Remove all potions.

[Vee]

The reason you were trying to get away from potions was more the greater- and full healing ones than the small ones. So how would removing those from the game, leaving lesser and normal ones for the early game in the west do?

[Grey]

I'm really not happy with a lot of the aspects of this system. I'm not 100% against it, but I think a fair few things need to be thought through thoroughly. My concerns:

Almost every character will choose a healing and teleportation rune. Healing potions and phase door scrolls are considered essential items, so any non-mage characters will definitely want the best of each type of rune on there. That straight away ties up 2 slots out of the 3, leaving the character with little in the way of real options. Essentially it's like only being allowed to carry one extra type of potion/scroll, and this can be a horrible choice to make. See invis and cure poison/disease are especially things which one doesn't use that often, but can be vital when needed. In this rune system they're not good enough to get a slot of their own, so they won't get chosen. When one does then get massively poisoned there's no way of dealing with it immediately, and that can mean a quick death.

When reducing around 20 potion and scroll types to just 3 available slots every character will only go for the 3 best for their class. Heat of battle tactical decisions are changed instead to advance strategic decisions. This can be good, but it punishes new players who don't know what to expect. Heck, it even just punishes players who by the will of the RNG run into something unexpected. With potions and scrolls you have a number of options at your fingertips to try and get yourself out of a tricky situation. The rune system expects you to plan for the unexpected instead. On top of that I'd say we already have plenty of strategic depth in the talent tree system. I'd like to keep as much tactical options open in combat. Replacing 20 options with 3 quite severely reduces your available bag of tricks, your ability to react to developing situations, and your ability to think on your feet to solve problems.

There's also the problem of balance. Potions are not currently balanced - they are of very varying strength. Some are very powerful indeed, such as speed or invisibility. A rune of speed or invisibility would be either so powerful it would break the game, or have such a long charge time that it would be too weak to waste a whole slot on. The runes would all have to be balanced in such a way that they'd be viewed as equal choices, which means no more powerful or weak effects. It would homogenise everything. If they are not equal choices then people will always choose the obviously stronger rune, and then they are not choices at all.

Then there's the issue of replacing consumables with unlimited abilities. Suddenly every character has unlimited phase doors, with the only block being a cooldown. Will everyone be phasing around like mages? Things like invisibility and speed especially suffer from this, as you can just rest around until the cooldown wears off before going into the next battle. Same with healing and other abilities - they never run out.

One way of dealing with some of these problems is to move certain current potion effects into wands instead. This would work reasonably well for invisibility and speed at least. However replacing potions/scrolls with equivalent wands seems a little silly, since it wouldn't change any of the associated problems. Also wands are very very rare in the game, so you'd be unlikely to find one early in the game. The nice thing about potions is that they're not particularly rare, but they're not rechargeable either, making their availability to the player more balanced.

On top of all that it's becoming an ever more confusing system, especially with the multiple recharge methods and variant charge pools and so on. It's very unfriendly to new players. Healing is a vital ability, and shouldn't be a challenge to achieve. The player should not have to do maths to figure out how many turns he has to wait until his next heal.

Overall this system will make no difference to mages, who can duplicate most item effects already. It will quite badly hit fighters and rogues who rely on potions/scrolls a lot, since their battle options will be quite drastically reduced. I do like the idea of the rune system, but as a replacement to potions it seems like it could take a lot of fun out of the game. The only positive I see is that it takes away the dependance on the Magic stat (I think it's a bit silly that at the moment the class which benefits most from items is the one that needs them least).

I personally like having consumable potions and scrolls. It's nice that they are a limited resource, and something I can horde for important situations. I like it when I end up in a tricky situation and quickly look through my inventory to see if I have something that can save me. It's exhilarating. Potions/scrolls also offer something that's nicely different to the talent skills, whilst it seems to me that this rune system is just a way of giving the player new talents.

I agree with the problems noted about potions/scrolls, but I think the current system could be tweaked to make it less abusable. There's already several suggestions in this thread.

tl;dr: Neat idea, but reduced options is bad.

