New Minions that aren't Undead

They also get in each others way or wander back and forward so you can't rely on a simple formula for number of minions, attack speed, damage etc. Minion AI has a big impact on their effectiveness as the horde grows in size.

It's really not worth arguing over, especially since the point of this thread is not more minions but rather more types of minions.

More types of minions will inevitably mean more minions.

The only reason I use spectres at all is that its another body (or two) between the bad guys and me, and inflates the numbers taking advantage of the exponential growth of the power of the total horde.

The inefficiency of the AI is a constant, and applies to the bad guys: this means it can be ignored in the model ;)

BTW, I love Puppet Master builds and would like to see more minion types in the game. I am just very aware of the power curve of an even half-assed build.



I think the only effective way of implementing this would be to have some kind of system that eliminates options from the skilltree, ie youd get either familiars or undead.

B.

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bredin wrote:

More types of minions will inevitably mean more minions.

No, it doesn't. You could have Raise Zombie, Raise Fat Zombie, Raise Skinny Zombie; three separate skills all governed by the maximum number of zombies you can raise.

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bredin wrote:

The inefficiency of the AI is a constant, and applies to the bad guys: this means it can be ignored in the model ;)

I disagree on at least two counts: firstly enemies do not use minion AI and secondly AI utterly dictates a minion's contribution to the fight so cannot be ignored. At any rate it's kinda pointless to argue whether it's Polynomial or Exponential.

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bredin wrote:

I think the only effective way of implementing this would be to have some kind of system that eliminates options from the skilltree, ie youd get either familiars or undead.

I disagree again. Each minion skill could simply be classified into one of X number of generic classes so that a common cap to the maximum number of minions applies to the total you summon within a class.