...Defiler Wings. As I loved that game, as it very much was a dragon simulator...
As much as I like DW, it was more of a dragon dynasty CYOA than a
simulator. Even base TfD is more of a simulator. Maybe a poor one, but still...
...the only thing that indicates "You can have minions that help you in battle" is the UI tutorial thing.
'Squads' and 'Assign' buttons, the 'Minions' column in the lair, 'Bestiary' with combat stats... Indirect, perhaps, but far from being the
only thing to draw your attention to it.
And nobody
forces you to have minions. Unless you play on impossible, but that's a self-inflicted wound, then.
There's even a pride category that rewards you for going solo. People have been
dominating normal difficulty with full squads as of late, so a solo dragon ought to be relatively viable with some care.
...their is a reason modern video games have tutorials.
Modern video games with tutorials have teams numbering in the dozens working full-time for months and years, not a hobbyist doing it on weekends for a few months. And need to make money and cater to children. You want tutorials and dragons, you play Dragon Commander, one of the dragon flight sims, or maybe Divinity 2. You need a 'dragon sex sim', you take what you can get.
More seriously, the quests serve as a tutorial, and Mom has a chat option that dispenses tips. There are several quests related to minions, in fact. If you just want to click buttons and not familiarize yourself with the game, an extended tutorial won't cure you. Players
hate tutorials.
The game just isn't beating you on the nose with its tutorial and assumes you're an adult capable of RTFM when needed.
More over, as a Dragon sim, I am not sure what Dragon media you have that has them going into combat with minions.
It's traditional for dragons to go solo, but there are quite a few examples otherwise as well. Shadowrun. Malazan. Cradle series. Villentretenmerth from the Witcher. Archdemon from Dragon Age.
Most of these aren't
exactly identical to TfD, but it's the same overall idea of 'let the squishy mortals do the stupid parts of combat.'
Dragons are usually good enough on their own. At least to beat a Peasent.
Not cat-sized dragons.
And if you
really want that not to be the case, you can play on easy or skip being tiny.
HOWEVER all that is being critical of the game as a "I am a Dragon hear me roar" sim
You can roar all you like unless you play on impossible or aren't cunning enough. A dragon who's only roar and no brains is called fertilizer.
Okay you are going to have to explain this, as I went through the intro, the UI guide and the gold head section and I see nothing that explains how this milking mechanic works or what it is.
There are two 'milkings'. What I referred to is the Witch milking the dragon. Not all difficulties give you gold from the start, so you need a leg up to acquire your first minion. Steel doesn't get that since it's good enough on its own.
You can also milk your captives, which is what helps you heal yourself and your minions.
But if you want to spend your satiation on Evolving instead of healing, you have to fiddle with Orders.
Healing takes comparatively little satiety. If you're struggling with that, you're probably still very small.
More to the problem is when you do a long sleep to heal as much as possible, and instead its to long and so you loose health overall.
Stock up before sleeping? It's the most basic gameplay loop in the whole game.
And if you fail, you don't die. You just wake up mad and hopefully learn your lesson about going to bed hungry.
That's somewhat frustrating Maths the player shouldn't need to deal with...
That's two-edged. You might also want to just check how long it will take to rest until healed, and that button allows you to let the game do the math for you. I remove that, you lose a precision tool in favour of handholding. Not a fan.
50 copper extra isn't a big loss for Steel.
The point isn't that it's expensive for steel to acquire minions. It's rather that pretty much all the other heads have options to do so, and once they do, the combat advantage of steel largely goes away. And steel will need
a lot of downtime if it goes solo. Or gold and access to the Witch.
...cause a small village at mobilization 2 can seriously challenge a solo dragon on easy, so I can't imagine a Dragon with a team of goblins does well in that fight againest a Hard difficulty village.
A starter dragon + four goblins will struggle on hard, although you can probably savescum yourself to victory if you have
a lot of patience.
One with battle paws as his first evolution and four goblins will kill the two peasants at the cost of three goblins. Which is pretty cheap, compared to the gains.
Huntsmen says hi. And if killing people gets harder on harder difficulties like I think it does, running into a Huntsmen before you've grown in size at least once on Hard is probably very painful even with a team.
A single huntsman on hard is very much beatable by the same tiny+battle paws+four goblins team. It's actually easier than two mobs. A completely unevolved dragon will struggle, but he
should be struggling.
...man has that huntsmen ruined some of my runs going at it solo.
You can always run from him. Unless you're
really weak or wounded, he won't kill you outright.
...a way to skip the intro text would be nice. ...click through the same stuff again and again.
I take it you're new to Ren'Py?
Hold down Ctrl. This is also mentioned in the 'help' section.
Oh and you may want to remove the text about the Smuggler's isle in the talking with the Dark Lady bit. As far as I can tell that tip isn't useful...
Maybe she's talking about a different island?
The tip itself isn't useless as such.
Oh and is Growing Pains meant to auto complete as a quest even if you are the smallest sized Dragon still?
Yes. It's not about size, it's about evolving your power up from the absolute bottom.
Whats even worse is that a cat sized dragon would not fight an ogre, or a herd of cows, or an armored patrol no matter how frenzied he is.
A frenzied dragon very well might. Dragons are known for their inflated egos and arrogance, after all.
And cows might start looking mighty appetising...
Theres a difference between irrational behavior and straight up stupidity/suicidalness.
Being
frenzied is a bit beyond mere irrationality.
Honestly I think the dragon we play as...
I think you could look at this as more
managing the dragon and less
playing as him.
...is an idiot and a huge disappointment to mother. There should always be an ignore option for truly overpowering opponents.
But the point of rage
is that he's temporarily lost his marbles and is frothing at the jaws.
Or hell let us eat a goblin if things are that desperate.
Goblins aren't likely to just let themselves be eaten. In general, anyone who serves a dragon knows they might be put on the menu anytime, and accordingly avoids the critter when he's snorting mad. The captives don't have that luxury, though.
