Morpheus, did you test Tactics Remix against the old Mega Mods like Darkside, Northern Tales oder Darkest Day?
I remember SCS tuned up clerics and thieves making the last Dungeon of DSotSC nearly impossible to play, due to hundreds of duergar Assassines and Priests crowding the area, summoning Skeletals and the like.
What do you think is to be expected, if one combines these oldies with modern tactics?
Northern Tales for example has its own "improved fiends" which was also pretty tough combined with SCS, and pretty much not what the Authors of NTotSC had intended.
I update existing game scripts, so if those mods use that, then they will be updated. I update the existing fiend files, so it's likely there will be some overlap.
Thanks for this mod and amazing follow-up.
Played several fights (on vanilla rules) which were few times tough but very doable in BG1 and the start of BG2 and I faced a big wall: Faldorn with my thief naked. No other npcs allowed... Is it something intended ? it really looks impossible pre Spellhold. I somehow suspect a bad combination with other mods.
Thanks for this mod and amazing follow-up.
Played several fights (on vanilla rules) which were few times tough but very doable in BG1 and the start of BG2 and I faced a big wall: Faldorn. I had to face her with my thief naked. No other npcs allowed... Is it normal or it was caused by mod conflicts?
Do you have any mods touching faldorn? You should be able to have Cernd face her and win.
In fact, yes despite being a very small install. Probably coming from multi stronghold from cdtweaks, it makes my npcs identified as a druid and I cannot skip it with another choice.
Faldorn is mostly untouched from the original Tactics (latest release in 2009). If multi stronghold is causing an issue, then I would recommend not to combine the two together.
I wanted to check if it was intended. Thanks for your super fast answer.
There is maybe another mod involved but multi strongholds is for sure among the culprits.
Cernd is there and he can defeat faldorn on his own. If another mod is interfering or preventing him, then that is most unfortunate, but I can overwrite it further.
I think I also encountered the problem Sat described; Tweaks has a multi-stronghold component yes?
If so there may also be a bug involved; I remember that I could never choose Cernd or Jaheira, even when they are in the party, and only the main character could be chosen (which I think is different to vanilla, where we have all druids as options, but it has been a long time since I last played vanilla), which can be a bit problematic if a pure thief (I usually have a mage and then it gets easier). What you could also perhaps try, Sat, if you don't mind other mods, is to beat the enemy via innate abilities. Perhaps the ghost summon from one of Lava's mod and perhaps there are some other abilities that can help and deal damage, aside from summonables.
Mostly generic tweaks to get everything feeling as part of Tactics Remix. Enemies will prebuff similarly, same attack styles, consistency of enemy types, and the dragon will act more like what the player is going to expect to find in bg2, albeit the SoD dragon is toned down a little.
Nice!
Someone addressing that stupid and annoying phase spider thing, where they warp to group members miles away from your scout, was long overdue.
As good as your combat scripts preventing enemies from chasing your party till the end of time, even after loosing sight oder you leaving and reentering the map.
I can‘t say how much those things where getting on my nerves.
One questions Morpheus, does Tactics Spell System address leveldrain in any way? Or can it be safely combined with subtle spells "Add savingthrow" against it?
Someone addressing that stupid and annoying phase spider thing, where they warp to group members miles away from your scout, was long overdue.
They will jump across the map still, but my change is to prevent them from jumping to a different map if you have a character located there. It will also prevent the phase spider from teleporting onto a dead character.
As good as your combat scripts preventing enemies from chasing your party till the end of time, even after loosing sight oder you leaving and reentering the map.
Is this a complaint with Tactics Remix? I'm just trying to understand, so I can address.
No, it was meant to highlight your efforts in changing that
I always found it annyoing and unrealistic, when enemies, after spotting your party, were chasing you like forever. I can't remember if this was in the original game or if it was custom scripting by SCS.
It's good how Tactics now approaches it.
> It will also prevent the phase spider from teleporting onto a dead character.
While this may be objectively called a bug, it could also be a feature, e. g. "the phase spider
is so hungry and wants to gobble up the innards of the fallen" or lay some eggs in it right now.
It's probably way too much work to do, but imagine some fancy animations of "minor" monsters
doing things on instinct even in the middle of a fight, because they are so distracted by the
tasty corpse of an elf. (In the old NPC mod of Paina, the avatar-like huge spider was kind of
oddly but buggily animated, e. g. at first I thought she would climb on top of the ceiling of
a cave sometimes, until I realised that the animation is simply buggy. The spell was lateron
removed or so, but the animation was still kind of cool.)
> I always found it annyoing and unrealistic, when enemies, after spotting your party, were chasing
> you like forever.
