Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

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Berserk Cyborg
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by Berserk Cyborg »

Going to start trying Alpha 6 with the balance mod. Looks like I already made the initial research changes for the bot players and documented most of the research granted in this mission, so there is that. Updated the mod's libcampaign to match current master.

The initial wave of units can be delayed with well placed trucks repairing tank-traps and towers, at least until the cannon units come along. Non-hardcrete structures are fairly easy for the NP to bust through. On the other hand, hardcrete base structures seem to hold up fairly well. Again, a bunch of medium-cannon units will quickly whittle them down so be careful of that.

Cobra body is pretty much necessary if you don't want your units destroyed in few hits. I only just cleared out the SE scavenger base and it brought more resistance than I first thought, at least without using mortars and relatively low experience units.

Anyway, these are my initial observations. I'll be testing the medium-cannon, rocket-pod, lancer, and bunker-buster when I resume from my save.

camBalance.wz
Berg wrote: If you change a unit design then the factory stops making the old design (even if you make it the same template).
This is normal.
Well, yeah, that should be expected. Selecting it, and not changing the design, causes the factory to stop making it.
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Eugen
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by Eugen »

Berserk Cyborg wrote: 01 Oct 2018, 21:40 Going to start trying Alpha 6 with the balance mod.
Excuse me please, what "balance mod" is being talked about? Where can I see what changes it brings to the original play?
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by alfred007 »

Eugen wrote:
Berserk Cyborg wrote:Going to start trying Alpha 6 with the balance mod.
Excuse me please, what "balance mod" is being talked about? Where can I see what changes it brings to the original play?
This "balance mod" is a try from Berserk Cyborg, Bethrezen and me to give the game a completely new balance. Scavengers are too weak (especially in the later levels), lancer and assault gun are overpowered, cannons are underpowered and so on. We started with alpha 01 and made some changes to the scavengers and to the order the first artifacts are researched. If you are able to read the code you can see the changes in the files that are included in the mod by comparing them with the original ones. If not, give me some time. Tomorrow is a holiday in Germany and I can give you a conclusion of what we have done so far.

This mod is far away from being published. We are just at the beginning and it will be a lot of work until we will have a working new balance.
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by Berserk Cyborg »

Eugen wrote: Excuse me please, what "balance mod" is being talked about? Where can I see what changes it brings to the original play?
Yeah, what alfred007 said above. We're attempting to improve the balance/stats as we go from mission to mission. But its a big project and will take some time to finish, if ever.
...

Ok, so here are my first observations using 9 low-experience units and testing them against the
LZ reinforcements and the surrounding hard structures with all weapon upgrades researched in this mission.

-Lancer-
Takes about 6-7 lancer rockets to kill the NP medium cannon units. Has little HP so the player
will need to retreat and keep their distance to beat other units. Takes awhile to reload.
Against hard structures the lancer does almost nothing now, which is good. It would probably
take 100+ lancer rockets to destroy a medium-cannon hardpoint.

-Rocket Pod-
Same as lancer except it is way, way faster at destroying units. I guess that is because
the rocket-pod gets all its reload and damage upgrades on this mission. We likely will need to think
about pushing some of its research into later missions like we did with slow rockets.

-Bunker buster-
Same as ever. Just not as powerful because we don't get all the slow rocket research on Alpha 6 anymore.
It is able to destroy a medium-cannon hardpoint in two hits. Very weak and takes awhile to reload like before.

-Medium cannon-
Does a fair amount of damage to units and structures with every hit. Can absorb many hits before being killed. Anything not a medium body or above is going to have a bad time going against it. Fits an all-rounder weapon role well. Seems to do less damage than I would want but the last cannon damage upgrade is in Alpha 8 so that would likely alleviate that.

In my opinion, a small group of rocket pods is devastating at this state in the game and we'll have to stagger its research like we did with the slow rockets.
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by alfred007 »

I think I will have a short look at the latest changes you made for alpha 05 (haven't done that yet) and join you the next days with testing.
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by alfred007 »

@Eugen
Here is an overview of the changes we made in comparison with the latest master version, not in comparison with version 3.2.3. If I forget something Berserk Cyborg should correct me. I'm just listing the changes that will have an effect to gameplay until alpha 06. We made some changes for weapons that the player gets in later levels but because we didn't test these changes I won't list them here.

