Increase the life-span of all units across the board & give builders a promotion.

First and foremost I have to admit that I am not the most informed person when it comes to programming or what is possible with the particular engine KAG uses, But I know a few things that would make this game a little more enjoyable for me, and at the very least, its fun to imagine.

1. Death should not be the only penalty.

The life-span of the average knight in a KAG is, while I don't have an exact number, what I believe to be pathetically low. What usually happens when two Knights meet is that one of them dies. Don't you think getting your neck fatally crushed is a little harsh because your foot-work is a little off? Now, I'm not saying tone down the footwork, the range, or anything else related to actually controlling the game. I just think wounded soldiers should have the opportunity to bleed, and not just die. Rebirth is not exactly the penalty most people are looking to avoid, especially when there are so many opportunities to be heroic in this game.

We live in this world of jabs, slashes and double slashes which is 75%, 50%, and 100% (50% if the first slash is blocked) of the vitality of even the toughest unit, and that's if they aren't jumping on your face at the same time. Archers can die if an enemy's front line advances too fast and they fail to retreat (An act of heroism, or just greedy with the arrow spam) or if some asshole with an arm like troy aikman decides to toss a bomb in their direction. You pretty much have to get close enough to breathe on them and try not to get three arrows to the face, which along with the stun it causes usually also mean death.

I think the we, the heroes of KAG deserve a death more dramatic than: He landed on my face and stabbed me.

I would much prefer a slower, more beautiful death.....Combine lower health with animations like losing limbs or bleeding out and KAG is on an entirely other level of awesomeness.

2. Builders should not be buffed, they should be promoted.

Builders should receive their own, separate change, since their power to create is far more lucrative than the other classes and doesnt need to be as toned down as much as it needs to be changed completely. The changes I would like to see to builders are as follows:

Builders no longer build, but now have the task of instructing hired NPC workers to collect, transport, and use resources. The NPC builders will follow the instruction of "plan blocks" ( which is actually a PLAN for a block, and not an actual block, mods ;) ) which are placed or drawn, or whatever, but are not actually IN PLAY until the workers do their job.

And perhaps while they're not being controlled, they could build houses or grow crops or some other resource the community of a particular side might need for beer, steak, or steak which at the moment is apparently made with wood.

Also: Stone and wood will need to be moved in much smaller quantities by hand, or with some sort of tool like a wheel barrow which I suppose could be an upgrade for a worker.

 

The problem is that good knights are already good and shouldn't be harder to kill.

I think that bleeding damage would be cool for jabs, now that they were nerfed to hell.

Builders need a buff so that they can keep up with the fast pace of the other classes. Hiring merchants would take too long

 

Ideas like these are great starting points for player mod concepts. Regardless of whether or not everyone agrees with your ideas, you could probably find somebody to team up with to code something like this if you're motivated enough.

I feel like my main issue with large changes like this is that it doesn't add depth to the game, it just adds width - more stuff. You could jam in dozens of complex building mechanics like hyper realistic building physics, chisels to shape the stone, specific load bearing structural blocks and a harem of slaves to move the stone to your 6x25^4 resource pixel deathstar-pyramid-temple. All these are possible with the aid of community mods but they just sort of add more stuff...
In what I, personally consider to be a game already slightly cluttered with items and stuff that see little use out of specific situations, changes like these would only add fuel to the fire so to speak. Aesthetic changes are fine, but when people suggest potential changes that start to affect core gameplay significantly then I'm usually pretty dubious about its inclusion in the main game. Oh, yeah. Then bug test it all.

Somewhat tangential point here, but some people seem to forget that KAG is a video-game. The whole point of playing video-games (at least for me) is not to play a game that seeks to emulate real life situations or even real life physics or concepts. It doesn't matter to me that KAG doesn't have intense decapitation mechanics or hyper-realistic/complex building or farming systems. At its core, KAG to me is a simple yet charming team based game. Combat on the surface seems basic when you first start playing, until you realize you get absolutely buttcrushed by better players 99% of the time. There's a surprisingly high skill ceiling available due to mobility options and clever co-ordination, but there's not like a billion little things you have to focus on like an RTS game. Sure it can feel cluttered with items and stuff but the gameplay works well at this stage. That said I haven't played it properly for a month or two. Simple is gud in my opinion though.

All that said, if you made a gamemode for this then I'm sure given enough time you could convince people to play - if you build it then people will come etc etc. You've already got a pretty fleshed out idea of what you want so you're half way there man. Make your ideas a reality, because all the tools exist for you to create something like this. If you get around to starting work on something like this and you get a semi-stable build of it, I'll lend you one of my servers to do testing on.

Just my 2 cents really. Join #kag.modding on quakenet or maybe ask HERE if you'd like some assistance.

<3

EDIT: Oh, and farming and dismemberment have been suggested already but I couldn't find anything for this type NPC building. Might wanna read the sticky in the future to avoid thread locking and wrist slaps.

 

I don't know about the AI builders mechanics, but it would be cool to see some quick presets for laying down the basis for workshop locations like this:

Spoiler

Single Thick, Workshop Integration Ready: 90 stone, 8 wood






Double Thick, Workshop Integration Ready: 210 stone, 14 wood






Castle Branch Single Wall (spacebar creates a mirrored structure of similar dimensions): 40 stone, 110 wood






Castle Branch Double (spacebar creates a mirrored structure of similar dimensions): 70 stone, 114 wood

Legend:
= Back wood wall
= Horizon (Whatever surface is chosen to build on)

Also it shouldn't give red zones showing that you can't build if back wall is over stone, in the case of repetitions like this:











Ideally, you would need line of sight to (haven't thought this out entirely so bare with me) the majority if not all of the tiles. So basically what would happen is you plop down a plan (of which, you should be VERY close to, if not on top of the location you are building on) and this creates an non-pick-up-able crate that contains the materials to build the plans in question. Then, going over to the crate you have the options "Build" and "Cancel". Build should complete the structure relatively quickly. Cancel gibs the crate and the materials that were going to be used pop into the world to be picked up once again.
I just find that these particular things need to be built all the time (especially TTH)

Edit: I don't mean to threadjack.... and this is a pipedream anyways, just my thoughts on automated building though.

 

Off of what swine said, increasing the life of knights would only make good ones even harder to kill. Right now, any knight can make one mistake and be dead because it only take one encounter to kill someone.
If a good knight had more health, it would take way more people and encounters to kill them because they wont die from just one mistake. And skilled/ tryharding knights dont make many mistakes

 

So the builder is basically a manager eh? That's so stupid it just might completely fail even as a mod

 

Cmon man. Try to keep criticism constructive. No point shitting on people's ideas needlessly.

_

What becomes of frontline builders with this sort of gameplay? They provide some pretty great utility. Do you bring NPCs along with you to build ladders up towers and stuff? Perhaps you could allow builders to pocket ladders/small fortifications/overhangs that are pre-assembled and stored in a flatpack like siege weapons. I think at least allowing builders to place ladders and spikes by themselves would be nice.

 

You don't need NPCs if you just give builders a coin incentive to place blocks according to the blueprint.

 

I like the first part but #2 is just crazy. It would basically break the game most ways, I can't properly explain what I mean but that's more of a strategy game mechanic than a tile-based competitive game mechanic. This applies especially in fast-paced KAG Beta.