Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

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alfred007
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by alfred007 »

In the end, the problem with the mortars is just one for one level: Alpha 05. From the end of Alpha 05 on you have the Cobra body and the problem is solved. I didn't reject all of your ideas, but the ones that would affect all units at all levels, to solve a problem for one weapon in one level. So we can start by decreasing the weight a little bit.

Even if the discussion about the range of the repair turret is an academic one, I've had a few thoughts. In the (theoretical and also unrealistic) case that you place your combat units in a perfect square around your repair unit, the numbers of units that can be repaired are the following.
Range 2: 24 (Repair unit in the middle of a 5x5 square)
Range 3: 48 (Repair unit in the middle of a 7x7 square) I don't know if the range is calculated by the real distance in the diagonal direction or by tiles. But even if it is calculated by the real distance, the number will be still over 40.
Range 6: 168!! (repair unit in the middle of a 13x13 square) And even if the distance in the diagonal direction is calculated by the real distance and the resulting number is a little bit lower, more than 120 units is ridiculous.

I admit these calculations are theoretical because these arrangements are unrealistic in a combat situation. But the number of units a repair unit could repair becomes way too high with a range of 6. That's why I say; if the changes can be made; as an interim solution we can increase the range to 4, but after the pathfinding problems are solved it should be never ever more than 3. And from the end of Alpha 05 on it's anyway a better idea to use repair facilities instead of repair units. Even without pathfinding problems.
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by Bethrezen »

the issue with your theoretical case though is that you are assuming a best case scenario where the repair units are in the centre of the group, however experience dictates that this is very rarely the case more over you are assuming that units are in a perfect square but again this is not realistic

if you imaging the range of the repair units shown as a red circle and then you assume that the repair unit is at the back of a group of say 40 units then you can see how you might actually need a range of about 6 tiles in order for them to be able to reach the units at the front of the group

now granted in a case where units at the front of the group are taking fire but the mobile repair unit cant reach the player could always manually intervene having said that however doing this in the middle of a fire fight is a major pain in the backside due to pathing issues and to be honest even if you are right about 6 tiles being the same range as the Twin MG personally i don't see a problem with it, now if you where talking about giving repair units the same reach as mortars for example then yes that would be a bit excessive but 4 to 6 tiles is perfectly reasonable i probably wouldn't do more that though because any more then that and it would be excessive.
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by alfred007 »

I think our positions are clear and because it's an academic discussion we should move it to a time when changing the range of repair units becomes a real option.
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by Bethrezen »

I think our positions are clear and because it's an academic discussion we should move it to a time when changing the range of repair units becomes a real option.
indeed

Alpha 05

This level seems fine now i would however make 1 small additional change, currently the research order for artefact 3 is like this

Artefact 3
  • Hardcrete
    • Mortar pit
    • Heavy Machinegun bunker
      • Heavy Machinegun hard point
    • Light cannon bunker
    • Light cannon hard point
    • Flamer bunker
    • Improved hardcrete
      • Improved hardcrete mk2
        • Improved hardcrete mk3
      • Reinforced base structure materials
        • Reinforced base structure materials mk2
          • Reinforced base structure materials mk3
However this makes no sense you don't have to research the Light Cannon Bunker before you can research the Light Cannon Hard Point so there is no reason to have the Heavy Machinegun bunker as a pre-requisite to research the Heavy Machinegun Hard Point so I would change the research order to.

Artefact 3
  • Hardcrete
    • Mortar pit
    • Heavy Machinegun bunker
    • Heavy Machinegun hard point
    • Light cannon bunker
    • Light cannon hard point
    • Flamer bunker
    • Improved hardcrete
      • Improved hardcrete mk2
        • Improved hardcrete mk3
      • Reinforced base structure materials
        • Reinforced base structure materials mk2
          • Reinforced base structure materials mk3
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by Bethrezen »

Alpha 06

Ok so I'm up to the bit where you get the first artefact and currently the research order for artefact 1 is like this.

