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 »

Bethrezen wrote:
I started testing the camBalance mod. I like the new sound of the MG-Towers and the higher range of the Flamer towers. I agree that one damage upgrade is enough in Alpha 01. What I don't understand is why you added the new MG-Range artifact. You had to revert it for the Heavy MG and you will have to revert it for the Assault Gun. With that upgrade, the MG and the Twin MG have the same range as the Heavy MG. Makes no sense in my eyes.

I think this upgrade causes more problems than it solves. Like you had to add a Flamer-Range-Upgrade to prevent the Scavenger Flamer Towers gets outranged. I see no need for this new artifact so I'm of the opinion that we should remove it and split the ROF-Artifact and the Damage-Artifact in Alpha 01 between Base 3 and 4 instead of having both in Base 3.
The reason is quite simple, previously scav's machineguns out ranged the players machineguns and twin machineguns, however that makes no sense because both the players and the scav's are using the same weapons and therefore should have equal range, the fact they don’t is just a balancing quirk because before the players machineguns where more powerful due to getting 3 damage upgrades back to back and due to the higher weapon modifiers but this has been addressed so I seen no conflict in adjusting the range so that both player and scav mobile machineguns have the same range.

if you are going to remove the range upgrade then the scav's should have the range on there machine-guns reduced as well so that the range of the scav's machine-guns is the same as the players machine-guns.

the way i see it there are 2 ways to deal with this issue either give the player a range upgrade or reduce the range of the scav's machine-guns I'm fine with either because ultimately they both achieve the same result, equilibrium.
On a logical point you are right. On the other hand the higher range is the only advantage of the scavengers. They are way weaker and have no repair units. So to bring both points together my idea is to give the scavengers the heavy machinegun from the very beginning. Thereby you have a logical reason for the higher range of the scavengers weapons and they would be a better competition without making them too strong. I looked into weapons.json and the machineguns of the scavengers have a higher damage than the projects machineguns. This means they are not using the same weapon as the project. And upgrading the scavengers machineguns to a real heavy machinegun would not be big change compared to the values they have at the moment.
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by alfred007 »

It looks like buildbot is down. The current master on github is b91d237 pushed today at 1:24 am by Berserk Cyborg, the current master at buildbot is master f8fd447 pushed yesterday 2:16 am by past-due.
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by pastdue »

alfred007 wrote:It looks like buildbot is down. The current master on github is b91d237 pushed today at 1:24 am by Berserk Cyborg, the current master at buildbot is master f8fd447 pushed yesterday 2:16 am by past-due.
The buildbot currently being down is probably a result of the server maintenance, however:

We will be transitioning away from the buildbot (the long process is underway), so please test the AppVeyor CI build links I posted above - that's where we're heading.
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by alfred007 »

pastdue wrote:
alfred007 wrote:It looks like buildbot is down. The current master on github is b91d237 pushed today at 1:24 am by Berserk Cyborg, the current master at buildbot is master f8fd447 pushed yesterday 2:16 am by past-due.
The buildbot currently being down is probably a result of the server maintenance, however:

We will be transitioning away from the buildbot (the long process is underway), so please test the AppVeyor CI build links I posted above - that's where we're heading.
What's the difference between the Portable Build and the Full Installer?
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by WZ2100ModsFAn »

alfred007 wrote:
pastdue wrote:
alfred007 wrote:It looks like buildbot is down. The current master on github is b91d237 pushed today at 1:24 am by Berserk Cyborg, the current master at buildbot is master f8fd447 pushed yesterday 2:16 am by past-due.
The buildbot currently being down is probably a result of the server maintenance, however:

We will be transitioning away from the buildbot (the long process is underway), so please test the AppVeyor CI build links I posted above - that's where we're heading.
What's the difference between the Portable Build and the Full Installer?
The permissions

basically the full installer installs it to your program files dir

which requires privilleges

Portable installs it to the dir your in like Example

Myusername/Downloads/Warzone 2100 Portable-master

You can also install portable to usb drive or even cd / dvds & bluray
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by pastdue »

