The Pilgrim's Attribute Mod

[spydermann93]

Hey guys,

Just to let everybody know that I am currently in the process of making attributes to better fight RPG-style characters.

Main Goal:
I never really liked how characters only had two flight settings; flier or flier with fast flier.  It seemed to be very rigid in my hero file creations and I wished to make a more varied attribute selection.  This has led me to create enhanced speed attributes, better "true invulnerability" attributes, various degrees of regeneration (based on the Official Marvel Handbook), and more to come.

Brief descriptions:

For flight, I have separated speeds much like the human rocket attribute, just on lower levels.

For flight, I have set it so that the character's speed of flight is separate from ground movement.  The first thought would be "why don't you just use fast flier if you wanted a slow character to fly faster?"  The issue is that Fast Flier only provides +3 speed while in the air, nothing more and nothing less.  The set of attributes that I have made can actually allow you to have your character fly at speeds much faster or even slower than they walk.  Iron Man can now have a land speed of 3 and an air speed of 9 or 10, rather than just 6.  A very fast moving speedster who has a jetpack on, instead of moving at an air speed of 10, can now fly at a speed of 4 or 5.  I just found this system to be much better at finding more "accurate" hero files.


Next on the list is speed.

I found that for some meshes (and for the sake of power scales), a speed of 10 is not enough (which is in no way the mesh's creator's fault).  I just wanted to see characters move more quickly across the map, giving a better feel for an actual speedster.  This set of abilities adds speed to your characters, giving them +2, +5, or perhaps even +10 speed.  There are going to be more sets in the future, but for now, I am content with this.


Now, for my most recent set of attributes: regeneration WITHOUT energy cost.

I was never quite content with regeneration either costing you all of your energy, or you had a character with so much energy, regeneration didn't really sap it and you were left with a character who could use their powers more than they should.  With this in mind, I made 5 separate healing attributes based on Marvel's Official Handbook.

The disparity between lesser regeneration and regenerative was too great for me.  Lesser regeneration did not heal enough for the energy cost, and due to the EP Ratio formula (which I understand was for more for Regenerative than Lesser Regeneration), lesser regeneration did not heal if the character was at two bars or less.  Regenerative offered excellent healing rates, but the energy demand was far too great (which was for balancing, I'm sure).  It was just a personal issue for me, so I set about changing it.

This is split into:

Enhanced Human Regenerative
Superhuman Regenerative
Metahuman Regenerative
Demigod-like Regenerative
God-like Regenerative.

What I have is this:

Enhanced Human Regenerative gives 1 HP every 1.5 seconds.
Superhuman Regenerative gives 4 HP every 1.5 seconds.
Metahuman Regenerative gives 6 HP every 1.5 seconds.
Demigod-like Regenerative gives 9 HP every 1.5 seconds.
God-like Regenerative gives 13 HP every 1.5 seconds.

For a relation, Regenerative heals at 8 HP every 1.5 seconds.

NOTE: These are not final, especially on prices for each attribute.

As for the future of this project, I'm planning on finding something to deal with strength and agility as I'd like to see more variation and scale in these attributes (like speed), but seeing how ranged, area, direct, and cone attacks cannot reach the same levels of damage as melee attacks, strength may or may not be changed.


If anybody has any suggestions, I'd be glad to hear them

[Podmark]

Those all sound like great ideas. Are your releasing these?

[spydermann93]

I plan to in the future.

Not sure when, but I do plan on it.

Also, once I do release them, they will be free to use for any mod; no credits necessary.

[Jimaras8]

Nice spidey. I think that the immersion especially with Marvel characters rises to new level. Keep it up.

[spydermann93]

Ok, everybody, this is what I have come up with for a speed table for FF:

Speed - Conversion [In terms of Marvel's Official Handbook] (Projectile Speed)

1 - Below Normal
2 - Below Normal
3 - Normal
4 - Athlete/Peak Human (Very Slow projectiles)
5 - Enhanced Human
6 - Superhuman (Slow projectiles)
7 - Subsonic
8 - Speed of Sound
9 - Supersonic (Normal projectiles)
10 - Orbital Velocity

Now, the reason why I have decided NOT to go beyond 10, despite my original idea, is because while I'd like to see my characters run with a speed faster than 10, the Human Rocket attribute removed a character's extra speed upon landing.  So, if Superman ran at a speed of 14 and flew in the air with Human Rocket (10), he'd land and only have a speed rating of 10 again.