[Sirrocco]

Actually, pretty much agreement with Vee here. Make potions/scrolls available, but have pretty much all of them all be weak stuff (with the possible exception of the artifact potions, if you want to keep those around). Sure, your endgame character could be carting around a pack of 50 potions each of which heals 100 HP, but if we yank slotted belts from the game, he won't ever have a reason to use them in combat. You could even use that as an alchemist schtick - you give them a sustain or a passive or something that boosts the effectiveness of potions and/or scrolls to the point where they're still meaningful in the endgame, while everyone else mostly leaves them behind - perhaps an entire tree.

Now, there are a few places where you can go that will allow you to bind and harness your chakras You have a blood chakra, a thought chakra, and a spirit chakra. Normal potions and scrolls run off of the chakras, and are flexible but generally inefficient (thus the lack of high-powered potions/scrolls). If you have an unbound thought chakra, you can use scrolls. If you have an unbound blood chakra, you can use potions. Most people have bound but not harnessed spirit chakras. (The ones with unbound spirit chakras are the true mages - that's what lets them regen mana.) Each chakra that you bind and harness gives you access to the corresponding variety of runes (blood runes corresponding more or less to potion effects, thought runes corresponding more or less to scroll effects, and spirit runes may or may not exist) and gives you one more place to attach a rune to (of any variety you may know).

It is possible to get your thought and blood chakras bound/harnessed in the west, but it's not easy. Possibly the Zig have the technique and no one else does. You'd have one store that would sell the appropriate runes there, and that would be it. None would drop. In the East, it's the opposite - there are runes dropping in dungeons, and easy access to runic techniques, but no potions or scrolls are sold or drop. Sure if you really want to do the potion/scroll thing, you can open the gate back and head back west to hit the shops regularly, but you're trading power and hassle for versatility, and it's generally not worth it, especially with the number of scroll-destroying and potion-destroying attacks out there (just make it a factor of total damage of the attack). There'd be some nifty difficult side-quest that you could go on to get your spirit chakra harnessed if you wanted to, to get a third slot, but it would require that your thought and blood chakras be harnessed already, as it would be something of an experimental/esoteric technique.

All of this does a few things.
- You still have a bunch of random potions and scrolls to gather at the start of the game (Sorry, Sus. I *like* them.) Likewise, if someone really jsut can't bear to be without potions and scrolls, they aren't required to.
- Potions and scrolls are dominant in the early game, when the money to pay for them can actually be a meaningful limiting factor, and become less significant in the endgame, when they'd otherwise be really abusable
- There's something of an explanation for mana potions - as potions and scrolls are generally aligned with the mage-types. Perhaps not so many of them, though.
- There is a nifty thing that people-who-are-not-archmages can get - not overwhelmingly powerful, but nifty.
- Runes are made distinctly different from "just another oddly shaped talent slot".
- Early access to runes as a cool and unique but not overpowered or full-game-affecting thing available to the folks that go the anti-mage route, to make up for losing access to Angolwin (whose ring shop does something of similar levels of coolness). When you show up, if you do something moderately impressive, they'll let you have your chakras harnessed, and once you do that with both chakras, *then* you can do the thing that teaches you antimagic. On the flipside, if the mages see you with closed chakras, they'll immediately assume that you're hostile and kick you out. (They may not know what it is, but they know how to recognize it, and they *know* about the kind of people who do that).

[Susramanian]

How rods work:

To put it simply, they work like they did in T2. You need two components to assemble a complete rod: a rod base and a rod tip. Rod bases come in the five T4 metals: iron, steel, dwarven-steel, galvorn, and mithril. Each has a certain amount of power, with higher quality metals having more power. Rod tips are just runes, the same as are used on yourself. Inscribe a rune on a rod base to make a complete rod. Inscribing another rune overwrites the first. You can use an equipped rod's ability just like an inscribed rune's ability.

Rod bases can have prefix egos. Runes can have both prefixes and suffixes. When a rune is inscribed on a rod base, the resulting complete rod will have all powers from the egos, but only display one prefix and one suffix: the prefix from the base and the suffix from the rune.

Example: charging iron rod + efficient healing rune of potency = charging iron rod of potency (which still has the efficient quality, as displayed when the item is inspected). When the rod base has the same prefix as the rune, the ego effect does not stack.

Rods have certain qualities that make them better vessels for runes than, well, you. First, they have more power. A rune inscribed on yourself always has 100 power, unless enhanced by an ego. Rods can have up to 200 before ego increases. Also, rods double damage and range of attack abilities, making them ideal offensive tools. There's nothing stopping you from making a rod of healing, but that ego mithril rod will really shine when you stick a frozen spear rune on it. You can also dig a rod out of your pack and equip it more quickly than you can inscribe a whole new rune on yourself, so having extra rods prepared in advance can be a useful strategy.