Bethrezen wrote:this build seems to have some issues when I install I get the following error
Working on a fix for that. XP doesn't support TLS > 1.0, so it can't connect to the HTTPS download links to download the component (as those servers only support TLS 1.2, and TLS 1.1+ respectively). Am adding an HTTP fallback for XP. (The file hash is verified regardless.)
Bethrezen wrote:Then when I try and change the screen resolution to full screen the game crashes, not sure if this is an issue with the game or if its just because the run time files failed to download and install.

also when i start the game I get the following errors here are the logs again I'm not sure if this is an issue with the game or if its just because the run time files failed to download and install.
Yep. We're hitting the issue on XP that's awaiting the vcpkg fix, so we can properly build all the dependencies with XP support. As soon as the PR is finalized and merged upstream in the vcpkg repo, we can quickly incorporate it and fix this.
alfred007 wrote:What's the difference between the Portable Build and the Full Installer?
The portable build installs to a local folder, saves settings / data to that same folder, and does not require administrator privileges to install. Very useful for testing builds, as everything is self-contained.

The full installer requires administrator privileges, installs (by default) to Program Files, and saves settings / data in a subfolder of your user account's %APPDATA% folder (on Windows).
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by Bethrezen »

On a logical point you are right. On the other hand the higher range is the only advantage of the scavengers. They are way weaker and have no repair units.
True but you are neglecting to factor in the fact that the computer has unlimited production ability the player doesn't remember the power for the computer resets it's self so the computer never runs out of resources.

Ultimately you can win against a superior force with an inferior one if you have unlimited numbers on your side perhaps the best example of this is the second world war at the time German tech was far superior to anything the allied powers had but they simply overwhelmed the Germans with weight of numbers.

It's like the elephant and the ant, you might be able to win every battle but there is no way to win the war because no matter how may you destroy more and more keep coming and ultimately you can't win against that because they will eventually ware you down.

try turning up the scav's production rate and you will see what i mean even though the project units might be a bit stronger in the end it makes no difference you will still loose because they will come faster than you can kill them and you wont be able to repair fast enough to stop your units from getting destroyed and the less units you have the bigger advantage the computer will gain until you are to weak to hold them off any longer and you get had off
Thereby you have a logical reason for the higher range of the scavengers weapons and they would be a better competition without making them too strong. I looked into weapons.json and the machineguns of the scavengers have a higher damage than the projects machineguns. This means they are not using the same weapon as the project. And upgrading the scavengers machineguns to a real heavy machinegun would not be big change compared to the values they have at the moment.
Just one problem with that, that way of thinking is totally illogical and simply wont work, for one very simple reason we get all are tech by stealing it from are opponent therefore if the scav's have heavy machineguns on alpha 1 then by the end of alpha 1 the project should have heavy machineguns as well since we would capture and research that tech thus learning how to make them are selves.

Therefore the scav's machine-guns can't be better than what the project have because that simply makes no sense when we are stealing that tech from are opponent, therefore what ever tech the computer has access to on a given level should be accessible to the player by the end of that level in order to keep things fair.

Also we know that scav's buggies don't use heavy machine-guns anyway they use standard machine-guns they are just slightly more powerful to compensate for the fact that the player gets twin machine-guns which the scav's don't use, so as far as dps goes the scav machine-guns on alpha 2 should be equivalent to the players twin machine-guns and therefore should have the same range and damage.
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by Bethrezen »

pastdue wrote:
Bethrezen wrote:this build seems to have some issues when I install I get the following error
Working on a fix for that. XP doesn't support TLS > 1.0, so it can't connect to the HTTPS download links to download the component (as those servers only support TLS 1.2, and TLS 1.1+ respectively). Am adding an HTTP fallback for XP. (The file hash is verified regardless.)
Bethrezen wrote:Then when I try and change the screen resolution to full screen the game crashes, not sure if this is an issue with the game or if its just because the run time files failed to download and install.