Yes, some more randomness or in-mob behaviour would be nice. Conversely some should also
be focused on specific targets, e. g. favoured (hated) enemies. I forgot what main enemy Minsc
had, but it would be interesting if that would influence some of the AI to favour such enemies,
and in reverse too (e. g. some monsters hating elves more than humans).
Tried to install it on BGEE: SoD with The Enhanced Edition Fixpack Alpha 2 https://www.gibberlings3.net/mods/fixes/eefp/ but keep getting the same warnings for all "improved" and "tougher" components like "Improved Bassilus":
"WARNING: no effects altered on spin862.spl"
Installing Tactics Remix without EE Fixpack works OK - no warnings.
Should I ignore those warnings or do they indicate some kind of issue and incompatibility with EE Fixpack?
Additional inconvenience: Project Infinity pauses installation after each warning with message:
"Has encountered errors during installation, exited with ExitCode = 3"
Warning can safely be ignored as the fixpack is correcting the same thing that I am correcting. I'll probably push a fix out shortly to get that warning removed. It is completely harmless.
Comments
I remember SCS tuned up clerics and thieves making the last Dungeon of DSotSC nearly impossible to play, due to hundreds of duergar Assassines and Priests crowding the area, summoning Skeletals and the like.
What do you think is to be expected, if one combines these oldies with modern tactics?
Northern Tales for example has its own "improved fiends" which was also pretty tough combined with SCS, and pretty much not what the Authors of NTotSC had intended.
Played several fights (on vanilla rules) which were few times tough but very doable in BG1 and the start of BG2 and I faced a big wall: Faldorn with my thief naked. No other npcs allowed... Is it something intended ? it really looks impossible pre Spellhold. I somehow suspect a bad combination with other mods.
Do you have any mods touching faldorn? You should be able to have Cernd face her and win.
There is maybe another mod involved but multi strongholds is for sure among the culprits.
I think I also encountered the problem Sat described; Tweaks has a multi-stronghold component yes?
If so there may also be a bug involved; I remember that I could never choose Cernd or Jaheira, even when they are in the party, and only the main character could be chosen (which I think is different to vanilla, where we have all druids as options, but it has been a long time since I last played vanilla), which can be a bit problematic if a pure thief (I usually have a mage and then it gets easier). What you could also perhaps try, Sat, if you don't mind other mods, is to beat the enemy via innate abilities. Perhaps the ghost summon from one of Lava's mod and perhaps there are some other abilities that can help and deal damage, aside from summonables.
Could you elaborate a bit more on the changes for SoD? Anything added for specific encounters, or just script changes, or what is to be expected?
Someone addressing that stupid and annoying phase spider thing, where they warp to group members miles away from your scout, was long overdue.
As good as your combat scripts preventing enemies from chasing your party till the end of time, even after loosing sight oder you leaving and reentering the map.
I can‘t say how much those things where getting on my nerves.
Keep up the good work!
Is this a complaint with Tactics Remix? I'm just trying to understand, so I can address.
I always found it annyoing and unrealistic, when enemies, after spotting your party, were chasing you like forever. I can't remember if this was in the original game or if it was custom scripting by SCS.
It's good how Tactics now approaches it.
While this may be objectively called a bug, it could also be a feature, e. g. "the phase spider
is so hungry and wants to gobble up the innards of the fallen" or lay some eggs in it right now.
It's probably way too much work to do, but imagine some fancy animations of "minor" monsters
doing things on instinct even in the middle of a fight, because they are so distracted by the
tasty corpse of an elf. (In the old NPC mod of Paina, the avatar-like huge spider was kind of
oddly but buggily animated, e. g. at first I thought she would climb on top of the ceiling of
a cave sometimes, until I realised that the animation is simply buggy. The spell was lateron
removed or so, but the animation was still kind of cool.)
> I always found it annyoing and unrealistic, when enemies, after spotting your party, were chasing
> you like forever.
Yes, some more randomness or in-mob behaviour would be nice. Conversely some should also
be focused on specific targets, e. g. favoured (hated) enemies. I forgot what main enemy Minsc
had, but it would be interesting if that would influence some of the AI to favour such enemies,
and in reverse too (e. g. some monsters hating elves more than humans).
Tried to install it on BGEE: SoD with The Enhanced Edition Fixpack Alpha 2 https://www.gibberlings3.net/mods/fixes/eefp/ but keep getting the same warnings for all "improved" and "tougher" components like "Improved Bassilus":
"WARNING: no effects altered on spin862.spl"
Installing Tactics Remix without EE Fixpack works OK - no warnings.
Should I ignore those warnings or do they indicate some kind of issue and incompatibility with EE Fixpack?
Additional inconvenience: Project Infinity pauses installation after each warning with message:
"Has encountered errors during installation, exited with ExitCode = 3"