Two-flag system in one team

[holypaladin]

In the first scenario of Descent into Darkness, we also have some soldiers (spearmen, bowmen) in Malin's team who are clearly unwilling to fight in his team and there is no confrontation (diplomatic or physical) only because of the ongoing orc attack. I propose creating a two-flag system for this scenario (loyalist flag for the soldiers, undead flag for Malin and his walking corpses). Certainly such a solution would improve the consistency of the campaign (I don't think the soldiers would be willing to fly undead flags). This would be an innovative idea (I haven't encountered it yet) but I think a talented programmer could handle it easily.

[beetlenaut]

I think a talented programmer could handle it easily.

I don't think this is true. Flags are set in the [side] tag. You can use [modify_side] to change the flag during the scenario, but presumably, that would do the same thing: change them for the whole side. Allowing two flags on the same side would take a change to the engine, and a change to how flags are set in WML as well. It's not a bad idea for that scenario, but I don't know if it's important enough for a developer to take that on. There might not be any other use cases.

[lhybrideur]

On Discord, Refumee posted the following code that is supposed to do that.

Code: Select all

        [object]
            [effect]
                apply_to=image_mod
                add=RC(magenta>red)
            [/effect]
        [/object]

[Lord-Knightmare]

That does nothing to modify the flag. That code segment only modifies the team color of the units. In this case, I think swapping the team color of the 3 loyalists units in Malin's side might work.

[Duke_Anax]

The Dark Mages scenario in Liberty does something like this, by simply having the player control two allied teams.

[beetlenaut]

Two teams is not a good solution in this case, because you would have to move the two groups one at a time. It would make that scenario quite a bit harder.

[Lord-Knightmare]

Two teams is not a good solution in this case, because you would have to move the two groups one at a time. It would make that scenario quite a bit harder.

I would not say hard. It's more describable with "frustrating".
Controlling two sides is vexing.
Plus, in these cases, abilities like leadership/inspire are not usable.
Healing needs better positioning.

Also, two-flag system introduces even more things to consider: how would you show second flag in the current screen which only shows one flag (the main one).