also when i start the game I get the following errors here are the logs again I'm not sure if this is an issue with the game or if its just because the run time files failed to download and install.
Yep. We're hitting the issue on XP that's awaiting the vcpkg fix, so we can properly build all the dependencies with XP support. As soon as the PR is finalized and merged upstream in the vcpkg repo, we can quickly incorporate it and fix this.
if the installer can't download the necessary runtime files can I download and install them manually is there a direct download link ? if so then it might be an idea to set that as a fall back in the installer so if the installer fails to get the runtime files you will be given the direct download link so you can download and install them manually.
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by alfred007 »

Bethrezen wrote:True but you are neglecting to factor in the fact that the computer has unlimited production ability the players doesn't and you can win against a superior force with an inferior one if you have unlimited numbers on your side perhaps the best example of this is the second world war at the time germen tech was far superior to anything the allied powers had but they simply overwhelmed the germens with weight of numbers
Yes, the computer has unlimited production ability but we control how fast he can produce units. And even with the faster production rate the computer has with the current master the scavengers are no real competition at the moment. Stripping them from the advantage of a higher range of their weapons would make them too weak.
Bethrezen wrote:Just one problem with that, that way of thinking is totally illogical and simply wont work, for one very simple reason we get all are tech by stealing it from are opponent therefore if the scav's have heavy machineguns on alpha 1 then by the end of alpha 1 the project should have heavy machineguns as well since we would capture and research that tech thus learning how to make them are selves.

Therefore the scav's machine-guns can't be better than what the project have because that simply makes no sense when we are stealing that tech from are opponent, therefore what ever tech the computer has access to on a given level should be accessible to the player by the end of that level in order to keep things fair.
We are not always getting the computers technology by the end of the same level the computer using it the first time. For example, at Alpha 10 the computer sends Heavy Cannon Mantis tracked tanks. We find the Heavy Cannon artifact at Alpha 11 and the Mantis body at the end of Alpha 12. And the New Paradigm always uses better technology than the project. Commanders in Alpha 05, Cyborgs in Alpha 09 or Hover Tanks in Alpha 12 to give some examples. The project always gets these technologies later. That means the New Paradigm is using superior technology than the project. And if the Scavengers gets their weapons from the New Paradigm it's not illogical that the Scavengers got the Heavy Machinegun as a superior technology from the New Paradigm. The project would find the Heavy Machinegun Artifact two levels after the Scavengers used it. This is the same situation with the Mantis Body that the New Paradigm is using in Alpha 10 and the Artifact is found by the Project two level later. Because the Project is stealing the technology from their enemies it makes more sense in my eyes to give the Scavengers a weapon the Project steals a few levels later and not giving the Scavengers weapons with weapon values nobody else is using.
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by alfred007 »

I tested the latest camBalance Mod of Berserk Cyborg in a new campaign. I also implemented in this test my idea of giving the Scavengers the Heavy Machinegun. I changed weapons.json for that and gave all Scavenger Machineguns the damage, firePause and range of the Heavy Machinegun. Everything looks fine. Maybe we can make the Scavengers produce their units a little bit faster. I estimate we can decrease each factory throttle by 2 or 3 seconds. I give this for discussion.

I noticed two things. First, as you can see on the first picture below, two Scavengers of base one are hiding behind the oil derrick but don't attack me. I know that the Scavengers retreat after my first attacks, but they should attack me again when I attack their base. Second, as you can see on the second picture below, the Barb-Buildings are missing a "t" in the word "hitpoints".
wz2100-20180527_191050-CAM_1A.png
wz2100-20180528_001834-CAM_1A.png
Attachments
logs Alpha 01.zip
(2.96 KiB) Downloaded 85 times
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by Berserk Cyborg »

alfred007 wrote:I changed weapons.json for that and gave all Scavenger Machineguns the damage, firePause and range of the Heavy Machinegun.
Including their tower weapons?
alfred007 wrote: I noticed two things. First, as you can see on the first picture below, two Scavengers of base one are hiding behind the oil derrick but don't attack me. I know that the Scavengers retreat after my first attacks, but they should attack me again when I attack their base. Second, as you can see on the second picture below, the Barb-Buildings are missing a "t" in the word "hitpoints".
Think I got the first one fixed. I'll let you experiment with it (it can be merged into the camBalance.wz).
libcampaignUpdate.wz
"Hipoints" -> "Hitpoints" in 5151267220bb590ceea4362a0d15c907caf8fcf3.
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by alfred007 »