Artefact 1
  • Medium cannon
    • Medium cannon hard point
  • Mini rocket pod
    • Mini Rocket Guard Tower
    • HE Mini Rockets
      • HE Mini Rockets 2
        • Fast Fire Mini Rockets
          • Fast Fire Mini Rockets 2
            • Fast Fire Mini Rockets 3
        • Lancer AT Rocket
          • Bunker buster rocket
          • HEAT Rocket warhead
          • Lancer Bunker
          • Lancer Hard Point
However this order is slow and inefficient and doesn't really make a lot of sense, so I would rearrange the research order like this.

Artefact 1
  • Medium cannon
    • Medium cannon hard point
  • Mini rocket pod
    • Mini Rocket Guard Tower
    • HE Mini Rockets
      • HE Mini Rockets 2
    • Fast Fire Mini Rockets
      • Fast Fire Mini Rockets 2
        • Fast Fire Mini Rockets 3
  • Lancer AT Rocket
    • HEAT Rocket warhead
    • Lancer Bunker
    • Lancer Hard Point
  • Bunker Buster Rocket
This seems like a more logical order to me and might actually make doing the research a bit quicker since you can research things concurrently and you don’t have to go through so many steps to get it done, I don’t know about any one else but I hate being kept waiting unnecessarily.

Ok so my first issues with Alpha 06, I notice that upon getting the engine upgrade it does basically nothing as you can see below.

Without the engine upgrade

Viper & Bug
Wheels - 1.37, 1.37
Halftracks - 1.17, 1.17
Tracks - 0.98, 0.98

Cobra
Wheels - 1.37, 1.37
Halftracks - 1.17, 1.17
Tracks - 0.75, 0.63

With engine upgrade

Viper & Bug
Wheels - 1.37, 1.37
Halftracks - 1.17, 1.17
Tracks - 0.98, 0.98

Cobra
Wheels - 1.37, 1.37
Halftracks - 1.17, 1.17
Tracks - 0.78, 0.66

The only effect that the engine upgrade had was on the cobra body with tracks

Without the engine upgrade - 0.75, 0.63
With the engine upgrade - 0.78, 0.66

It should be noted that the values above are only for the body and the propulsion unit because I wanted to observe how the engine upgrade actually worked having said this however in most cases adding the turret doesn't actually change these values because the weight of most turrets is not actually sufficient to alter the vehicles speed anyway.

Now looking at this we can deduce 2 things.

1.) While the engine upgrade does work the effect is so tiny that it's meaningless.

2.) Instead of increasing the maximum possible speed for a given propulsion method which is what I would expect the engine upgrade to do the engine upgrade acts more like a weight modifier, effectively reducing the weight of a given vehicle so that it can move faster, however since most vehicles you can build at this point in the game already move at the maximum possible speed for there given propulsion method because there weight is not sufficient to affect there speed this basically renders the engine upgrades pointless.

So how do we fix this? Well there are 3 ways I can think of

1.) You could increase the maximum possible speed of all propulsion methods to say 10.0 but then increase the weight of each turret, body and propulsion unit so that total vehicle weight really does effect vehicle speed, this would mean that when the engine upgrade is applied you would actually see a difference as the engine upgrade would work to reduce the weight of the vehicle allowing it to achieve a higher speed.

Thus a machine gun on tracks would still be able to bomb along at like 150 miles per hour because it doesn't weigh very much but a very heavy turret like the heavy cannon would only be able to achieve say 60 miles per hour on the same chassis because it is so much heavier.

This I believe was pumpkins original design intention even if they didn’t necessarily pull it off for what ever reason.

The down side to this however is that it would require a fair amount of work to fix which is why it probably hasn’t been done and why things are set-up the way that they are currently.

2.) you could change how the engine upgrades work and make the engine upgrade increase the maximum speed of a given propulsion method the issue here however is three fold.

a.) Doing this runs the risk of making light vehicles too fast, especially since the weight of most turrets is not currently sufficient to influence the speed of the vehicle.

b.) Doing this still doesn't address the core issue, the fact that the weight of all components needs adjusting so total vehicle weight really does affect the vehicles speed.

c.) you would still be required to adjust the weight of all components to make total vehicle weight really affect the vehicles speed, and of course doing this would entail a fair amount of work having said that I believe that it is work that does need to be done.

