Missing units

[Pillager]

Yeah,

The sacrificial bat method would work (at a price). A player would need to weigh the risks of not sending a scout ahead vs the cost of doing so...and decisions like that are one of the reasons I enjoy this game.

I always need a negating unit 'right now'. You see a hero, and you wish for an archon...you see a dragon and you need a devil. This isn't any different. Besides, throwing a few bats at a powerful hero will do nothing, but sending a few bats out to search for an invisible marauder could easily succeed.

[KGB]

All bats are sacrificial. I don't ever expect any of them to return home or pull guard duty some place. And I build gobs of them so that losses of a few mean nothing. So anyone who isn't sending scouts ahead isn't planning to win that's for sure.

And with a hero or dragon I can track it's progress over several turns until my Archon/Devil arrives to deal with that unit if the need arises or counter with my own hero/dragon etc. With an invisible unit when it moves, you lose track of it, potentially never finding it again. That's much worse because you can't defend what you can't find.

So there is no way I want invisible units that can't be tracked by a method other than running units around hoping to get into combat. There has to be either (A) True Seeing on a 1 turn unit like a bat/scout (B) A way to find units without true seeing other than hoping to get into combat. The DLR bootcheck, hero menu (where it would show nearby invisible heroes) and kill enemy quest (nicknamed 'radar', which showed invisible units) functioned in this manner for those willing to invest some time and effort. I suggested a 1 square view radius which I think works fine because you still have to get right next to the unit to find it. A kill enemy quest works well too of course assuming you can get 1 quest per hero instead of 1 per side.

Otherwise invisibility will get out of hand once it migrates to another unit besides the Yeti. And rest assured, migrate it will, whether to another unit(s), item(s) or hero skill.

KGB

[LPhillips]

I don't see a lot of good in the whole invisibility option in the first place. But invisibility on only snow, only for the Yeti, might be alright.

[Pillager]

KGB,

The yeti is the issue here. Is invisibility 'out of control' if it is in snow only and not shared with stacked units? No other units (or heroes or items) with invisibility have been proposed. You are acting as if invisibility is an infectious disease.

I think that true sight could just be an added feature of the scouting ability. Allowing scouts to detect adjacent invisible units.

[KGB]

Pillager,

The Yeti as described (invisible only in snow) is fine. But my point was that this type of skill tends to end up going to other units/spells/items/hero skills until it ends up being overly powerful (for example why aren't Elves invisible in the Forest or Dwarves in the hills). So it's better to keep it under control initially so that it doesn't have to be totally re-done in the future at which point it may nerf the Yeti entirely.

Thinking again about this after reading your last post it made me realize that what you are describing is not invisibility but rather camouflage as in 'blending into your native terrain'.

So maybe what we instead need to do is change the terrain bonus's to be:

1) +X in combat
2) Camouflage

And a unit gets one or the other or neither but never both.

Where camouflage means that unit is invisible in it's native terrain. However any other identical native unit to that terrain (another Yeti but NOT a Mammoth) would be able to see such units normally.

This makes sense and removes the need for a True Sight skill whether on it's own or part of the scouting skill. Another unit that could get Camouflage terrain bonus (desert) is the Sand Worm since it travels underground.

KGB