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 »

I don't think so. Insane should be a real competition even for experienced player. And if you give them 5 minutes on top it would be no longer a competition to win beta 2 with a full clear of the map
One small problem with that assertion the issue of doing a full clear of beta 2 is not matter of it simply being challenging to do, the issue is that currently it's not possible at all no matter how good you are, minimum you need at least another 1 to 2 minutes.

When i tried I took 7 of my strongest units, 1 bunker buster, 6 lancers, a special commander, and 2 repair trucks, and while i was able to eliminate all there units and structures, in the time limit i was timed out before I had a chance to drive down into the crater to recover my units, so like i said minimum you need at least another 1 to 2 minutes, and ideally no more than 5 minutes.

Beta 03

Ok so i just started this level and immediately I loose 3 units to the collective lancer VTOLs those lancer VTOLs are way way way overpowered and if they get past your air defence or if like me you don't have any air defence because you didn't have any resources to build any on Beta 01 then you have absolutely no chance of defending your self what so ever and that needs to be addressed sharpish, because that is effectively going to make the level all but impossible to complete because they are so overpowered that just 2 of those have a 100% kill rate against even heavy body tracked units and if they are coming every 2 minutes, then its not going to take them long to demolish my entire army given that even your most heavily armoured units can't survive against them.

That is completely unfair even player owned tank killer VTOLs can't kill the computes most heavily armoured units in 2 shots and if that's what there lancer VTOLs can do now i dread to think what there tank killer VTOLs can do later on.

Also I can't be sure I'll need to check but I think the spawn point for there VTOLs is also wrong, on Beta 3 the spawn point for there VTOLs is up near there base i don't think there VTOLs should be appearing at the Beta 01 spawn point on Beta 03 as far as i can remember all the collective VTOLs use use the northern spawn point on Beta 03, if the Beta 01 VTOL spawn point is used on Beta 03 then i think only cluster bombers coming to attack your base come from there, I think the lancer VTOLs always come form the northern spawn point, but like I said I'll need to load up Beta 03 on v1.10 again and double check.

Oh also i tried out doing both research and building AAA units on Beta 02 and you can do 1 or the other but you don't have enough resources to do both, so my original assertion that you need to be given more resources at the start of Beta 01 stands because you need to have your AAA units built before Beta 03 starts especially given how hugely overpowered there lancer VTOLs are currently or you are going to get demolished and even with a squad of mobile AAA to protect your ground units I'm still not sure that would enough.
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Berserk Cyborg
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by Berserk Cyborg »

Beta 2 is as challenging as Alpha 3 (which is to say not much). I do agree that maybe Beta 3 could be a bit too much to handle at the beginning so I pushed 85d9d5dc1ee76716d32c53027a30a5c11b0bfb75. It balances the weaker start ambush by making the VTOLs more frequent (and have a west and north spawn).
Bethrezen
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

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Berserk Cyborg wrote:Beta 2 is as challenging as Alpha 3 (which is to say not much). I do agree that maybe Beta 3 could be a bit too much to handle at the beginning so I pushed 85d9d5dc1ee76716d32c53027a30a5c11b0bfb75. It balances the weaker start ambush by making the VTOLs more frequent (and have a west and north spawn).
Oddly enough the ground units aren't really the problem because i already have 2 squads of heavy body tracked lancers sitting at the entrance to the crater so they get obliterated in seconds anyway, the main problem is that there lancer vtols are simply doing to much damage there lancer tanks are bad enough but at least you have a chance against those but against there lancer vtols you have no chance at all because just 2 hits is enough to take out even your most heavily armoured units.

Admittedly this is not the first time i have encountered this issue, older versions of the game had this problem to until i reported it and it got fixed. so once again lancer/tank killer vtols are going to need there damage reducing slightly because they are to powerful, either that or the player units need better armour because otherwise every time there lancer vtols come the player has a 100% chance to loose units and that is going to result in the player getting demolished and that is unfair and unbalance.
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by Bethrezen »

question how hard would it be to deal with the units getting stuck when trying to retreat for repair because other units are in the way issue, because this is another problem that has plagued the game for a long time, and its pretty annoying loosing units for no other reason than they can't retreat because the rest of the group are in the way and wont move and let them past.

