Planning armour upgrades

**Apani** · December 16, 2014, 02:01 PM

Let's talk about upgrades: first of all, what they do is to increase a unit's armour points by roughly 2 (althought the stats will only show an improvement of 1), they cannot add nor change anything else. So unfortunatedly Neph's idea of adding shields or gilding with upgrades is not going to work.

It also means that they must follow a order which accomodates the approximate +2 increase by upgrade: for example unarmed 0 -> leather 2 -> light brigandine 4 -> lamellar 7.

I also think it's obvious that more heavily armored units should require better infrastructure, be it higher level smiths or barracks.

This said, here are my proposals for Town Guards:
Partial light mail 4 -> partial heavy mail -> 6 -> coat of plates 8 -> partial plate 11 OR partial plate 11 -> full plate 13 -> improved metallurgy +2 -> advanced metallurgy +2

What they would look like:
Partial light mail: like this, minus the chestplate: http://www.zeldawiki.org/images/b/bf/MM_Soldier.png
Partial heavy mail: heavier looking or longer chainmail, like this: http://zeldawiki.org/images/7/7b/Soldier.png
Coat of plates: Chainmail as before, but plated like this: http://www.zeldawiki.org/images/b/bf/MM_Soldier.png
Partial plate: As they currently are, plus a chainmail.
A full plate is self explanatory, whilst improved metallurgy would need no visual change.

**Drazule** · December 16, 2014, 02:51 PM

Its not gonna be armor. There's gonna be a 2 tier system which has units change in various ways. Such as Hyrule painting their armor gold for a morale boost.

Scroll down a bit
http://hyruletotalwar.wikia.com/wiki/Hyrulean_Knights

**VictorAYorke** · December 16, 2014, 03:26 PM

Running on a pre- or non-Memory Editing basis, it sounds like there's not enough room in terms of armour upgrades to do anything groundbreaking. We have available to change:

-Values and how much they jump per level.
-How many levels are available per faction (I assume - this could be hooked up to certain buildings), also possibly per unit class but I don't know if that's how it works.
-The model changes, name of upgrade and specific flavour texts around the upgrade.

Other than those, and in the M2TW engine as we presently have it, what else can we go about changing?

**UndyingNephalim** · December 16, 2014, 04:11 PM

Originally Posted by Apani

So unfortunatedly Neph's idea of adding shields or gilding with upgrades is not going to work.

It can be done, I've done it.

**Apani** · December 17, 2014, 06:52 AM

Originally Posted by UndyingNephalim

It can be done, I've done it.

What you've done is to give their upgraded model a shield and a gild, but this has no actual effect whatsoever on the unit's stats other than an hardcoded armor increase of ~2 points.
Ripeto, no matter the upgrade they won't get any additional shield or morale points, just a plain +~2 to their armor stats.

Also, I have a question on infrastructure: why there is need of a dedicated armory to make shields and gildings (which should be the simplest tasks for an armorer) when, as it seems, every city in Hyrule can already afford to produce plated troops right off the bat?

**Eldren** · December 17, 2014, 12:51 PM

##########################

1)

Originally Posted by Apani

What you've done is to give their upgraded model a shield and a gild, but this has no actual effect whatsoever on the unit's stats other than an hardcoded armor increase of ~2 points.
Ripeto, no matter the upgrade they won't get any additional shield or morale points, just a plain +~2 to their armor stats.

How about you rephrase that and ask him if he has actually done it for HTW. Instead of simply saying it can't be done.
Cause what I've heard so far from you and Neph, Inplys that He has done that for HTW, And you just don't believe him. Of course I could be wrong too.

##########################

2)

Originally Posted by Apani

Also, I have a question on infrastructure: why there is need of a dedicated armory to make shields and gildings (which should be the simplest tasks for an armorer) when, as it seems, every city in Hyrule can already afford to produce plated troops right off the bat?

You have a good point. But you can simply chuck it up to creative license. Or Neph could have just wanted to have Upgrades done differently that in M2TW.
##########################

@ UndyingNephalim.
So what is your Response to these 2 things? I'm also interested in the answer.

**Apani** · December 17, 2014, 02:06 PM

You need to distinguish between a unit's model and stats. A unit visually wields a shield if it has it in his model, but only gets shield points if it's written in its export_descr_unit entry. Also, there is no way to decide which stats increase with each upgrade, only an hardcoded +2 to armor. So, even if Nrph makes an upgrade which gives shields and gilding to a unit's model, it won't give a boost to the unit's morale nor shield points.

**Eldren** · December 17, 2014, 03:19 PM

@ Apani.

Again, You say it's impossible to do. Then what was all that, That Neph said? Why don't you ask him If he was able to do it? If you don't believe it, just because you can't do it. Then ask him(nicely) If he can teach you.

If Neph says he was not able to pull it off, And the planed Feature will not be added. Then That is that.
But so far he has said it is working as intended.

**UndyingNephalim** · December 17, 2014, 04:11 PM

You do know there is a lovely campaign_script file that can give properties to units when a certain building is constructed by the player? I would not announce a feature to everyone if I did not at least first test it out to see if it works.

**Apani** · December 18, 2014, 07:13 AM

Originally Posted by UndyingNephalim

You do know there is a lovely campaign_script file that can give properties to units when a certain building is constructed by the player? I would not announce a feature to everyone if I did not at least first test it out to see if it works.

Good idea, I didn't fink of that, but I still have my doubts about it working properly; can campaign_script give them even shield points? Can it nullify the +~2 armor which every armor upgrade normally gives? Also, from what you said, can I assume they won't work in custom battles?

And my other question still stands; I didn't ask it of out spite, just so you know:

Also, I have a question on infrastructure: why there is need of a dedicated armory to make shields and gildings (which should be the simplest tasks for an armorer) when, as it seems, every city in Hyrule can already afford to produce plated troops right off the bat?

**Drazule** · December 17, 2014, 04:19 PM

Apani, why would he lie? He either found something new that people don't know, or he spent 30+ hours modeling and texturing Hyrule's units as well as adding two buildings to each tech tree (complete with custom art) for literally no reason.