Give Siege Tower bridging ability

[phoenixffyrnig]

These weren't just used to take walls, they often had a lower bridge too to get men over moats. What if we gave siege towers the ability to transform, removing all movement but drops a bridge to let your men cross one tile of obstruction, whether it be built terrain such as trench, moat or canal, or one tiles worth of river?

Endru has mentioned elsewhere that the siege tower will become more costly to build relative to other constructs after upcoming changes, so no need to fuss that this unit is already OP

[makazuwr32]

Might require some coding for that ability from endru but i see no reason to reject that.

Up to endru still.

[Endru1241]

Transformation is not the way here.

Siege tower already has aura that gives flying spec, but there is no way to grant units any kind of movement bonuses change (apart of transforming them).
To get over it this bridge would actually need to be separate unit, so ability would be actually regular summon, but with some debuff on caster.

The question is - what about details - should ability be one time use only or we have to think of some complicated way to get bridge back?

[phoenixffyrnig]

I didn't have anything complicated in mind. Irl it would have been as simple as lowering the drawbridge for use and raising it when it's finished with, allowing the siege tower to carry on as before. Something that keeps it that simple to use would be ideal

I wouldn't think we would need any movement change if the tile could be somehow summoned to act like a normal bridge, would we? Flying spec only works for getting over single tile enemy buildings, right? Or have I missed something and it already does what I want it to?

[Endru1241]

Nah.
It doesn't overcome movement bonuses and that is what makes moat a barrier.
Moats are in terrain group very rough to walk - e.g. swordsmen have only 40% movement there.

As for simplicity of ability - it depends if we are are talking about player perspective or design leader.

I can think of a way to make it retractable again, but there is a ton of things, that could turn out to not be working and preventing implementation.
Sometimes I like to experiment and furthermore - give other modders a proof of concept, that something can be done, but it is extremely extensive task time-wise.
An idea is as follows:
- lower bridge would summon a unit similar to bridge, but only for foot units passage - the ability would have cooldown of 20 or something huge
- it would also place debuff removing movement to siege tower
- this bridge would have "retract itself" ability, that targets siege tower with effect decreasing debuff time to <0, effectively removing it and related effect decreasing cooldown of summon, as well, as self kill

Problems already seen:
- destroying this bridge would immobilise siege tower and making some sort of lower cooldown - never allow retracting it after
- there is no way to make sure bridge retracts to original owner siege tower
- rectract would kill unit on it (or leave it), but there is no way to check if bridge is empty for casting it

[phoenixffyrnig]

It doesn't overcome movement bonuses and that is what makes moat a barrier.

Ah yes, bridge tiles weren't working properly on moats, I forgot.

As for simplicity of ability - it depends if we are are talking about player perspective or design leader.

Yeah, I was definitely meaning user friendly for players - I didn't think for one moment that your role would be simple

Thanks for your informative responses though.

[Endru1241]

It doesn't overcome movement bonuses and that is what makes moat a barrier.

Ah yes, bridge tiles weren't working properly on moats, I forgot.

It is no longer an issue actually.
Stratego added new spec IS_BLOCKING_TERRAIN_AFFECTS, which is given to bridges, transport ships.
It was added on version 1.145 (start of August).