Remembering of Locations of Oil Resources

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Re: Remembering of Locations of Oil Resources

Post by crab_ »

montetank wrote:So-in future i will see 4 oil derricks in the right corner in the low-oil games. 8 oil-derricks in the left and right corner of my base in mid-oil-games. Let us forget the sensor-turrets. Let us forget to search for oil-derricks. Thanks. I cant follow this discussion.

I repeat: if you search for oil in MP game then you playing wrong way. Normal MP player remember 90% of locations of oil resources on each map he plays.
"Oil searching" is not equal to "Fighting for oil".
If you do oil searching then you almost lost fight for oil because enemy receives 50% energy advantage just by spending 1 truck!!
I know what i'm saying. I won lot of games just because i had "clever" trucks (just because i remembered locations of oil resources while my enemy is not).

"Oil Searching" exists only when both players are playing given map the first time.
It works only for random generated maps.


While you searching oil with sensor your opponent got that oil already with his truck (he build truck instead of sensor because he remembered oil).
Terminator wrote:ow about add ab pecial ability to Command center - like : "find oil Impuls" that could be launched fro example onece per 2-3 mins or something like that. (similar to laser satellite commandpost, but to scan terran for oils) and it may effect for sertain radius - not for all map or something. Just derricks close to you - that should be resonable. You wont capture enemies oil anyway, but if you do - that means you are "pro" and you will figures out that by yourself.
Sounds good.
I remember many games when player got oil near base of his opponent. Because his opponent did not remembered oil even near his own base.
Each forgotten oil ~10-20% of power advantage to your enemy
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Re: Remembering of Locations of Oil Resources

Post by stiv »

Uhhh... don't oil locations show on the map preview?
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Re: Remembering of Locations of Oil Resources

Post by NoQ »

stiv wrote:Uhhh... don't oil locations show on the map preview?
Still too hard to remember.
_______________________

And i still think that the best way to fix this is to make better maps.
Make different maps for skirmish and multiplayer. Make sure maps for multiplayer have oils placed cleanly and strategically and highlighted with terrain or features.
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Re: Remembering of Locations of Oil Resources

Post by Rommel »

Does anyone have any idea on how hard it would be to create a kind of "random map generator", or at least say a "random oil location generator"? This would then be good for those people that like to search out the oil and such. Without getting to test it is hard to tell if it would be good to have or not, so I would say if it is too much messing around to implement it is prolly not worthwhile.

edit: removed oil driller stuff as it is in another thread
Last edited by Rommel on 12 Jan 2014, 20:21, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Remembering of Locations of Oil Resources

Post by NoQ »

Does anyone have any idea on how hard it would be to create a kind of "random map generator"
Some part of it would be easy. Note that we already have a partial random map generator, namely the random seabed generator. Seabed is generated randomly every time you start the game. This mechanism can be easily adjusted to generate the rest of the map as well.

What remains is, if i don't miss anything:
  1. UI for setting up different parameters. If it is too hard, we can make it in a form of map.ini first (you press a certain map as usual, but instead of loading map data as usual, you get your map generated according to the settings in ini file). Also, probably limits screen is suitable for that.
  2. Send the generated map over network. No idea how hard or easy it is.
  3. Actual generation algorithms. We have a few implemented already, one in Diorama (probably too slow), one in FlaME (faster)).
Alternatively, we can try to give JS engine write access to terrain to mess the map up in eventGameInit(). This would probably be slower than C, and issues may accidentally arise (eg. who would recalculate continents?, etc.).
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Re: Remembering of Locations of Oil Resources

Post by Iluvalar »

montetank wrote:So-in future i will see 4 oil derricks in the right corner in the low-oil games. 8 oil-derricks in the left and right corner of my base in mid-oil-games. Let us forget the sensor-turrets. Let us forget to search for oil-derricks. Thanks. I cant follow this discussion.
I think you dont understand the problem, there is 2 play style : exploration and multiplayer. The host always own (if not created) the map. He, at least, do not have to explore and he start with a huge advantage over the other players. There is no point to this.

Oil derricks and base position should be revealed at start just as if you had an uplink the first minute of the game.
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Re: Remembering of Locations of Oil Resources

Post by Rommel »

NoQ wrote: [*]Send the generated map over network. No idea how hard or easy it is.
I wonder if it could just use the same system like now with transferring maps (ie when a player joins a game and doesn't already have the map), I guess all the random map generation would happen before the game is hosted, just like choosing a normal map.