Berserk Cyborg wrote:
alfred007 wrote:I changed weapons.json for that and gave all Scavenger Machineguns the damage, firePause and range of the Heavy Machinegun.
Including their tower weapons?
Yes, I included the BabaTowerMG
Berserk Cyborg wrote:
alfred007 wrote: I noticed two things. First, as you can see on the first picture below, two Scavengers of base one are hiding behind the oil derrick but don't attack me. I know that the Scavengers retreat after my first attacks, but they should attack me again when I attack their base. Second, as you can see on the second picture below, the Barb-Buildings are missing a "t" in the word "hitpoints".
Think I got the first one fixed. I'll let you experiment with it (it can be merged into the camBalance.wz).
Thursday is a holiday in Germany (Fronleichnam) and I have Friday free and will then look for it
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by Bethrezen »

Yes, the computer has unlimited production ability but we control how fast he can produce units. And even with the faster production rate the computer has with the current master the scavengers are no real competition at the moment.
True but again that’s necessary to stop the level becoming an other alpha 12 where the level becomes basically impossible to beat, plus the first few levels are supposed to be easy even on the hardest difficulties because they are meant as training missions to ease the player into the game.
Stripping them from the advantage of a higher range of their weapons would make them too weak.
not really because you can just turn up the damage slightly, according to what difficulty setting the player is playing on, the higher the difficulty the more powerful there weapons should be, within reason of course because we don't want them becoming overpowered, and when combined with faster production on harder difficulties that would be more than enough to prevent that from happening.
We are not always getting the computers technology by the end of the same level the computer using it the first time. For example, at Alpha 10 the computer sends Heavy Cannon Mantis tracked tanks. We find the Heavy Cannon artifact at Alpha 11 and the Mantis body at the end of Alpha 12. And the New Paradigm always uses better technology than the project. Commanders in Alpha 05, Cyborgs in Alpha 09 or Hover Tanks in Alpha 12 to give some examples. The project always gets these technologies later. That means the New Paradigm is using superior technology than the project.
While that is true for the majority of the game when it comes to machineguns its not because we both start off with those, so if we are both using basic machineguns then they should have the same range and damage, and like I already said the scav's only use heavy machineguns in there heavy machinegun bunkers, giving there mobile units heavy machineguns on alpha 1 would give the scav's to much of an advantage, because the players units are to lightly armoured to stand up to that, don’t get me wrong I understand where you are coming from but you need to look at the bigger picture and realise that scav's where never meant to be a match for the player it's why they are only equipped with the most basic of equipment, they are there for introductory purposes only and pretty much every other game out there usually starts off the same way where the first few levels are supposed to be easy because they are meant to ease players into the game.

Now if you wanted to start making the scav's stronger starting at alpha 06 then i don't see a problem with that because by then the players has stronger bodies / propulsion / weapons and can produce stronger units, so at that point scav units should probably be upgraded as well to keep them relevant, that also makes sense from a logical point of view as well since the scav's are allied with the new paradigm you would think that once the new paradigm consider the project to be a threat that they would give the scav's more advanced equipment to help them take us out.
I tested the latest camBalance Mod of Berserk Cyborg in a new campaign. I also implemented in this test my idea of giving the Scavengers the Heavy Machinegun. I changed weapons.json for that and gave all Scavenger Machineguns the damage, firePause and range of the Heavy Machinegun. Everything looks fine. Maybe we can make the Scavengers produce their units a little bit faster. I estimate we can decrease each factory throttle by 2 or 3 seconds. I give this for discussion.
humm....!?!?!

