Talk:Development/@comment-26393217-20160510185303

How to stike a flyer with a sword?

There has been a discussion on the Enlight forum about how ridiculous (and over-powerful) the Dragon Knight was, being able to hit flyers at will: "Hey, can't they just fly higher than a horseback?" I don't remember however having read that several races have such ridiculous, land or floating, melee units, indeed. Let's list them: - Knights: none - Dwarves: none - Barbarians: none - Empire: none - Dark Dwarves: all the golems (large land units) - Wood Elves: all the treants (large land units) - Dark Elves: none - High Elves: the Dragon Knight, then (large ground unit) - Minotaurs: the Minotaur King (huge land unit) - Orcs: the Ogre and the Giant (large land units) - The Fey: the Sylph (small floating unit) and the Banshee (medium floating unit) - Daemons: the Reaper (medium floating unit) - Undeads: the Doom Knight (large land unit) - The Ssrathi: T-Rex (large land unit) - The Plaguelords: all the hydras (huge land units) That amounts to 15 units, not counting the huge land melee titans. Thus, the Dragon Knight's case is not the concern by itself. The floating units should be considered as land units for this purpose; I figure that "floating" means "walking over water and lava", at a height no greater than that of a small tree.

Ideas: - any flyer should be able to avoid any melee ground (or floating) unit if they wish so (i.e. if they fly higher). - a flyer attacking a ground unit at melee range should be vulnerable to retaliation from the most capable or trained said ground units. - then the current ability to strike at any adjacent flyer could be changed into an ability to retaliate on attacking melee flyers, or better, into an ability to target any attacking melee flyer which has just targeted a ground (or floating) unit, or a building, nearby. - for this purpose, very short range breath or missile flyers (i.e. dragons) would be considered as melee flyers, but chiefly because of... the Dragon Knight role! (And only if we want that a Dragon Knight is able to damage a dragon, and not only to resist a dragon's breath)

Now, the Dragon Knight wouldn't be so ridiculous: he would be trained to strike from horseback at swooping griffons and harpies, and at breathing dragons. Indeed, all the other 14 afore listed units would do the same, some of them because they are floatting and able to "jump" at a swooping flyer, some others because they are large/huge (and fast enough!) (e.g. the Treants, the Ogre, the Golems (or only the Iron Golem?), ...), and others just because they are trained for that (Dragon Knight and Doom Knight) whereas like-units can't (other cavalry units, Slayer Knight and other infantry units). (In the Dragon Knight's special case, perhaps a new power could be bestowed upon him, such as a hard-coded resistance against dragon breath (or immunity to critical effects from dragons!), or a White Ward spell, to truly be worth his name) Then, would the ability to defend building as well be ridiculous (how can a horseman reach the roof of a palace?), or an accepted side-effect?

Suggested implementation (if possible): - I figure that a way to "simply" implement the change would be to be able to dynamically change the movement type of a unit during the battle. If possible, a flying unit that is attacking a ground (or floating) unit with a melee attack or a very short range attack (rather than just being close, map coordinates wise), thus being prone to retaliation, would have its movement type temporarily changed to "floating special" or "hovering". Only current anti-air melee ground units would be able to attack such "hovering" units, whereas any melee ground units are able to attack normal floating units. - Perhaps, there is no need to create a new movement type, only a logical test with the Aerial tag and the attack max range, just before the attack is dealt. The duration of this status should be enough to any anti-air melee ground unit, even the slow golem, to walk two hexes or so and attack at least once. Perhaps, a hidden cooldown as when a spell is cast, to avoid any kind of micro-hit-and-run exploit by a human player. (That is, once a unit has swooped down, it takes time to climb back out of range) Of course, a realistic hit-and-run tactic would be possible, just as currently to avoid range retaliation.

Intended result: - Current anti-air ground melee units would still be able to defend themselves, and other ground (or floating) units, and buildings, as currently. - They would be helpless against 4+ ranged flyers, however, as well as against passing-by melee flyers.

Possible concern: - I figure that, without touching the AI, anti-air ground melee units would chase flyers only to do nothing then they get close. It's a behavior you would expect from defenders, waiting for the flyer to fly down, but this could lead to many "stuck" units as far as AI players are concerned, if said flyer just stand by, and the AI don't think about bringing a melee flyer or a ranged ground unit nearby. - The whole thing means that those anti-air, ground, melee units would lose some potency and versability for realism's sake. Perhaps, they should be rebalanced, then?