Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

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OFelix
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by OFelix »

yes i know you can recycle your excess experienced units and then rebuild them on beta and doing so will allow you to retain the experience they have earned having said that this fact isn't necessarily obvious to new players.
Interesting! How would you do that? :-)
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by Bethrezen »

OFelix wrote:Interesting! How would you do that? :-)
simple enough at the interlude between the end of Alpha 12 and the start of Beta 01 you get 15 minuets to get prepared, so what i do is recycle all my units rebuild squads 1 and 2 as heavy body tracked lancers plus 3 heavy body tracked commanders and a heavy body half track mobile repair unit that makes up the 40 units that i can take with me on the transports, so what about my other units since by the end of alpha 12 I normally have 54 experience combat units which is 3 squads of 18

well i simply build them at the factory that is provided to me on Beta 01 so at the start of Beta 01 I'll order the factory to build 4 builders and 18 heavy body tracked lancers giving me a total of 54 heavy body tracked lancer by the end of Beta 01 and the 18 lancers that i build on Beta 1 will come out of the factory with what ever experience team 3 had when i recycled them at Alpha base, therefore even though I play Alpha campaign with 3 squads i don't loose any experienced units because when i recycle them at alpha base the experience they had is stored thus allowing any units i build at the start of beta to come out of the factory with what ever experience my units has when I recycled them at the end of alpha.

if your question was meant to imply that you don't know how to recycle units then that is simple as well select a unit or group of units and then right click on them to open the right click menu and then press the recycle button, then confirm that you want to send that unit or group of units for recycling by pressing the confirm recycle button.
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Berserk Cyborg
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

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alfred007 wrote:Two thoughts: You should set the time for the rescue part back to 30 minutes ... And I think every land reinforcement should be set to a minimum of 10 units. Range up to 15 is ok, but there should be at least as many units like in a transporter.
Done in e424c73043f5eb46e61e0dfe69c0efb06065463b. I think its time I catch up to you so I am going to start playing from my Alpha end save (on Beta 4 and I changed the tactics of the Beta 3 ambush group because it was boring. Now they should stay alive longer since they repair instead of falling back to the cyborg base). Oh, and be on the lookout for bases that miss stuff that should explode with the base in Gamma. I will try finding any on Beta.

Anyone know how powerful the Collective ripple rocket structures should be? If I remember correctly, the current damage is really low compared to past versions.
Bethrezen wrote: the fact that cannons are pretty worthless anyway because they are simply to weak to effective
I use them all the time and have yet to see them be useless. Very good at absorbing multiple hits a lancer unit would never survive from.
Bethrezen wrote: Also I'd check your fix to stop players resuming and completing a level they have already failed because it seems a little buggy.
That was only for not showing continue on cheat mode. I'm trying to see how escape breaks out of these menus... it is incredible difficult to follow the maddening GUI/widget code.

We can give them experience, but not sure about saving the transport load.
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by Bethrezen »

Beta 03

Ok so just been having a go at Beta 03 on v1.10, and here is the research list

Base 1 - Rocket Autoloader mk1

Base 2 - (one with cyborg factories)

Panther medium body
Dense Composite Alloy
Cyborg Dense Composite Alloy

Base 3 - (one with tank factories)

Hyper Fire Chaingun Upgrade
Heavy Flamer Inferno
Inferno Emplacement
Superhot Flame Gel
Superhot Flame Gel mk2
Superhot Flame Gel mk3

looking at this I notice a couple of mistakes

1.) The following research topics are missing

Superhot Flame Gel mk2
Superhot Flame Gel mk3

2.) you are incorrectly being given the following research topics

Rocket auto loader mk2
Flame auto loader mk2
Rocket auto loader mk3

[edit]
Anyone know how powerful the Collective ripple rocket structures should be? If I remember correctly, the current damage is really low compared to past versions.
not sure off the top of my head but i can check on v1.10 and see

[edit]

It's kinda hard to get a read on just how powerful these things are supposed to be on v1.10 because like all artillery on v1.10 there ripple launchers are really really inaccurate.

so what i decided to do instead was take a look at what there mobile ripple launches are because I would assume that the turrets would be much the same, here is a screen shot

Image

I guess your best bet would be to just look at the original source either that or download a couple of the older versions and see what they had it set at.
I use them all the time and have yet to see them be useless. Very good at absorbing multiple hits a lancer unit would never survive from.
True though my issue with cannons is that they are so bloody slow not only movement wise because they are so heavy but in killing stuff as well, taking on collective tracked heavy body heavy cannon units with cannons is a nightmare on insane and it takes absolutely forever because they inflict so little damage you may as well be firing blanks.