I also believe this method could be interpreted as pumpkins original design intention since the only real change between method 1 and 2 is how you actually apply the speed increase, although this way has the virtue of being somewhat more intuitive than the current set up because the upgrade does what you intuitively expect it to do, it makes your various propulsion methods faster instead of acting more like a weight modifier and effectively making your vehicles lighter.

Although functionally method 1 and 2 do more or less the same thing I think this is probably the method we should go for, since it makes the engine upgrades do what you intuitively expect them to do.

3.) You could remove engine upgrades and component/vehicle weight all together and simply give each vehicle type a fixed speed which is how most other RTS games handle things the problem though is that most other RTS games don’t have the ability to design your own vehicles so doing that could be tricky as you would need to reclassify every possible vehicle design into 1 of 3 categories light, medium and heavy and I'm not sure that doing that would really work or even be possible and/or desirable more over it goes against the original design of the game.

Plus it’s a really crude, clumsy, overly simplistic and amateurish way to address this problem that in the long run may well do more harm then good.

Which brings me nicely to my second issue weight is at this point a largely redundant stat that in the vast majority of cases either doesn't affect the speed of a vehicle at all, and where it does have an affect it either feels more like a balancing bug

Case and point

Viper
Halftracks without the engine upgrade - 1.17, 1.17
Halftracks with the engine upgrade - 1.17, 1.17

Viper
Mortar
Halftracks without the engine upgrade - 0.84, 0.63
Halftracks with the engine upgrade - 0.88, 0.66

Personally I don’t know why mortars speed is reduced because it shouldn’t be, clearly the mortar turrets is to heavy.

Or the effect is so small that it doesn't really make a difference anyway

Case and point

Cobra
Tracks without the engine upgrade - 0.75, 0.63
Tracks with the engine upgrade - 0.78, 0.66

Cobra
Medium cannon
Tracks without the engine upgrade - 0.56, 0.47
Tracks with the engine upgrade - 0.59, 0.49

Which brings me nicely to my third issue tracked propulsion, while tracks are good in a defensive battle due to the fact that tracked vehicles are tougher, on an assault mission which comprises about 95% of the missions in the game they are to slow to be practically useful, especially on insane where time is of the essence and you don’t really have time to dilly dally around waiting for your vehicles to get where you need them to be, yes in certain limited cases tracked vehicles are useful on an assault for example punching through an opponents defence but the fact of the matter is there are faster ways to go about doing that with lighter vehicles which move faster and get the job done just as quick and often times will actually be finished before your tracked units even arrive at the destination, so I really think the maximum speed of tracks needs to be increased, but of course if you increase the speed of tracks then that also means that you have to increase the speed of the other propulsion methods by a similar amount so what I would do perhaps something like this.

Hover - 2.50
Wheels - 2.25,
Halftracks - 1.75
Tracks - 1.25

That's about as much as i have so far for alpha 06 i still need to try out the other weapons and see how they are after you tweaked them.
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by alfred007 »

Bethrezen wrote: Alpha 06

Ok so I'm up to the bit where you get the first artefact and currently the research order for artefact 1 is like this.

Artefact 1
  • Medium cannon
    • Medium cannon hard point
  • Mini rocket pod
    • Mini Rocket Guard Tower
    • HE Mini Rockets
      • HE Mini Rockets 2
        • Fast Fire Mini Rockets
          • Fast Fire Mini Rockets 2
            • Fast Fire Mini Rockets 3
        • Lancer AT Rocket
          • Bunker buster rocket
          • HEAT Rocket warhead
          • Lancer Bunker
          • Lancer Hard Point
However this order is slow and inefficient and doesn't really make a lot of sense, so I would rearrange the research order like this.

