Alpha 11
Everything worked as it should. But at the moment the only win-condition is to pick up the artifact and then go back to the LZ. But in the intelligence report it is said, that no enemy should leave the area. So I think we should go back to the win-condition of picking up the artifact and destroy all NP troops. I tested it and I could finish the stage in less than 5 minutes by sending a combat group to the artifact and then directly go back to the LZ. And the only reason that it took so much time was, that I'm playing with tracked tanks. I think with cyborgs you could do it in less than 3 minutes. That's far too easy.
Actually the video refers to the NPC convoy that you find down in the canyon because if you aren't quick enough then the convoy will pick up the artefact drive up to there drop zone board there drop ship and escape the area with the heavy cannon artefact or at least that is what is supposed to happen I know that is what happened in older versions but haven't actually tested to see if that is what happens in the current master, I'll have to give that one a go and see.
Having said that I do agree that this mission is a bit too easy because you can simply drive a squad of units down into the canyon kill the convoy pick up the artefact and then return to your LZ and it only takes like 5 or 10 minutes at most unless you are going for the total annihilation victory condition and killing everyone, in that case the missions gets a little more tricky but only because of the relatively short time limit because at this point scav's are no match for the player.
As far as I understand the code of the stage it is only one reinforcement coded. I mean we should go back to several reinforcements as it was in 3.1.5. Maybe to every 3 minutes, maybe every 5 minutes. I prefer 3 minutes. What was it in 3.1.5?
I'm sure the drop point in that base was supposed to send in troops every 2 or 3 minuets I know it did in older versions of the game, because I used to park my units outside there base while I was doing research, pepping for the next level etc because in older versions of the game a lot of stages had way more time then what was needed and we didn’t get the power bonus for completing the level quickly so I would often deliberately leave drop zones open and leave a squad of units near by to gain experience.
I will concede however that maybe that was never supposed to happen, and maybe you where only ever supposed to see 1 drop ship i don't know, I'm simply judging by what i would consider to be normal behaviour and this is based on what i remember happening on older versions.
Certainly on hard and insane i would expect the reinforcements to continue until you shut down the drop zone which isn't that hard to do just drive a squad of bombards round behind there base and up on to the ridge and then blast the turrets from above.
I disagree. You don't have to recycle all your units before you start your transporter. So about 8-9 of these 15 minutes you can use during the away mission. And to get prepared for alpha 10 you can move the delivery points of your factories to the area you want to have them in alpha 10 and produce them during alpha 9.
Maybe not but its simpler and more straightforward to deal with this before you take off for Alpha 09 because then you don’t have to contend with the vanishing units bug which can really screw up your plans.
In case you're not familiar with this bug let me explain, If you build units while on an away mission and then save on the away map and reload that away map save when you finish the away mission and return to your base you will find that the units you built won't be at the rally point they will be in the bottom right corner of the map due to an old bug in the game that has yet to be fixed.
This happens on all 3 campaigns though in Beta it's not such a big deal because you can retrieve your units but in Alpha and Gamma you can't so that bug can be a real pain in the backside because the only way to get your units back is to fly them in during an away mission.
So in pepping for Alpha 10 I prefer to build and place my units in position before taking off for Alpha 09 so for the time being until such a time as the vanishing units bug is fixed then players should have enough time to recycle, rebuild and get there units in to position before taking off for alpha 09.
How about this ? I know i've suggested this before but if you don't want to add any more time to alpha 09 why not let players research composite materials mk2 and the python heavy body on alpha 08 to me that would be a reasonable compromise.
That way if you complete Alpha 08 quickly you could use the time to start the upgrade process so you don't loose so much time doing so on alpha 09.
With regards to balancing you have to not only consider how you play the level but also how someone else might play the level, take Alpha 08 for example I can actually complete that level with only 7 lance 2 repair units and a commander and I can do it within the initial 22 minutes time limit I don’t have to go anywhere near the second LZ if I don’t want to although I usually do so I have time to do the research having said that the only reason I'm able to do that is because I know what I'm doing it would be unreasonable to expect other people to be able to do the same even if I explained the strategy to them.
which is why I advocate the changes that I do because I'm not only looking at what I'm capable of doing I'm also considering what other people can do, as well as what the original intention was.
By the way you should use your tanks with tracks instead of half-tracks. You gain a lot of hitpoints (from less than 1000 up to 1600 for your lancers). So they can stay longer at the front and it is rarely necessary to send them to repair.
Most missions on Alpha don’t need tracked units that's overkill not to mention the fact that tracked units simply move to slow, as for keeping your units repaired again for most of the Alpha missions a couple of mobile repair units are sufficient so you don’t need to go back to a repair bay at all.
But then again my squads are all usually attached to experience commanders so they get the damage and armour bonuses so unless I come up against really stiff resistance I usually don’t have to do a lot of trekking back to the repair bay and even if I do being attached to a commander helps because when you send attached units for repair only damage units will go and those units will automatically return to the commander which means that you can continue doing what ever it is your doing uninterrupted with the undamaged units while the damage units get repaired and automatically return to there assigned commander, a useful but lesser know feature of commanders.
And you don't need 5 power generators. Every power generator can handle four oil derricks and with the six oil derricks in alpha you just need two power generators. Number 3, 4 and 5 are useless.
True I guess its force of habit from years of playing other RTS games like C&C DoW etc.
To be honest I'm of the opinion that it would actually make more sense to remove the cap on power generators so that a single generator could handle all of your derricks, i know that's not how it was designed nor is probably what was intended but given how you only need power to run the oil wells it would make more sense to simply have the player build only 1 power plant, certainly it would save space and make life simpler for the player, but obviously this would only apply to the campaign.
It was intentional behavior in the old wz scripts. They were only ever told to patrol around those positions which was probably an assumption that the player would expand their base all over the map rather than staying near the western half (see this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JpVaBOV ... D&index=37).
Ah fair enough, I'm wondering is it possible to cater to both? Those that do expand all over the map as was probably the original intention that you eluded to and those that don’t?
Perhaps you could have the units switch orders after a period of time if they don’t encounter any players units of structures.
I guess my strategy for this is much cleaner and simpler and i simply place a squad of heavy body tracked lancers attached to an experienced commander to the north and another to the south to intercept there tanks and then have a squad of heavy body heavy machine gunners on half tracks attached to an experience commander by the mountain pass to intercept the drop ships of cyborgs and then as each zone is cleared i will move them to the ridge above my base and to the oil well to the north of my base, so there is no need to expand all over the map, that's wasteful and on insane you don't have the time to do that anyway.