More over cannons are useless against everything except vehicles which is also less then ideal when trying to assault an enemy base really cannons should be a general purpose weapon that automatically fire different types of round depending on the target like real tanks to, so for soft targets high explosives, for armoured vehicles kinetic penetrate rounds other wise known as silver bullets in the military and for bunkers and the like incendiary rounds, and as for cyborgs they should just fire which ever round is going to be most effective i would guess probably high explosive since cyborgs are weak against artillery which fire high explosive shells.

although the game as a whole needs a rebalance because lancers and assault guns are overpowered as hell where most other weapons are in fact underpowered cannons being a good example either they need a much faster rate of fire to account for the lower damage per hit or they need to inflict more damage per hit.
That was only for not showing continue on cheat mode. I'm trying to see how escape breaks out of these menus... it is incredible difficult to follow the maddening GUI/widget code.
Ahh I was wondering why ya went about trying to fix this the way ya did, because while its partially effective at dealing with the issue its kind of jarring and would be better to not be able to close the game over screen in the first place which would force players to use one of the 1 of 2 buttons provided, they by stopping this exploit dead in its tracks.
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by Berserk Cyborg »

Pushed ebacfd2cdebbfc626dd5d7ff4ed6f0c1825b3641. Gives all of the the superhot flamer gel upgrades again. I think those ROF upgrades for rockets/inferno were like the HESH rockets situation. So if you have an idea what should unlock those (or adding new artifacts) then that would be welcome. The Collective certainly get those upgrades later.
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by OFelix »

Bethrezen wrote:when i recycle them at alpha base the experience they had is stored
I didn't know that. Thanks!
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by Bethrezen »

Pushed ebacfd2cdebbfc626dd5d7ff4ed6f0c1825b3641. Gives all of the the superhot flamer gel upgrades again. I think those ROF upgrades for rockets/inferno were like the HESH rockets situation. So if you have an idea what should unlock those (or adding new artifacts) then that would be welcome. The Collective certainly get those upgrades later.
I see, I'm curious if v1.10 didn’t have the bug that prevents you from gaining access to various bits of research on various levels at what point in the original source does it say you where you supposed to gain access to this stuff??

I know the original source is a bit of a nightmare and wz script can be tricky to follow but I would have thought that the research list from the original source would state at what point you where supposed to get this stuff ? even if you couldn't actually access it in game due to bugs.

Failing that if you can't find that out, then perhaps the most sensible and fair thing to do is to simply let the players gain access to it at the same point at which the collective gets access to it. You could also perhaps look at some of the older versions and see where they have them placed.
I didn't know that. Thanks!
Your welcome :)
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Berserk Cyborg
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by Berserk Cyborg »

It looks like the flamer autoloader Mk2 (which unlocks Mk3) depends only on having researched Inferno though it has "keyTopic" in it so it was probably going to be unlocked with an artifact. And the HESH rockets would then unlock the other two rocket autoloaders.

What I will do is add the flamer autoloader Mk2 as an artifact to Beta 5 (the air base has some Inferno emplacements) and add rocket autoloaders Mk2/Mk3 in Beta 6/9 as artifacts in tank killer hardpoints.

Edit: In 2b5bf044c70233e57c76801b5d25f72ef039d014.
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by alfred007 »

Bethrezen wrote: although the game as a whole needs a rebalance because lancers and assault guns are overpowered as hell where most other weapons are in fact underpowered cannons being a good example either they need a much faster rate of fire to account for the lower damage per hit or they need to inflict more damage per hit.
I totally agree. What we already did is reducing the damage of the assault gun from 22 to 20 and reduced the weaponmodifier of anti personnel weapons for cyborgs from 140 to 125. A few weeks ago I made a short test by reducing the damage of the assault gun to 18 and it seems to me that this is the minimum damage the assault gun should have, so it will not be useless.