I can understand this happening in a confined space because there is no room to move but it's happening even when you have lots of room to manoeuvre because on beta 3 when assaulting there first base i keep loosing units to there lancers even though my units are set to retreat at medium damage, and its all down to the fact that they can't get past my other units, which is pretty irritating to put it mildly.
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by Bethrezen »

Ok tried out master warzone2100-master-20171221-225330-85d9d5d

No dice there Lancer VTOLs are still way overpowered and are still one shotting my troops.

[edit]

Ok so given the issues I've been having with the VTOLs on Beta 03 I've been taking a closer look at how the VTOLs where set up on v1.10 and here is what I have managed to glean so far.

The first attack comes after about 2 minutes, this seems inconsistent and it doesn't always come after 2 minutes but when they do come they always seem to show up around the same time 1h:58m:30s, and there are always 4 cluster bombers set to attack the oil well that is in front of the command centre.

Now if you don’t manage to shoot them down then they will continue to attack various parts of your base on an interval of about 70 to 80 seconds, again this seems somewhat inconsistent and they don’t always attack your base every 70 to 80 seconds sometimes after the initial attack it can be several minutes before they show up again.

If you manage to stop there initial attack and destroy all the cluster bombers, then the next vtol attack wont come till around 1h:45m which is a grace period of around 13 minutes.

If you are successful in shooting down there VTOLs the computer will either spawn 4 more cluster bomber vtols and attack your base or 4 lancer vtols which will attack your troops this seems to be random, as for the interval of attack it seems to be however long it takes to fly across the map rearm and then fly back out now obviously this varies a bit depending on whether the computer is using cluster bombers or lancer vtols because both seem to have slightly different reload times, but typically its usually between 1 to 2 minutes give or take.

Something else I notice is that on v1.10 the collectives lancer vtols don’t seem as accurate as they are on master nor are they are where near as powerful, if on master I use the give all cheat at the start of Beta 03 to allow me to access lancer vtols and then go in to the design window and crate a lancer vtol the damage value is set at 672 but if I do the same thing on v1.10 the damage value is only 240 which explains why the collective vtols are able to kill my units in just 2 hits on master because the damage value is almost 3 times higher than it is in v1.10 (2.8 times higher to be exact) and they are more accurate as well which explains how there lancer vtols are doing around 1000 points of damage per hit and i know they are doing around 1000 points of damage per hit because a heavy body tracked lancer has 1909hp on master and 2 hits is enough to take it out so they must be doing about 1000 points of damage per hit which is way way way to much there is no way there lancer vtols should be causing 50% damage per hit, so that is definitely something that needs to be addressed, again i get that insane isn't supposed to be easy but that is way over the top and totally unbalanced.

Even taking in to account the difficulty level scaling, and the fact that v1.10 has some missing lancer upgrades so the lancer VTOLs should be stronger on v1.10 than what they are, I still don't see how you can account for such a big discrepancy in power levels.
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by alfred007 »

Bethrezen wrote:One small problem with that assertion the issue of doing a full clear of beta 2 is not matter of it simply being challenging to do, the issue is that currently it's not possible at all no matter how good you are, minimum you need at least another 1 to 2 minutes.

When i tried I took 7 of my strongest units, 1 bunker buster, 6 lancers, a special commander, and 2 repair trucks, and while i was able to eliminate all there units and structures, in the time limit i was timed out before I had a chance to drive down into the crater to recover my units, so like i said minimum you need at least another 1 to 2 minutes, and ideally no more than 5 minutes.
I use an experienced commander tracked with mantis body, 7 tracked mantis lancers and 2 repair tanks (no trucks). And I had never a problem with winning this level by total annihilation. It is tricky with the lancer towers and it was often necessary to reload a saved game, but at the end I was always successfull.
And it is not necessary to move all your units to the crater. You need only one unit, that you can place short before the destroyed transporter. And with that you need only a few seconds to reach the transporter after you destroyed all structures and units of the collective.
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

