How Irrelevant Scouting is Mid/Late Game.

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Kourtious
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How Irrelevant Scouting is Mid/Late Game.

Post by Kourtious »

Scouting becomes far less relevant as the game goes on. Normally you would simply scout for oil derricks and enemy base. Once that is done, there was no other purpose to scouting.

Mid game Scout-ruining reasons:
-You have sensors to see any invaders.
-Defenses makes scouting very hard.

If you can already see what your enemy has, what is the point of scouting? You have all the intelligence you need to counter your opponent, same goes for your opponent. However, if your opponent has good defenses how will you scout? You can't simply enter.

So I propose a solution, when you see and enemy structure, you can see what that structure is doing. For example, research facilities, factories, and tank designs. It might make units worth sacrificing.

OR

Add a camouflage technology tree(leave things to your own imagination).

What is your view on scouting?
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Iluvalar
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Re: How Irrelevant Scouting is Mid/Late Game.

Post by Iluvalar »

If the map was about 10x the scale and the research and production was also scaled the same way. I could see how someone would want to sacrifice a few minutes of gameplay to navigate around the enemy structure in order to get information. Nobody want to play 5 minutes of scouting in a 15 minutes game. Wouldnt be the same game at all...

Sadly, due to the nature of an never ending tech tree game. We unfortunately end up with about 50% of the games were the more rushing playing find himself unable to give the final blow with his low tech design and have to use the extra resource he captured in order to research something that will be able to give the decisive blow. This state, if the opponent is clever can last for 5-10 minutes before the game end.

If what you are suggesting was applied correctly, we'd end up with games were someone run around the enemy defence, take a peak to the enemy base just to realize that the game is over and he now have to sit another full hour of gameplay of that near helpless situation. I don't think it would be fun.

tl;dr : We could simulate a spying game trough the clever use of scripts but there is no way we could introduce a sane micro-manageable spy in the current game.

We could conceive a non-micro-manageable spy. And Indeed it's there and called a satellite uplink in the game.
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Berg
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Re: How Irrelevant Scouting is Mid/Late Game.

Post by Berg »

Iluvalar wrote:We could simulate a spying game trough the clever use of scripts but there is no way we could introduce a sane micro-manageable spy in the current game.
This is not realy warzone making scripts do what the players should do its just delete part of the game.
You need to scout and make sensor tanks late in the game for artillery and watching what the enemy does... But after that you have uplink satellite research etc.
Most games dont get that far as they spam tanks and only have 10 minute games so again you need to scout.
Kourtious
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Re: How Irrelevant Scouting is Mid/Late Game.

Post by Kourtious »

Lets use low oil games as an example. (standard 4-6 oils per player and 2-4 oils per player to compete for) with (weak-medium level scavs or no scavs at all).

This way artillery numbers & efficiency are properly portrayed. Normally, there is little or no artillery in a low oil game, because low oil games are short. Now the only reason you need sensors is because you need to see where your enemy is. However, in low oil games hardened sensor towers are not cheap and maybe requires trucks to endanger itself on the front lines. On the other hand, most players won't even touch the artillery line which means sensors are less useful, thus scouting is less irrelevant.

Unfortunately, this also happens in Max oil games too. Artillery is absolutely worthless mid-late-game(who the hell needs arty when 5 Ripple rocket emplacements can't kill a heavy tank in one blast, same goes for hellstorms against medium armored tanks) unless your facing a fool.
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Berg
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Re: How Irrelevant Scouting is Mid/Late Game.

Post by Berg »

Kourtious wrote:Lets use low oil games as an example. (standard 4-6 oils per player and 2-4 oils per player to compete for) with (weak-medium level scavs or no scavs at all).

This way artillery numbers & efficiency are properly portrayed. Normally, there is little or no artillery in a low oil game, because low oil games are short.
You make an assumption about low oil and start using that assumption as basis for you facts.
Pro players can fight it out for hours on low oil I have seen one game go for 6 hours and yes there was artillery so Every Assumption is wrong.
You need to play a lot more on line and see...Don't play against AI's.

Regard!
PS: the 10 minute games are high oil mostly. but that cant be counted on either.
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Rman Virgil
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Re: How Irrelevant Scouting is Mid/Late Game.

Post by Rman Virgil »

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Speaking of assumptions (or premises), I'm gonna step entirely outside the premise box of this discussion. To wit, retail WZ was released as a fundamentally finished game. It was not, in 2 major GPM areas. That's not opinion, or any other form of egoic motivation. It's a fact. I will only speak to one here.

First this definition: Scouting = Intelligence gathering modus operandi.

From there let's start by pointing out a major discontinuity at the start of game that defies all logic of martial engagement in an advanced 22nd century, high tech, war machine as well as solidly balanced GP design.

Start of game war machine tech for units and structs is obviously in the realm of 21st thru 22nd century capabilty. So much so that such tech as claytronics, smart motes & muavs can be readily derived from exactly how things already work in the game with structs, units (esp. builders), sensors, firepower and ordinance.

The discontinuity comes into play on the side of scouting or the intelligence gathering apparatus because it is not much more advanced in early game than the Stone Age tech of Cro-magnons in their life and death struggle with Neandertals over resources.

How the MP game is played, why the design of a whole segment of MP map making, and why the premise box of this discussion, can be attributed to, or directly correlated to, this discontinuity.

This not to imply that Pumpkin Studios, WZ creators, were game design dolts, because they were not. They just thought they would have at least a year after retail release in April 1999 to finish up the GPM work that was still incomplete and, of course, continue the ongoing task of balancing. Unfortunately, they barely got 3 months out of that year, so much was left unfinished, unintroduced, and unbalanced.

