By directly in front of the target, I mean that the squad is blocking the line of sight, as well as being so close to the target that their troops are almost touching.
I think that squads should be able to act like a semi-cover. As in, for every squad blocking an archer's line of sight to its target, the effectiveness of the archer's missile towards the target should be -10, or -15 if the squad is directly in front of the target. I also think that the effectiveness of flanking bonuses and the semi-cover bonus I mentioned should scale down according to how many troops are left in the squad, like if normally the bonus would normally be 10, and the squad has 10 of 20 troops left, the bonus would scale down to 5.
If equipment actually showed up on troops during battle, you would see elven archers with using a bow with only one hand and holding a shield in the other while skeletons march into battle with shotguns. Although equipment doesn't show up on troops, so the theme and realism of the game aren't really effected much by these little things.
I kind of prefer the symbolic representation of troop levels over the numeric representation, mostly because the symbols in my eyes were easier to identify and the current numerals are not as easy to differentiate.
An Agile Weapons tech tree for melee & missile, an Armor tree for armor & endurance, a Heavy Weapons tree for strength & range, and an Advanced Training tree for morale & endurance & movement & reaction & exp bonus & maybe even more troops per squad would be cool.
I believe I misphrased what I said. My healing costs/times are manageable, it isn't a problem. I'm just trying to say that it takes a bit too much gold/time to maintain equipment.
Although, I think the gold cost and/or repair time of equipment should be reduced. I only have a bundle of uncommons and some rares but I always find that my equipment is breaking faster than I can repair them. Also, unless I make huge consecutive blunders in battle and need to heal more for it, the repair costs rival my healing costs, if not more.
you can also speed up the recovery process of the dent in your gold-cache by sending your other units off into safer battles while your PvPing team heals up. Quests also tend to pile up if you idle by in your city, so you could do some of those. Hope that helps. :D
I like the idea of being able to choose a path each area, but each choice has so many possible outcomes that seem to come so randomly it almost doesn't matter. Perhaps the percent chance for each outcome should be modified to be in more preference towards a certain outcome depending on the choice, so at least we can predict what will happen with greater accuracy?
in addition to the normal flee button, there should be a button to make the squad flee and not stop fleeing until it leaves the battle, that way a squad does not have to take unnecessary casualties by engaging every so often to continue fleeing. Also, if not suggested already, the ability to multi-select and queue up commands to units to make complicated maneuvers while commanding elsewhere.
Here are some ideas for some new or modifications of existing tech trees. The Armor tree would be changed to add +3 armor, +1 endurance per research. The Weapons tree would be split into a Light Weapons and Heavy Weapons tree. The Light Weapons tree would add +2 melee, +2 missile per research. The Heavy Weapons tree would add +3 strength, +1 range per research. A new tree would be a Training tree, which would add +1/3 a point of movement, -1/6 a point of reaction, +1 endurance, +2 morale, +5% xp bonus from battles. Each tree would 6 researches. All units to unlock would require a research from the Training tree and a research from one of the other three trees, in addition to a barrack level.
If a squad is in a position where there is no escape (ie: terrain obstacles on two sides, enemies on the other sides), then the probability of fleeing should be lowered even if their morale is low. If a rat is cornered with no means of escape, then it will fight to survive, whether it wants to or not.
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