Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

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Bethrezen
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by Bethrezen »

As I wrote in my linked post above I wasn't sure if one damage upgrade is enough for the light cannon in alpha 04. The light cannon is doing 10% more damage than the heavy machine gun against the medium NP units but is, of course, worse against scavengers in comparison to the heavy machine gun. So we should try giving the light cannon the second damage upgrade in alpha 04. This would give the light cannon a base damage of 32 and should be good enough against scavengers and much better against NP units and turrets. And because it was planned to give the second damage to the medium cannon in alpha 06 it would make no big difference.
I'd give the light cannon ago with my latest trial and error values

damage 48 (base damage 40 + 1 upgrade at 20%) and rate of fire 35 (fire pause 17)

that actually felt pretty reasonable to me.

now with 3 damage upgrades that would give the light cannon a theoretical damage of 2240 per min but obviously this is before you factor in enemy armour if you factor that in plus any missed shots then its probably closer to around 1800 damage per min which i reckon is right in the ball park for the light cannon because anything less then about 1600 to 1700 per min is to weak.
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by Berserk Cyborg »

Bethrezen wrote: a damage value of 27 and a hard modifier of 20 isn't anywhere near enough.
...
so yeah if flamers are going to maintain there usefulness past alpha 4 they need something like a 200% buff because currently they are completely useless.
How about with a damage of 36 and hard modifier of 45? Or a new flamer weapon would be necessary, as another option.

Also, second cannon damage given on Alpha 4 again (have not tested anything else related to cannon yet). I don't find light-cannon weak all that much. Only ever inaccurate to a small extent.
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Bethrezen
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by Bethrezen »

ok so just given that a go and the flamers seem to fair better at least they are actually able to destroy there hard points now, although it's far from ideal and they are still quite slow although to be fair these are hardened structures, so its one of them times where reality and game play collide, on the one hand you don't want them to be to good against hardened structures, but on the other you at least want them to be viable option, so I'm kind of torn, one part of me thinks they probably need to be a little stronger but another is mindful of not making them to strong, so yeah I'm in two minds.

One issue I do have however is that when my flamers where having a go at the new paradigm turrets they where going down and either being destroyed or forced to retreat due to sustaining critical damage a bit to quickly so I'm wondering if maybe flamers could do with an armour upgrade, I know that like mortars flamers are support weapons and are therefore not really supposed to be heavily armoured but unlike mortars, flamers are right in the thick of the action and actively taking incoming fire due to there shorter range and at the moment they are to lightly armoured for that, now against scav's that's manageable since they aren't as powerful and are quicker and easier to kill but against the new paradigm they are to vulnerable, now maybe this will resolve its self once the player gets medium bodies, I'm not sure, what i do know however is that even on half tracks flamers take damage to quickly to be an effective front line unit, particularly if they are going to be that slow against hardened structures.

as for cannons they seem to fair better with the second damage upgrade, although they still seem to struggle a little against there medium body half tracked medium cannons, having said that however, when you calculate out what light cannons with a base damage of 20 and a rate of fire of 60 would do with 2 damage upgrades that comes out at 1680 damage per min before deducting for the opponents armour, and when you calculate out what light cannons with base damage of 40 and a rate of fire 35 and 1 upgrade at 20% would do that also comes out at 1680 damage per min before deducting for the opponents armour, so from a game play perspective either way should give the same game play experience against the new paradigms medium tanks.

humm..... I wonder if it would be possible to get to a point somewhere in the middle of them 2 so as to head off any potential issues with the upgrades on beta.
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by alfred007 »

I tested alpha 05 twice. Once with one damage upgrade for the light cannon and once with two damage upgrades for the light cannon. I produced in both tests 20 new half-tracked light cannon tanks with no experience. I made two combat groups, one with 16 light cannon tanks to attack the NP and one with 4 light cannons to fight the newly produced scavengers of the southern base. Both groups protected from some repair units.

With one damage upgrade, I ended the test with only the NP sensor tower left with 20 minutes left on the timer, with two damage upgrades with 25 minutes left on the timer. I'm of the opinion that the level is too easy for insane difficulty with two damage upgrades. Like Berserk Cyborg I don't think the light cannon is too weak with just one damage upgrade. The bigger problem is the horrible accuracy. With two damage upgrades, neither the commander nor the half-tracked medium cannon units could reach the repair facility because all get destroyed before. So I don't agree with Bethrezen that the light cannon struggles against the half-tracked medium cannon units.

