Brainstorm - Creature Mechanic - Creature production - Ideas needed!

[Rasmus]

- In playing it, I never questioned why the Dark Mother can puke out creatures! Some magics are better left unexplained.
- I agree that a player should earn the right to build better creatures through combat and exploration. The exact mechanism to do that is less important than the bigger goal of encouraging combat through some kind of major rewards.
- A player should have a non-combat way to make an army to rebuild his strength after losing a battle. If you require combat as a marginal cost (instead of fixed cost), then a single battle could be the end of the game because you lose and can't recover.

I am not sure if I understand the egg idea. Once I gather the requirements for building a creature, I would like it to come quickly in case I am in an emergency and need creatures to defend. Adding in a hatching time delay could be a problem: what if my DM is being attacked, how to defend it if all she drops is eggs that get targeted and killed by the NPCs before hatching?

The idea is not that the player will capture enemy creatures to create creature. The idea is that he will get the ability to create a certain creature type after capturing that same creature type. Then when the player have the ability to create this creature its production cost is something that are linked to the production chain or evil points or essence, not fighting and killing enemies.

I like the idea of eggs, but I only see them as after effect of ordering a creature to be made from Dark Mother. I mean when DM's make one a creature will show up as an egg-like blob. This way just made eggs can hatch in one place around Dark Mother. Creatures are made "ready to hatch", but need some time to get out of this blob.

The time of hatching should be short because the way of making creatures like we have now (catch - imprison - DM's lunch) is made also for players that are in trouble and could thanks to that quickly make more creatures and defend oneself (however creatures are born unarmed and with 1st lvl, but that's always something). When we order something we want it ASAP right? I don't like to wait 1 hour for my pizza especially if I'm in situation when I could eat a whole Cyclotaur with it's hooves. ];})

Well, when you say that the hatching should be short I feel like it is very relative. I mean, I can say that a short hatching time is one minute while you mean 10 seconds. This is something I think we have to do some testing on and see what feels most right. I don't want the player to just spit out 10 creatures to defend him when he is being attacked just because he have the resources for it.

I still think the Imps should swallow eggs that the DM spits out to become "pregnant" like in my most recent post on this thread. I think it follows the game atmosphere well. But getting the units quickly would be good. Though perhaps a "pregnant" imp would have "Mother" instincts and do some martial arts to kill attackers instead of having them be totally useless while carrying the egg. In this way, you create a unit that can fight but dont get the unit you need right away so you have to plan ahead. Challenging but you get some fighting units when you are in a jam.

I am having trouble seeing the imps giving birth to an full size orc. Unless you are thinking baby orcs to begin with But even if that is a cool idea having baby creatures running around in the dungeon it could be a little bit to demanding for me as a developer having these game-mechanics in there as well, because that would require a lot of extra animations and modelling for something that may not weigh up to how good this game mechanic is. If you really want this one, then you will have to convince me some more

I don't know that Imps should ever have the ability to attack. It just doesn't fit the profile of the creature, and if they were to attack the amount of damage they could inflict would be so minuscule that it would require a hefty group to pump out enough damage to eat away at an attacker's HP bar. It had been brought up elsewhere here about having guard stations of sorts, and perhaps if you want to protect the eggs, then posting a station at or in-line with the path to the hatchery, that would serve just as well to protect the unhatched.

I agree with you, I see the imps as mindless creatures that just follow orders and want to please any master they may have, they don't want to fight, they just want to stay out of trouble, that is why they are doing everything we tell them to do. Having the imps fighting would as Mello said require a large group of imps to do any damage at all, and this could mean that as soon as a enemy enters the dungeon the player could loose a lot of imps because they are way to brave.