| Fixing Conflux: My Changes | |
|
LordCameron
Famous Hero
Veteran of the Succession Wars
|
posted July 19, 2025 01:02 AM |
|
|
Fixing Conflux: My Changes
Conflux feels wrong, I'm sure most of you agree. I've been tinkering away trying to come up with a way to make them feel better and I think I've finally come onto something.
My inspiration was the fact that all the summon elemental spells are essentially pointless except for Summon Earth Elemental. This led me to realize they are all just fairly interchangeable stat blocks. So what if they weren't?
With that in mind here are my changes which I've managed to implement, and one I can't figure out, using a combination of MMArchive and hex editing:
Water elementals: Now always do max damage, and also have regenerating. This reflects their watery nature (cure and bless). Summon them if you need a tank.
Air elementals: Can now fly and plus one speed. (haste). Pretty self explanatory, summon them if you have obstacles or walls in the way, or want to kite your foe.
Earth Elementals: Double health and damage, half growth. (tanky) Summon these if you want raw stats, or want your first aid tent to have some use.
Fire elemental: Unfortunately I can't figure this one out. If they could reduce defence by 15% like a behemoth then you could summon them against really tough foes to ignore defence, but I can't figure out how to edit them to do that. Any suggestions for an easier edit or how to hex edit in the ability is welcome.
Those are the change, which on their own make conflux feel much more interesting, but then I also changed the units to actually reflect their tier. This one is more to taste. Here are my current stats for each unit:
Water: 200 gp, 7 growth, 30 hp, 5 speed, 7 atk, 9 def, 5 dam, 12 to 25 on adv. map
Air: 115 gold, growth 8, 19 hp, 9 speed, 6 atk, 6 def, 1-6 dam, 16 to 30 on adv. map
Earth: 800 gold, growth 2, 80 hp, 4 speed, 10 atk, 10 def, 8-16 dam, 8 to 16 on adv. map
Fire: Unchanged
The goal wasn't to buff or nerf the faction, just make you think "what do I need?" rather than "What stat block will I click on randomly today?"
What do you think? Especially in regards to fire, I need to figure out what to do with them or how to give them the behemoth ability.
____________
What are Homm Songs based on?
|
|
Brevan
Hired Hero
|
|
posted July 19, 2025 06:26 PM |
|
Edited by Brevan at 02:21, 20 Jul 2025.
|
Consider Fire Elementals attacking without retaliation and otherwise be unchanged (or nerfed, since that's a super strong effect), but PsyElementals have this covered. Artistically, you could say the enemy are recoiling from the blaze so didn't attack. Giving them a 2-Hex attack like Engineers/Dragons could be great too (allows them to attack archers behind a meat-shield), but FireBirds have this covered. Perhaps they could impart a debuff (-3Def Disrupting Ray, similar to RustDragons or SeaWitches).
If we're suggesting changes to heroes too, then I'd say the Might heroes could benefit from having 1 regular creature specialty and 1 of the "special" creature specialties only Conflux have (e.g. Ignissa could still give +3Atk +4Def +2Dmg to Fire Elementals, but let Fiur give them +1Speed +20%Atk/Def per 4 Hero Levels). If that can't be done, then maybe the starting skills of the hero-pairs could at least be more different or synergistic (like one of the IceElemental heroes could start with Archery, or one of the PsyElemental heroes could start with Tactics).
All that aside, I'm a fan of Summon Air Elemental, I really like that they can rush forward relatively fast and get themselves surrounded by a bunch of stuff while I Meteor Shower the big group. Earth Elementals with Chain Lightning would also work I suppose.
|
|
LordCameron
Famous Hero
Veteran of the Succession Wars
|
|
posted July 20, 2025 03:49 AM |
|
|
Yeah I considered blinding/ no retalition to go with the Blind from fire magic theme, but then you have sprites and psychic/magic elementals doing it too so I wasn't sure.
An all around attack because fireball/inferno could also work, but it would probably look weird on the animation side and again, psychic/magic already do that too.
Edit: Maybe just something as simple as +3 ATK and -3 Def for a Frenzy/ Bloodlust angle. My only problem there is I don't want to make the unit too one-note.
____________
What are Homm Songs based on?
|
|
BTB
Famous Hero
Moist & Creamy
|
|
posted July 20, 2025 08:47 AM |
|
|
I can just show you how to have fire elementals ignore defense if you want. But for the base form, at least, it doesn't really fit.
When they're upgraded, you have a third metric - ranged attacks - that allow for a meaningful balance set across four different elementals. Lacking that, you're basically trying to create four different archetypes through a balance of just three stats, which can get tricky.
Air and Earth are the obvious ones: fastest, but lowest ATK/DEF, and slowest, but high ATK/DEF. That just leaves Fire and Water, which would be High Attack/Low Defense (Fire) and the inverse (Water), with fire having an average/high speed and water having average/low.
|
|
star_mage
Adventuring Hero
|
|
posted July 20, 2025 05:00 PM |
|
|
I would probably stick to the traditional elemental association:
Air - Speed
Earth - Hit Points/Defence
Fire - Attack/Damage/Offense type ability
Water - Magic (like you said, regeneration, bless).
Or give Fire a magic side: spells like Fire Shield, Fire Wall etc
|
|
LordCameron
Famous Hero
Veteran of the Succession Wars
|
|
posted July 20, 2025 05:54 PM |
|
|
BTB said:
I can just show you how to have fire elementals ignore defense if you want. But for the base form, at least, it doesn't really fit.
My thought process is armour doesn't help you walk through a fire, but it falls apart a bit when attacking phoenixes and dragons and whatnot.