As a conclusion, I say that the light cannon with a base damage of 20, a ROF of 60 and one damage upgrade is good enough to compete with the NP in alpha 05.
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by Bethrezen »

As a conclusion, I say that the light cannon with a base damage of 20, a ROF of 60 and one damage upgrade is good enough to compete with the NP in alpha 05
hummm.... maybe if the accuracy was improved some perhaps but with the current accuracy light cannons perform worse then heavy machine-guns when they have only 1 damage upgrade the difference is subtle yes but the difference is enough to be noticeable, since i usually play alpha 05 using heavy machine-guns in an unmodded game, so I'm not so sure although to be honest I'm not really surprised you disagree since you always did seem to favour pushing the difficulty to the extreme where i tend to be a little more conservative, having said that there are other ways to go about making the level a little more challenging, i don't know about you but i never did try out what it would be like having reinforcements come in from off screen in addition to the new factory
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by alfred007 »

Bethrezen wrote:
As a conclusion, I say that the light cannon with a base damage of 20, a ROF of 60 and one damage upgrade is good enough to compete with the NP in alpha 05
hummm.... maybe if the accuracy was improved some perhaps but with the current accuracy light cannons perform worse then heavy machine-guns when they have only 1 damage upgrade the difference is subtle yes but the difference is enough to be noticeable, since i usually play alpha 05 using heavy machine-guns in an unmodded game.
So what do you think of giving the cannons their first accuracy upgrade after the first damage upgrade? I think this could solve the problem. Or we give the light cannon a slightly higher base damage.
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by Bethrezen »

So what do you think of giving the cannons their first accuracy upgrade after the first damage upgrade? I think this could solve the problem.
well we could give it a shot see how things play out.
Or we give the light cannon a slightly higher base damage.
the issue with increasing the base damage is that you have to reduce the rate of fire proportionally or the light cannon ends up overpowered so ultimately you end up with roughly the same result which more or less defeats the whole purpose of the exercise and that's something that was born out earlier when i was tinkering and i set the base damage to 40 the rate of fire to 35 and had 1 damage upgrade at 20%.

I more or less ended up with the same result that you would get with a base damage of 20 a rate of fire of 60 and 2 upgrades at 30%

its why I'm wondering if its possible to get something somewhere in the middle because i don't think 1 upgrade is quiet enough but obviously you think 2 upgrades is a bit much but maybe if the accuracy was bumped up a bit more of the shots would actually land on target and solve the issue.
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by alfred007 »

Bethrezen wrote:
So what do you think of giving the cannons their first accuracy upgrade after the first damage upgrade? I think this could solve the problem.
well we could give it a shot see how things play out.
OK, let's try it.

Does anybody know what modifier is applied to scavengers? Always "Legged"?
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by Bethrezen »

having looked at the weapons.json the scav's weapons seems to use the same modifiers as the players so machine-guns use anti personnel, cannons user all rounder, flamer uses flame etc same seems to apply to modifiers for buildings as well.
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by alfred007 »

Bethrezen wrote:having looked at the weapons.json the scav's weapons seems to use the same modifiers as the players so machine-guns use anti personnel, cannons user all rounder, flamer uses flame etc same seems to apply to modifiers for buildings as well.
That's not what I mean. I want to know, when I shoot at the scavengers, what modifier is used to my weapon for the calculation of the damage that I do to the scavengers. If it would be for example "Legged", the modifier for the cannons would be 60 and for the machine guns 120. That would explain why the light cannon is worse against the scavengers in comparison to the HMG even with comparable damage values.
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by alfred007 »

Bethrezen wrote:hummm.... maybe if the accuracy was improved some perhaps but with the current accuracy light cannons perform worse then heavy machine-guns when they have only 1 damage upgrade the difference is subtle yes but the difference is enough to be noticeable,
I think I found the reason why the light cannon is doing worse in comparison to the HMG when the light cannon has only one damage upgrade. If the normal calculation would give a result that a weapon would deal no damage, it deals a minimum damage of one-third of its base damage. For example, if the weapon has a damage per round of 30 after modifier but the enemy has an armour of 50 the weapon will deal a damage of 10 per round. And that's the fact for the HMG against the NP hard structures. Machine guns have a modifier of 25 against hard structures. So the HMG would deal a damage of 8 against a hard structure with an armour of 15. The result would be no damage and in this case, the one-third-rule takes place and the HMG deals a damage of 10 per round. The light cannon with one damage upgrade deals a damage of 11 per round. And because of the higher ROF of the HMG, the light cannon is remarkable worse against hard structures what a better accuracy can't compensate. The light cannon is only slightly better against the NP units. So for insane difficulty, I suggest we give the light cannon still two damage upgrades but activate the ground reinforcements of the NP. But only for insane difficulty, not for the other difficulties.
Bethrezen wrote:i don't know about you but i never did try out what it would be like having reinforcements come in from off screen in addition to the new factory
Me too. Until now I didn't try it.