Artefact 1
  • Medium cannon
    • Medium cannon hard point
  • Mini rocket pod
    • Mini Rocket Guard Tower
    • HE Mini Rockets
      • HE Mini Rockets 2
    • Fast Fire Mini Rockets
      • Fast Fire Mini Rockets 2
        • Fast Fire Mini Rockets 3
  • Lancer AT Rocket
    • HEAT Rocket warhead
    • Lancer Bunker
    • Lancer Hard Point
  • Bunker Buster Rocket
This seems like a more logical order to me and might actually make doing the research a bit quicker since you can research things concurrently and you don’t have to go through so many steps to get it done, I don’t know about any one else but I hate being kept waiting unnecessarily.
I agree that the research order is a little bit too slow. From a logical point of view it makes sense to make the Mini Rocket Pod a prerequisite of the Lancer so I suggest the following research order.

Artefact 1
  • Medium cannon
    • Medium cannon hard point
  • Mini rocket pod
    • Mini Rocket Guard Tower
    • HE Mini Rockets
      • HE Mini Rockets 2
        • Fast Fire Mini Rockets
          • Fast Fire Mini Rockets 2
            • Fast Fire Mini Rockets 3
    • Lancer AT Rocket
      • Bunker buster rocket
      • HEAT Rocket warhead
      • Lancer Bunker
      • Lancer Hard Point
Because you have also still to research the tracked propulsion artifact all three weapons would be available at the time you have finished the research of the tracked propulsion.

The issue with the engine upgrade is a difficult point. You can find the formula how speed is calculated here. I'm no friend of increasing the maximum speed of the propulsions. Insane difficulty got implemented to make the game more competitive and higher maximum speeds would make it easier. That makes no sense in my eyes. At the same time I agree that it's too soon that wheeled and especially half-tracked units are moving with their maximum speed. And tracked units are also a little bit too slow.
Bethrezen wrote:... 2.) Instead of increasing the maximum possible speed for a given propulsion method which is what I would expect the engine upgrade to do the engine upgrade acts more like a weight modifier, effectively reducing the weight of a given vehicle so that it can move faster, however since most vehicles you can build at this point in the game already move at the maximum possible speed for there given propulsion method because there weight is not sufficient to affect there speed this basically renders the engine upgrades pointless. ...
The engine upgrade increases the engine power but only by 5 percent. That explains the low effect on the unit speed. I think increasing it to 10 or maybe even 15 percent with reducing the speed before the upgrade could make sense.
Bethrezen wrote:... the fact that the weight of all components needs adjusting so total vehicle weight really does affect the vehicles speed. ...
And I think that's what we have to do even it will be a lot of work. We can also adjust the power output of the bodies so that light bodies doesn't reach the maximum speed so soon.

One question is if the wheeled units in Alpha 01 should still move with maximum speed from the very beginning or not. I think wheeled units with light bodies should move with their maximum speed even if the engine upgrade would be useless for them, but with the half-tracked propulsion the player gets in Alpha 04 they shouldn't. I have no idea how much the values of the half-tracked propulsion have to be changed to become a remarkable effect. And we should make an agreement on what values we want to set the speeds before we start to mess around with the stats.

Edit: I forgot: From tomorrow on I'm with my parents so I will have no time for testing. I will be in the forum from time to time to be still a part of the discussion.
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by Berserk Cyborg »

As requested, increased mortar weapon HP (around truck/repair level), reduced mortar weight to 1750, HMG hardpoint doesn't depend on the HMG bunker, and made lancer available after the first mini-rocket damage upgrade.

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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by WZ2100ModsFAn »

all of the tickets are fixed and 3.3 will come out soon?
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by pastdue »

WZ2100ModsFAn wrote: 21 Dec 2018, 02:43 all of the tickets are fixed and 3.3 will come out soon?
Please test the Latest Development Builds from here: https://github.com/Warzone2100/warzone2 ... ent-builds
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by Bethrezen »

I agree that the research order is a little bit too slow. From a logical point of view it makes sense to make the Mini Rocket Pod a prerequisite of the Lancer so I suggest the following research order.

Artefact 1
  • Medium cannon
    • Medium cannon hard point
  • Mini rocket pod
    • Mini Rocket Guard Tower
    • HE Mini Rockets
      • HE Mini Rockets 2
        • Fast Fire Mini Rockets
          • Fast Fire Mini Rockets 2
            • Fast Fire Mini Rockets 3
    • Lancer AT Rocket
      • Bunker buster rocket
      • HEAT Rocket warhead
      • Lancer Bunker
      • Lancer Hard Point
Because you have also still to research the tracked propulsion artifact all three weapons would be available at the time you have finished the research of the tracked propulsion.
Question why have HE Mini Rockets 2 as a prerequisite of Fast Fire Mini Rockets ?

