I don't know how artisan has his setup. Likely whichever one comes last week overwrite the other one. If memory serves, whatever he has likely isn't going to be as challenging as what TR has.
Ok. Just asking because you mentioned somewhere earlier, that Tactics will recognize if artisans mod has made changes to the Shade Lord and will skip the respective component.
I don't expect it to be to challenging, I just want some enemies using his Shadow Magic in my runs.
Are the SCS components for: Item Tweaks, Gameplay Tweaks, and Cosmetic and Ease-Of-Use Tweaks compatible with Tactics Remix? This is excluding the SCS: Core Component, Spell Tweaks, AI Enhancements, and Tactical Challenges.
For example, from Item Tweaks I'm wanting remove: Arrows of Dispelling from Stores, the Shield of Balduran, Vhailor's Helm/Cloak of Mirroring/Robe of Vecna (to ToB). And from Gameplay Tweaks I want: Improved Shapeshifting, and to delay the bonus merchants.
Are these tweaks advised in terms of Tactics Remix balancing? Keen to try out the mod after I saw that it supports Loretakers! And I was looking for a mod to improve Mutamin's Garden, and in general anti-XP cheese tweaks for BGEE.
Those tweaks should generally work. I may update enemies via TR to add new gear that may cause an issue with moving Shield of Balduran, Vhailor's Helm, Vecna, etc. as I don't know where SCS moves them and I don't account for it.
Are the SCS components for: Item Tweaks, Gameplay Tweaks, and Cosmetic and Ease-Of-Use Tweaks compatible with Tactics Remix? This is excluding the SCS: Core Component, Spell Tweaks, AI Enhancements, and Tactical Challenges.
For example, from Item Tweaks I'm wanting remove: Arrows of Dispelling from Stores, the Shield of Balduran, Vhailor's Helm/Cloak of Mirroring/Robe of Vecna (to ToB). And from Gameplay Tweaks I want: Improved Shapeshifting, and to delay the bonus merchants.
Are these tweaks advised in terms of Tactics Remix balancing? Keen to try out the mod after I saw that it supports Loretakers! And I was looking for a mod to improve Mutamin's Garden, and in general anti-XP cheese tweaks for BGEE.
For BGEE (and especially if you already played the game many times) I recommend installing the improved TR encounters as well. You can get a lot from the mod with the improved creature modules and improved spellcasters, but many set encounters in the game get little to no changes (aside from heavier hitting enemies).
Thank you for this. It brings out very old school tactics feel with a lot of modern twists, I like the mod. I dont like the way its too animation heavy, though, nwn animations ported look decent but clash a bit for my eyes. I would much prefer regular bg2 monsters reskinned with color changes (Improved Anvil does this for its many golems)
I love that I can have two installations one for tactics and one for scs, and I can play whichever I like. I basicaly have two eet games modded with my favorite mods, but one with tactics added and other with scs added at the end.
I love brutal tactics mod style suprises you had in some encounters, have missed them since I started playing improved anvil and scs.
But I noticed something. On my eet installation with only tactics mod, loading a save game takes about 4-5 seconds, even 6-7 seconds if its a crowded area. On my scs eet installation, loading is way faster, almost instantenous- which is one of the things I like about enhanced editions. Tactics modded eet is 10.1 gb large while scs modded eet game is about 8.9 gb, so I know some tactics files are bigger due to animations? scripts? I noticed each tactics spellcaster script is HUGE like 2-3 mb. Whereas scs enemy mage scripts are like 300-400 kb- nearly tenth in size. I assume tactics mod give a full mage script to each enemy and with enough randomisation and level differences so they are very large to cater to every possibility. whereas scs custom gives each enemy a new, semi-unique script so they are shorter. Does anyone have this loading time issue or is my pc just so crappy?
Other than that, HUGE thanks for all the hardwork. I love all difficulty enhancing mods, improved anvil is TOO crazy, scs is VERY smart, sometimes frighteningly so, and tactics is a very happy medium between the two, I think.
New animations are present to better visually distinguish between different enemy types. Nabassu and Balor are very different creatures, yet they shared the same animation. I want the player to see and know they face one vs the other as in og it can be very difficult to tell the difference. Besides just looking different, animations like the golem animation updates have a practical purpose: vanilla animations have no throwing animation. Tactics Remix will use a thrown ranged attack, and with vanilla animations they just twitch giving no indication to the player that the golems are performing any actions. With the animation updates, the player can clearly see that the golems are throwing rocks at the player.
For the save game load times, that is tied to the heavy usage of EEex with custom triggers I created. I've been working hard to streamline these scripts and uses of EEex to reduce the load times as I feel I can get the scripts into a place where its not noticed while keeping the functionality of many of the net new triggers I created.
