Manual redraft

[Wintermute]

Currently (1.6.1) allied healing stacks with your own healing, so in 1a) the unit would be healed again on your ally's turn. In 1b) the unit would be healed by your ally, and then would get normal village healing on your turn.

Ah, thanks. So now the healing limit is 8 points per side turn rather than eight points per entire [4-hour] turn.

Ew, though. What about a unit that regenerates? Does it regenerate on its turn, then get healing from an ally as well? Whether it does or doesn't, that raises some supplementary questions, but I'll ask them in the healing thread, not here.

The healing done on each side's turn is independent at the moment. So regenerating units would also benefit from allied healing. The thread you are looking at is a proposed change to healing, but has not been implemented in 1.6.1. While the current system is not wildly intuitive, there are problems some issues with capping healing, since a lot of UMC is built on the assumption that allied healing is allowed. Currently those changes are on hold, so just explaining the way things work now is probably the best way to go.

[ancestral]

Nice HTML formatting! Not a lot of people know to use <dt> and <dd>.

Good work. (I wasn't able to see the images, but I'm assuming that's still a work in progress.)

[dlp]

WRT draft 3:

This is looking really good. The added graphics are a terrific improvement (especially for the Resistances section), and the new Terrains and Fog/Shroud sections are also beneficial.

I don't see anything wrong with the images, or missing ones. What "niggles" are you referring to?

1.3.8: "In fact, you will always gain more gold from winning early than you will from capturing every village on the map and holding them until the scenario's turns run out." I don't think this is always true. In TSG's Into the Depths (using 1.5.12), for example, I recall finding once that I'd captured so many villages, I'd be richer if I delayed victory to the last turn. More often, though, with the new carryover system, it seems to me it's pretty much a wash, and thus it's better to kill as many enemies as possible before winning (to gain max XP) and even delay on purpose in the hope that new enemies will appear.

2.4, paragraph 6: "You can undo movement provided you haven't received any new information since you made the move."

2.4.3, para 3: "Being mountain-dwellers, their defenses are generally average..." (change to US spelling). "As might be expected, the lack of headroom in caves hinders them significantly." (add comma).

2.6, para 1: "When units take damage, you can heal them..." (add comma).

2.6, para 2: "Hitpoints recovered through resting are added to the hitpoints recovered from healing, so it's possible for a unit to recover up to ten hitpoints per turn." Struck text can be interpreted as contradicting para 1.

2.6, para 4: "Waiting in a village. The unit will heal eight hitpoints at the start of every turn, and if it remains there and is not attacked it can rest as well and regain ten an additional 2 hitpoints per turn." Same reasoning as above.

2.6, para 4: "Regeneration. If the unit has the regeneration ability, it will gain eight hitpoints every turn regardless. If it rests as well, it can regain ten an additional 2 hitpoints per turn." Same reasoning.

Except for the quibbles noted above, the Healing section seems clear and complete to me now. I just hope it's correct! (Gee -- if I ever find 6 different allied +8 healers, I can rest next to them in a village and gain 58 HP!)

[turin]

1.3.8: "In fact, you will always gain more gold from winning early than you will from capturing every village on the map and holding them until the scenario's turns run out." I don't think this is always true. In TSG's Into the Depths (using 1.5.12), for example, I recall finding once that I'd captured so many villages, I'd be richer if I delayed victory to the last turn. More often, though, with the new carryover system, it seems to me it's pretty much a wash, and thus it's better to kill as many enemies as possible before winning (to gain max XP) and even delay on purpose in the hope that new enemies will appear.

Whether or not you get a "bonus" for completing a scenario early - the bonus being equal to total village gold possible on the map times number of turns left - is set by the scenario writer. Most "defeat enemy leader" scenarios have bonus set to yes, so you have an incentive to not milk XP; most "reach a given location" scenarios have it set to no, since you're running for your life anyway. Sometimes writers even do things like set it so achieving the harder objective gives a bonus, while achieving the easier objective does not.

I have no idea how to boil this down into manual-friendly speak; it might be best to just leave it out entirely. But it's certainly not true that "you will always gain more gold from winning early than you will from capturing every village on the map and holding them until the scenario's turns run out" - that's only true for scenarios with bonus=yes. (Though bonus=yes is, I believe, the default.)

[Simons Mith]

I don't see anything wrong with the images, or missing ones. What "niggles" are you referring to?

Heh, no clues. If nobody notices anything wrong then obviously the differences are minor enough to be left for the moment. I can refresh them at my leisure, once I've got my Mac back in use.

[dlp]

Whether or not you get a "bonus" for completing a scenario early - the bonus being equal to total village gold possible on the map times number of turns left - is set by the scenario writer. Most "defeat enemy leader" scenarios have bonus set to yes, so you have an incentive to not milk XP;

What you've said means the early-finish bonus is canceled out if one captures all the villages. In that case, one is better off maximizing XP. Indeed, even if a village or two is too remote to bother with (as is often the case), the 40% multiplier often makes the difference so trivial that holding off to sop up all the XP is the smarter play.

