Pumpkin/Werewolf promotion items.

Technically haven't made a decision on the Defense formula yet, either, but I'm heavily leaning toward formula #1. The main difference between them is that formula #2 more greatly rewards having high elemental resists already. This means that it would favor large monsters, especially golems, and be less prone to protect the unit against its weakness (although this gets murky because the shield/armor probably raises the unit's resistance to that weakness...) I think armor in general already favors usage by large monsters, especially golems, so it seems like inferior design to exacerbate that problem by using formula #2.

I'll probably work on the rest of the targeting stuff first, since I'm already wading in it from working on Kiss. This will involve implementing a more complex Charm targeting AI, making some more decisions on how undead will be prioritized by enemies, and doing a bit more theorycrafting on how the enemy should target the backrow.

That's all that needs to be done before working on Deneb's Garden, as far as I can see. A much shorter list than what was needed for Pogrom Forest. So hopefully I can get this stage out a lot quicker than the last one!

Alright, finished all the targeting implementation. I may want to tweak how I'm handling enemy Charm/Petrify/Pumpkin in the future, but it has functional, and at least semi-intelligent handling now.

I also fixed a relatively minor bug that would cause enemy attack animations not to land on undead when using attacks that can't hurt them.

So that just leaves Pumpkin/Werewolf promotion items and the Def stat.

I'm going with the straight reduction to damage for the Def stat, it feels better mechanically. But I'll have to run math on and ultimately decide how the addition of the Def stat will affect shields/armor, and how whatever change occurs with them will affect trinkets. I'll probably work on that first and think about the promotion items afterward.

With the flat damage reduction for DEF Items, it seems that it would benefit getting hit during Weak tactics more, since the reduction is the same. How about 1.2 or 1.25 reduction for Strong tactics? Using armor would benefit the cautious a little more.

Eh, not really. The percent decrease to damage received is the same in both cases. And if you want to use raw amounts, then by the same logic the opportunity cost of not using a weapon hurts Weak tactics more than it does Strong. So in raw amount terms, using Weak enhances the raw amounts contributed by all types of equipment.

Alright, I've updated all shields/armor to have a Def stat. I went with formula #1, but instead of using Def/2, it's just Def. What this means is that each point in Def represents a straight 1 point reduction in damage received.

So that just leaves making a decision on Rotten Pumpkin and Full Moon Stone before moving on to Deneb's Garden stage design.

Here's an update on the options I'm currently considering for these items:

Rotten Pumpkin:
1-Recruit a neutral Pumpkin.
2-Promote Pumpkins into Halloweens, but Pumpkins will also have a level-based promotion into Halloweens.

Full Moon Stone:
1-Promote a Fighter into a Werewolf.
2-Promote a Werewolf into a Weretiger, but Werewolves will also have a level-based promotion into Weretigers.

I'm also open to suggestions.

I see no reason to item-lock these classes, especially not if there will be a new tier for each of them (Boogeyman and Raksasha). So that's why I didn't include any item-only promote options. If I go with option #2 for either, then the base class and promotion class will need to have the same stat growth, because I don't want to punish using the classes before you have promotion items for them. This may not be a big deal, but it does impose a limitation on their design.

My vote would be #2 for both.

I'm definitely not keen on #1 for Pumpkins. I could go either way for Full Moon. I'm also far less likely to be bothered by Pumpkins and Halloweens needing to have the same stats than Werewolves and Weretigers.

Since I have no intention of letting this stage take as long as the last one: the movement paths and enemy squads for this stage are now complete! I still have the playtest to do, and a couple decisions and changes to make before I can call it complete, however. Here's an updated list of those things:

Decisions:
-Rotten Pumpkin effect
-Full Moon Stone effect

Changes:
-Make enemy squads not include the healthiness of their own undead when deciding whether or not to retreat.

For Rotten Pumpkin, I am heavily leaning toward it offering an early promotion for Pumpkins that will also be achievable through gaining levels. For Full Moon Stone, I am still deciding between having it do the same thing for Werewolves, having it turn a human character into a Werewolf, or possibly something else.

Took a bit of a break, but I started testing Deneb's Garden today. Confirmed that the enemy deployments were doing what they're supposed to, but decided I wanted to do some undead slaying and reform my army, so I'll probably get into the meat of the stage tomorrow.

Played about halfway through the stage and had to abort as I made some errors in the enemy deployment designs.

I also think that I have too many enemy squads in this stage that counter undead, so I'd like to tone that down a bit. I'm probably still unconsciously design enemy squads to hate on undead, due to how they used to work. On the topic of undead, though, they seem to be holding up fairly well here, despite the enemy countering. For instance, one of my units has a single ghost in it. Ghosts are pretty fast, so it manages to get an attack in, and then it absorbed an enemy cleric's heal and died. After the battle, the Ghost is alive again at no cost to me. That's not a terrible trade, and absorbing that heal actually wound up letting me kill a giant who would have gotten two heals otherwise. This is a good thing, because the situations in which undead are invincible are going to be much fewer and further between than in the original game and in previous versions of this hack, so it's important that they are able to be at least a bit useful even in situations where they get wiped.

After I finish retuning the enemy troops, I'll take another run at this stage.

Alrighty, I've finished playtesting the actual stage, but I still have a couple things to do before I can release it. Hopefully this weekend I can wrap it all up!

I find the talk of class promotion items to be most interesting.

I don't think that you should even out the stat growth between Halloween/pumpkins and wolves/tigers. The item allows them to promote early and therefore get better stat growth. It's better to get the item early than it is to go for the upgrade-by-level, but the item is more difficult to get and therefore serves as a cool bonus. Alternatively, the stat growth could be inferior from the item which would encourage you to be strategic in your item upgrade use. This is somewhat true of the stone of dragos. Beastmasters have slightly better growth than dragoners (I hate the pithy additional INT growth so late in the game) so you may want to keep your beastmaster until so you can upgrade him directly to the dragon master.

That being said, the werewolf/weretiger upgrade was questionable at best in vanilla. The were tiger loses a front row attack and gains a back row attack, but I am unsure that is worth it. Maybe the weretiger should keep the 3 attacks in front and 2 attacks in back to make him clearly better. Alternatively, you could give him something targeted from the back. I like the idea of upgrading from wolf to tiger, but I don't like the idea of losing the front line power in exchange for mediocre stat growth improvement. Upgrades should be vertical improvements rather than lateral changes (if you follow my meaning).

You may have already changed many of these things and I just missed it. If so then I thank you and apologize.

P.S. Please don't let palettes restrict you! This is a retro game so fans like me have no expectations as far as how polished the mod must be. If named characters have the same palettes as certain upgrades then I am completely unaware and would probably not even notice it. It simply isn't that important to most people. I would rather you be free to innovate without being hemmed in by tiny details.