At the current master rockets and cannons have the same weaponEffect in weapons.json. In my eyes, this makes it a bit difficult for balancing. So I took the weaponEffect ALL ROUNDER from the MP stats and added it to the campaign structure and weapon modifiers. Then I took all cannons and Gauss guns to the new weaponEffect ALL ROUNDER in weapons.json. I also changed the weaponEffect for the VTOL weapons. In master they got the weaponEffect ANTI AIRCRAFT which is incorrect in my eyes because they usually don't attack other VTOLs but ground units. So I gave, for example, the VTOL assault gun the weaponEffect ANTI PERSONNEL and the VTOL Lancer the weaponEffect ANTI TANK. Makes more sense for me. What I also did is adjusting the modifiers a little bit and reducing the damage of lancers from 160 to 120 and of the VTOL lancers from 240 to 200, because VTOL lancers are also overpowered, what Bethrezen also several times said. At the moment I let the heavy cannons untouched though it's clear that we have to change something for balancing.

What I don't understand in weapons.json is, that some weapons have a firePause and some weapons have a firePause and a reloadTime. What's the reason behind that and what is the effect on the weapons if you change that values?

I add the changed files for discussion or, if you all agree, for implementation.
Attachments
changed stats.zip
(7.91 KiB) Downloaded 130 times
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by Bethrezen »

What I also did is adjusting the modifiers a little bit and reducing the damage of lancers from 160 to 120 and of the VTOL lancers from 240 to 200, because VTOL lancers are also overpowered, what Bethrezen also several times said. At the moment I let the heavy cannons untouched though it's clear that we have to change something for balancing.
What I can say about the Collative lancer VTOLs on Beta 3 is that they are really getting on my nerves because they seem to one shot everything except possible heavy body tracked heavy cannon units and commanders, which is rendering my mobile AAA completely useless because they are totally unable to withstand there lancer VTOL attacks even though they are on tracks and have heavy bodies so they are as tough as I can make them and unfortunately they don’t seem able to shoot down there lancer VTOLs before they fire and trash my units, which means that every time there lancer VTOLs appear there is a 100% chance that something is getting killed which to my mind is a little unfair because the players lancer VTOLs aren't anywhere near that strong and nether should they be because that would be way to easy.

Something else that's really getting on my nerves on Beta 3 is my units continually getting stuck on the unpassable tiles that are left behind when you blow up one of the buildings, or getting stuck on senary or each other, ultimately i guess the only way to sort that stuff is to sort the pathing but yeah talk about irritating

With regards to the changes I'd need to try them out and just see how they are.
I also changed the weaponEffect for the VTOL weapons. In master they got the weaponEffect ANTI AIRCRAFT which is incorrect in my eyes because they usually don't attack other VTOLs but ground units. So I gave, for example, the VTOL assault gun the weaponEffect ANTI PERSONNEL and the VTOL Lancer the weaponEffect ANTI TANK. Makes more sense for me.
You are aware that some weapons like the lancer / assault gun for example are supposed to be able to attack both air and ground targets right? so you might want to double check that weapons that are supposed to be able to attack both air and ground target can still do so after you change the weapon effect because that may well be why vtols lances for example had the anti aircraft effect to allow lancer vtols to shoot down other vtols by changing vtol lancer to anti tank you may well of fouled this up.
What I don't understand in weapons.json is, that some weapons have a firePause and some weapons have a firePause and a reloadTime. What's the reason behind that and what is the effect on the weapons if you change that values?
to understand that it would help to know what weapons have what, my guess though is that some weapons like the Machine-gun for example don't have a reload time as such since they are rapid fire weapons unlike for example lancers so maybe the fire pause is the way the game engine controls the rate of fire for rapid fire weapons and maybe reload time is for slower weapons like the lancer that do have a reload time.

although to be honest if that is indeed correct it is an odd way to go about things because you would assume that all weapons would have a reload time and that value would simply be increased or decreased depending on the weapon.

