Spider Mass

[Kolaris8472]

Would some kind sir point me in the direction of a tweak I could make to solve the issue below?

I'm defending the Bridge of Khazad Dum. There's several thousand orcs all jostling to try and cross. Then come the Spiders. They move directly across the bridge and up the ramp, ignoring my soldiers for the most part and just booking it for the "town" square. Ok, fine, they're Spiders after all and you'd figure they manage to get across the bridge one way or another.

What I'm not going to put up with is that they somehow manage to push the entire orc army across the bridge in front of them. We go from meeting each other halfway across the bridge in a stalemate, to a huge black mass being all the way up the ramp behind the bridge - all in a matter of seconds. You'd figure that all this charge would accomplish is knocking thousands of orcs off the side of the bridge, but no...

I've tried lowering their mass in descr_mount, but that had no effect. They are apparently Elephants in terms of mounts? Is that the problem? If I made them have traditional horse mounts, would that have any serious side effects?

[Ultra123]

off topic:

it seems all units have this odd problem, its tough to defend a gate for example when all the uinits simply try to walk through your own instead of fighting straight to the town square.

extremely annoying when these units are armoured such as goblin halberds. its impossible to defend against it, as chokepoints are ineffective. i do not remember this being a problem in 2.1. if this was fixed the spiderss wont bee line for the townsquare as detailed above and would actually fight.... perhaps avoiding the issue altogether.

[KnightsTemplar]

Sounds like the old Dwarven bastard tactics- shield wall charge.
The 'density' from the combined mass could easily push through people and break formations...
The best way to defense seems to be form your own units up and play rugby?

[Darth Lord Revan]

Would some kind sir point me in the direction of a tweak I could make to solve the issue below?

I'm defending the Bridge of Khazad Dum. There's several thousand orcs all jostling to try and cross. Then come the Spiders. They move directly across the bridge and up the ramp, ignoring my soldiers for the most part and just booking it for the "town" square. Ok, fine, they're Spiders after all and you'd figure they manage to get across the bridge one way or another.

What I'm not going to put up with is that they somehow manage to push the entire orc army across the bridge in front of them. We go from meeting each other halfway across the bridge in a stalemate, to a huge black mass being all the way up the ramp behind the bridge - all in a matter of seconds. You'd figure that all this charge would accomplish is knocking thousands of orcs off the side of the bridge, but no...

I've tried lowering their mass in descr_mount, but that had no effect. They are apparently Elephants in terms of mounts? Is that the problem? If I made them have traditional horse mounts, would that have any serious side effects?

Go to descr_mount located in the data folder and find this:

type black_spidersA
class elephant
model black_spidersA
radius 1.2
x_radius 1.2
y_offset 0
height 2
mass 15 2
banner_height 1
bouyancy_offset 3
water_trail_effect elephant_water_trail
root_node_height 2.84
attack_delay 0
dead_radius 1.4
tusk_z 1.2
tusk_radius .9
riders 3
rider_offset 0.05, 1.35, 1.37
rider_offset -0.3, 1.22, 0.4
rider_offset 0.3, 1.22, -.35


The red colour is the vainilla mass for spiders and the blue colour is a suggested number (well, thats how I changed them anyway)
That had the intended effect for me... are you copying the descr_mount to you desktop, modifying it, saving, and then replacing the one in data folder there?

I left their stats the same in the EDU so they are still deadly to almost all units, except for very heavy infantry and they don't send everybody flying to the sky while moving... give it a try.