SCS, if you know that i mean...

Ezzaam4Futbol

Hey everyone,

Is it possible to get a kind of SCS from BGT on EE. This mod could make the AI smarterrrr. Instead of the slider at very hard that increase the damage we get, i seriously prefer that kind of challenge with SCS. Fights are much more interesting. What do you think about that?

Kerozevok

Totally disagree.

SCS is not for the beginners and it does not respect the D&D rules for the casters.

O_Bruce

SCS should stay a mod. Just be patient, I'm sure than in time it would be possible to convert this mod to work with BG:EE.

It would be also nice from people to finally understand that BG:EE is not for hardcore (REALLY hardcore) players only.

Necdilzor

As a beginner I found this game extremely challenging at moderate difficulty. I think that a good idea would be to make a new, even more difficult option for all those veterans who are looking for a serious challenge (according to D&D rules, I don't know if it's compatible).

DavidW

I don't think this would have been a good idea:
(i) the BG2 engine doesn't really support the kind of shifts you'd have to have in order to impose SCS via the difficulty slider, and would need fairly radical reengineering
(ii) SCS has a very large number of different settings, and if you collapsed them into one option you'd lose a lot of flexibility.

@Kerozevok: I think SCS basically respects the BG rules for casters (which aren't quite the same as the D&D rules). If I'm wrong, let me know - it may be a bug.

Kerozevok

@DavidW. I'll not teach you what it does "ForceSpell" instead of "Spell".

Shin

SCS 1 and 2 are great mods, but I also believe it is better to keep them in that form. One of the main strengths of SCS (and many other mods) is the way you can select which components you want and thus tailor the content according to what you like. As DavidW (thanks for all the hard work!) points out, this can't really be done with a difficulty slider.

ajwz

Yeah, I think SCS is better in mod form, but for the sheer volume of requests like this (I think it must be the most requested thing on these forums) the devs would be mad not to make a hardcore/HOF style mode for release.

DavidW

@Kerozevok: I think you'll have to teach me. As far as I can recall, the only time I get mages and priests to use ForceSpell() and the like (outside the optional prebuff sequences) are a couple of times when they're trying to teleport and scripting limitations mean that I can't let them be interrupted. (This happens maybe twice in the whole mod.) Am I forgetting something?

Kerozevok

@DavidW It's been a long time that I've not played with SCS and there has certainly been many changes since... But if I remember correctly, all priests/mages had unlimited spells with the "old versions", so I assume they used ForceSpell ?

DavidW

You don't remember correctly. I've always used a finite spell pool and stayed roughly correct to the official number of spells, albeit in early versions, "roughly" was a bit more hit-and-miss.

(Incidentally, the way to get unlimited spells is to use SpellNoDec(), which is interruptable but doesn't require that you have the spell.)

smeagolheart

Kerozevok said:

Totally disagree.

SCS is not for the beginners and it does not respect the D&D rules for the casters.

You mean like how all the mages are standing around while fully buffed. Ready for anything I guess. Doesn't everyone prebuff themselves with stoneskins and what have you first thing in the morning right after brushing their teeth in the forgotten realms?

Tanthalas

Well, its hard to tell in the novels. Many of them do carry around "oh shit" contingencies to teleport away when they're in trouble.

DavidW

smeagolheart said:

You mean like how all the mages are standing around while fully buffed. Ready for anything I guess. Doesn't everyone prebuff themselves with stoneskins and what have you first thing in the morning right after brushing their teeth in the forgotten realms?

Any mage who doesn't, when there's the slightest chance of trouble, is an idiot (and mages are not idiots).

Wes Weimer used to call this the "seatbelt" theory of prebuffing - you put your seatbelt on when driving somewhere not because the probability of needing it is high, but because the cost is low and the worst-case scenario is disastrous.

(Not that this has anything much to do with "respect[ing] the D&D rules", which uncontroversially allow you to cast Stoneskin first thing in the morning. )

CamDawg

DavidW said:

(Not that this has anything much to do with "respect[ing] the D&D rules", which uncontroversially allow you to cast Stoneskin first thing in the morning. )

Which immediately prompts: do soap and toothpaste penetrate stoneskin?

DavidW

That's why you cast it *after* cleaning your teeth, Cam. That's the origin of the phrase, "you have to get up pretty early in the morning to assassinate a mage".

lansounet

This is why I hate the "layer-behaviour" of stoneskin. Physical damage absorption (X dmg absorbed per Y levels) would be so much better against those mages walking around in their stoneskin. Nothing like wasting your backstab on these buggers.

I remember reading such major change to stoneskin is very tricky to accomplish if not impossible due to engine limitations though (missing effect or something?)

DavidW

Yep: there's no effect in BG2 that imposes 3E-style damage resistance, and no effect that lets damage resistance drop away after a certain amount has been taken. You could make stoneskin grant, say, 75% damage resistance for some fixed period, but that wouldn't really be much use - you could still reliably disrupt a mage's spells by doing 25% damage. Love it or hate it, the structure of BG2's mage-protection spells is fairly deeply integrated into mid- to high-level battle with enemy mages.

Mera

I understand that for newer players, SCS is really too hard. However, I believe that there are quite a few gamers that have already played BG a lot and that would love an increased difficulty and even more strategical combat.
The problem I have with SCS as a mod is that it's a real pain in the ass to install and configure properly. There's a billion options available and you might not have a clue if it's interesting or not, especially for non-English speakers (the installation is well translated iirc but not the detail of what components exactly do). I have already used SCS quite a bit and every single time, I end up with a different configuration because of that... Plus, some components are just not fun to play with.