If you have the time I'm curious to see how, but if it is a bunch of work don't bother because though I'd like to test it out, like you said I'm not 100% on that change and starmage makes some good suggestions.
____________
What are Homm Songs based on?
|
|
BTB
Famous Hero
Moist & Creamy
|
|
posted July 22, 2025 09:38 AM |
|
|
|
Well, by all accounts I should be thanking you here. I went to the code where Behemoths ignore defense so I could demonstrate it to you and noticed something was off. Turns out the DWORD pointers I used for their current percentage values were off by a few bytes, so God knows what they were actually doing.
|
|
baronus
Legendary Hero
|
|
posted July 22, 2025 12:25 PM |
|
|
If you want to give individual properties to elementals, you need to consider how each element works. Ideally, through opposites.
Air <--> Earth
Undoubtedly, air is light, earth is heavy. Therefore, air elementals should have low hit points, while earth elementals should have high hit points, to reflect their character. It's also logical that light elements should be very fast, while heavy elements should be slow. Similarly, elementals should have similar damage.
Regarding damage, logically speaking, to balance the damage, air elementals should have more and earth elementals less.
Regarding flight, it's obvious that air elementals fly, and it's absurd that they're infantry. But earth elementals should also have flight, because it's absurd that an earth obstacle stops... an earth elemental! It's made of the same material, not a biological entity, but an elemental mass, and should penetrate obstacles. The only option here is flight, as there's no penetration.
A fire elemental, of course, should shoot, as it's best suited for this purpose. It's heavier than air but lighter than water, which is lighter than air.
Units should also become increasingly powerful with higher levels.
Sample stats:
Air Elemental 20 health .2 - 12 damage 11 attack .7 defense 7 speed 6(12) increase
Fire Elemental ... 30 health .3 - 13 damage 10 attack .8 defense 6 speed 5(10) increase
Water Elemental ... 40 health .4 - 14 damage .9 attack .9 defense 5 speed 4(8) increase
Earth Elemental ... 50 health .5 - 15 damage .8 attack 10 defense 4 speed 3(6) increase
|
|
Phoenix4ever
Legendary Hero
Heroes is love, Heroes is life
|
|
posted July 22, 2025 02:29 PM |
|
|
 I had a good idea regarding Conflux and their stupid fire immunities:
* First of all Fire and Energy Elementals + Firebirds and Phoenixes should NOT be immune to fire spells, instead we will make them mind immune, to protect from Blind, Berserk, Hypnotize etc.
* Next we will set Advanced Protection From Fire to 100%.
This means, Conflux can still have 4 Arma immune creatures, but Energy Elementals will have to do some work first. But you can now use Bloodlust, (Inteus specialty) Fire Shield and Slayer on them and Sacrifice on Firebirds/Phoenixes.
Now you can also use fire buffs on summoned fire elementals!
Oh and I also made Fire Shield and Slayer mass spells at Expert Fire Magic + buffed other fire spells, so Fire Magic is better.
Edit: I forgot to mention that I have also made a hack, that makes spell casting creatures able to cast spells on themselves. So Energy Elementals can just cast Protection From Fire on themselves, be completely immune to fire damage and still be open to fire spells. 
|
|
MurlocAggroB
Known Hero
|
|
posted July 22, 2025 06:50 PM |
|
|
Phoenix4ever said:
First of all Fire and Energy Elementals + Firebirds and Phoenixes should NOT be immune to fire spells, instead we will make them mind immune, to protect from Blind, Berserk, Hypnotize etc.
Fire Elementals are already immune to mind spells. All elementals are. The specific immunity on Psychic Elementals is redundant.
|
|
Phoenix4ever
Legendary Hero
Heroes is love, Heroes is life
|
|
posted July 22, 2025 07:30 PM |
|
|
I know.
Also nobody said anything about Psychic Elementals.
|
|
Ghost
Undefeatable Hero
Therefore I am
|
|
posted July 22, 2025 07:54 PM |
|
|
Thanks for idea..
I think my new WoG/ERA map..
So Air casts Lightning and Storm casts Chain Lightning.. Water casts Summon Ice, and then Ice casts Ice Bolt.. Fire casts Inferno, and Energy casts Armageddon, but Earth casts Summon Magma, and then Magma casts Implosion..
Yeah problem that spells aren't so much.. It after I change stats and lvl them..
Map name can be The Elementals.. Player must find to their king..
"Stronger" than Faerie Dragon due to horde x damage for a few of Faerie Dragons x damage, for example.. So Inferno becomes mighter spell to against hit & run, etc
____________
Fight MWMs - stand teach
|
|
purerogue3
Famous Hero
|
|
posted July 22, 2025 09:00 PM |
|
|
Ghost, you may be on to something..
This would mean Faerie dragons are extraneous - although cute, maybe they cast the spells that the elementals do not cover?
That would make a lot of sense on the macro level too
You're a
|
|
purerogue3
Famous Hero
|
|
posted July 23, 2025 05:37 PM |
|
|
All elementals have max att/def (=99) so that neither hero's skills affect them.
This means mages have comparative advantage ->hits in with "magic" theme
Damage is 'magical' (melee) rather than physical (melee) as per BTB so they are blocked by resistance/interference rather than armorer.
Only air elementals fly.
Energy elementals have melee AOE.
Magma elementals have natural fireshield.
Water elementals have large max.dmg - min.dmg
Immune to same school magic damage, normal opposite (reverse for earth/air), 50% for neither.
Haven't decided on regen/lifedrain..
|
| |
|
|
