Self Developed Behavior - Spreading Effect

[Dagravian]

I've been studdying those effects on modders lounge to see how the game does see them so we can come with suggestions to improve them, here i want to suggest a modifier to improve fire or/and other dot effets, to make them work more realistic, for this, i want to suggest something to measure an effect "behavior" that self develops over the time.

For example, if you send a fire arrow to a building, ideally, the fire should spread and scale up by itself, without the need of more fire arrows since the behavior of the fire is to grow up as long as there is fuel (unit health), but should keep the "stackable", since you can shoot even more arrows as you set fire in many positions of the building to speed up the process... Currently only the amount of the fire arrows are translated to the game, but the behavior of the each fire spot is not... This spreading behavior (translated roughly by me as "autostack modifier" for the JSON // you can suggest other names...) would add actual self-developed behaviors to the effects in the game.

That "autostack" mentioned above It is not related to "if the effect is stackable by an unit or not"... But "if it does self develop or not with time". In short, the effect behavior. I want to get that stated very clearly... It is indeed that will stack, but It would work as a separated pool that does acumulate one specific effect one or many times each turn to represent this natural "developement" of the things if they are not taken care quickly...

In short words, when allowed on one effect, this "Autostack Modifier" is: If "desired" effect exists on the unit, add "x" amount of new copies of this effect on the beggining of the turn for this unit.

So, when applied, it will copy the current effect one or more times if they are already affecting an unit. So you would have a clone of the effect with this modifier each turn untill the effect is removed, it starts with 1 markup, next turn goes to 2, next turn goes to 4, then 8 and so on untill it is treated(removed) or the unit dies...

So you would became able to create effects with more accurate behaviors combining the current stacks and this "autostack", but also create effects using this new setting exclusivelly. Since it would work on its own pool to represent developement/spreading/consequence... Behaviors of effects over the time.

This was intended specially focused on DOT effects. But could be easilly used to create new effects as scaled regeneration (passive not aura), stress, diseases, corrosion, petrifying, freezing, bleeding, radiation or any other behavior that self develops without the need of any other external agents or actions.

Idk how you would input the function for the behavior on the settings... But i expect on the JSON part:

- Something like a "null/on/off" switch option.
- Something that requires the value for the modifier above. Being "1" the default value.

Here i attempt some guidelines. (Not needed but i think it can help you figure out how to implement)

```JSON Effect
trnEffectSelfBehavior: "";
AutostackAble: "true/false"; //autostack pool swicth
AutostackCopyAmount: "random value"; //desired amount of copies by turn, default = 1
```

[Stratego (dev)]

actually this may already work with current possibilities.

one need to set the fire effect that it does not only applies a "damage" each turn, but applies an other effect too (that is again can be a fire effect) this will double the amount of fire effect each turn.

ask someone with modding to try if it works or not.

thanks!

[Dagravian]

I think you mean with that... That if you imput the effect again on effect behaviour, the spreading fire might work?
Eg:

"effectBehaviour":["REPETITIVE_VANISHING", "EFFECT_FIRE_ARROWS"];

This being on the code of fire arrow itself, would make that work?

[Stratego (dev)]

no

one effect json can contain
1. an effect affect to inflict (eg -20 hp defined in units folder)
2. a reference to another effect in effects folder (that this case can be itself the "fire arrows" effect)