Research to increase the damage of the warhead and research to increase rate of fire are 2 distinct and separate research arms, that have nothing to do with each other, so it doesn't make any sense to have HE Mini Rockets 2 as a prerequisite of Fast Fire Mini Rockets.

As for your other suggestion I'm in 2 minds with that one because on the one hand i can sort of see where you are coming from but on the other i don't really see how researching mini rockets would lead to lancers, for me i would tend to do things the other way round I'd build the weapon first and get that working then I'd work on making better projectiles for it, because you can't test better projectiles if you don't have something to launch them from first.

If you wanted lancers to have something as a prerequisite then there would have to be a new rocket upgrade which is common for all rocket based weapons so for example

Artefact 1
  • Medium cannon
    • Medium cannon hard point
  • Rocket Propulsion
    • Mini Rocket Guard Tower
    • Mini rocket pod
      • HE Mini Rockets
        • HE Mini Rockets 2
      • Fast Fire Mini Rockets
        • Fast Fire Mini Rockets 2
          • Fast Fire Mini Rockets 3
    • Lancer AT Rocket
      • Bunker buster rocket
      • HEAT Rocket warhead
      • Lancer Bunker
      • Lancer Hard Point
    • Bunker Buster Rockets
If we decided to go this way then Rocket Propulsion makes sense as a prerequisite for all rocket based weapons because you can't have a rocket based weapon until you have a rocket engine to propel the projectile.

This would then lead to the development of all other rocket based weapons systems, although what you would have Rocket Propulsion do other then unlock the ability to produce rocket based weapons I'm not sure, although it would have to do something otherwise it would be redundant and unnecessary.

To be honest this is the only way I see your other suggestion making sense.

The issue with the engine upgrade is a difficult point. You can find the formula how speed is calculated here. I'm no friend of increasing the maximum speed of the propulsions. Insane difficulty got implemented to make the game more competitive and higher maximum speeds would make it easier. That makes no sense in my eyes. At the same time I agree that it's too soon that wheeled and especially half-tracked units are moving with their maximum speed. And tracked units are also a little bit too slow.
The engine upgrade increases the engine power but only by 5 percent. That explains the low effect on the unit speed. I think increasing it to 10 or maybe even 15 percent with reducing the speed before the upgrade could make sense.
While i understand the point you are making, i can't help but feel if you are going to have engine upgrades then they should make your units faster which means that all propulsion units start with a relatively low maximum top speed but as you apply more and more engine upgrades the maximum top speed should increase accordingly.

I mean this is consistent with real world physics, if I put an engine from a formula 1 race car in a ford escort then I'm going to be able to do like 200 miles per hour because the engine is so powerful, and the only thing that is going to make me go slower is the weight of vehicle, well assuming you eliminate other factors like wind resistance driver ability etc.

Think of it this way take your average car now with a normal load it's probably able to do what say 100mph but if you then slap a whole load of armour all over it the way they do for vehicles that carry diplomats and the like well now that vehicle is so heavy that you'd be luck to be able to achieve a top speed of 60miles per hour without a significantly more powerful engine, and this is how the engine upgrades and vehicle speed in general should work in warzone light vehicle like machine-guns should be able to move at full speed because they don't weight very much but heavier vehicles like tanks should move slower on the same chassis due to the fact they are more heavily armoured and are therefore much heavier so they need a bigger engine in order to achieve there maximum top speed.

To honest I'm not a big fan of the way propulsion is currently set up, because if none of my units are ever going to be allowed to go faster than 1.35 on wheels or 1.17 on half tracks and 0.75 for tracks then what is the point in having engine upgrades at all you may as well just remove engine upgrades and then then just adjust the hand full of vehicles that are to slow, and in the grand scheme of things it would make very little difference to the game, but of course that is not in my opinion a good way to go.