to really know what they do your best bet would be to just play around with them a bit maybe try removing them or setting some really stupid values like for example like for example reload time on lancer 0 and fire pause on machine guns 1000
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by alfred007 »

Bethrezen wrote:You are aware that some weapons like the lancer / assault gun for example are supposed to be able to attack both air and ground targets right? so you might want to double check that weapons that are supposed to be able to attack both air and ground target can still do so after you change the weapon effect because that may well be why vtols lances for example had the anti aircraft effect to allow lancer vtols to shoot down other vtols by changing vtol lancer to anti tank you may well of fouled this up.
Due to the fact that they attacked ground units when the had the weaponEffect ANTI AIRCRAFT, I see no reason why they should not still shoot other VTOLs when they have the weaponEffect ANTI TANK. As far as I understand the weaponEffect it only modifies the damage the weapons have to units or buildings. That means that weapons have a stronger impact on wheeled units than on tracked units even with the same damage value. But at last you are right, we should check that.

Edit
Bethrezen wrote:to understand that it would help to know what weapons have what, my guess though is that some weapons like the Machine-gun for example don't have a reload time as such since they are rapid fire weapons unlike for example lancers so maybe the fire pause is the way the game engine controls the rate of fire for rapid fire weapons and maybe reload time to for slower weapons like the lancer, cannon etc. that do have a reload time.
It doesn't seem so. A rapid firing weapon like the Cyclone Flak Turret has a reload time and a slow firing weapon like the Howitzer has no reload time. I see no system behind it.
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by Bethrezen »

I add the changed files for discussion or, if you all agree, for implementation.
I take it, to load that as a mod i just change the file extension from zip to wz ? and then drop it in to the appropriate mod folder to run it?
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by alfred007 »

Bethrezen wrote:
I add the changed files for discussion or, if you all agree, for implementation.
I take it, to load that as a mod i just change the file extension from zip to wz ? and then drop it in to the appropriate mod folder to run it?
That's the way like it is described in the FAQ
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by Bethrezen »

We can give them experience, but not sure about saving the transport load.
Why not just store the transporter manifest in a .json file because as I understand it .json files are basically database files right so you could just have the game populate a .json on Beta 01 if the players tries to bring in more then 40 units and then read that file out on Beta 02 to determine what units will be at the crash site if the .json file is empty meaning the player didn’t try to bring in a fifth transport then just generate some generic units else generate the units specified in the .json file that would seem like the most straightforward way of doing it that requires only minimal amounts of messing round since most of what you need to make that work already exists just a though.
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by Berserk Cyborg »

Pushed 7523d1ae737fa67179d9b9566599bdcaaa9931c7. I saw a few things that needed a change in Beta 4. Good news is the hover lancers will defend that one base instead of being shelled to death, but that means taking out the command center for disabling the VTOLs will be a bit tricky on insane.

At first I tried playing a conventional way (setting up on the escape route), and got crushed by 40+ hover lancers going to defend the escape route, but soon realized that the constant stream of lancer VTOLs are quite taxing on northward progress unless you build a bunch of walls and Hurricane AA sites every few tiles. So I opted for a rush tactic to intercept the commander before he gets to the western base and used a bunch of newly produced lancers tanks to absorb the initial wave of Collective lancers. Basically, the longer you wait on this mission, the tougher it gets.
alfred007 wrote: I add the changed files for discussion or, if you all agree, for implementation.
I myself have a few changes to your stats seen here. It changes ANTI PERSONNEL modifiers so that they are not as effective against strucutures. Flamers vs. structure should only be viable against bunker and soft.
updated-Campaign.wz
Bethrezen wrote: Why not just store the transporter manifest in a .json file
It might be possible to just read the important parts of a droid object and store it in a js object for later retrieval. The source has a thing called a limbo droid list for the droids on a mission type like Gamma 2 also.

Edit: Pushed e6eeebe0d1ad9e1c30ae6b4d3de0ba7c2b19df69. Small update. I noticed sometimes the VTOLs in Beta 5 would not always rearm and would try hovering over stuff so this should stop that.
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