Stats:
Weapons:
Scavengers:
We give the Scavengers the same MG's like the player has. MG, TwinMG and Heavy MG with the same stats. The special Scavenger MG got removed.
Flamer: Damage reduced to 8 from 25, ROF increased to 33 from 5, longRange increased to 800 from 384, periodicalDamage reduced to 8 from 10, periodicalDamageRadius increased to 80 from 32, periodicalDamageTime reduced to 40 from 90
Tower MG: Damage reduced to 14 from 16, longRange reduced to 900 from 960

Player:
Light Cannon: Damage reduced to 20 from 30, ROF increased to 60 from 15
Medium Cannon: Damage reduced to 40 from 45, ROF increased to 30 from 13
Heavy Cannon: Damage increased to 80 from 70, ROF increased to 15 from 12
Flamer: Damage reduced to 12 from 30, ROF increased to 27 from 5, longRange increased to 600 from 384, periodicalDamage reduced to 14 from 15, periodicalDamageRadius increased to 100 from 32, periodicalDamageTime reduced to 50 from 60
Bombard: Damage increased to 90 from 80
Lancer: Damage reduced to 120 from 160

MG Bunker: LongRange increased to 830 from 768
Twin MG Bunker: LongRange increased to 830 from 768
Heavy MG Bunker: LongRange reduced to 860 from 960
New: Flame Tower; MG Tower (in addition to the Heavy MG Tower)

Weaponmodifier:
Implementing the new weaponEffect ALL ROUNDER with the following values:
Half-Tracked: 110
Hover: 120
Legged: 60
Lift: 40
Tracked: 105
Wheeled: 115

ANTI PERSONNEL:
Legged: Reduced to 120 from 125
Tracked: Reduced to 60 from 75

ANTI TANK:
Half-Tracked: Reduced to 120 from 125
Hover: Reduced to 80 from 125
Legged: Reduced to 35 from 75
Tracked: Reduced to 115 from 125

ARTILLERY ROUND:
Hover: Reduced to 120 from 150
Legged: Reduced to 150 from 200
Tracked: Reduced to 80 from 100
Wheeled: Increased to 130 from 100

FLAMER:
Half-Tracked: Reduced to 75 from 80
Hover: Reduced to 100 from 150
Legged: Reduced to 130 from 150
Tracked: Reduced to 60 from 85
Wheeled: Reduced to 80 from 100

Structuremodifier:
Implementing the new weaponEffect ALL ROUNDER with the following values:
BUNKER: 75
HARD: 100
MEDIUM: 115
SOFT: 130

ANTI PERSONNEL:
BUNKER: Reduced to 40 from 100
HARD: Reduced to 25 from 75
MEDIUM: Reduced to 65 from 100
SOFT: Reduced to 125 from 200

ANTI TANK:
BUNKER: Reduced to 35 from 40
HARD: Reduced to 20 from 55
MEDIUM: Increased to 75 from 50

BUNKER BUSTER:
MEDIUM: Increased to 200 from 100

FLAMER:
HARD: Increased to 40 from 5
MEDIUM: Increased to 140 from 100
SOFT: Increased to 160 from 150

Structures:
Some minor changes in some structures I don‘t list in detail

Changes in the levels:

Generally:
Damage and ROF upgrades for the player are split up. You are not receiving automatically the upgrades from the first to the third after you researched the artifact. New artifacts have been added for this.

Alpha 01
Scavengers get first MG damage upgrade and first MG ROF upgrade
The sequence of artifacts found is changed
Factory throttle of Scavenger factories is decreased

Alpha 02
Scavengers get first flamer damage upgrade and first flamer ROF upgrade
Factory throttle of Scavenger factories is decreased
Scavenger factories are producing units with Twin MG

Alpha 03
Scavengers get second MG damage upgrade
More Scavenger defence structures
Already existing Scavengers on the map are using the Twin MG
New Scavenger base in the north including a factory producing Scavengers with the Heavy MG
The artifact is now hidden in the factory
Because of the higher difficulty, the timer is set to 25 minutes for the off-world mission

Alpha 04
Scavengers get second flamer damage upgrade
Factories are producing units with the Heavy MG
Already existing Scavengers on the map are using the Twin MG
New artifact for the second flamer damage upgrade
Artifact for the Light Cannon now here