And I think that's what we have to do even it will be a lot of work. We can also adjust the power output of the bodies so that light bodies doesn't reach the maximum speed so soon.

One question is if the wheeled units in Alpha 01 should still move with maximum speed from the very beginning or not. I think wheeled units with light bodies should move with their maximum speed even if the engine upgrade would be useless for them, but with the half-tracked propulsion the player gets in Alpha 04 they shouldn't. I have no idea how much the values of the half-tracked propulsion have to be changed to become a remarkable effect. And we should make an agreement on what values we want to set the speeds before we start to mess around with the stats.

Edit: I forgot: From tomorrow on I'm with my parents so I will have no time for testing. I will be in the forum from time to time to be still a part of the discussion.
personally I'm of the opinion that all vehicles regardless of what propulsion they are using should move no slower then 1.00, because any slower and the unit becomes useless because its to slow and you would run out of time to complete the level

so what i would probably do is set the default speeds as follow

Tracks 1.00,
Half Track 1.35
Wheels 1.50
Hover 2.00

Then the engine upgrades should increase the maximum top speed for each propulsion unit by say 10% so after getting the engine upgrade on alpha 6 the maximum top speeds for each propulsion unit would look like this

Tracks 1.10,
Half Track 1.49
Wheels 1.65
Hover 2.20

then of course the total weight of the vehicle and the engine power of that body would determine if that unit is actually able to achieve that speed, and of course this is the part where we would need to adjust the weight of each component accordingly.

So how i would handle this is as follows, first i'd establish a common base line by tuning the weight of each component to the point where weight just starts to affect the maximum top speed and from there once we have a base line established we can adjust each unit up or down to make it faster or slower depending on whether it should be considers to be a light, medium or heavy vehicle, that seems like a sensible approach to me, albeit a somewhat long winded and involved one.
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by Bethrezen »

Alpha 06

Ok so just been trying out the weapon changes and while the Mini Rocket Pod seems reasonable against vehicles certainly better then it was anyway, I think the modifier against the New Paradigm turrets is a bit on the low side looking in the structuremodifier.json I note that the modifier for hard targets is set even lower then for bunkers which seems a bit odd to me, you have bunker modifier set to 35 yet the hard modifier only set to 25 which seems like a strange choice since normally the modifier for bunkers is normally the lowest for all weapons since bunkers are just difficult to destroy with anything other than bunker busters, flamers or high explosive bombs which is as it should be.

I also note that you have the modifier for bunkers set lower on antitank then you do for anti personnel which again seems a little strange to me shouldn’t that be the other way round since explosives should be more powerful then a weapon designed to kill infantry so I would probably increase the modifier for hard targets to about 50 for antitank

I would also adjust the modifiers for hard targets and bunkers for anti personnel as well and I'd flip them round the other way so the modifier for hard targets becomes 40 and the modifier for bunkers for becomes 25

In addition I also note that the accuracy on the mini rocket pot is still subpar and a lot of the shots seem to be missing the target while its not as bad as it was before I would perhaps slightly increase the accuracy on the mini rocket pod, because I don’t think we are really seeing what the mini rocket pod is truly capable of due to the poor accuracy, and as consequence it still feels a little weak to me.

I also think the build cost for medium cannons is a bit too high and as a consequence you don’t really have the necessary resources to use it at this pointing the game because at the start of alpha 6 you only have 3 oil wells and around 3000 oil and that’s not really enough so I would perhaps reduce the build cost for medium cannons on halftracks and cobra body from 212 to 187 the same as for mortars and lancers on a cobra bodies and half tracks.

In addition I kind of feel like the speed of mediums cannons when on half tracks is currently to low while I would expect the medium cannon to be a bit slower than the light cannon due to the heavier armour when every other unit you have is moving at 1.17 or 1.37 depending on if you are using wheels or half tracks 0.84, 0.63 is just to slow to be practically useful, yes you can use wheels which helps to address the speed problem but that isn’t really desirable since you are weakening the durability and the main reason to the use cannons over say lancers for example is the increased durability.

As for the damage it seems reasonable against the new paradigm vehicles but the damage against there turrets feels a little weak, lancers also have the same issues against there turrets that cannons and mini rockets do.