The area of GPM design relevant to this discussion that was begun by Pumpkin but remains unfinished 15 years after retail release is the entirety of their ECM tech fully implemented....

But of course to acknowledge that you have to let go the premise of a finished retail game release and the default investment in designing for, and playing, a fundamentally unfinished game in a certain way proficiently even though it continues to relegate the game to a marginal, and failed, status in RTS genre history.

To nick a phrase coined by Al Gore - "An inconvenient truth."

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Kourtious
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Re: How Irrelevant Scouting is Mid/Late Game.

Post by Kourtious »

Berg wrote:
Kourtious wrote:
You make an assumption about low oil and start using that assumption as basis for you facts.
Pro players can fight it out for hours on low oil I have seen one game go for 6 hours and yes there was artillery so Every Assumption is wrong.
You need to play a lot more on line and see...Don't play against AI's.

Regard!
PS: the 10 minute games are high oil mostly. but that cant be counted on either.
I feel offended, because I do in fact play low oil games. In addition. I played at least 50 low oil games(with a shockingly high win rate) and plenty of other categories. The majority of those games were 10-20 minutes. Furthermore, lack of artillery was really apparent. However, some games don't have pros participating. This means half my games could be invalid or not good enough games.

Here is my observation of you Berg: I infer your IGN is Emperor Berg and the maps you play so far are high oil games: 16 oils + 1-2 oils per player to compete. However, it is the only map I see you play. Unfortunately, it would be very biased for me to conclude with such limited information. For example, your previous post in this thread. In addition, you only mentioned one specific pro game that lasted for 6 hours(must be a one in a 1000 kind of a game) that of coursed used artillery. You used that one game to judge my experience. I do feel truly offended.

I forgive you though, so don't apologize.

Back to the topic. Yes, Warzone was and still is an imperfect and unfinished game. It will most likely be unfinished. However, any game can be revived through money and effort. Furthermore, the game lacks the lovely feature of scouting which I really want implemented.

p.s. A.I. is too exploitable to be fun.
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Berg
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Re: How Irrelevant Scouting is Mid/Late Game.

Post by Berg »

Kourtious wrote:I feel offended
No need to feel that way I am pointing out that your quoting from 10 minute games...
There are many games that last longer then 10 minutes and have low oil...
I realy enjoy a low oil 2 hour game.


Regards Emperor Berg!
Ps again Rman points out too that a lot of the code was never finished. And some features have also been deleted over the years.
PPS Also I dont think being able to see every detail of your enemy's actions will enhance.
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Iluvalar
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Re: How Irrelevant Scouting is Mid/Late Game.

Post by Iluvalar »

Berg, is such games still exists in 3.1 ? From my own experience games do end in 15-20 minutes now. With the DPS increase and knowing how fast I could die if someone rush me, I now make sure in every games that I rush myself to avoid a sudden death. As much as I enjoyed the 2 hours long games, this never seem the case anymore.


Also, I noticed there is a huge gap between what we call scouting in warzone (Roughly having a cheap unit on the front line) and what Kourtious seem to call scouting (sending a specialized unit deep inside the enemy line).
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Kourtious
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Re: How Irrelevant Scouting is Mid/Late Game.

Post by Kourtious »

Iluvalar wrote: Also, I noticed there is a huge gap between what we call scouting in warzone (Roughly having a cheap unit on the front line) and what Kourtious seem to call scouting (sending a specialized unit deep inside the enemy line).
Scouting in my definition varies a lot. It really depends on how you look at it. Here are my suggestions of scouting.

-Drop Pod Sensors: HQ targets an area and automatically launches pod(requires oil) to the targeted area. The pod is able to be destroyed both in air and on land; however, it has quite the health. Once landed, the pod will lift the fog in the area and reveal any information, but it has a time limit before it self destructs(run out of juice). This means the player can view a specific area on the map at the cost of oil. In addition, HQ's(maybe specialized HQ modules) are far more valuable now.

-Camouflage-Cloak Technology: A line of tech designed to prevent enemies from spotting key targets. For examples:
1)Camouflage Tents. Tanks and cyborgs can enter a Camouflage tent to prevent artillery strikes.
2)Expensive Cloak Tech. Units can be cloaked using this tech. However, if the cloaked units attacks, or suffers medium damage, or next to an enemy unit, or nearby to a sensor(sensors could have a minimum range to detect cloak units) the cloaked units will be revealed.

-Any research building spotted will reveal the last technology seen researched.
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Rman Virgil
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Re: How Irrelevant Scouting is Mid/Late Game.

Post by Rman Virgil »

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@ Kourtious: Those are all worthy ideas to explore but I'm afraid nothing less than a proof of concept mod (followed by extensive, formalized, play testing and data accumulation) will sway anyone from all the different proposals for change being discussed to address the major issues with MP GP, all of which have zilch to do with intelligence gathering mechanics. At this stage, cognitive dissonance may be at work.

[Aside: To clarify the Stone Age analogy in my first post, I see scouting with a cheap truck as a form of intel gathering just a bit more advanced than eyes on the ground getting around on foot or riding a horse.]

The irony is that Pumpkin already pointed the way with thier interim solution to the issue till the ECM schema was fully coded and rolled out. That interim solution was removed from the MP game mode and nothing in the same universe of intel gathering was put in its place. And now solutions are being sought entirely outside of that universe with a strategy shaped by a notion called the path of least resistance, which is not always the best course. In this case, think bait for one ambush after another. :shock:
Berg wrote:.....

PPS Also I dont think being able to see every detail of your enemy's actions will enhance.
I agree. However, I still think the viable solution that makes for GP sense, and a compelling fun sensibility, lies within the universe of intel gathering mechanics and not outside of it.
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