I love all difficulty enhancing mods, improved anvil is TOO crazy, scs is VERY smart, sometimes frighteningly so, and tactics is a very happy medium between the two, I think.
At this point in time, Tactics Remix objectively has the smarter scripting over SCS. TR can just do things with custom lua scirpting and EEex that SCS simply isn't even able to copy. As noted above, it is currently at a slight cost to the load times, but performance wise, it is driving smarter enemy behavior.
TR AI is better than SCS in most cases. Also cheats less. TR enemies can't see through invisibility (aside from the ones that are originally coded to), unlike SCS where everyone can see you (even if they can't target you). Just one example. Both systems are exploitable if you chose to play that way (far easier to kite enemies or coax them to you one by one in TR for example), but nothing is perfect.
Thank you for this. It brings out very old school tactics feel with a lot of modern twists, I like the mod. I dont like the way its too animation heavy, though, nwn animations ported look decent but clash a bit for my eyes. I would much prefer regular bg2 monsters reskinned with color changes (Improved Anvil does this for its many golems)
I share the same view too. Mostly because I have grown found of the original sprites/animations, but also they can look out of place. Specially since only a select few are changed. It looks rather odd when only a certain type within a group of monsters has the new sprites but the rest do not (Umber Hulks in Sendai's enclave for example). I also caught some inconsistencies among the golems in Suldanessellar too (this one could be an oversight). But it's a design decision and I respect it. I guess all the monster types could be changed just to preserve consistency, but that I think would balloon up the mod size.
@morpheus562 first of all - thank you for that awesome tactics mod - even though initially I was a bit sceptical about it, after actually trying it I'm liking it much more than SCS. Now, one thing that feels a bit unfair, especially in early game, especially when playing in no-reload mode, is pre-buff parts of smarter mages (and correspondingly smarter priests) components. In particular, Silke became an unstoppable monster - despite your clear intent making her more manageable by removing lightning bolts, she just prebuffs with stoneskin, improved invis, blur and fireshield, making her invulnerable to 1st level party, even when trying to "cheese" by running away and resting - she'll just refresh everything. So looked into the code of momage.baf, thought a bit, and came to an idea of how to make it more manageable on lower levels, more realistic, but still challenging on the high levels.
Core ideas - pre-buff only using known spells (but still don't expend them), update buffs during fight using normal casting, and split spells into 3 categories:
- multi-hours buffs (like armor, stoneskin) - always pre-buff, if present in a spellbook
- 15-minutes or longer buffs - pre-buff only when NPC expects hostility - i.e. is already hostile, or is in dungeon or forest, plus make it possible to override this flag manually for select actors (Tarnesh and Neira are good examples)
- shorter buffs - cast only using real casting
Rationale for this split is following - mages are expected to be walking around in day long protections, they cast in the morning - hence pre-cast these always, but they would not continuously review shorter protections (15-30-60 minutes long) unless they are expecting troubles - hence precast them only under such circumstances. And really short timed stuff like PfMW, which has also very short casting time makes sense to cast only _during_ having troubles.
I've implemented first draft (attached here) and tested in so far on Tarnesh and Silke - and it looks promising in my opinion, but of course, that's very limited test coverage so far.
So, now actual questions to you - are you open to incorporate changes in that direction into your mod - of course after discussing edge cases, refining, more thorough testing and bug fixing, and if yes - would you prefer to do it as replacement, or as one more option of smarter mages?
The AI in smarter mages/priests is a bit exploitable in that they don't follow you (at least not as aggressive as SCS). Going outside of their field of view (moving in the map, going indoors, etc) confuses them and you can make them waste spells. You can even go invisible (for those early low level encounters) or just run around a corner and wait for their buffs to run out. Just another cheese tactic one can use, but then again you can easily claim they are valid tactics (for a Thief for example).
Ideally you would just stay there and duke it out, but as you experienced their buffs are a bit nuts and there is very little way of countering them in a straightforward way. However, once you have access to proper tools it's not too bad. The buffs/protections they apply are proper to their level from what I have seen and mages walking around in stoneskin (if their level permits it) is valid in my opinion. It's just that it's a laundry list of protections/buffs being triggered at battle start. Said buffs do change depending on difficulty settings, but from what I've seen the variation is not that much (except for summoned guardians).
The main problem I see is that they all have way too many spells, even with the No Extra Spell option. None of their pre-casting (be it buffs, protections or summons) seem to count towards their learned spell list and some enemies even seem to be able to refresh their contingencies even after they should run out of spell slots.