I agree, though, that trying to explain all the subtleties correctly could be vexing. It's probably better to let players figure them out for themselves.

[turin]

What you've said means the early-finish bonus is canceled out if one captures all the villages.

Not exactly. Because of upkeep, if you have too many units you'll still get more gold from ending the scenario early than from milking XP.

But I agree, it's not a good idea to try to explain all these details.

[Sangel]

Wow - having drafted original gameplay manual, I had no idea that it had made it as far as 1.6 almost entirely intact! Skimming through the Draft 3 here, I love what you're doing with the manual; it's clearer and more comprehensive than what's currently in the game.

I'm going to give this a proper read as soon as I have time to see if I have any suggestions, though it looks like you guys have things pretty well covered at this point.

[dlp]

Because of upkeep, if you have too many units you'll still get more gold from ending the scenario early than from milking XP.

True -- I overlooked upkeep. Even so, I find typically that, by the time I'm approaching the end of a scenario, I've captured most villages and attrition of my non-loyals has reduced upkeep to the point that the net benefit of ending early is only 5 gold/turn or so. Usually, I deem the impact on my subsequent ability to recruit/recall to be negligible, so I maximize XP, but that's a personal-strategy choice.

Thanks for refining my understanding.

[Simons Mith]

Quick request before I forget; every time I try to screen-grab this particular message, Wesnoth crashes. :-/ Would someone care to capture the 'X enemy and Y friendly units sighted, press T [or whatever it is] to continue' message when you spot friends and foes on a shrouded/fogged map? Thanks. PNG format if possible.

[mnewton1]

Is this what you wanted?

[Simons Mith]

Is this what you wanted?

Thanks, they'll do nicely.

[Wintermute]

Just a quick post to say that I have been very busy, so I haven't had time to read the draft. I still plan to 'soon' though! I think that we should shoot for "a few" (3+ maybe?) different people to read through it looking for mistakes/tweaks/etc. I think it would be nice to be quite confident with the document before sending it off to be translated!

If you have (carefully!) read through the whole draft, please post to indicate any proposed changes or just that it looks good.

[Simons Mith]

[Edited to include two^Wthree additional points:]

1.) [Edit: Now corrected, thanks to feedback from AI. Old version was as follows:] On the top panel of the game display, you see terrain type displays such as Forest (Forest), Castle (Keep) etc. I've tried to explain what's going on as follows: The name of the current terrain is also displayed. The main terrain type is given first - 'Castle', 'Forest', 'Hills', etc. - followed by the terrain subtype (if any) within parentheses. Hence Castle (Keep), Forest (Forest) or ... [Please can I have some other examples?] Terrain subtypes allow for things like river fords, desert hills, castle ruins and so forth. When a unit is in a mixed terrain type, it's assumed to occupy the parts of the hex that best suit it, and it gains the best defense rating and movement of the available options.

2.) [Edit2: I've done the easy ones now, leaving Concealment, Backstab, Leadership, Healing, and/or Curing. I will do them all myself eventually (if my computer lets me), unless someone beats to it.] Can someone help out with some additional screen grabs? I would like to provide demos of the backstab special, and concealment, curing, healing, leadership . For each, I would like two identical units in the same screen shot, one with the ability and using it, the other not. Screen shot should be around, oh, let's say 200 pixels square, smaller if possible. If you need more space, make the pictures wider rather than taller. PNG format. Don't worry too much about cropping down, I can do that, but please place units only a couple of hexes apart. For curing and leadership you'd need some additional units nearby, posioned or wounded, or lower-level and attacking. This will require a bit of good timing to screen-capture the units just as they do their stuff. Or a frame capture from a screen-to-video tool, if you've got one. This will save me some fiddling about; static screen grabs I can get, but it's during movement/attacking that I tend to get crashes. Thanks very much! By the way, if anyone can think of an obvious way to show any of the other abilities or weapon special in a single still image, I'd be open to suggestions. Steadfast, anyone?

3.) Shall I document the multiplayer game lobby? It is described in good detail on the Wiki, and I'm inclined to refer readers to that. OTOH it is a legitimate part of the game functionailty, so maybe I should cover it. Opinions? Tx again.

4.) In the multiplayer preferences, what is the chat lines slider for?

[Edit: 3 and 4: still waiting for answers.]

[AI]

1. is incorrect. First is the name of the terrain, then, in parentheses, the name(s) of the terrain(s) it derives from. In some cases, like villages, bridges and fords, the result is best-movement, best-defence, but in many, like snow forest or desert hills, best-defence and worst-movement is used.