So, until that is fixed, I decided to base my projectile speed on the speeds that my characters can run.  After some initial testing, I have found that the optimum speed for bullets is "Slow" to "Normal" as from my research, bullets have been recording going at speeds that fall under the Subsonic and Supersonic categories for characters in Marvel's Universe.  So, I ran some tests to see which projectile speeds would best represent the speed of bullets in relation to my characters, and luckily, they landed about right.  Slow projectiles had a speed of a rough 6 in character speed; Normal projectiles had a rough 9 in character speed.  Luckily, the categories for speed were split just properly enough so that my speed chart could work.

Now, for flight, I have kept my flight mechanics, but they have changed a bit:

Speed - Conversion

4 - Directed Motion Hovering (or equivalent speeds)
5 - Natural Winged Flight
6 - Artificial Winged Flight
7 - Subsonic
8 - Speed of Sound
9 - Supersonic
10 - Orbital Velocity
11 - Escape Velocity (according to Marvel, at this speed, a character is no longer touching the ground due to centripetal forces)
12 - Sub-Light Speed
13 - Light Speed (cannot be obtained by physical beings in Earth's atmosphere)
14 - Warp Speed

So, in relation to Marvel's Official Handbook, it is logical for flight speed to surpass running speed due to escape velocity measurements.

More to come soon.

[Cyber Burn]

I wanted to comment on this because I can tell that you have put in an enormous amount of work into this, but most of this is going way over my head.    I spend most of my time in CTool2 (Between my own skoping and admiring the work of others), so I don't get too much actual playtime.

[spydermann93]

Haha, I know that feeling.  I've been testing and testing and testing for a very long time, and I still have yet to find a method that makes me happy with my hero files.

If I were to have kept going with my original designs, I would easily have over 2,000 hero files by now, but I have never been quite satisfied.

For that reason, I am making this mod.  There are many things that I wish to modify in the Freedom Force games to make it even more customizable.  I have never been content with the Attribute/Resistance/Material system.  I wish that you could adjust resistances and weaknesses with sliders, much like in Alex and Tommyboy's game project that they have been working on.  I have also never been content with the Active Defenses in this game, where they either block an attack or they don't; there is no "if this attack is of x type and does y damage, then shield z will block the attack."  Rather, it's "if this attack is of x type, shield z will block it."

I plan on a beta release once I figure out this speed issue.  If I can't figure it out soon enough, I shall release this mod to allow people to play around with it whilst I continue testing.

[spydermann93]

Hey guys,

Speed update:

Thanks to Stumpy's help, my Super Speed attribute works flawlessly with Flier. However, there are still some kinks that I am attempting to work out with the likes of Fast Flier and Human Rocket.

Until then, I have set up a new speed formula for characters:

1- Below Normal
2- Below Normal
3- Normal
4- Athlete
5- Peak Human
6- Enhanced Human
7- Superhuman
8- Superhuman
9- Subsonic
10- Speed of Sound
12- Supersonic
13- Orbital Velocity
14- Escape Velocity
16- Sub-light Speed
18- Light Speed
20- Warp Speed

Now, in my tests, I have found the speed equivalents of projectiles:

4- Very Slow
6- Slow
9- Normal
12- Fast
16- Very Fast

So, based upon those readings, I have developed my speed formula. Now, for flight, since Human rocket didn't work, I had to come up with something else.

After some tests, much to my delight, I found that flight speed is roughly twice that of land speed. So, looking at that, I have devised the flight speeds as such:

Land Speed->Flight Speed [actual speed]

2- Directed Motion Hovering [4]
3- Natural Winged Flight [6]
4- Artificial Winged Flight [8]
5- Subsonic/Speed of Sound [10]
6- Supersonic [12]
7- Orbital Velocity/Escape Velocity [14]
8- Sub-light Speed [16]
9- Light Speed [18]
10- Warp Speed [20]

So, the flight speeds have actually matched up pretty well with the land speeds and the projectile speeds. For characters with land speeds under 11, I have found it safe to just use the Human Rocket attributes to get the air speed that I wanted.  In the event that a character had a land speed above 10, I would set their land speed to the land speed of their flight speed and just use my Super Speed attribute to achieve what I was looking for.