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Bethrezen wrote: I can understand this happening in a confined space because there is no room to move but it's happening even when you have lots of room to manoeuvre because on beta 3 when assaulting there first base i keep loosing units to there lancers even though my units are set to retreat at medium damage, and its all down to the fact that they can't get past my other units, which is pretty irritating to put it mildly.
I'm no expert with pathfinding, but I think A* (which Warzone uses) does not care about things like unit density. All it tries to do is direct units along the shortest path possible which more or less leads to a collision nightmare. Something like Flowfield would help pathing immensely. Which, if I understand it correctly, is like invisible arrow vectors drawn on each tile, with cost gradients paired with those vectors (zero being the destinations and impassible stuff with infinite cost), and the units will have a hint where to steer/accelerate towards and make use of additional paths if some areas are congested.

It was suggested in viewtopic.php?f=32&t=12561. Probably would take weeks to months to implement so I would say it is not exactly easy to do.
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by Bethrezen »

I'm no expert with pathfinding, but I think A* (which Warzone uses) does not care about things like unit density. All it tries to do is direct units along the shortest path possible which more or less leads to a collision nightmare. Something like Flowfield would help pathing immensely. Which, if I understand it correctly, is like invisible arrow vectors drawn on each tile, with cost gradients paired with those vectors (zero being the destinations and impassible stuff with infinite cost), and the units will have a hint where to steer/accelerate towards and make use of additional paths if some areas are congested.

It was suggested in viewtopic.php?f=32&t=12561. Probably would take weeks to months to implement so I would say it is not exactly easy to do.
that's why i had suggested as a temporary fix until a better solution can be implemented just letting units that are triggered to retreat either by the retreat at medium/heavy damage controls or by the player clicking the go for repair button just pass through your other units this could in theory be done by turning off collisions for retreating units.

I know that's a really dirty solution that could lead to some weirdness like units driving through terrain for example, but given how complex pathing would be to fix this could at least alleviate the issue temporarily.
use an experienced commander tracked with mantis body, 7 tracked mantis lancers and 2 repair tanks (no trucks). And I had never a problem with winning this level by total annihilation. It is tricky with the lancer towers and it was often necessary to reload a saved game, but at the end I was always successfull.

And it is not necessary to move all your units to the crater. You need only one unit, that you can place short before the destroyed transporter. And with that you need only a few seconds to reach the transporter after you destroyed all structures and units of the collective.
Typically it's at there lancer towers where i come unstuck on beta 2 because they cause so much damage so quickly that actually it can take several minutes to get past them when you factor in time taken to get repaired because just a couple of hits is enough to take your units to critical damage and if you don't fall back for repair then you are going to get destroyed and obviously mobile repair units are slower at repairing your units then static repair bays are, but static repair bays have the disadvantage of not being able to move with your troops so its swings and roundabouts either way you loose more time than you can really afford to.

so far every attempt i have made to do a full clear results in me coming up short i can clear the map sure but i don't have enough time left to make it to the crash site.

also repair trucks and repair tanks are the same thing, if i meant builders i would have said builders :P perhaps i should have said mobile repair units instead.
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by Bethrezen »

Beta Campaign

General I'm of the opinion that Beta Campaign has some serious balance issues that need looking at.

There lancer VTOLs are way overpowered so much so that I'm having to use the double up cheat just to even the score, and make there attacks survivable and even with the double up cheat on they are still reducing what ever unit/units that get attacked to critical damage.

To a lesser extent there lancer tanks are also overpowered because on average its only taking there lancer tanks 4 hits to kill one of my units yet my lancer units have to inflict nearly twice as meany hits to kill one of there heavy body tracked units.

Thirdly I'm coming up against serious resource shortages, and I'm having to continually play catch up at least for the first 3 missions and possibly longer I don't know because Beta 3 is as far as I've gotten on master due to these issues, and i don't see me getting any further till these issues are addressed.

