Scripted cutscene mid battle and turn ending

[rygar]

I don't know if this has been covered before but I'd noticed , for instance in gholla outlook siege defense, a triggered event with dialogue will pass the turn instantly back to the enemy. Thereby very possibility result in major casualty to the player.

in my case, there were 2 war troll who wandered side by side and right up into my mix merry band of chosen ones just as their turn ended. Right at the start of my next  turn the first blast by Vincent took out one troll, triggered the dialog and amidst the inclusion of another enemy wave, my turn got ended. Just one move and my turn ended. the remaining war troll said thanks and started wailing blows on my busy-talking, awestruck merry 4 happily , all 4 ap of his attack on Sexy Selen. That would have been a premature game over on my nightmare play through had Selen not dodged one hit out of 4. As things were it would have been worse had there been a stray ranged unit hanging around prior to the cutscene.

so, if plot design entails necessary injection of cutscene and enemy into battle midway through player turn and before all remaining enemies are dead , can it be scripted that player turn does not end that instant?

failing which, at least halt enemy turn and pass turn back to player. Not ideal , occasionally turn exploiting but far lesser evil than a dead character per my example.

[fallen]

rygar - any time that the turn is handed over to the enemy after a cut-scene, this is intentionally done by the author of the cut-scene. The default is to hand control back to the player.

[rygar]

Ok, if the reason is to allow enemy faction to make move when cutscene is triggered and not grant player a free turn essentially by default then may I suggest the cutscene take effect when player turn end and enemy turn starts.

The way it's implemented in my case above seems set up to explicitly ko one character or two in the random chance that when cutscene is triggered the player has not repositioned his characters strategically.

[fallen]

rygar - can you be very specific about which cut-scene you had this issue in? I can take a look and see if we can improve, but we won't be changing the setup of how cut-scenes are triggered.

[rygar]

fallen

SPOILER: Click to show

If I don't quite remember. that cutscene was either the second wave during the first day of siege defense at ghollam outlook or the one before Groth finally makes his battlefield appearance on the second day of siege defense.

This could sound confusing but I remember though that not every start of a new wave of enemy attack was initiated by giving turn over to the enemy. Some were initiated and then turn given back to the player (free turn).

If you can't change the trigger of cutscene another way is to make sure all current enemies are dead before triggering that wave where turn is given over to enemy.

I'm surprised no one bump into this nasty problem. Non issue or just good slice of dice that not 2war troll happen to be lying around and right next to a nontank before that turn was triggered I wonder ? At that point I was, hmm , outraged as my party was simply steam rolling through ep2 until that shock near death and it was all down to an inexplicable design, at least for me

[Zhivago]

Ugh, that sucks! I remember I happened to kill the next wave generating mob early in one of the fights, but it wasn't a major issue because I had set up the party planning for surprises (the right side of the walls have a very tactically secure position with a solid choke point.)

[fallen]

rygar - in those fights, the next wave is triggered after you kill a certain number of enemies. So, the next wave is coming. You have to prepare for multiple waves. Sorry if that was not clear from the story setup of the seige.

[rygar]

Umm, I may have failed to clarify my problem.

It wasn't so much the next wave or overwhelming number due to next wave adding to the one or 2 stragglers from previous wave.

It was the fact that when the next wave was triggered the remaining stragglers who were close to your party get to move immediately with no regards left to the remainder of my 25ap left in that turn. That 25ap would have ensured that the close proximity threat was well managed. In my case the problem was exacerbated by the fact that the 2 stragglers were elite mob. 2war troll who after their turn moved right next to my non tanks. With a completely against the run of play move like stripping my turn when the trigger for next wave was hit, the last war troll had a field day. To put it into perspective it's like my party killed one war troll completely ignore the last one, standing around commenting on the new onslaught of the next wave forming at the edge of battlefield with that last war troll chomping at a companion no less.

For turn based games I think stripping a player of an entire turn has to be well managed if not exactly taboo.

fallen I'm all for multiples waves or even at times overwhelming odds at the start of turn due to a contextual ambush set up. But the least is the player gets his whole turn to manage the situation. But try doing an ambush and allowing enemy faction to move first when they are within combat engaging distance then it's toast for the player party really especially with AI set to target vulnerable classes. At best it becomes a lottery as to who gets picked off first.

You could give a clear hint but it might have to be explicit along the line of "be mindful of overwhelming enemies to swarm over you and you will be rooted by fear at the sight of the odds stacked against you ( your turn will end when next wave enters the field) .

[Cory Trese]

Good thing that the AI is NOT set to target vulnerable classes! =)

[rygar]

Nov 15, 2014 16:26:42 GMT -5 Zhivago said:

Ugh, that sucks! I remember I happened to kill the next wave generating mob early in one of the fights, but it wasn't a major issue because I had set up the party planning for surprises (the right side of the walls have a very tactically secure position with a solid choke point.)

Can't clearly remember the layout but I think the wall was a horizontally flipped L and if I remember right the right side of wall offer a choke for a narrow single- tile wide path but the mobs could still come around the left side which is one big open space and , anyway, mobs spawn at the bottom  where they could come right at you from the left side of the wall

a real choke point could circumvent the turn ending issue where the stragglers(only war troll really who move after they hit) could not move right up to your non tanks. But if there's an effective one I didn't see it then 

[rygar]

@corytrese really . I'd often seen archer in range of my tank and backline and Vincent was nearly always the go to person for those arrows. Ha

for melees it's less straight forward , like splitting their hits among those adjacent to them

[Zhivago]

rygar from what I recall it offered above average cover from most of the oncoming ranged mobs and had exactly two one square chokes, one at the bottom and one at the top. I placed Kincaid at the bottom and Fyona at the top and held my little mini fort. It was definitely tense, yet ultimately manageable for me. I may have gotten lucky with the composition of my adds, however.

[fallen]

Thanks for the all the feedback on this thread!

rygar - I have specifically looking into that scene that you had mentioned. The design to give the turn back to the monsters was a left-over from a previous, less successful setup for the first day of the siege. The change has made, as you pointed out, the monster-turn no longer needed. It was the only stage of the siege that was doing that, and it has been removed for the next release.