Important lists

Below is a list of rods, rod egos, runes, and rune egos. I've tried to make the various runes competitive with healing and phase door runes, though most characters will want at least one of those. Worth noting are the speed runes and invisibility runes, which always have a recharge of 0 and a cost around 15. This means that, in effect, these runes have limited charges. They're better to inscribe on rods than yourself, as you can swap out a depleted rod, but inscribing a new rune on yourself takes time. Some care will need to be taken when assigning egos to runes. The ego that improves effect duration should only appear on runes with effect durations, for example.

Rods bases and their power pool:
Iron 120
Steel 140
Dwarven steel 160
Galvorn 180
Mithril 200

Rod egos:
Charging (recharge doubled)
Powerful (+50 power)
Efficient (-20% cost)

Runes:
healing
mana
regeneration
dispelling (remove all negative effects like poison, disease, slow, etc.)
speed (Always has recharge = 0, cost ~ 15)
invisibility (Always has recharge = 0, cost ~ 15)
vision (magic mapping + see invisible)
brilliance (powerful illumination with chance to blind)
phase door (sometimes targetable at high levels)
teleportation
shielding
detection (detects more types the higher level it is, like the pre-beta14 sense spell)
heat beam (beam fire damage)
frozen spear (single target ranged cold damage)
acid wave (acid damage in radius X around player)
chain lightning (ranged lightning damage, chains at most twice)

Rune egos:

brawler's (effect scales with strength)
duelist's (effect scales with dexterity)
titan's (effect scales with constitution)
wizard's (effect scales with magic)
psychic's (effect scales with willpower)
sneak's (effect scales with cunning)

charging (recharge doubled)
powerful (+50 power)
enduring (+5 to effect duration)
efficient (-20% cost)
reaching (+5 to effect range)

of curing (removes poison/disease in addition to normal effect)
of potency (boosts numerical effects by 20%)
of the elements (gains power back when user takes elemental damage)
of absorption (gains power back when user takes physical damage)
of unshackling (removes movement impairing effects, protects against them for 10 turns in addition to normal effect)
of regenerating (applies 15 health per turn regen for 10 turns or the rune's duration, whichever is longer, in addition to normal effect)

Unless otherwise noted, all rune costs are around 100. They're never more, since rune power is (except in case of ego) fixed at 100. Like other aspects of runes, they vary according to the whims of the RNG. Exact numbers for the rune effects will need to be playtested, but they shouldn't be as powerful as similar talents. Sick combinations of egos will of course result in wide ranges of power.

[Susramanian]

We were chatting about how to sell the idea that in order for rods to work as we want, we'd need to make equipping a new rod from your pack take several turns. I'm thinking five to ten-- enough so that you can phase door out of a fight and do the switch, but you won't be able to pull it off mid fight. If you can swap them out instantly, then players just accumulate a mountain of rods for every occasion and use them as needed; this is exactly the situation we have now with potions and scrolls. Bleh!

So anyway, it takes a handful of turns to pull rods out of your bag, so that's not a very viable tactic. You have one rod slot, but you can equip rods in your weapon slots, too, as I mentioned in the original post. But rolling around with no weapons isn't a good idea in most cases. Edge then pointed out something brilliant: you can just equip backup rods in your alternate weapon slots. Then you can swap quickly! This is the first really good use I've heard of for alternate weapon slots.

The mental image this conjured up was a beautiful one.

I want my warriors doing that with offensive rods!

[Sirrocco]

I really think that anything that depends on the idea of taking extra time to equip rods/wands is pushing things. It takes one round to equip a shield. It takes one round to equip a weapon. Basically, you're scrambling for a way to give people potions/scrolls without letting them use potions/scrolls too much. That's fine, but "rods taking a long time to equip" isn't the right answer

I haven't played the endgame (my best characters thus far die on Carn Dum and the Tempest quest) but I can say that there's absolutely nothing wrong with the general way that potions, scrolls, and wands work in the early game. It works fine. Don't muck with it.

Now, the problem you're claiming is that endgame is ruined by the easy availability of numbers of extremely potent heal potions, and that certain abilities are marginalized by the existence of affordable consumables that do essentially the same thing. (Also, you like making the game more challenging in general.)