@deadinside I mean - I do understand that it still probably can be cheesed, although Morpheus went a long way to prevent that, and pretty successfully tbh, but it is not fun, and I believe it is not the way to play he imagined. Again - on higher levels Tactics is just fine, it is these initial low level encounters that are problematic without meta-knowledge, and that’s what I want to try to fix - properly.
And yes - none of their precasting counts in tactics to NPC spell list, and doesn’t expend „spell slots“ - I did check (and modify) the source - it is just a set of conditions, like „level > X? Apply Fire Shield instantly and without chance of failing“ and so on. My modifications (very rough draft at this stage) among others, address exactly this problem - instead of checking level, it checks whether NPC has spell memorised. So instead of all mages of same level having same prebuffs, they keep their individuality, and don’t precast something they were not intended to be able to cast.
There may be a small bug - not a very important one - with regards
to Kuroisan, the acid ninja.
Upon first meeting him, he kind of introduces himself. That's the
default, initial dialogue - the party gets to know him before it
receives a group whooping.
Now, after that initial meeting, though, I still get that very first
dialogue option on subsequent encounters, as if I never met him before.
This was not the case in past installations of the mod, so perhaps something has
changed here. It is as if Kuroisan thinks he never met the party, like some variable
may not be set or something. (Some other mod may interfere here; oddly enough
in the fight against the lich of the twisted runes, that main lich does not die. This is
a separate issue though; perhaps the cowled menace mod interfers with the improved
twisted runes mod. I seem to have run into this issue in the past where a few liches
do not die even if they received more than destruction-level damage. In prior
installations I did not have that issue - quite peculiar.)
In my most recent play-test-semi-run-through, before now making a very long break
due to reallife time constraints, is that The Red Badge encounter is very difficult now.
I think my party was at about 6 million XP or so and pretty strong overall, though I did not
pick Korgan this time, which actually made the Red Badge encounter much harder. (It's
really strange how the game is balanced, Korgan is like a god compared to other
party members.)
From 10 tries winning here, I was able to win only once; and in that one case where I won
in the fight, Dusk was permanently dead/removed (was at low health and poisoned, and then
one of the snakes did that mega-strike or sneak attack and Dusk zeroed out into the void.
They all hit like a truck).
I understand that at +4 million XP, the red badge encounter is probably the hardest
one, so I am not suggesting to reduce the power level per se, as the design objective
focus more on the mid-to-end-game here. However had, in particular that area effect damage
that not only damages but also stuns, is really really strong.
I had some fights where those in the party who got stunned never got released, or just
stunned anew, thus disabling them effectively for the fight. In other cases they
have to run away from their enemy and not be able to do much other than perhaps
one action, e. g. Viconia trying a mass cure but then being poisoned or damaged
to half health; then she has to run away again or be killed. Sanctuary of course
helps to some extent, but one kind of has to micro-manage most of the party.
If I were to change one thing, I'd look at the stunning situation, since that is by
far the most problematic one. Poisoning is also annoying but there are some
items that can help with that, so it is not as severe a problem.
I guess with Korgan in the party I would have had a much easier time since he
just berserker-tanks through, but without Korgan as well as the improvements
made, it really is extremely difficult now. IMO from a design point of view,
it is very difficult to adjust to changing balance levels. If there were multiple
options available, I'd pick the variant how it was before the upgrade in
difficulty here; but the main problem is, IMO, more the stunning effect
together with relocating party members. I had fights where basically the
whole team was stuck to an edge of the map, either unable to move, or
unable to move and fight.
I should also say that I kind of maxed out summons too - Fall used her
basilisik companion (I took her this time rather than Korgan), Viconia
summoned a fallen deva, Aura had her automaton and autocannon,
the rest kind of relocated after MAIN CHAR cast haste initially. It works
to some extent when the party members spread out, usually being
either in the bottom left or bottom right corner, but once the group
stun effect kicks in, things get much, much harder. The only one who
did not have any problem was MAIN CHAR (berserker/mage), largely
because he had the best items and most versatility here. Aura had the
issue of low hp (same with Jan), Fall is stronger but also has to run
away once a snake focuses on her. Drizzt is semi-ok (Korgen is still
better though; I actually only have Drizzt in team because of the
Region of Terror mod, which is actually a lot of fun, even though too
overpowered with its rewards). Anyway, that's just a bit of feedback.
The main reason for that test-through was to test Acifer's Silverrealm
mod, so if you have not tested it yet, give it a try. I have to focus on
reallife now, but on my next todo list is to begin to work more seriously
on my gnome-centric mod.
Comments
I don't expect it to be to challenging, I just want some enemies using his Shadow Magic in my runs.
