>That's a nice, easy to control, challenging feature which could deepen knight combat.

It could either deepen it or make it a lot slower - you have to be very careful with such things ;)

> Newton's dreaded Whopper format

What's that?

Not quite sure where to put my thoughts inside this topic, so I'll go ahead and put this in the topic itself:

I'm against introducing magic in form of spells at all. I've got mainly two reasons for this:

First, I think we can do something more interesting and better then that. Every second game out there has magic spells, CR did as well - But we've got the chance to introduce the gameplay options that the spells had in some other way, maybe we can find something much more fitting to our general style right now.
OC started off with the "steampunk" idea in mind - crooked apparatuses, doubtable science, that kind of stuff - and I think we can go into that direction with magic effects as well. (In fact, magic is quite the opposite of crooked science!)

Secondly, looking back at CR, I think the most spells that were included in the fantasy pack in the end were over-designed. The icecrow and firesnakes, fireball, curses and heal spells - those and lots of other similar ones couldn't be used for anything else than dealing damage or preventing damage because of how specific they were. I always thought casting those spells was less fun than making up a cool strategy which included some spells to support it (e.g. the gravity spells).

I suggest to think of some effects that are useful in many ways and find an fitting way of implementing it. We did this with the airblast, which resulted in the windjar, didn't we? Just like that we could make tools, buildings, (maybe even vehicles and animals? ;)) that provide the same effect and just add some more detail. It's just boring to have 15 scrolls or spells or whatever, which look the same and are used all the same.

Just to give a few brainstormy examples, based upon the spells which are currently scrolls:
- Hardening (turns snow to ice) - Pour a bucket of water on the snow. You could also extinguish fires with that, or transport water.
- Wind spell - Would be cool if you could power windmills so they create wind instead of power.. maybe a small, deployable version of that? ;)
- Thunder spell? Chargeable lightning attractor - it also protects buildings! ;)
- Fireball - Why not make a torch? Clonks could breathe a fireball (or a bit of continous fire when clicked&held) once while holding them. They'd also illuminate your settlements at night!
- Teleport - Mini-LHC which creates black holes, of course!

So even if some of those items end up being single-purpose as well, we'd still have some advantages: First of, it's better recognizable. It's not just an icon on the same scroll I'm seeing all over the place. It also has a cool name! Secondly, items can be designed much more individually. They don't have to work all the same - with scrolls and spells, it's almost always 'cast -> (aim) -> success'. Having the "spells" more thought out and each in its own item could add a lot of detail and charme to the game.

This would also provide us with two things that can be used to balance things in scenarios:
First off, the player wouldn't have access to all "spells" all the time, because his inventory is limited. He'd have to choose according to his strategy before entering the battlefield. (This is not different from scrolls as it is right now, but since there is the discussion of a general magic system, I just wanted to bring that up again.)
Second, spells that are too "powerful" to be casted any time and any place could be turned into buildings or vehicles, so you'd have to invest some time researching or building these to gain an advantage through them.

I know that many of you have gotten used to magic in clonk, but I really think this would be worth a shot.

Just a few little things, it's hard to to tell what the general thoughts in this thread are (lots of words, so little time to read them.)

In regards to the discussion for spell selection... What about letting players use the whole keyboard to set spell hotkeys? Is that doable? No, it won't work for multiple people at one computer, but for league games (assuming OC will have a league) is hotseating even allowed or fair?

And also, I've a bit about combat spells and balance and such. What about settlement spells?

Just to clarify, I'm not saying the hotkeys would be the only way to spell cast, they'd just be available as an upgrade the original quick-spell system.

Also, if we don't want imbalances between experts who can fire away a key-combination in a blink, and beginners/casuals who actually need to check what they're doing, then why not let the key combinations be customizable?