That's all for now, but soon I shall have some information on more of my custom attributes and hero formulas.

[Cyber Burn]

I hate to say it, but since I never really messed with FFX or even with attributes in general, pretty much everything is going over my head. It looks like you have put a lot of work in to this. Thank you for all of it.

[spydermann93]

Anything that I can do to bring more to Freedom Force, I shall test and try to come up with something.

Big thanks to all of the people who created FFX. Without the mod, this game would be nowhere near the scale that it is now.

[BentonGrey]

This all looks very interesting, Spyder.  I love having more customization and texture in FF!

[spydermann93]

Hey guys,

Just to let everybody know, I am still bumping along with this.

Right now I'm trying to get a good durability set going. What I've been finding is that a combination of the health rating based on Marvel RPG and a resistance setting based on the Official Marvel Master Guide has been proving quite fruitful and flavorful!

It takes some really heavy hitters to actually hurt the Hulk, Thor, and Hyperion (yes, Jim, I am still tinkering with this guy, haha ) and it will take quite a good punch from a physically fit human to phase Spider-Man and Wolverine.

Guns still hurt "street" level heroes (Spidey included), but you'll need to pack some serious firepower to affect Iron Man and Wolverine (thanks to his blasted healing factor), as it should be.  A dinky little pistol won't be enough to take out the INVINCIBLE Iron Man, but I'm pretty sure that a nuclear warhead will blow him to smithereens

Needless to say, these new durability settings are still in the works and are requiring me to adjust quite a few other elements of the game, but the path to an "accurate" Freedom Force is growing ever more closer, thanks immensely to the ever-moddable FFX mod, without which none of this would be possible.

[Jimaras8]

(yes, Jim, I am still tinkering with this guy, haha

Never lost faith in you buddy  , but don't worry Benton has thrown me his SS herofiles and i can say i have a Hyperion that matches my belief for the hero. Of course i will be more than happy to see your ''offspring and make them go head to head.

From what i hear about you rmod you are trying to be incredible faithful to Marvel lore as all your examples are realistic and close to the ''real-life'' stats of the heroes. How are you doing with the balance? Of course i dont' expect to see Spidey knocking out Worldbreaker (althought he did it once with Cap's help  ) but maintaing a sense of competition will be a perfect medium ground.

[spydermann93]

(yes, Jim, I am still tinkering with this guy, haha

Never lost faith in you buddy  , but don't worry Benton has thrown me his SS herofiles and i can say i have a Hyperion that matches my belief for the hero. Of course i will be more than happy to see your ''offspring and make them go head to head.

From what i hear about you rmod you are trying to be incredible faithful to Marvel lore as all your examples are realistic and close to the ''real-life'' stats of the heroes. How are you doing with the balance? Of course i dont' expect to see Spidey knocking out Worldbreaker (althought he did it once with Cap's help  ) but maintaing a sense of competition will be a perfect medium ground.

I'm glad that you have a Hyperion to play with, then, haha For some reason, he just never felt quite right; at least, not in the way that I play the game.

Balancing will have two settings: one will be more akin to vanilla (i.e. no actual invulnerabilities; more gameplay than 'realism'), and one more geared towards 'accurate' portrayal of characters.

The reason behind this mod is for accurate portrayal, or as close as to accurate as I can get within game limitations.  Some of the more plot-induced elements (e.g. Spider-Man and Cap knocking out the Hulk) won't be held with much regard when there are more common feats made by a character (Hulk battled Thor, toe-to-toe, for hours, and I'm sure that we can all agree that Thor is stronger than Captain America and Spider-Man ).

For example, in Thor #280, it was mentioned that Mjolnir did not affect Hyperion unless Thor threw it with more "umph" to it.  As such, in-game, I want to represent that fact by giving an invulnerability to Hyperion that could resist Thor's Mjolnir throw just as often as he could get hurt by it.  I'll be looking for many more examples, but this is how I'm going about this whole idea.

I realize that not everybody plays the same way I do, and that is why I'm providing two different sets of balancing.  I myself, however, will be much more heavily focused on the 'accurate' side of character representation, as that's what I like to see in my game.