Changes are coming!

[montetank]

well people can learn hmm maybe I should aggressively seek barrels then they cannot spend that unit doing other tasks perhaps. I see this as no issue.

You could also argue another point like the players at the top of the map have an advantage due to building placement facing the right way, south players can rotate but takes more time. Depends how far you wish to take this.

When will these changes be released in a new official version? What else is planned? Such as Longer research items list

No, Tzeentch. It seems, you haven`t test a skirmish until yet. Let me explain...Warzone 2100 is a little bit like chess. We have an opening of the game...until the 7/8 minutes then the midgame and then the final. Only 1 (in words ONE) oil drum more in your base at the beginning is the winning of the game. So i made this testmap for you/others. Only to show, how big the advantage is. I have given player 0 an additional oil drum. With this drum he is able to build factory/research/command center (in this order) . And then the powergenerator and the derricks. Without running out of power. We know, that this is the fastest way to build tanks in a rush map. Without this oildrum, player 1,2,3 are helpless against player 0. Try it out please. BTW-that remembers me, that i should continue with my first urban map

[Tzeentch]

Understand the point a bit more, you will always be ahead of the other player so even at both = skill level having this advantage can easily mean victory. Like taking the other persons horsie early on.

I'll give this a test to find out more as you say, leads me this question. What is the randomness of barrels a bit more specifically from what I read this is partially random but also based on some preset positions within each map. Can this be changed to exclude from a set radius from each players starting position and just randomly done within the map so it must be actively seeked out

A minor point but this sounds more important than I initially thought. More fair although some luck will also still be in play which I like. Increased variables are fun

Tz

[montetank]

Understand the point a bit more, you will always be ahead of the other player so even at both = skill level having this advantage can easily mean victory. Like taking the other persons horsie early on.

I'll give this a test to find out more as you say, leads me this question. What is the randomness of barrels a bit more specifically from what I read this is partially random but also based on some preset positions within each map. Can this be changed to exclude from a set radius from each players starting position and just randomly done within the map so it must be actively seeked out

A minor point but this sounds more important than I initially thought. More fair although some luck will also still be in play which I like. Increased variables are fun

Tz

I cant answer this questions, Tzeentch. I don`t know, how the game is coded. Your idea with the radius is good. I also don`t want to bann the drums, which are placed by the map makers. If it isn`t possible to bann these random barrels, maybe it is possible to reduce their oil from 100 to 25 for example. That wouldn`t be so dramatic at the beginning.

[NoQ]

Current status of oil drums on master is described here: http://developer.wz2100.net/ticket/4143
It's easy to further improve. I also like the idea of disabling random oil drums for the first 10 minutes.

[Tzeentch]

It seems you and I share the same views, we've both said the same thing and you've done it like 16 months ago! I've got some catching up to do "Can do, by increasing radius in enumRange() call. Or maybe add a special check ...
" - this quote from the link about oil drum spawning

"Probably it's a good idea to add an option instead (since we have room for it after removing the fog of war option): no drums/only pre-placed drums/spawn random drums (icon ideas: a drum crossed out, a drum, three small drums)." - My exact thoughts, option to configure so players have the option. As many people are both for and against using barrels for a variety of good reasons. Will this be done in the latest release Perhaps a drum with a ? symbol (As you won't know where it is) can be for random symbol.

This is all great

[montetank]

Current status of oil drums on master is described here: http://developer.wz2100.net/ticket/4143
It's easy to further improve. I also like the idea of disabling random oil drums for the first 10 minutes.

Yes-you wrote: "Oil drums are now respawned in 10 minutes after they are picked up." Thats not the fact in the moment and would be the easiest and best way to solve the problem. If you watch my stupid vid https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ue4MRB3y7dM you can see, how i captured this one random drum after 2:02 minutes and got the power immediately. I didn`t know, that there was a discussion about this random drums. Thanks

This is all great

You see? We are not alone

[NoQ]

What i wrote is correct; a bit outdated though. With the final version of the patch, oil drums are respawned in 2*N minutes (where average for N is 5, and maximum is unlimited; a geometric distribution, to be exact). This is done so that people don't put alarms for every 10 minutes to look at the map for oil drums; they need to stay as unpredictable as possible.

