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Currently whenever an enemy summons multiple monsters and one of them happens to have a FRIENDS or an ESCORT (S) tag, they come with multiple escorts. These extra monsters can fill up a lot of spaces and can be either extremely dangerous or extremely beneficial to the player.
If an enemy sumons a single generic monster, it is forbidden from summoning anything with the FRIENDS or ESCORT tags. Similarly if a monster summons a single demon, dragon, or undead it is not allowed to summon a monster with the FRIENDS or ESCORT flag. These restrictions to not apply for summoning animals, hounds, or multiple monsters.
Let's first discuss what would happen if a summoned monster with the FRIENDS tag didn't bring his friends along.
SUMMON_(single monster), SUMMON_HI_DRAGON, SUMMON_HYDRA, SUMMON_WRAITH, SUMMON_UNIQUE no changes
SUMMON_HI_UNDEAD: you can no longer get a pack of forest, grave or barrow wights that fill up the area. These are by far the least dangerous high undead. Removing friends makes this very powerful spell even more powerful, because you become more likely to get very nasty monsters.
SUMMON_HI_DEMON: You will not get packs of Vrocks, Hezrous or Barbazus. Again these are the weakest demons, (none have breath attacks) but they can all also summon themselves. Only allowing one at a time allows for more dangerous monsters to come, but at the same time limits the demon explosion possiblity. At any point in the game I'd probably rather have a pack of Hezrous than a single pit fiend. So I think that removing the friends summon makes this more powerful, but not as much as the HI_UNDEAD
SUMMON_HOUNDS: This gets nerfed but not as strongly as you might think. You are unlikely to get a ton of time/aether/gravity/inertia/chaos hounds that will cause you to bail almost immediately. At the same time you are not as likely to get a pack of wargs that eat up all the summoning spaces. Because hounds run away in corridors if there is space, having less hounds around allows for additional summons. Changing this will make it less likely that you'll have to bail on a single summon, but also less likely that you will be able to completely ignore a summon. Generally hound summons currently only get 2 types of hounds. Changing this would allow for many types of hounds. So while there are less total hounds, the different types even out the difficulty distribution. It's interesting that summon hounds is commented under the annoying section, when it really is one of the most feared.
SUMMON_KIN: Nerfed, but all the summoned kin group monsters are pretty useless, with the possible exception of a group of araneas summoned by shelob. I don't think there's much to consider here.
Now for escort monsters. Right now it is desirable to kill Gothmog, Lungorthin, Moria, Vecna, Feagwath, Kronos and maybe Gabriel and Ancalagon so they don't come with nasty escorts when Morgoth inevitably summons them. I'd be loath to remove this motivation for killing them. However, on the flip side, it is beneficial to leave alive the queen ant, the cat lord, orc uniques, troll uniques so that they come with extremely weak escorts that fill up the place. The fact that it's beneficial to leave certain uniques alive bothers me, but there are other remedies.
If I had to make a recommendation it would be to limit the summoned escorts to the space immediately around the uniques. The way to do that is to have the summoned unique come in and then immediately cast a summon_kin (with the friends tag removed) Since this does nerf unique summoning considerably, I'm not sure whether this is the best solution. But at least it's a suggestion.
tl;dr removing friends from summoned monsters actually makes many summons stronger. removing or reducing escorts makes summons weaker but thematically consistent.
If an enemy sumons a single generic monster, it is forbidden from summoning anything with the FRIENDS or ESCORT tags. Similarly if a monster summons a single demon, dragon, or undead it is not allowed to summon a monster with the FRIENDS or ESCORT flag. These restrictions to not apply for summoning animals, hounds, or multiple monsters.
Let's first discuss what would happen if a summoned monster with the FRIENDS tag didn't bring his friends along.
SUMMON_(single monster), SUMMON_HI_DRAGON, SUMMON_HYDRA, SUMMON_WRAITH, SUMMON_UNIQUE no changes
SUMMON_HI_UNDEAD: you can no longer get a pack of forest, grave or barrow wights that fill up the area. These are by far the least dangerous high undead. Removing friends makes this very powerful spell even more powerful, because you become more likely to get very nasty monsters.
SUMMON_HI_DEMON: You will not get packs of Vrocks, Hezrous or Barbazus. Again these are the weakest demons, (none have breath attacks) but they can all also summon themselves. Only allowing one at a time allows for more dangerous monsters to come, but at the same time limits the demon explosion possiblity. At any point in the game I'd probably rather have a pack of Hezrous than a single pit fiend. So I think that removing the friends summon makes this more powerful, but not as much as the HI_UNDEAD
SUMMON_HOUNDS: This gets nerfed but not as strongly as you might think. You are unlikely to get a ton of time/aether/gravity/inertia/chaos hounds that will cause you to bail almost immediately. At the same time you are not as likely to get a pack of wargs that eat up all the summoning spaces. Because hounds run away in corridors if there is space, having less hounds around allows for additional summons. Changing this will make it less likely that you'll have to bail on a single summon, but also less likely that you will be able to completely ignore a summon. Generally hound summons currently only get 2 types of hounds. Changing this would allow for many types of hounds. So while there are less total hounds, the different types even out the difficulty distribution. It's interesting that summon hounds is commented under the annoying section, when it really is one of the most feared.
SUMMON_KIN: Nerfed, but all the summoned kin group monsters are pretty useless, with the possible exception of a group of araneas summoned by shelob. I don't think there's much to consider here.
Now for escort monsters. Right now it is desirable to kill Gothmog, Lungorthin, Moria, Vecna, Feagwath, Kronos and maybe Gabriel and Ancalagon so they don't come with nasty escorts when Morgoth inevitably summons them. I'd be loath to remove this motivation for killing them. However, on the flip side, it is beneficial to leave alive the queen ant, the cat lord, orc uniques, troll uniques so that they come with extremely weak escorts that fill up the place. The fact that it's beneficial to leave certain uniques alive bothers me, but there are other remedies.
If I had to make a recommendation it would be to limit the summoned escorts to the space immediately around the uniques. The way to do that is to have the summoned unique come in and then immediately cast a summon_kin (with the friends tag removed) Since this does nerf unique summoning considerably, I'm not sure whether this is the best solution. But at least it's a suggestion.
tl;dr removing friends from summoned monsters actually makes many summons stronger. removing or reducing escorts makes summons weaker but thematically consistent.
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