While I do agree that the scav's where a little weak at least on the harder difficulties I have some concerns about this because as i already mentioned the scav's are intended to be an introductory force there not supposed to be a match for the player, so I'm rather weary of giving them stuff they are not supposed to have or giving them stuff before they are supposed to have it, and rather than giving them stuff they are not supposed to have or giving them stuff before they are supposed to have it I'd be much more inclined to just turn there damage and armour up a bit and make them produce a bit quicker on harder difficulties, this will have the effect of making them more dangerous on the harder difficulties which is what you would expect without skewing the balance of the easier difficulties.

As far as machine-guns go here is what is what I'd do

Alpha 01
Scav machine-guns are the same as the players machine-guns same range, damage and rate of fire

Alpha 02
Scav machine-guns get a damage upgrade to make them match the damage of the twin machine-guns.

Alpha 03
Scav machine-guns get a damage and range upgrade to make them match the range and damage of the heavy machine-guns.

I think this is a reasonable compromise, that is in keeping with the flow of the game and shouldn't unbalance things even on the easier difficulty settings, and if things prove a bit to easy then on the harder difficulties i would also make the scav's produce a bit quicker and i would give there units some extra armour to make them a bit harder to kill.

doing things this way you keep things balance while simultaneously making them more dangerous on the harder difficulties without skewing the balance of the easier difficulties.
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by Berserk Cyborg »

Bethrezen wrote: As far as machine-guns go here is what is what I'd do

Alpha 01
Scav machine-guns are the same as the players machine-guns same range, damage and rate of fire

Alpha 02
Scav machine-guns get a damage upgrade to make them match the damage of the twin machine-guns.

Alpha 03
Scav machine-guns get a damage and range upgrade to make them match the range and damage of the heavy machine-guns.
At first glance, a damage upgrade on Alpha 2 seems a bit much. About 6 or so of their machine-gunners will rip anything apart unless you got about 2 repairs on one of your units (I kept the towers the same, though). Did not test Alpha 3 yet.
camBalance.wz
alfred007 wrote: Thursday is a holiday in Germany (Fronleichnam) and I have Friday free and will then look for it
For defense orders, I remembered the artifact groups in Alpha 11 and Beta 4 needed to define a scan radius of zero, or else they'll get distracted if player units get too close to their waypoints. So I fixed that.
defenseOrderUpdate.wz
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by alfred007 »

Bethrezen wrote:As far as machine-guns go here is what is what I'd do

Alpha 01
Scav machine-guns are the same as the players machine-guns same range, damage and rate of fire

Alpha 02
Scav machine-guns get a damage upgrade to make them match the damage of the twin machine-guns.

Alpha 03
Scav machine-guns get a damage and range upgrade to make them match the range and damage of the heavy machine-guns.

I think this is a reasonable compromise, that is in keeping with the flow of the game and shouldn't unbalance things even on the easier difficulty settings, and if things prove a bit to easy then on the harder difficulties i would also make the scav's produce a bit quicker and i would give there units some extra armour to make them a bit harder to kill.
OK, sounds good. If we give the Scavengers the same weapons the Project have, we should also upgrade the Cannons of the Scavengers (BabaCannon and BabaBusCannon) to the Light Cannon that the Project will get in Alpha 05.

@Berserk Cyborg: In weapons.json you changed the values for the BabaJeepMG and the BabaMG but not for the BabaBuggyMG and the BabaTrikeMG. Is this intended or do you forgot them because the alphabetical order of the weapons in weapons.json is not correct?

Even if it's a little bit soon I want to give one more idea for discussion. At the moment the Assault Cannon have the same base damage per minute as the Heavy Cannon. Should we make the Assault Cannon a little bit stronger than the Heavy Cannon like the Assault Gun is stronger than the Heavy Machine Gun? This would give the player one more option from the moment the Assault Cannon is researched (Beta 9 if I remember right).
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