Now I know you could make the argument that this is what bunker busters are for, and you would be right the problem however is that while bunkers busters are absolutely devastating to the enemies turrets and structures they are completely useless against anything other then enemy structures, plus bunkers busters build cost is way to high and should be reduced from 237 to 187 the same as for mortars and lancers on a cobra bodies and half tracks, then of course we have to also content with the absurdly slow reload rate, and the fact that bunker busters seem to have the incredibly irritating habit of wasting there shots on targets they can't damage.

Now I don’t know if there is a way to fix the auto fire on bunker buster so they wont auto fire on enemy units, but if there is then that needs fixing, I would also significantly increase the reload rate on bunker busters, from 3 to 10 the same as for lancers, now I know that at face value it might seem like doing that would make bunker busters overpowered but you have to remember that bunker busters are such a specialised weapon that actually I don’t think it would really matter since they are rarely used.

Personally I only ever use bunker busters on vtols where I can do targeted attacks against specific targets, I don’t use them on tanks because they have way to many short comings to be practically useful, now of course if bunker busters where able to actually damage enemy units then that might change but while they are only useful against enemy structures, I'll probably just stick to using them on vtols only, and even then I only use them like maybe 2 to 3 times in the entire game.

Having said all of that if you feel like increasing the rate of fire would make them to powerful then you could always turn down the modifiers a bit although as I already said I don’t think that’s necessary.
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by Bethrezen »

pastdue wrote: 21 Dec 2018, 04:05
WZ2100ModsFAn wrote: 21 Dec 2018, 02:43 all of the tickets are fixed and 3.3 will come out soon?
Please test the Latest Development Builds from here: https://github.com/Warzone2100/warzone2 ... ent-builds
i know that until the vpk stuff gets sorted out the latest dev builds wont work for xp but it would appear that the Windows (x86): Portable is not built for a 32bit system because when i tried launching it i got.

untitled.PNG
untitled.PNG (5.42 KiB) Viewed 5787 times
that normally only happens when you try to run either a 16bit or 64bit application on a 32bit system, so might wanna double check that.
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by pastdue »

Bethrezen wrote: 22 Dec 2018, 15:29 i know that until the vpk stuff gets sorted out the latest dev builds wont work for xp but it would appear that the Windows (x86): Portable is not built for a 32bit system because when i tried launching it i got.


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that normally only happens when you try to run either a 16bit or 64bit application on a 32bit system, so might wanna double check that.
It's 32-bit. You're getting that error because you're running Windows XP.

32-bit Windows builds are now built with a modern toolchain that supports Windows 7+ (they *may* work on Vista, but I haven't tested yet)

If / when vcpkg fixes xp support, we can enable separate XP-compatible builds.
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alfred007
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by alfred007 »

Bethrezen wrote: 22 Dec 2018, 15:05 If you wanted lancers to have something as a prerequisite then there would have to be a new rocket upgrade which is common for all rocket based weapons so for example

Artefact 1
  • Medium cannon
    • Medium cannon hard point
  • Rocket Propulsion
    • Mini Rocket Guard Tower
    • Mini rocket pod
      • HE Mini Rockets
        • HE Mini Rockets 2
      • Fast Fire Mini Rockets
        • Fast Fire Mini Rockets 2
          • Fast Fire Mini Rockets 3
    • Lancer AT Rocket
      • Bunker buster rocket
      • HEAT Rocket warhead
      • Lancer Bunker
      • Lancer Hard Point
    • Bunker Buster Rockets
If we decided to go this way then Rocket Propulsion makes sense as a prerequisite for all rocket based weapons because you can't have a rocket based weapon until you have a rocket engine to propel the projectile.
I like this idea. I just would call the artifact Rocket Technology and would make the Mini Rocket Pod a prerequisite of the Mini Rocket Guard Tower. It's unlogical that you can research a tower that weapon you haven't researched yet.
Bethrezen wrote:I mean this is consistent with real world physics, if I put an engine from a formula 1 race car in a ford escort then I'm going to be able to do like 200 miles per hour because the engine is so powerful, and the only thing that is going to make me go slower is the weight of vehicle, well assuming you eliminate other factors like wind resistance driver ability etc.
Even if you put an formula 1 engine into a ford escort as you said the ford wouldn't be able to drive as fast as a formula 1 car because his wheels would get destroyed and other reasons. This means that you must have a special propulsion to drive the maximum speed an engine allows.