For example, from Item Tweaks I'm wanting remove: Arrows of Dispelling from Stores, the Shield of Balduran, Vhailor's Helm/Cloak of Mirroring/Robe of Vecna (to ToB). And from Gameplay Tweaks I want: Improved Shapeshifting, and to delay the bonus merchants.
Are these tweaks advised in terms of Tactics Remix balancing? Keen to try out the mod after I saw that it supports Loretakers! And I was looking for a mod to improve Mutamin's Garden, and in general anti-XP cheese tweaks for BGEE.
For BGEE (and especially if you already played the game many times) I recommend installing the improved TR encounters as well. You can get a lot from the mod with the improved creature modules and improved spellcasters, but many set encounters in the game get little to no changes (aside from heavier hitting enemies).
Could you look at https://github.com/UnearthedArcana/magic_battles_revised ?
Can this mod be installed with alongside TR?
I love that I can have two installations one for tactics and one for scs, and I can play whichever I like. I basicaly have two eet games modded with my favorite mods, but one with tactics added and other with scs added at the end.
I love brutal tactics mod style suprises you had in some encounters, have missed them since I started playing improved anvil and scs.
But I noticed something. On my eet installation with only tactics mod, loading a save game takes about 4-5 seconds, even 6-7 seconds if its a crowded area. On my scs eet installation, loading is way faster, almost instantenous- which is one of the things I like about enhanced editions. Tactics modded eet is 10.1 gb large while scs modded eet game is about 8.9 gb, so I know some tactics files are bigger due to animations? scripts? I noticed each tactics spellcaster script is HUGE like 2-3 mb. Whereas scs enemy mage scripts are like 300-400 kb- nearly tenth in size. I assume tactics mod give a full mage script to each enemy and with enough randomisation and level differences so they are very large to cater to every possibility. whereas scs custom gives each enemy a new, semi-unique script so they are shorter. Does anyone have this loading time issue or is my pc just so crappy?
Other than that, HUGE thanks for all the hardwork. I love all difficulty enhancing mods, improved anvil is TOO crazy, scs is VERY smart, sometimes frighteningly so, and tactics is a very happy medium between the two, I think.
For the save game load times, that is tied to the heavy usage of EEex with custom triggers I created. I've been working hard to streamline these scripts and uses of EEex to reduce the load times as I feel I can get the scripts into a place where its not noticed while keeping the functionality of many of the net new triggers I created.
At this point in time, Tactics Remix objectively has the smarter scripting over SCS. TR can just do things with custom lua scirpting and EEex that SCS simply isn't even able to copy. As noted above, it is currently at a slight cost to the load times, but performance wise, it is driving smarter enemy behavior.
I share the same view too. Mostly because I have grown found of the original sprites/animations, but also they can look out of place. Specially since only a select few are changed. It looks rather odd when only a certain type within a group of monsters has the new sprites but the rest do not (Umber Hulks in Sendai's enclave for example). I also caught some inconsistencies among the golems in Suldanessellar too (this one could be an oversight). But it's a design decision and I respect it. I guess all the monster types could be changed just to preserve consistency, but that I think would balloon up the mod size.
Core ideas - pre-buff only using known spells (but still don't expend them), update buffs during fight using normal casting, and split spells into 3 categories:
- multi-hours buffs (like armor, stoneskin) - always pre-buff, if present in a spellbook
- 15-minutes or longer buffs - pre-buff only when NPC expects hostility - i.e. is already hostile, or is in dungeon or forest, plus make it possible to override this flag manually for select actors (Tarnesh and Neira are good examples)
- shorter buffs - cast only using real casting
Rationale for this split is following - mages are expected to be walking around in day long protections, they cast in the morning - hence pre-cast these always, but they would not continuously review shorter protections (15-30-60 minutes long) unless they are expecting troubles - hence precast them only under such circumstances. And really short timed stuff like PfMW, which has also very short casting time makes sense to cast only _during_ having troubles.
I've implemented first draft (attached here) and tested in so far on Tarnesh and Silke - and it looks promising in my opinion, but of course, that's very limited test coverage so far.
So, now actual questions to you - are you open to incorporate changes in that direction into your mod - of course after discussing edge cases, refining, more thorough testing and bug fixing, and if yes - would you prefer to do it as replacement, or as one more option of smarter mages?
…edited to explain rationale a bit further
Ideally you would just stay there and duke it out, but as you experienced their buffs are a bit nuts and there is very little way of countering them in a straightforward way. However, once you have access to proper tools it's not too bad. The buffs/protections they apply are proper to their level from what I have seen and mages walking around in stoneskin (if their level permits it) is valid in my opinion. It's just that it's a laundry list of protections/buffs being triggered at battle start. Said buffs do change depending on difficulty settings, but from what I've seen the variation is not that much (except for summoned guardians).
