Messages

5581

Helpline / Re: Blank letters

« on: May 16, 2011, 02:43:00 PM »

I am looking into it.  It is made trickier by the fact that the development server does not appear to exhibit this problem...

5582

Development / Re: SVG Maps

« on: May 16, 2011, 01:01:32 AM »

I finished drawing up the borders of BT/AT in GIS software. A few more operations and many things will be possible with those.

Any chance of getting them exported as an SVG file? (Or other common vector-graphics format, which could be converted to SVG)

No ETA on the rest of the continents, though. Drawing the borders takes time, which is a limited resource. BT/AT had the advantage of being a two in one.

No kidding.  It's a lot of work, and I don't envy those who take on the task.  Thanks.

5583

Feature Requests / Re: Replacing Founders of Religions

« on: May 15, 2011, 03:51:01 PM »

Tom has said, quite firmly, that there is not, and will never ever be, a way to replace the Founder of a religion.  Only one person founded it, and no one else can ever claim that they did.

There are plans to make it possible to do everything the Founder can do, in practical terms; however, if the Founder is still there, or comes back, you'll still be subordinate to him.

5584

BM General Discussion / Re: You are currently an adventurer in <realm> owned by the lord of <blank>

« on: May 14, 2011, 11:30:30 PM »

Well, why not a simple text change to "You are currently an adventurer in <realm>, hailing from the region of <region>"

It should take all of three seconds to type, and a couple minutes to see that it works correctly.

Except that the "owned" part, inaccurate as it may be, is there for a reason: to remind all adventurers that they are commoners, and thus expected to do what their Lord says, without question.

Perhaps something more like "owing fealty to the Lord of West Splodge" would be a good compromise?

5585

BM General Discussion / Re: You are currently an adventurer in <realm> owned by the lord of <blank>

« on: May 13, 2011, 06:50:56 PM »

Oh; yes, I know.  That's a bug, that I thought I had fixed, but may not have.

Also, even once it is fixed, adventurers for whom it is blank will still have it be blank.

5586

BM General Discussion / Re: You are currently an adventurer in Obsidian Islands owned by the lord of <blank>

« on: May 13, 2011, 06:47:12 PM »

It determines your home region, which affects an adventurer's ability to do various things.

For instance, closer to home, hunting is easier, and you will find more sages.

5587

Development / Re: "Silent" (auto) rebellions

« on: May 13, 2011, 02:37:38 AM »

I think you'd be surprised at how much support "28% of the vote" actually indicates.  Part of the problem is with how it calculates the number of valid votes; I believe it includes all the secondary and tertiary votes, whether or not they're actually set.  And I know that I rarely set my second and third votes, because there's only one person I particularly want to win.

5588

BM General Discussion / Re: The Realm as a Team

« on: May 13, 2011, 02:33:47 AM »

1. Official realm goals- For regularly-elected realms, only changeable at elections. For less-regularly-elected realms, perhaps make them "periodically" changeable.
Unresolved issues- Should these goals be mechanical (preset list of 20 goals, you pick'em, and the game sends out a message if/when they are achieved... or, at election/goal review time, a message noting your failure) or should they be freeform? Pro for mechanical: creates a strong mechanics-backed sense of team objectives and whether they are met or not. Con for mechanical: pain to code, not flexible, might not reflect real game concerns. Pro for freeform: opposite of con for mechanical. Con for freeform: opposite of pro for mechanical.

I don't think I'm a big fan of these. Especially if it is some kind of checklist where candidates just click checkboxes from a set of pre-generated options. I think game mechanics criteria would lead to gaming the system, where people will do things that don't make sense for their character/realm/situation just to meet some mechanics-based trigger point. I really don't like things that promote that kind of play.

If I were to implement something like this, there would be a sliding scale of "reward" (which might just be a notification of how impressive an achievement is that you have, um, achieved) based on how far away from a given goal the game judges you to be when you set it.  So if you set as a goal to control 15 regions, and you control 14, it wouldn't get you much.  But if you only control 10, it would acknowledge that as being a far more ambitious goal.

Bearing in mind, of course, that this is all just vague top-of-my-head brainstorming about how such a feature might work, in theory.

5589

Helpline / Re: Advanced Mentoring and History

« on: May 12, 2011, 09:53:07 PM »

What? What prevents a ban?

I think he meant "can't get banned by enemy realms."

5590

BM General Discussion / Re: The Realm as a Team

« on: May 12, 2011, 09:51:04 PM »

3. Layered map- We want a simple, color-coded diplomatic map of each continent. The issue here is just the coding/graphics.

Actually, the issue here is primarily the lack of an SVG-based map, or other programmatic description of the shapes of regions, for each continent.  If I had that, it would only take me a few hours to code up various useful overlays.

5591

BM General Discussion / Re: Discriminating Religion

« on: May 12, 2011, 02:34:19 PM »

Yes, I just wish it felt more like the Church dominated the realm than vice versa. Right now it feels like the Church is simply an extension of the realm, when it should be the other way around... Maybe its just the name. I also am used to SA which has had in the course of time no fewer than seven theocracies (of which three currently exist), plus we are the dominant religion in Libero Empire and have representation in Terran and Summerdale. No one realm truly dominates the faith. This actually makes the Church more interesting, since it is the common ground that binds all these realms together. Makes for great politics.

Have you noticed Kenarth's recent complaints about Lords being chosen for piety, rather than any more pragmatic strategic or tactical considerations?

I haven't been there all that long (at least compared to the history of the realm), but it seems to me that Simon (Theuderik's player) has been moving the Church from being an extension of the realm to being its master over the course of his term as Pontifex, which (if I'm reading it correctly) is an impressive feat, and worthy of note.

5592

Helpline / Re: Advanced Mentoring and History: How to Be a Banker

« on: May 11, 2011, 02:09:17 PM »

Regions without a Lord lose 50% of their Taxes to 'Administration costs' anyway, so this can be a method to save a few more funds, if no Lord will be elected/appointed by Tax Day.

Actually, so far as I know, that is not the case.  The 50% will simply never be collected, which means it's not in the tax offices for you to steal.

5593

Wiki / Re: Have Army Banners Show Up

« on: May 10, 2011, 06:47:56 PM »

http://wiki.battlemaster.org/wiki/Siege_of_Valkyrja

That's just the most recent, and I'm sure you all know about it. Any ideas on when we can expect to see army banners appear on the wiki through some sort of easy transfer? It's a bit impractical to have to manually change the entries in a copied and pasted battle report.

You should be able to reference the image URLs directly, shouldn't you?

5594

Other Games / Re: Dwarf Fortress Succession Fort—Angnomal, "Redstaff"

« on: May 10, 2011, 04:23:55 PM »

Hehe, gave up OCR?

Yes. The state of open-source OCR isn't as good as I thought it was.  Took a long time to fix the OCRs of the first few profiles

5595

Helpline / Re: Advanced Mentoring Concerns

« on: May 10, 2011, 03:41:19 PM »

It is nearly impossible to design a game such that those with more time to devote to it gain no benefit over those who do.

Unless, that is, you enjoy playing ProgressQuest.

BattleMaster is designed so that you can enjoy it while putting in very little time.  Human nature being what it is, people who talk more (subject to the caveats I mentioned in the "how to gain influence" section) will get thought of more highly.  That means they will get more positions. 

There is nothing we, or anyone, can do about that.