I can see some interesting late-game stuff - as I noted, making the late-game consumables far less effective and offering alternatives instead. This would include both healing and direct damage consumables. As for the "powers get marginalized" thing, why don't we sit down and actually figure out which powers are getting marginalized by which potions/scrolls/wands. Perhaps, instead of radically reworking the character's relationship with items and adding new gear slots and the like, we can simply tone down some of the specific items. I personally think that it's fine that J Random Fighterguy can do anything with scrolls that a wilder or mage can do with talents - as long as the talent effects are clearly and significantly better at what they do.

Example: phase door scrolls are not a problem. The phase door spell is controlled. The scrolls are not. this gives the phase door spell a lot of tactical value that the scroll simply doesn't have.

Magic Mapping scrolls seen to rather seriously marginalize Earth Eyes. Solution is to significantly reduce the radius of the magic mapping scrolls. They'd still be more effective than light scrolls, but they'd be less overwhelming. Possibly add in some "detect stairs" scrolls, so as to not jack up the difficulty of traversing the sandworm lair too much.

[escargot]

This whole rune thing sounds really interesting, I'm really fond of the idea of replacing consumables for some different and somehow unique mechanism.

But I think that the potions issue is mainly, and maybe only, because of the way they work. Nowadays you don't see games with auto-healing pots. Since Diablo 2 the potions (or healing consumables) heal you over time, you might get all of your 400 HP healed, but it will take a while/some rounds; reducing the cheesyness notoriously and adding some tactic depth.
Diablo 2 had also the auto-heals, which were considerably hard to get and that healed both life and mana; fact that I think is crucial, if you have an auto-heal that works both ways you will try as hard as you can to get the most out of it, adding even more depth to the decision of using the consumable.
In T4 everything works automatically and all potions are rather easy to get. If I happen to run out of potions it's mostly because I was lazy to get more, rather than not having the chance to get more. Pots are easy to scum and they are always for sale in a considerable ammount. This should be addresed if it's decided to keep potions.

Considering consumable spells. I think the proposed rune system is way more interesting than the scrolls now available; and I don't see why you can't have both, weak cool-down dependant healers and (fixed) potions. I don't know if any of you played Torchlight, but it has this kind of magic system, there are different kind of spells (offensives, summons and passives, as far as I 'remember) which you can strengthen via skill points and different spells from each brand with different levels, which you could inscribe in your limited 'spellbook', every spell used mana and had a cool-down.
It worked fine, because you could play with the basic ones knowing they weren't powerful at all but could save you from a difficult spot (summon some weak lvl.1 skeletons to lure the enemies away from you; which worked similarly to a scroll of phase door: you could get saved thanks to it, but it wasn't automatic), or you could spend points on the skills and work with the spells through the game.

And I understand the point someone mentioned that everyone would get the heal and the teleport, leaving just one slot to another tactical spell. But that's mainly because there aren't other options. If I'm a melee-warrior and am at a difficult spot I hate to phase door, it might save me, but I would prefer to have some "melee option" to save my ass. Two extra attacks, or an autostun, or a reset to my cooldown timers; in most situations that would help more than getting somewhere random, where you can maybe refit yourself. Same for archers, I rather have them phased away than myself.
So maybe adding a variety to those last-ditch efforts would solve the obvious rune choices.
And the same goes for specific resistance for the different baddies you'll find in your next goal; different elemental damage for specific targets and so on.

Whatever happens, I think this discussion will surely make the game better. Way to go Sus.

[edge2054]

A simple answer is swapping equipped items should take 2 turns (and really it should anyway). I'm not suggesting the player have to take an item off to wear a new item but the character should and that should take a turn each.

2 turns is a long time mid-fight, to long to be a viable strategy in melee for sure and only somewhat viable at range.

I think it's fine. Swapping backup weapons out for your main weapon should still take a single turn, which gives everyone 1 free wand slot and potentially 2 more back up slots (or even 5 slots if they want to give up there weapons )

Speaking of wand swapping. The code should always equip wands in this order, empty wand slot, empty weapon or shield slot, swap for full wand slot. It should never swap for a filled weapon or shield slot.

