Difference between revisions of "Units"

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Individual globs are often referred to as units. They are the creatures you guide through their lives in Globulation 2.

Managing Units

Units have two lines of dots below them, representing their levels of hunger (in blue) and wounds (in green). Workers that are carrying a resource will also have an icon on their top-right depicting the type of resource they're carrying. By clicking on a unit, you can see more detailed information about it in the sidebar:

• Its hitpoint count is the total number of points of damage it can take, and the number it has remaining. See the combat section for more information about this.
• Its food level is the percentage of food it has remaining. The food level is normally green, but becomes red when the glob gets hungry. When its food level goes below 0%, the glob starts to starve.
• Its happiness is in brackets next to its food level. Happiness is equal to the number of fruit the unit ate the last time it went to an inn, and is discussed in the fruit section.
• Its current speed is the speed it currently walks at.
• Workers that are carrying a resource will show the type of resource.
• Warriors and workers have skill levels, representing their proficiency in various skills.
• Warriors and explorers have a blue bar representing how close they are to their next experience level. As they gain experience points, the bar fills up with purple.
• Warriors have an armour level, which starts at 10, minus 10 for each piece of fruit they ate last time they had lunch.
• Warriors have attack strength and attack speed values. See the sections on combat and speeds for more.
• Explorers have air damage and (when they've trained in a level 3 school) ground damage values, which is discussed in the combat section.

Speeds

Units can only work at a certain rate. The amount of time it takes a unit to do something, like walk a pace or hit an enemy, is based on its action speed. The details of the speed system are presented here, but if you're not interested in numbers, all you really need to know is that doubling an action speed will halve the amount of time it takes - for example, a warrior with an attack speed of 2 will be able to land blows twice as fast as a warrior with an attack speed of 1.

Internally, the game measures time in ticks, which are set at 40 milliseconds long. Globulation 2 doesn't have an option to increase or decrease this, but when your computer is overloaded, ticks take longer. The formula for calculating the number of ticks to complete an action is 256/s, where s is the speed of the unit. So a unit with a speed of 1 will take 256 ticks (10.24 seconds) to complete an action, speed 2 takes 128 ticks (5.12 seconds), and so on until the maximum speed (256) which takes 1 tick. Here are the speeds currently used in the game:

Food

Globs need food to keep them going. When a glob takes lunch at an inn, it fills its stomach. A glob's stomach can hold 350 grains of wheat, and every action they take burns one grain. So, for example, a glob's stomach will always be empty after they've walked 350 paces, no matter how high their walking speed. Globs don't count as moving when they're inside a building, so don't burn any food.

Globs will usually become hungry well before their stomach is empty, and refuse to do any more work until they've eaten. If they haven't managed to get to an inn by the time they run out of food, they will start to starve, losing hit points in place of food. Once they've eaten, the starving glob can visit a hospital to repair the damage. You can keep an eye on how hungry your population is with the graphs menu.

Although globs only need wheat to live, they like to have some fruit in their diet, and can even be convinced to convert to another team to get more fruit. The full details are discussed in the fruit section - but basically the more fruit your globs eat, the happier they are, but the less armour warriors have.

Damage

Unit types

Right now, Globulation 2 supports three kinds of unit: workers, warriors, and explorers.

Workers

Workers are the backbone of glob society. Their job consists mainly of harvesting resources and applying them to buildings.

• Armour: 0
• Vision range: 1
• Hungry threshold: 25% (or 10% when bringing resources back to a building)

Warriors

Warriors do most of the offensive work in Globulation 2. Unless they hungry, critically injured, or following a war flag, they will attack any visible enemy unit or building within an 8x8 square of themselves. Once they're engaged in combat with an enemy, they will keep fighting until they get hungry, critically injured, or the enemy is destroyed. Warriors get hungry at 20% food.

• Armour: 10, minus 10 for each piece of fruit they ate the last time they were at an inn.
• Damage: 8-32, depending on training
• Vision range: 1
• Hungry threshold: 20%

Explorers

Explorers are currently the only flying creature in Globulation 2. They have a fairly weak attack, but they're most useful for gathering intelligence about the world. All explorers can attack other air units and also gain the ability to attack ground units after training at a level3 school. The explorers attack ignores armor but is incapable of damaging buildings.

• Armour: 0
• Damage: 8
• Vision range: ?
• Hungry threshold: 25%

Skills

Some buildings teach units how to improve certain skills, such as the speed they can walk or the strength of their attack. Units can upgrade one skill each time they visit a building to train, and will always improve that skill to the maximum value possible for the building.

Attack strength

Attack speed

Learning attack speed to level 1 will gives a warrior an attack speed of 11, level 2 gives an attack speed of 18, level 3 gives 25, level 4 gives 32. See the section on speeds for more information.

Open questions

• How quickly do units train? What about healing and feeding? What about unit creation in swarms? Do they all use the same formula?

Training, healing, feeding and unit create speed are building parameters. They should use the same formula. --Nct 05:38, 30 December 2005 (PST)

• Does the hunger/wound graph represent the amount of hunger/wounding, or the number of hungry/wounded?

The amount as it is normalized to the graph height. --Nct 05:38, 30 December 2005 (PST)

• Does the wound graph include starvation wounds? What about when the unit has lunched?

If a unit has wound because of food, it goes in the wound category. As this graph is dynamic, if the unit has eated and healed it is not anymore in this state. If the unit has eated but not healed, it still count in the wounded graph. Please notice that the HP must be below a certain threshold to be counted in the wound graph. --Nct 05:38, 30 December 2005 (PST)

• Can warriors attack air units?

No. --Nct 05:38, 30 December 2005 (PST)

• When you say "each move", walking, harvesting, attacking etc. all count as moves? So a warrior with a high attack speed but low walking pace will wear himself out faster in combat than on the way there?

Yes. --Nct 05:38, 30 December 2005 (PST)

• What do warriors and towers prefer to attack? The code seems to indicate towers go for warriors, followed by workers, followed by other buildings.

Yes. Please look at this thread. --Nct 05:38, 30 December 2005 (PST)

• Is it true that training preferences are chosen in increasing order of value in this list:

enum Abilities\\
{\\
       STOP_WALK=0,\\
       STOP_SWIM=1,\\
       STOP_FLY=2,\\
       \\
       WALK=3,\\
       SWIM=4,\\
       FLY=5,\\
       BUILD=6,\\
       HARVEST=7,\\
       ATTACK_SPEED=8,\\
       \\
       ATTACK_STRENGTH=9,\\
       ARMOR=10,\\
       HP=11,\\
       \\
       HEAL=12,\\
       FEED=13\\
};

• ... and that training preference is considered before distance or anything else?