On Beta 1 I'm so short of resources I can't build AAA and or do any research, on Beta 2 I'm spending all my resources just trying to do the research from Beta 01, and on Beta 03 for about the first 40 or 50 minutes I have no resources either because I'm trying to build AAA finish off the remaining Beta 01 research and convert squad 3 back to mortars, combined with getting my units one shotted by there lancer VTOLs my units inability to retreat due to pathing issues and there incessant attacks by ground units, I'm getting crushed because my units are simply going down to quickly.

so I'm generally of the opinion that the player needs a little help, because the odds are stacked way to far in favour of the collective at the moment, now personally I'd be nerfing the collectives lancers a bit and I'd be giving the player more resources particularly on beta 01 so that the player isn't having to play catch up continually.
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by Berserk Cyborg »

Pushed 9de49658725bfaf6929befc6e47c87952ef00396.

Less kinetic armor, no thermal armor, 9000 power for insane only, and weaker rockets. Essentially the collective will be as tough as they were on Beta 3 starting around Beta 5-6. These are research changes so you would have to start over on Beta 1 again to see them.

To expand on that the Collective had dense composite alloy mk2 and HESH rocket mk2 by the time they were in Beta 3 which is probably why they were so overpowering.

Edit:
Issue #21 in the general issues topic fixed in 1595decca92330bd1c00b14bb884b23ae5c2b0d1.
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by alfred007 »

Berserk Cyborg wrote:Pushed 9de49658725bfaf6929befc6e47c87952ef00396.

Less kinetic armor, no thermal armor, 9000 power for insane only, and weaker rockets.
You are talking about less kinetic armor and changed the collective research in beta 1 from R-Vehicle-Metals03 to R-Vehicle-Metals04. Ain't that more kinetic armor? Or am I understanding something wrong? Same in all beta levels you edited in this commit.
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by Berserk Cyborg »

Yeah, I know it can be confusing when looking at it like that. The thermal armor upgrades depend on having R-Vehicle-Metals05 researched so those upgrades would pull in an extra kinetic alloy upgrade. I made them use R-Vehicle-Metals04 so as to keep slight research edge over the player. And that paired with less HESH rocket upgrades allows a smoother transition of difficulty across the first six Beta mission.
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by alfred007 »

I updated to master 797966b and started testing gamma 2.

I adjusted the assemblies and added 5 seconds to queue("enableReinforcements",) because the transporter had not left the map when the voice started.

There is one issue and two differences to 3.1.5. The issue is, that both Cyborg factories are producing with the same throttle, despite for one factory a throttle of 30 and for the other a throttle of 40 seconds is coded.

In 3.1.5 the timer was split into two parts. 70 minutes to destroy the silos and after that, the timer reset to 25 minutes for the rest of the level no matter how much time you had left from the first part. In master, we have 2 hours for both parts and the timer don't reset after the silos are destroyed. I think we should split the timer again into two parts with 75 minutes for the first and 30 minutes the second part because with insane difficulty you wouldn't have enough time for the second part with only 25 minutes with normal difficulty (= less than 17 minutes with insane difficulty).
And in 3.1.5 the nexus units retreat as soon as they are damaged. In master they fight until their death. In the labels.json file at position 5 we have healthRetreatPos. We should use that position, because it's more difficult to destroy the nexus units if they retreat, repair themselve and attack again.

The labels.json file with the changed assemblies and all log files are added. There are many log files because I restarted the game several times to adjust the assemblies.
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Berserk Cyborg
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by Berserk Cyborg »

Pushed some of those suggestions in f00ca92fa4b0f0814a6ce73fa2f44ad62a4129c5.

I have a crude working model for the retreat repair behavior (have not tested it much). With the mod below groups with the option to use it will retreat droids to whatever position is specified where they will wait and repair themselves (set at 75% health). It only applies to already placed droids on map, but it can be added to factory produced groups or "phantom factory" groups, if desired.

Edit:
See next post of mine for the mod.
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alfred007
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by alfred007 »

I looked into the code of your mod and found for gamma 2 that you send the nexus units to position 15 (hillRetreat) for autorepair. This is outside of the map of the first part. What I meant is position 5 (healthRetreatPos). This is in the SW base and makes more sense in my opinion.
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