[Mushroomhermit]

What if switching rods/wands initiated a cooldown on actually using the item. Like it takes you three turns to "attune" to a new rod when you pull it out. That would allow you to keep them as powerful tools and reward forethought too.

Also, I really support the reduced reliance on potions/scrolls

[ushumgal]

I can see the balance issues you are trying to resolve, but personally I'd still prefer to have potions rather than runes tattooed on the characters. Magical potions fit well in the Middle Earth world, but I don't really think magical glyphs on the skin really do, at least in terms of image.

One other way to resolve the issue is to have a cooldown period for potions. The stronger the potion, the longer you have to wait to drink another. So low-level characters could drink their potions of lesser healing with no troubles, but if you drink a potion of greater healing, you have to wait, say, 20 turns before you can drink another. Any number of justifications could be found...the magic of the potion is still coursing around your body and you can't take more in until it is all gone, or something like that.

[Grey]

I really don't like the proposed rod system. It would produce far more inventory clutter than potions and scrolls. It also relies heavily on the character finding both useful runes and empty rods - get unlucky and you'll struggle to get good ingredients together. On top of that it's turning the system into something more magical, which severely limits those who want to go the anti-magic route (not that the route should be easy, but it should be possible too).

The 5-10 turns thing for equipping and using a rod is also something I very much dislike. In the heat of battle even 1 turn to equip is a long time. It's silly to *need* phase door to be able to get access to vital options. Phase door is also not 100% reliable, and with the new cooldown system on the effect you'll quickly find youself killed trying to rely on it. So again it comes down to having to plan everything in advance and hope nothing unexpected pops up.

I like escargot's suggestion of more competitive rune types. "2 free turns" would be a great alternative to phase door for instance. "2 turns 90% physical resistance" would be another. The problem is making them not too cheap, especially with recharging runes.

[Susramanian]

I'll try to answer some of the concerns people have with this system.

All characters will just choose a healing and teleportation rune.
Actually, with rods potentially having enough energy for consecutive casts, they're a great candidate for taking on the healing role. And personally, I'll probably be relying on amulets of teleportation for my teleportation needs just as I do now, giving me a more interesting rune selection.

Three rune slots can never replace twenty or so potions and scrolls.
Don't forget at least one rod, and two more in alternate weapon slots. Also, many of the potion effects have been combined to make the runes competitive. A rune of cure poison would be terrible and never used, but a rune of dispelling (remove all negative effects, grant free action for a time) might be very tempting. Don't forget that runes have egos which themselves add desirable effects, and is basically a way to cram even more potions into a single rune slot. It's easy to take a glance at the system and say '3 is less than 20, so this sucks,' but there's all sorts of complexity built into it that will make for much more interesting options in the end.

Unlimited casts of speed and invisibility are unbalancing.
Agreed, so these runes never recharge. This gives them limited casts, making them a better choice for a rod than a body rune.

Unlimited casts of phase door and stuff is unbalancing.
With a cooldown between casts, I'd say the new system makes a much better attempt at balance than the current system, where your casts are limited by only your willingness to store scum.

New players will be hopelessly confused.
This should never be a reason to simply abandon an idea. All sorts of measures can be taken to make this more accessible to new players, such as the tutorial and tooltips. A simple 'time remaining to next cast' field can be included so people don't have to do math to understand runes. We all did okay with the dizzying screen full of talent trees (which is a totally alien concept in a roguelike), so I'm sure folks can pick up the rune system.

This doesn't affect mages and hurts fighters and rogues.
I can't speak for rogues, since I never play them. As for mages, I predict that my experience with runes will actually affect how I spend my talent points. If I can meet my healing needs through my three runes and a rod, for example, I might ignore the nature tree completely. People likely do this with potions already. As for fighters, they're who I had in mind when I created this. I only ever used a few types of potion and scroll anyway. I'll have a blast building rods and upgrading runes and reconfiguring everything as I discover new interesting options.

Why should a rod take multiple turns to equip when I can equip a weapon or shield in one turn?
Good point! It should also take multiple turns to dig weapons and such out of your bag. This is what the alternate weapon slots are for. Mushroomhermit pointed out that switching rods/wands could initiate a cooldown on actually using them. This would have the desired effect, too.

Magic tattoos have no place in Middle Earth.
Fortunately, we've all moved to Maj'Eyal!

The new rod system will clutter the inventory.
I've been working on that. See the next post.

