Dugy
commented
3 months ago I never imagined the mechanical enemies as actual robots in nowadays' sense. Even in 21st century, we don't have practical bipedal robots (existing ones are either connected to supporting devices, or moving in some bipedal way that's different from humans, or hydraulic and extremely bulky), and only most cutting edge AI technology allows wheeled robots or quadrucopters operate with some autonomy. If they appear in Wesnoth, there must be some kind of supernatural force allowing them to operate the way they do, an idea that it could be done with the crude technology of the environment is far fetched. So basically there is some kind of magic inside of them providing a mechanical force and decision making.
That puts the automatons into the same category as undead or elementals. Not quite living, but there is still some magic keeping them up. I was interpreting this as some soul was bound into the thing, which made it operate autonomously. And this soul can be absorbed by the redeem ability inside the caster, making the caster stronger as a result.
But, of course, we are talking about magic here, it can work whatever way we want, gameplay experience goes first, rationalisations of the wizardry can be contrived later.
Redeeming is an activity that will occupy your leaders so that other units have to do the fighting instead of letting the leaders wipe out too many enemies with AoE attacks.
Regarding mushrooms, they have a very low level because they are easy to kill in large numbers and would be a massive farm of experience if their level was greater.
white-haired-uncle
I've always thought of redeem as capturing the unit's soul and incorporating it into some sort of alternate world/reality/whatever inside E/L. I looked, and couldn't find anything to back me up on this, only that the unit is captured within their souls, but it still seems right. Therefore, just now when I redeemed some of those little mechanical drone things that Uria carries around with her, it didn't seem right.
I wonder if it makes sense to be able to redeem purely mechanical units, and perhaps elementals. I'm not sure about undead, I really don't get into the whole fantasy thing, but I'd say they probably still have souls, perhaps with the exception of walking dead.
If redeem were to become more selective, I would also make shrooms elemental. I've heard it said that you should really focus on the redeem attack, because if you don't redeem lower level units when you have the chance you won't be able to do so later. I find this to be complete nonsense, even if there weren't plenty of packs of imps (just don't kill the leader that spawns them), there's an endless supply of shrooms.
Something to think about. I suspect it would mean making unreemable an ability so it could be placed into a unit_type -- I haven't thought too much about this, but it feels like it would be a good idea.
P.S. The shrooms are probably way too powerful for their levels anyway. I can't think of any other level 2 units you have to be careful around.