Knights and Merchants.net Forum

We have discussed the idea with Lewin before, how about adding mutators to multiplayer? They are intended to be special mods you can enable, that make the game faster and/or more challenging.

Mods can be located near "peace time" selector and work together to affect the game.

Some of the ideas:
- Block market
- Endless resources in mines
- Never-hungry (you can ignore food industry and completely focus on warfare)
- Speedup x1.5
- Only Militia
- any other crazy idea (f.e. 1hp houses)

Downside of the idea is that they will make people more separated, imagine a lobby where A wants to play with one set of mods and B with another, both will be frustrated.. or not?

I think it's prettty good idea, however this: is what I'm afraid of. I don't think the KaM community is big enough (yet) to prevent problems like these. But I still like the idea, so maybe keep it for the future or test it really well.

This is an interesting idea but should, in my opinion, be added much much much much later. First multiplayer's gameplay needs to be very stable. For example, the change with food upcoming release is pretty big and most people will need to adapt their playing again.
And the problem you mention is a problem indeed...

Like anti said the community is too small at the moment for this. Although I don't see a problem when you only add "block market" for example.

very good idea ;]

KaM is very complex game. All of the mutators I can think of in their core are simplifications (cut this piece out, or that piece). I'm not sure if this is the right direction altogether, but is there a way to make game harder and add more to it with mutators? It depends on how you look at it. PT has become a standard now as far as I know (how many games have PT = 0min?), it is the sort of mod that adds to the gameplay experience. Maybe there are other such mods we can discuss that will not cause separation?

I like the idea of the mutator, and some of them like block market, infinite resources in mines.
About that player 1 wants this mod, player 2 doesn't, there is 1 host.

But this would be fun for 1 game, after that I won't use them again so i think it only would make the game less interesting.
It's like with the maps, you play the crappy maps once but then they're useless.

i like the idea of these mods. they will give a more diverse gameplay.
what about an option to enable certain buildings from the start. yesterday i played on (i believe it was) back to the desert or across the desert. in this map you have direct access to the stonecutter and woodcutter. i really liked this, it will speed up the game a bit more in the beginning. wouldn't it be a great option to select this in the lobby too?

That's back in the desert, and yes To is a smart guy.

Something like an "Early start" option that unlocks Inn-School-Quarry-Woodcutters-Sawmill at once? Not sure if that will be good cos you will have to build all the houses anyway.

I have a proposal for a mut: change the terrible, cold-feeling blue color of the iron mine back to the lovely, original red one.

PLEASE

It's a good idea !
The 1 HP houses idea is cool, I'd like to see a game like that :p

There can be plenty of (crazy) "mutators" (not sure if everything is posibble though) like :
- Instant recruitement (all the citizens are trained as soon as you click)
- Wrath of the gods (some of your houses, not the schools or strorehouses, are destroyed and burnt as soon as they are build, and your soldiers may die of strange illness)
- Fury (the more troops you have, the faster the weapons are to produce)
- etc ...

Yeah that was just to show that there are quite a lot of crazy/non crazy mutators that could be added, and each one adds more possible "mutators combinations", and divides players into groups.
For now, I believe that only a few necessary mutators should be added. If the community grows up enough, then everything would be fine and you could add more.

not all of them, perhaps only the quarry and woodcutter. this way you can choose building a quarry/woodcutter first or a school first. ofcourse it's better to first build a school. but this way you can ignore building an inn until your servs are getting hungry. it saves some precious time, wich you can spend on building a quarry/woodcutter first.
i would not include the sawmill in this option, that would make it a bit too quick and less fun.

by the way, this reminds me of left 4 dead 2's mutations. like running arround with a chainsaw with unlimited gas. a mutation with only crossbowman who have no reload time would be funny too

Mutators - i like it !
I think it could be to add such improvements as:

- speed game x1.5
- towers limit ( f.e. 1,3,5,7,10,15)
- (ranged units) to 1.5x greater range
- maximum number of buildings (f.e. 30,40,50,60)
- units have 1 hp
- buildings have 2x less hp

I think those mutators should be in game:
- Speed up 1.5
- Number of towers possible to build (from 0 to unlimited)
- Blocking market
- Speeding up / down starving of units (e.g. 50%, 75%, 100%, 125%, 150%, 175%, 200% of normal time needed before get hungry, or even turn off it)
- (Eventually) changing hp of houses and laborers speed (I mean speed of building houses), e.g. to 25%, 50%, 75%, 100%, 125%, 150%.

I don't think making more mutators would be better - setting game would start to be too complicated.