The new rod system relies on the character finding the correct items.
Just like other gear right now. A fighter who doesn't find a steel or better weapon for a long time is a miserable fighter indeed. Sometimes the RNG just bends you over. We can tweak rarities for rods and runes as needed to alleviate whatever problems come up during playtesting.

Having to wait 5-10 turns to access vital options is very bad.
If they're vital, they should already be equipped. The system gives ways to cram quite a few potion/scroll effects into relatively few rune/rod slots, but when it comes down to it, you're never again going to simply have access to everything you could possibly ever want in every situation all at once. Set up your rods and runes carefully, including alternate weapons slot rods.

How can we do the anti-magic thing without potions?
That's a very good question. We would need to add something to allow this. Perhaps upon initiating the anti-magic challenge, you're given a kit of potions to see you through it. If you violate the rules and use magic, the potions explode. I'm sure we can come up with something better than that. Let's hear ideas!

Effect X should be included in runes.
Why don't we see more suggestions like this? This is how you make the system fun. Propose new ideas. Darkgod has proven to be superhumanly open-minded.

[Susramanian]

Two problems I've been made aware of with the current system:

1) Inventory will now be cluttered with runes instead of consumables
2) There are so many possible rune/ego combinations that getting the one you want is extremely unlikely.

Let's fix both of these at once by allowing the player to apply runes to runes. Only one rune type is kept, and the egos kept are random. The stats of the resulting rune are rerolled.

Example: use a brawler's regeneration rune on a charging frozen spear rune of absorption. Random results possible:

regeneration rune
regeneration rune of absorption
charging regeneration rune
charging regeneration rune of absorption
brawler's regeneration rune
brawler's regeneration rune of absorption
frozen spear rune
frozen spear rune of absorption
charging frozen spear rune
charging frozen spear rune of absorption
brawler's frozen spear rune
brawler's frozen spear rune of absorption

This is probably a little too random. We might want to disallow the following:
results identical to one of the items you start with (unless those are the only options, like with combining two ego-less runes)
results with fewer egos than both of the starting items.

This would trim the above list down to these possibilities:

regeneration rune of absorption
charging regeneration rune
charging regeneration rune of absorption
brawler's regeneration rune of absorption
frozen spear rune of absorption
charging frozen spear rune
brawler's frozen spear rune
brawler's frozen spear rune of absorption

And if that's too random, we could force the resulting item to have a double ego if a double ego rune was used in the creation. That would trim it to these possibilities:

charging regeneration rune of absorption
brawler's regeneration rune of absorption
brawler's frozen spear rune of absorption

I'm a little hesitant to recommend this last method, as it gives a players ways to guarantee desirable egos. Uncertainty is good for the gamer's soul.

The powers of the runes aren't added together or anything silly like that. This is just a way to give the user a little control over the dizzying combinations of rune and ego that he has available. With this addition to the system, it's reasonable to think that, with some patience and luck, any character will be able to cook up a specific ego-rune-ego combination. It will also give the player something productive and fun to do with runes that he doesn't want. Even two runes with no egos are worth combining, as the stats of the resulting rune are rerolled. You can use this to try to roll up better versions of runes you want. Of course, if you combine a rune you really want with another rune, don't cry if you end up with something crappy. The RNG is still in charge here.

[Grey]

This system is getting ever more complex. I prefer to spend time killing monsters than fiddling about with items in my inventory, scribing runes and making rods, switching rods at various points to get the right preparations etc. The more you add to the system the more you push me against it.

Your idea was much nicer before egos and combining and rod-infusing. A simple rune system with x slots on the character and simple cooldowns on each ability. Give the player 5 and it works as a great replacement to potions. It's easy enough to understand, doesn't take a lot of work to manage, and can add new fun strategic gameplay elements. 5 slots should be enough to give enough tactical options to each player - early game it'd likely be 3 healing, 1 phase and 1 cure poison. Later on you might find cooler ones that combine a few abilities, and maybe even artifact ones that make a new slot of their own.

[Gwai]

Grey, that is probably the innate difference between you and I then. I always enjoy inventory management and the preparation for the fights. Fights are only somewhat strategy. Preparation is all strategy.

To be fair, T4 is much more fight oriented vs. preparation than T2. Which is why I've actually mostly stopped playing T4. It's less of a chesslike game than it used to be.