The main problem I see is that they all have way too many spells, even with the No Extra Spell option. None of their pre-casting (be it buffs, protections or summons) seem to count towards their learned spell list and some enemies even seem to be able to refresh their contingencies even after they should run out of spell slots.
And yes - none of their precasting counts in tactics to NPC spell list, and doesn’t expend „spell slots“ - I did check (and modify) the source - it is just a set of conditions, like „level > X? Apply Fire Shield instantly and without chance of failing“ and so on. My modifications (very rough draft at this stage) among others, address exactly this problem - instead of checking level, it checks whether NPC has spell memorised. So instead of all mages of same level having same prebuffs, they keep their individuality, and don’t precast something they were not intended to be able to cast.
to Kuroisan, the acid ninja.
Upon first meeting him, he kind of introduces himself. That's the
default, initial dialogue - the party gets to know him before it
receives a group whooping.
Now, after that initial meeting, though, I still get that very first
dialogue option on subsequent encounters, as if I never met him before.
This was not the case in past installations of the mod, so perhaps something has
changed here. It is as if Kuroisan thinks he never met the party, like some variable
may not be set or something. (Some other mod may interfere here; oddly enough
in the fight against the lich of the twisted runes, that main lich does not die. This is
a separate issue though; perhaps the cowled menace mod interfers with the improved
twisted runes mod. I seem to have run into this issue in the past where a few liches
do not die even if they received more than destruction-level damage. In prior
installations I did not have that issue - quite peculiar.)
Anyway, just reporting this.
With Twisted Rune, I'm guessing Cowled Menace changes a script.
due to reallife time constraints, is that The Red Badge encounter is very difficult now.
I think my party was at about 6 million XP or so and pretty strong overall, though I did not
pick Korgan this time, which actually made the Red Badge encounter much harder. (It's
really strange how the game is balanced, Korgan is like a god compared to other
party members.)
From 10 tries winning here, I was able to win only once; and in that one case where I won
in the fight, Dusk was permanently dead/removed (was at low health and poisoned, and then
one of the snakes did that mega-strike or sneak attack and Dusk zeroed out into the void.
They all hit like a truck).
I understand that at +4 million XP, the red badge encounter is probably the hardest
one, so I am not suggesting to reduce the power level per se, as the design objective
focus more on the mid-to-end-game here. However had, in particular that area effect damage
that not only damages but also stuns, is really really strong.
I had some fights where those in the party who got stunned never got released, or just
stunned anew, thus disabling them effectively for the fight. In other cases they
have to run away from their enemy and not be able to do much other than perhaps
one action, e. g. Viconia trying a mass cure but then being poisoned or damaged
to half health; then she has to run away again or be killed. Sanctuary of course
helps to some extent, but one kind of has to micro-manage most of the party.
If I were to change one thing, I'd look at the stunning situation, since that is by
far the most problematic one. Poisoning is also annoying but there are some
items that can help with that, so it is not as severe a problem.
I guess with Korgan in the party I would have had a much easier time since he
just berserker-tanks through, but without Korgan as well as the improvements
made, it really is extremely difficult now. IMO from a design point of view,
it is very difficult to adjust to changing balance levels. If there were multiple
options available, I'd pick the variant how it was before the upgrade in
difficulty here; but the main problem is, IMO, more the stunning effect
together with relocating party members. I had fights where basically the
whole team was stuck to an edge of the map, either unable to move, or
unable to move and fight.
I should also say that I kind of maxed out summons too - Fall used her
basilisik companion (I took her this time rather than Korgan), Viconia
summoned a fallen deva, Aura had her automaton and autocannon,
the rest kind of relocated after MAIN CHAR cast haste initially. It works
to some extent when the party members spread out, usually being
either in the bottom left or bottom right corner, but once the group
stun effect kicks in, things get much, much harder. The only one who
did not have any problem was MAIN CHAR (berserker/mage), largely
because he had the best items and most versatility here. Aura had the
issue of low hp (same with Jan), Fall is stronger but also has to run
away once a snake focuses on her. Drizzt is semi-ok (Korgen is still
better though; I actually only have Drizzt in team because of the
Region of Terror mod, which is actually a lot of fun, even though too
overpowered with its rewards). Anyway, that's just a bit of feedback.
The main reason for that test-through was to test Acifer's Silverrealm
mod, so if you have not tested it yet, give it a try. I have to focus on
reallife now, but on my next todo list is to begin to work more seriously
on my gnome-centric mod.