Alpha 05
Scavengers get the first flamer range upgrade and the third MG damage upgrade
Removed NP upgrades: First factory upgrade, first cyborg factory upgrade, first vehicle metals upgrade, first cyborg metals upgrade, third flamer damage upgrade, first mortar damage upgrade, first rocket accuracy upgrade, first slow rocket damage upgrade and the third and second repair facility upgrade
New Scavenger base in the southeast including a factory
Only for insane difficulty: NP ground reinforcements from the north
Already existing Scavengers on the map are using the Heavy MG
Replace the Light Cannon artifact in the Scavenger factory by the third flamer damage upgrade
Moving the artifact from the NP HQ to the NP research lab
Decrease the NP factory throttle

Alpha 06
In progress
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by Eugen »

@alfred007
Thanks! Very interesting. Maybe it is going to be a good balance mod in the end.
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by Eugen »

I can't submit a bug - cannot log in.

Flamers do not shoot while moving. warzone2100-master-20180928-122314-de6b592_x86_portable
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by Berserk Cyborg »

Eugen wrote: 03 Oct 2018, 19:02 I can't submit a bug - cannot log in.

Flamers do not shoot while moving. warzone2100-master-20180928-122314-de6b592_x86_portable
Oh, were you talking about the campaign flamers in that other thread? The topics in that subforum are mostly for skirmish/multiplayer (where the flamer weapons do shoot on move).

I don't think it would change much of anything if I make them to shoot on move... campaign flamers will
still be almost useless. Just need to remove fireOnMove from the weapon stats.
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by Eugen »

Berserk Cyborg wrote: 03 Oct 2018, 22:24 I don't think it would change much of anything if I make them to shoot on move... campaign flamers will
still be almost useless. Just need to remove fireOnMove from the weapon stats.
Thanks! At last now I understand how to change weapon stats :D

I made flamer not so useless, changing "firepause" from 120 to 50.

I insist that every item (weapon and body) should be useful and there should not be obsolete items the time you research them.
I also addeed a Bug body to my inventory from the very first mission editting stats in savegame files.

I do it by "cheating" but hope the developers will implement this idea (no useless items whatsoever) in release versions.
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by Eugen »

Another bug which makes me swear every time :ireful:

1) There is no "hold position" command.

Imagine a mobile sensor turret with assigned mortars in Alpha 6 mission. You put the group behind the walls and want it to defend agains initial attacks from the New Paradigm.

Because of the fact that there is no "hold position", your sensor turret is always trying to pursue the enemy leaving its position, therefore exposing itself and mortars to heavy fire.

2) Update: another bug
Patrol command doesn't work. If constantly encountering enemy, the group would ignore patrol area and expand further and further.

P.S. Using warzone2100-master-20180928-122314-de6b592_x86_portable
Currently running warzone2100-master-20180928-122314-de6b592_x86_portable.
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by alfred007 »

You can find the discussion about the removed secondary orders here.

At the moment we have a primary hold order (press "h")that isn't exactly working like the old secondary one. Bethrezen and I discussed this also several times during testing the campaign and we are both missing the old secondary hold order.

Forgon made a patch in ticket #4832 so that flamer and AA units can shoot while moving. I think your idea of giving the bug body from the very beginning won't be implemented because of the reason I told in my answer to your post.
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by Berserk Cyborg »

Think I solved the rocket-pod being too powerful. I reduced the damage upgrades like we did with the slow-rockets and made them fire slightly less often (rof of 130 as opposed to 150). I also forgot to upgrade the scavenger units on map and in factory for Alpha 6 which is now being done. Git repo with the changes so far.

We could unlock the bug body as early as Alpha 5 in the mod.

camBalance.wz
Edit: Actually include the script changes now :oops:
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by Eugen »

Berserk Cyborg wrote: 06 Oct 2018, 17:05 We could unlock the bug body as early as Alpha 5 in the mod.
I already wrote to Alfred about the Bug body. Let me elaborate here also:

"The New Paradigm has been supplying Scavengers with weapons since our arrival"

So giving Bug in the first mission (say near the first enemy oil derrick together with MG bullets) will mean that the Project collected the technology from Scavengers who recieved it from the NP.
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by alfred007 »

@Berserk Cyborg
You can read my answer to Eugen here.

A little bit off-topic: How is accuracy working actually? I found a thread with a discussion what system should be used to calculate accuracy. But in the end, if I understand it right, accuracy is set to 100% except for the long range. For this range, a value is set in the weapons.js file in stats. I've thought a few things about accuracy but before I post it I want to be sure that I understood the current system right.
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