Edit: The one-third-rule does not only takes place if the result would be no damage but also if the calculated damage is lower than one-third of the base damage. This means a weapon with a base damage of 30 is always doing a minimum damage of 10 per round. Only if the calculated damage is higher than 10 the calculated damage is used.
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by Berserk Cyborg »

alfred007 wrote:
Bethrezen wrote:having looked at the weapons.json the scav's weapons seems to use the same modifiers as the players so machine-guns use anti personnel, cannons user all rounder, flamer uses flame etc same seems to apply to modifiers for buildings as well.
That's not what I mean. I want to know, when I shoot at the scavengers, what modifier is used to my weapon for the calculation of the damage that I do to the scavengers. If it would be for example "Legged", the modifier for the cannons would be 60 and for the machine guns 120. That would explain why the light cannon is worse against the scavengers in comparison to the HMG even with comparable damage values.
Either legged or wheels (propulsion.json):

Code: Select all

"BaBaLegs": {
        "buildPoints": 15,
        "deceleration": 450,
        "id": "BaBaLegs",
        "name": "BaBaLegs",
        "speed": 200,
        "spinAngle": 45,
        "spinSpeed": 450,
        "turnSpeed": 225,
        "type": "Legged",
        "weight": 10
    },
    "BaBaProp": {
        "buildPoints": 15,
        "id": "BaBaProp",
        "name": "BaBaProp",
        "speed": 200,
        "type": "Wheeled",
        "weight": 10
    },
Enabled the reinforcement group for insane difficulty only.
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by Bethrezen »

I think I found the reason why the light cannon is doing worse in comparison to the HMG when the light cannon has only one damage upgrade. If the normal calculation would give a result that a weapon would deal no damage, it deals a minimum damage of one-third of its base damage. For example, if the weapon has a damage per round of 30 after modifier but the enemy has an armour of 50 the weapon will deal a damage of 10 per round. And that's the fact for the HMG against the NP hard structures. Machine guns have a modifier of 25 against hard structures. So the HMG would deal a damage of 8 against a hard structure with an armour of 15. The result would be no damage and in this case, the one-third-rule takes place and the HMG deals a damage of 10 per round. The light cannon with one damage upgrade deals a damage of 11 per round. And because of the higher ROF of the HMG, the light cannon is remarkable worse against hard structures what a better accuracy can't compensate. The light cannon is only slightly better against the NP units. So for insane difficulty, I suggest we give the light cannon still two damage upgrades but activate the ground reinforcements of the NP. But only for insane difficulty, not for the other difficulties.
Edit: The one-third-rule does not only takes place if the result would be no damage but also if the calculated damage is lower than one-third of the base damage. This means a weapon with a base damage of 30 is always doing a minimum damage of 10 per round. Only if the calculated damage is higher than 10 the calculated damage is used.
Interesting I wondered why light cannons where doing worse then heavy machine-guns even though they had comparable values, I guess that would also explain why flamers where doing next to no damage against new paradigm structure because it's damage was so low that ultimately it was doing zero damage by the time you factors in armour and modifiers and was therefore invoking the one-third-rule, but since the damage of flamers was so low it was only doing like 8 damage.

I guess the obvious solution then is to slightly increase the damage and / or modifiers of weapons that would otherwise deal no damage when you factor in enemy armour and modifiers thereby avoiding invoking the one-third-rule in the first place.

which means increasing the damage and / or modifiers on heavy machine-guns and flamers and light cannons.

so for the flamer and machine-guns I'd increase the hard modifier to say 50 and maybe increase the damage by 10 as well because there hard points seem to have armour of 15 so for the heavy machine gun that would be

40 damage - 15 armour = 25
with a hard modifier of 50 that 25 / 2 = 12.5 damage per shot
12.5 x 107 = 1337.5 damage per min vs there hard points

for the flamer that would be
46 damage - 15 = 31
with a hard modifier of 50 that's 31 / 2 = 15.5 damage per shot not including the dot
15.5 x 34 = 527 damage per min not including the dot vs there hard points

and for the light cannon I'd increase the damage back to 30 but decrease the rate of fire to 45 then with 2 damage upgrades that would be
48 damage - 15 = 33 damage per shot since all rounder has a hard modifier of 100
33 x 45 = 1485 damage per min vs there hard points

with its current values its 32 - 15 = 17 damage per shot since all rounder has a hard modifier of 100 17 x 60 = 1020 damage per min vs there hard points.
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by alfred007 »

With a base damage of 30, a ROf of 45 and two damage upgrades the light cannon is doing the following damage against half-tracked scorpion tanks:

30 + two upgrades of 30 % each = 48
48 x 110 % (weaponmodifer) = 53 (rounded up by the game)
53 - 12 = 41
41 x 45 (ROF) = 1845

In comparison, the lancer with the current values in the camBalance mod:

120 + one upgrade of 25 % = 150
150 x 120 % (weaponmodifier) = 180
180 - 12 = 176
176 x 10 (ROF) = 1760

As you can see, the light cannon with two damage upgrades would be stronger than the lancer with one damage upgrade. These values are making the light cannon too strong.
Bethrezen wrote:with its current values its 32 - 15 = 17 damage per shot since all rounder has a hard modifier of 100 17 x 60 = 1020 damage per min vs there hard points.
The HMG is doing a damage of 10 per round (one-third-rule), with a ROF of 107 you get a damage per minute of 1070. That's only slightly more than the light cannon with two damage upgrades. Against the NP half-tracked scorpion tanks the HMG is doing the same damage per minute because of the one-third-rule.