However, It doesn't say when they get spawned for the *first* time. Only when they are *re*spawned after pickup. And for the first time, they get spawned this way: first drum after 10 seconds, second drum after 20 seconds, ..., and as many drums are spawned this way as necessary to have 1 drum per 64x64 map tiles.

This emulates the original 3.1 placement algorithm more closely. But i agree that early drums affect the game too heavily, and it's worth re-considering this approach.

[vexed]

When will these changes be released in a new official version? What else is planned? Such as Longer research items list

For lack of a better answer...When it is done.
As for what else is planned, lots of things are planned, but, don't have a solid ETA on everything.

Heck, we still need people to help NoQ with the conversion of WZ's campaign to JS, AFAIK, he is the only one that has been doing it, and those that have expressed some help in the past didn't get that far it seems.

If people can concentrate on that, that will go a long way into making a release come out faster.

[NoQ]

I believe that the campaign project should not block the release. Probably it's even a good idea to convert levels throughout later minor releases. Even if a lot of people suddenly start helping me with it, which would be great, it'd still take a lot of time for them to warm up.

So my focus now is on the map format task, which i badly want to "make it" into the release. Then i'd proceed with the campaign, trying to finish arizona part of the campaign, and i think it can already be a beta-testing phase(?) Then i'd prioritize missions with known bugs. Then the rest of them.

[montetank]

I believe that the campaign project should not block the release. Probably it's even a good idea to convert levels throughout later minor releases. Even if a lot of people suddenly start helping me with it, which would be great, it'd still take a lot of time for them to warm up.

So my focus now is on the map format task, which i badly want to "make it" into the release. Then i'd proceed with the campaign, trying to finish arizona part of the campaign, and i think it can already be a beta-testing phase(?) Then i'd prioritize missions with known bugs. Then the rest of them.

It is a pity, that i can`t help. My study of mathematics won`t help. I have so much time. Let me know, if you think, i could help, except with testing. Testing is all i can do, i guess

[Tzeentch]

whats the situation on this? Is this being done inside the 3.1.3 release? displayconsolemessages being the one continuous annoyance in big games spamming messages "unit lost"

[vexed]

whats the situation on this? Is this being done inside the 3.1.3 release? displayconsolemessages being the one continuous annoyance in big games spamming messages "unit lost"

Nope.. 3.1 is feature locked, no new stuff going in there, only bug fixes (well, mostly).
This is all for master only.

[Tzeentch]

right got it, so master is more for an experimental setup as a possible future set of changes and where 3.1 is the main stable releases branch everyone else downloads to then play

[Tzeentch]

montetank can your experience of mathematics be applied to potential balance issues from the fact point of view? Something like this - viewtopic.php?f=48&t=12160#p132097 with the stats, cost, game times and comparisons whilst doing the task of separating facts from opinions. I suppose in chess terms a knight may be 3 points but arguable as 6 if positioned in the right place. eg, you have low, med and high oil maps and some weapons appear better on low oil. Shouldn't all weapons be viable on any type of oil map? It is not easy given you have so many variables to consider but I suppose the most basic components best to start on. In another thread away from this ofc.

[NoQ]

montetank can your experience of mathematics be applied to potential balance issues from the fact point of view?

The must-read on this topic is Iluvalar's autobalance project; i don't think it has ever been sensibly published and explained, but there was a lot of talk and the script was giving very good results. It was mostly discussed in the NRS thread [1] - a total conversion mod that relied on autobalance and designed with being suitable for autobalancing in mind (essentially, the author reached the conclusion that the original game cannot be autobalanced without huge changes in the research tree).

Shouldn't all weapons be viable on any type of oil map?

It is easy to see that this is impossible to achieve. Instead, there should be strict requirements imposed on the maps to fit the balance, see [2] for the start.