We can talk about what the maximum speed for all propulsions of warzone should be and at what level and what body a propulsion is able to use the maximum speed but I don't think it's a good idea not to set a maximum speed.

From Alpha 06 on wheels are nearly useless because of their weakness so it's not so important in my eyes to make much adjustments for them. I agree that we have to think about half-tracked and tracked propulsion and the effect of engine upgrades but we shouldn't make them too fast because the levels would become "too easy". If you make the tracked propulsion too fast the half-tracked propulsion would become overfluous. So I think it's should be still necessary for the player to make a decision if he want to use stronger units with tracked propulsion with the disadvantage to be not very fast or to use fast units with half-tracke propulsion with the disadvantage that they are weaker. If you make the tracked propulsion too fast it would become the same situation as with an overpowered weapon.
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by alfred007 »

Bethrezen wrote:In addition I also note that the accuracy on the mini rocket pot is still subpar and a lot of the shots seem to be missing the target while its not as bad as it was before I would perhaps slightly increase the accuracy on the mini rocket pod, because I don’t think we are really seeing what the mini rocket pod is truly capable of due to the poor accuracy, and as consequence it still feels a little weak to me.
We already increased the accuracy of the Mini Rocket Pod. You can see the current value in the weapons.json file at longHit. If I remember my calculations right the Mini Rocket Pod would be twice as powerful as the Lancer if you set the longHit value for both to the same. So the longHit value for the Mini Rocket Pod has to be significant lower than the value for the Lancer or the Lancer would become a no longer viable choice.
Bethrezen wrote:In addition I kind of feel like the speed of mediums cannons when on half tracks is currently to low while I would expect the medium cannon to be a bit slower than the light cannon due to the heavier armour when every other unit you have is moving at 1.17 or 1.37 depending on if you are using wheels or half tracks 0.84, 0.63 is just to slow to be practically useful, yes you can use wheels which helps to address the speed problem but that isn’t really desirable since you are weakening the durability and the main reason to the use cannons over say lancers for example is the increased durability.
I never felt the speed of the Medium Cannon on half tracks too slow. I made several Test in Alpha 06 with Lancers on tracks, Mini Rocket Pods on tracks and Medium Cannons on half tracks and I usually had about 20 minutes left on the timer when I finished the level, sometimes more. And also in the following levels to Alpha 10 the speed of the Medium Cannon with half tracks was never a problem for me. I think this should be a part of the discussion about speed and the engine upgrades.
Bethrezen wrote:As for the damage it seems reasonable against the new paradigm vehicles but the damage against there turrets feels a little weak, lancers also have the same issues against there turrets that cannons and mini rockets do.
It's intended that Anti-Tanks weapons are less effective against structures but maybe we made them too weak. Maybe we have to do some adjustments but it's still the goal that Anti-Tank weapons are less effective against structures than Allrounder weapons.
Bethrezen wrote: I also think the build cost for medium cannons is a bit too high and as a consequence you don’t really have the necessary resources to use it at this pointing the game because at the start of alpha 6 you only have 3 oil wells and around 3000 oil and that’s not really enough so I would perhaps reduce the build cost for medium cannons on halftracks and cobra body from 212 to 187 the same as for mortars and lancers on a cobra bodies and half tracks.
... plus bunkers busters build cost is way to high and should be reduced from 237 to 187 the same as for mortars and lancers on a cobra bodies and half tracks...
I never had problems with energy but I can only give a serious feedback after I'm back at home and had a look into saved games.
Now I don’t know if there is a way to fix the auto fire on bunker buster so they wont auto fire on enemy units, but if there is then that needs fixing ...
Afaik, not at the moment. What about new buttons where you can set every weapon at "fire only at units", "fire only at structures" and, "fire at anything" like "fire at own will"? But we would have to find someone to implement this.
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