[beta 17] trickery tower

[jolin012]

Conclusion of da beast post: I've found trickery bugs/problems and how to solve them (i think, unless someone or something proves me wrong).

So - you implemented a new trickery tower, again without telling anything about it beforehand

a) the "clones linger and disable you to build" is a good idea, cause it no longer works to clone a tower, and sell teh cloned tower and keep the clones. (or begin building a tower, clone during upgrade, then abort).

But - there are problems with the tower, as soon as i saw it in the changelog i figured one bug abuse, which is why you should have told us before... yes, i can be a bit, shall i say, aggresive, heh you should know by now, to ideas, however all i mean is to critique them in good sense. if i want them away there is a reason (heh i know it's more fun to test an idea out ingame rather than getting it axed in words), however this one, i don't want away, I'd like to help it get better. So - with the removed bugabuseability there came a new one. One can max 3 elements, build refineds of each of them, upgrade 2 of one type, create clones, abort upgrade, upgrade another type, create clones, abort upgrade, upgrade the 2 of the last type, clone, cancle upgrade. and viola, with 2 pure essences, i have 12 cloned pures, but no real pure tower.

the pure essence show weird numbers. pured clones cost instead of 0 essences they cost -1 essence. and if you have more pure clones than real pures, it can't show a negative number ofc, so it shows a 7 digit number. Perhaps you made the mistake to make pures instead of cost one and cost minus one food, made it cost one and cost minus 2 food, to cost a total of -1 food, and having more of those clones than reals, can give negative food stock, then it goes crazy.

c) the ratio system isn't a bad idea. but I don't understand the math behind them. here's a little table of how many clones could be created, dependant on trickery tower level, out of different amount of cloned originals.

[pre:1llq7ksh]Originals-> 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 |

------------+----+----+----|----|

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 6 |

2 | 2 | 4 | 5 | 7 |

3 | 4 | 7 | 10 | 13 |

/\

||

Trickery LvL[/pre:1llq7ksh]

So - Why? First of all, those numbers don't look like 25%, 50% and 200%. Second, Why at all have different ratios for different levels, the clones allready last for different times with same linger time. meaning, with same amount of clones lingering they will have the correct amount of clones in play. all levels of trickery should allow 2 clones/tower. Note that on lv 1, 7/8 of the time those clones will be lingering, so it's not a 200% buff. This would also have been prevented if you told of the tower beforehand.

d) even with correct numbers, this is not a perfectly good idea. by switching towers of damage, you will get 200% bonus the first 15 seconds from a lvl 1 trickery, and that takes down an entire wave in 15 sec. That is not good. So - how to solve this? The beta 17 system does not work cause: You can create clones out of several tower types, but do not need to keep all the types. all clones that can be cloned within 120 seconds can be created within one second, so you do not need to keep the tower type for long.

And how to solve the problem?

as I always wanted "if original sells clones should autosell too" which is very reasonable because if a well tower, is removed, it's buff is too. And with the new linger system, combined, it will not be possible to just reupgrade+cancle the same tower and create new clones.

remaining problem: it would still be possible to add 200% buff for 15sec. that'd be 100%buff for 30sec which is one wave, using lv 1 trickery, and changing towers of attack the next wave. this would only work on random mode. or putting the towers on non autocast so that ye wan wait with the 25% buff and make 100% buff on the hard waves, like mech/undead/weak element. if it's not a big deal ye can call it strategy sure, but when it's about 100-200% buff out of 25%-50% on the hardest waves, it's kind of a deal. perhaps it's a bad idea that one tower can have 2 clones and then rest for the remaining of the 120sec. perhaps it's better with one clone per original, and 60sec of lingering? or should I say, That would be better, just wanna know if it is possible, to have the lv 3 clone last 120sec but only affect the "ratio"(aka they linger) for only 60 sec. That way, tooltip would be about:"create a clone that lasts for (15/30/120) seconds. Minor problem still remaining: for 60 seconds no other clone can be created out of that tower". It would still take 60 seconds to buff a tower by 200% (need to cast, wait 60, cast again to have 2 clones), and i don't like that.how to solve: I would like it to be the way that i suggested trickery from teh very first time, with a negative fireup buff, removing 75%/50%/adding 100%(having only one clone if lvl 3 too) damage to the clone, but perhaps if combined with blacksmith, it won't work out, because several %s affect each other like %al units, not a new regular % multiplication)

[Karawasa]

I skimmed your post and here is my response...

-The food bug has been resolved for 17b.

-I'm changing the ratio to 1/2 for all levels, that means two clones per one real. The numbers add up as follows:

Clone is a 100% buff to damage for the duration it is out. Level 1 is two clones for 15 seconds each, is 100% damage buff for 30 seconds, out of 120 seconds this is 1/4 ratio and thus 25% boost. Level 2 and 3 follow the same logic and end up with 50% and 200%.

-The abuse you mentioned is a byproduct of making it such that clones don't cost food. It is not able to be countered with the solution you proposed, because I don't know how to code the solution you propose. Also, if you sell a Well/Blacksmith tower the buffs do NOT disappear...

[Guest Sancdar]

Another bug with Trickery is that the clones lead to bugged networth values. I never noticed if the old ones did, but the lingering networth is very noticeable.

[Karawasa]

Yes, coincidentally I recently dealt with that that in 17b.

[jolin012]

I skimmed your post and here is my response...

-The food bug has been resolved for 17b.

-I'm changing the ratio to 1/2 for all levels, that means two clones per one real. The numbers add up as follows:

good, that's how it should be

Clone is a 100% buff to damage for the duration it is out. Level 1 is two clones for 15 seconds each, is 100% damage buff for 30 seconds, out of 120 seconds this is 1/4 ratio and thus 25% boost. Level 2 and 3 follow the same logic and end up with 50% and 200%.

yes ofcourse, same as i suggested. although i also suggested making it 60 sec, and only one clone(15sec/30 sec), but 2 clones for lv 3(60 sec).

-The abuse you mentioned is a byproduct of making it such that clones don't cost food.

nopes, same can be done with other types of towers than pures, the pure clones not costing anything is not what's wrong. what's wrong is that they remain when original pure is sold. which explains why i suggested "is clone sold, then original sold."

It is not able to be countered with the solution you proposed, because I don't know how to code the solution you propose. Also, if you sell a Well/Blacksmith tower the buffs do NOT disappear...

ahh, i get it now. what you misunderstood was when i said "when original is removed, clone should be removed".you thought i meant if trickery is sold, it's clones are removed too, right? i meant: when the cloned tower, pure or damagetower of any type, is sold, it's clones should sell too. i mean, same with smith and well, if buffed tower is removed, buffs are removed too

But the lingering is not removed! as mentioned in the first post, the "remove clone if real removed" would remove everything except the problem of building one tower, cloning it to +100% for 15 or 30 sec, then selling the original, and building a new type of original. That would only be removed by doing as i proposed the first time i suggested trickery to make the lvl 1 and 2 clones to do last full time, but deal only 25% and 50% damage. using perhaps a negative buff of fireup, (*hoping* that they don't stack with blacksmith like 25% damage+ a 50% fireup for da clone to deal 75% damage instead of 25+12.5=37.5%)