Just increasing the HP and damages of enemies is not going to do it. I would absolutely loved if the dev team took the core components of SCS (a few balancing tweaks and smarter AI for example) and put them in a new difficulty settings.

Make it happen guys!

lansounet

DavidW said:

I don't think this would have been a good idea:
(i) the BG2 engine doesn't really support the kind of shifts you'd have to have in order to impose SCS via the difficulty slider, and would need fairly radical reengineering
(ii) SCS has a very large number of different settings, and if you collapsed them into one option you'd lose a lot of flexibility.

About point (i) : How about adding Difficulty() triggers everywhere to dictate the behaviour/smartness of opponents? Quite easy to make I reckon from what I know about your SSL thing to make BAF files but probably would make the scripts 5 times larger

Ardanis

lansounet said:

About point (i) : How about adding Difficulty() triggers everywhere to dictate the behaviour/smartness of opponents? Quite easy to make I reckon from what I know about your SSL thing to make BAF files but probably would make the scripts 5 times larger

1) It would indeed increase file size even further (some SCS' scripts are well over 1 megabyte), leading to even worse slowdowns when loading those scripts into game. I play on P4 2.4 GHz, and it takes several seconds to load.
2) You'd still have to write new set of AI for lower difficulties. They may be simplier and shorter, but a work nonetheless.

lansounet

Of course I just meant it is actually possible to script different AIs for different difficulty settings without ressorting to engine features like changing all creatures scripts when changing difficulty.

DavidW

@lansounet: Ardanis is right: yes, theoretically what you suggest would work, but in practice, SCS script lengths are already at the extreme edge of what's workable. (I'm going to be very interested to see how BG:EE handles my scripts.)

@mera: I'm sympathetic to the hassle of installing SCS. It's actually given me some insight into professional game design: people often ask for a given feature to be optional, and designers tend to be resistant. SCS lets everything be optional, with the result that a manual installation requires more than 100 choices! I don't know if you've played SCSII since v20 came out: it now has a new (if fairly crude) auto-installer which hopefully simplifies things a lot. Of course, the real problem is that everyone thinks "some components are just not fun to play with", but nobody agrees as to which ones!

Anton

Topics on this subject that are worth mentioning:
- Advanced Option: Checkboxes for Enemy AI Enhancements
- [Request] More / better Player AI Scripts
- Requesting a new difficulty setting (not just numeric adjustments)
- Is the EE edition getting enhanced AI?

Shin

@mera @DavidW I always looked at the extensive customizability of SCS as one of its greatest strengths. It takes awhile to install and you need to read a lot if you haven't done it before, but taking control of what kind of content you want is a major point of using mods, the way I see it. It also shows how great care has gone into the creation of it, rather than a "this-is-how-the-designer-feels-you-must-play" package deal that changes a lot of stuff on its own.. like certain other mods.

On top of that, the readme also presents the reasoning behind almost every change so you can more easily evaluate it, which is also rare.

Anton

Still hope for some kind of integration into BGEE..

There are a lot of people who just don't use mods at all.
A lot of my mates when we do multiplayer run use NO MODS rule.. But this way (without SCS) game is just way too easy

Anton

AI enhancement was one of the most requested feature from the start (check links in my post above).. How come we didn't get any?

@TrentOster

karnor00

Bit of an old thread now, but I always saw SCS (and SCS II) as NPC mages getting to metagame. I know which encounter is about to happen so I prebuff just outside the room before attacking - without metagaming I wouldn't run into every tough encounter fully buffed.

So prebuffing in SCS is basically NPC's using that same metaknowledge to know exactly when I'm about to enter the room and therefore buffing accordingly.

My only issue with SCS (moreso SCS II for BG2 really where it makes more of a difference) is that my mages are forced to turn into specalised debuffers with little room left over for actually doing damage. But the problem with not having it installed is that I find the game far too easy.

smeagolheart

Like my example of mages getting up in the morning, casting stoneskin on themselves, then going about their day brushing their teeth my problem is why would said mage be protecting himself at 7am on a tuesday morning? Aren't there timers on these spells that would make them want to save their defenses for when it's likely to be useful? Metagaming by the mages is the reason I guess. Players metagame so I guess it is equal.

When players cast spells they have to rest to get their spells back. I want to be in some dungeon and meet a powerful wizard laying around resting to get his stoneskins back because he wasted his casting earlier that morning before he brushed his teeth.

Bercon

How many enemy mages you actually encounter in the entire trilogy that didn't get any kind of warning that you were coming from the sounds of battle or by being the attacker / expecting attack at any moment? I bet the number is single digit.

The_New_Romance

Bercon said:

How many enemy mages you actually encounter in the entire trilogy that didn't get any kind of warning that you were coming from the sounds of battle or by being the attacker / expecting attack at any moment? I bet the number is single digit.

From the top of my head, there's Zordral (at the Carnival), Denak and his Red Wizards and the guys up at Sorcerous Sundries. Then there's Ogre Mages that can't possibly know you're coming (e.g., the one at Firewine). I don't know whether they count. I also don't know whether guys such as Tarnesh, who want to assassinate you, but don't really know when you're about to arrive and even how you look, should be able to be prepared to the point.

I'd say the number might approach two digits in BG1 alone.