Re: IN-AOO battle double-prime

Tim Whalen (whalen@stromboli.usc.edu)
Tue, 25 Oct 1994 10:11:35 -0700

Rich notes :

> Tim was also grumbling about the IN not doing enough structure damage
> to Chateau Olympique, a concern Pat had mentioned, and asked me if I was
> sure that the combat code was working correctly. As with all requests
> ...

Actually, it appeared to me that IN had done too *much* damage to the
Chateau since it appeared that it had taken 56 points of damage leaving
it with 16 points of permanent damage. I then did some thinking about
how the rules describe fortification damage and convinced myself that
there was probably a problem there...

Sorry for making Rich's night miserable but it's a good thing to have
cleared up for the future. I want to say that IMO the way damage is
described in the rules is better in spirit than the way it was being
implemented. The ability to remove the defensive bonus without destroying
the castle makes it possible to try to capture a castle in battle which
I think is a good thing (albeit probably not my style.) Also, if castles
take 140 damage to destroy utterly it's a bit more realistic than making
it the same as all other structures. You may even want to scale this by
the razing factor so that castles take 520 hits. (BTW 300 man-days is a
tad farfetched to tear down a castle compared to 200 man-days for an inn
since it takes 30 times longer to build.)

At any rate, what is most important to me is that I understand how things
work. Any variation of the damage systems as described or as implemented is
fine with me so long as I know which one it is. Or just tell me how many
catapults to bring next time. ;>) We also need to think about what the
castle status should be after a battle. I propose that castle defense
be allowed to vary between 0 and 40 and RAZE/REPAIR adjusted so that they
affect defense rather than damage when the damage is at 0% and vice versa.

Tim

PS: How about a new construction skill to add fortifications to a structure
(up to some set maximum)? I'd like to have a token defensive bonus for
my temples and inns... This is much simpler than all that 'Add Flying
Buttresses' subskill junk that gets proposed every so often.


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