The light cannon with a modifier of 110 is doing 35 (110 x 32 rounded down by the game) - 12 = 23 damage per round resulting in a damage of 23 x 60 = 1392 1380 per minute against half-tracked scorpion tanks.

I think with two damage upgrades the light cannon is good enough as a viable alternative to the HMG with the current values.

Edit: Corrected wrong light cannon damage per minute
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by Bethrezen »

The point i was trying to make though is that you want to tune the damage up just enough to avoid invoking the one third rule, because if you are invoking the one third rule then you have obviously set the damage and / or modifiers to low.

so by increasing the damage of the flamer and heavy machine gun by 10 and increasing the modifier for hard structures to 50 you avoid doing that.

The same holds true for the light cannon increase the damage by 10 but decrease the rate of fire proportionally.

now I realise that the upgrades are a percentage and if you increase the base damage by 10 then that's going to increase the over all damage by more then 10 but when i said increase the damage by 10 I literally mean increase the damage by 10, so if the overall damage per shot of the heavy machine-gun is 30 with 3 upgrades then increase it to 40 obviously there are different ways to do that but the end effect is the same.

the other thing about this is that if you want to avoid invoking the one third rule then your units need to be doing a minimum of 40 damage per shot because there hard points have 15 armour and with a preposed hard modifier of 50% then that's

40 - 15 = 25
25 / 2 = 12.5 rounded to 13

of course with the current modifier of 25% then the damage increase needs to be a hell of a lot more then 10 to avoid invoking the one third rule but of courses doing that would make them to strong vs there units, so you would fix one problem but cause another my suggestion largely avoids that.

now as far as the light cannon goes I figured that reducing the rate of fire by 15 would be enough to maintain the right balance but if not then it could always be turned down a touch more to say 40, as a value of 15 was an educated guess because I'm not sure of the exact ratio between damage and rate of fire but i figure its probably somewhere in the region of about 2 to 1 or maybe 1.5 to 1

so 1 point of damage is worth something like 2 or may be 1.5 points on rate of fire.

[edit]
oh also i was calculating against there hard points not there units, so if you run these calculations vs there medium units then yes it does mean doing slightly more damage vs there units because the scorpion body I think only has a base armour of 12 armour where the hard points have 15 but in order to avoid invoking the one third rule you need to bump up the damage just enough to avoid invoking it against the most heavily armoured target winch in this case is there hard points which will then stop you invoking it vs any target since there units all have less armour then there structures, or they do till you start adding armour upgrades that is.

but if doing slightly more damage vs there units proves to be a problem then just turn down the modifiers against there units a touch to bring the damage back down.

also the light cannon with 2 upgrades cant be stronger then the lancer with 1 since the base damage of the lancer is 160 and while i get that in the current iteration of the mod the base damage for the lancer is 120 not 160 that's probably irrelevant at this point as the lancer is probably going to need adjusting some more anyway, because even at 256 damage and a rate of fire of 10 lancers on alpha 10 have a hard time vs the new paradigm heavy tanks which are using tracks, heavy body and heavy cannons which make them extremely difficult to destroy especially since there are so many of them, so actually I reckon a base damage of 120 might actually make the lancer a bit to weak, more over the real problem with the lancer on beta is the vtol lancers not the ground based lancers the ground based lancer where actually ok, and can be controlled by simply adjusting when and where you get the upgrades for both the damage and armour.

another though occurs once the heavy cannon has been fixed and is almost as strong as lancers 256 damage on lancers might actually need increasing or you may not actually be able to kill the new paradigm tanks on alpha 10 fast enough, which will result in you getting your backside handed to you, but of course this is something we can asses once we get that far but its something worth keeping in mind.

as far as lancer being overpowered against the new paradigms structures that can be sorted out by slightly reducing the modifiers against structures, while still leaving them stronger against there units which logically speaking is actually a more sensible way to go rather then just flat out nurfing there damage against all targets.

so actually i would probably leave lancer at 256 damage on alpha because otherwise you are going to make them to weak, I'd then reduce the anti tank structure modifiers a bit to stop lancer being so overpowered vs there structures and then to avoid lancers getting to strong to quickly vs the collective, I'd just stagger the damage upgrades on beta.

ultimately this is an eminently more sensible way to go as it gives you more scope for balancing the cannons as this allows you to have a bigger difference between them.
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