The issue with this could be the inability to change the settings once the game is hosted, players love to argue over settings lol
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Re: Remembering of Locations of Oil Resources

Post by NoQ »

If the map is generated and sent too early, somebody can have a look at it before the game starts.

But also probably we also don't really need to send the map at all, as long as its generation is based on synchronized random numbers, so just all computers simultaneously generate the same map out of the same random seed.

And i think it's also a good idea because it prevents cheating by adjusting map generation algorithm.

So probably there aren't really much problems, one can already start coding, even without UI, and see where it goes (for a start, mess up any chosen map every time, taking only player count and starting positions from the original map). [1] [2].
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Re: Remembering of Locations of Oil Resources

Post by stiv »

NoQ wrote:
stiv wrote:Uhhh... don't oil locations show on the map preview?
Still too hard to remember.
Oh, dear! We certainly would not want to make the game challenging.

Instead of doing ${a bunch of complicated stuff}, why not simply make the entire map visible right from the start?
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Re: Remembering of Locations of Oil Resources

Post by crab_ »

stiv wrote:
NoQ wrote:
stiv wrote:Uhhh... don't oil locations show on the map preview?
Still too hard to remember.
Oh, dear! We certainly would not want to make the game challenging.
Game is not challenging itself.
We are discussing MP games here. Difficulty of MP game depends on skills of your opponents.
We want to make games harder for pro-players and easier for new-players.
When new-player can see oil resources then game between pro and noob becomes more challenging for pro-player and game become more easier for new-players.
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Re: Remembering of Locations of Oil Resources

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We want to make games harder for pro-players and easier for new-players.
No we don't.
We certainly would not want to make the game challenging.
We aren't. "Give random players a random advantage" is not called "Make the game challenging".
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Re: Remembering of Locations of Oil Resources

Post by Hesterax »

I do agree that we need to get more people interested in low oil maps. I understand that some players might not like searching for oil as it shifts the focus a bit from base building and an army but the thing is that Warzone 2100 is all about grabbing oil and is one of the main skills to master when playing Warzone 2100 (okay maybe you won't call it a skill but it certainly does help in improving micromanagements skills and flipping focus :) )
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Re: Remembering of Locations of Oil Resources

Post by stiv »

but the thing is that Warzone 2100 is all about grabbing oil and is one of the main skills to master when playing Warzone 2100
True. Competition for resources is one of the things that defines Warzone. It would be a shame to loose that.
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Re: Remembering of Locations of Oil Resources

Post by crab_ »

stiv wrote:
but the thing is that Warzone 2100 is all about grabbing oil and is one of the main skills to master when playing Warzone 2100
True. Competition for resources is one of the things that defines Warzone. It would be a shame to loose that.
I disagree.
Why you think "Warzone is about grabbing oil"? Why? Who decided that?
I do not remember mission in Campaign where is goal of mission is grabbing more oil resources. Each mission is grabbing tech. In Campaing in most cases we do not care about oil resources. We have enough money to play Campaign.
Warzone is all about grabbing techologies.

Note: searching for oil resources - it is not competition. When 2 good players fight in low-oil game - they both remember exact location of each oil resource. It is just making game harder to involve new players and nothing more. Searching for oil is our boring duty. We open map in deity mode and spend our time to remember each oil resource.
Well, when 2 new players start low-oil game on new map - they may search for oil.
And we do not have any common rules of oil placement...

Searching for oil can be fun for some folks.. When two friends plays via IP, they can find interesting to search oil resources on unknown map. But after 2-3 games on that map they can remember oil resources. So that searching fun is either for unknowns maps or for new players. There is nothing about normal competetive MP games.

We can keep current behaviour for skirmish game, but remembering of oil in MP is simply killing MP game.
Ah another variant is add start game option "Oil resources visible"
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Re: Remembering of Locations of Oil Resources

Post by NoQ »

Competition for resources is one of the things that defines Warzone.
Remembering oil positions is not part of that competition.
Eg., when in Starcraft 2, unlike Starcraft 1, they made minerals and gas visible at game start, it didn't make the game less competitive.

In casual games some of the players already remember oil positions even before the start, some don't, and it makes the game unfair (moreover, at least one player always does remember positions, namely the host). In competitive matches you are forced to learn the map by heart anyway, so you don't really care if oils are visible or not, making them visible does not affect competitiveness at all.
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