Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

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alfred007
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by alfred007 »

One question is if we want to use the light cannon so that we get the medium cannon for example at the end of alpha 08 or if we accept the light cannon as an intermediate step to the medium cannon and use the medium cannon as an alternative to the lancer in alpha 06. I would find it more interesting to use the light cannon first and the medium cannon later but this will be a lot more work for balancing than giving the medium cannon from the end of alpha 05 on as it is at the moment. One way could be giving the cannons two damage upgrades back to back, the lancer only one and making the medium cannon this way a useful alternative to the lancer. In alpha 08 we give the cannons their third damage upgrade and the lancer the second and after the heavy cannon gets researched in alpha 11 we give the lancer his third damage upgrade making the heavy cannon the useful alternative to the lancer. But this would mean that the light cannon will never be an alternative you use because in alpha 05 you will not rebuild your units to use the light cannon and in alpha 06 you have the medium cannon.
Bethrezen wrote:As for the scav's coming in from off screen I currently don’t have an opinion as I haven't tested it out yet, although I'm a little puzzled what you mean because if you are talking about having the scav's coming off screen at the point where you get the flashing red marked south of the landing zone they would be moving east not west, so I'm not sure where you are actually intending them to enter from.
I'm talking about the scavengers that get produced in the new southern factory. If you give them an assembly at the north exit of their base they get often stuck because of all the troops that are already in the base. In one test I made 3 units were stuck with the result that after every newly produced unit the AI thought the group size of 4 for an attack is reached and I get attacked by one unit after the other and not by a group of 4 units as it should be. If you give the factory an assembly at the western exit no unit get stuck and they attack as a group. But then they move north on the western side of the hill in the middle in direction of the players LZ. When I give them an assembly at the north exit they move north on the eastern side of the hill in the middle and attack my units that fight the NP. So what I want to know is if you more like if they attack my troops that fight the NP or if you more like if they open a "second front" by attacking my LZ.
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by nearo »

alfred007 wrote:I made some tests and think that I now understand how the resulting damage is to calculate. If I'm right it's the following:

(Damage of the weapon - armour of the enemy ) x weaponmodifier x difficultymodifier
Armour of the enemy is base armour plus upgrades
You almost guessed it right... here's the exact formula.
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

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alfred007 wrote:One question is if we want to use the light cannon so that we get the medium cannon for example at the end of alpha 08 or if we accept the light cannon as an intermediate step to the medium cannon and use the medium cannon as an alternative to the lancer in alpha 06. I would find it more interesting to use the light cannon first and the medium cannon later but this will be a lot more work for balancing than giving the medium cannon from the end of alpha 05 on as it is at the moment. One way could be giving the cannons two damage upgrades back to back, the lancer only one and making the medium cannon this way a useful alternative to the lancer. In alpha 08 we give the cannons their third damage upgrade and the lancer the second and after the heavy cannon gets researched in alpha 11 we give the lancer his third damage upgrade making the heavy cannon the useful alternative to the lancer. But this would mean that the light cannon will never be an alternative you use because in alpha 05 you will not rebuild your units to use the light cannon and in alpha 06 you have the medium cannon.
I guess we could unlock cannon after mortar is researched (or alongside it with the same artifact). Thus allowing it to be used for at least Alpha 5/6 more readily, and maybe force medium cannon to unlock alongside the rocket pod (or farther into Alpha 6)? That way light-cannon is used for at least a little while.

Later I had implemented (untested) some of the suggestions in this commit. Mostly mortar upgrade staggering so: damage 1 depends on light-cannon, damage 2 and ROF 1 depend on medium-cannon, and damage 3 depends on bombard.
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by WZ2100ModsFAn »

When will there be plans for nullbot to be in campaign?

Noq mentioned that there would be a version of campaign with nullbot implemented

instead of the regular ais
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by alfred007 »

WZ2100ModsFAn wrote:When will there be plans for nullbot to be in campaign?

Noq mentioned that there would be a version of campaign with nullbot implemented

instead of the regular ais
One step after the other. First, we have to get the campaign stable again. Second, we have to get a better balance. And after that, we can talk about implementing other AI's.
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by Bethrezen »

One question is if we want to use the light cannon so that we get the medium cannon for example at the end of alpha 08 or if we accept the light cannon as an intermediate step to the medium cannon and use the medium cannon as an alternative to the lancer in alpha 06. I would find it more interesting to use the light cannon first and the medium cannon later but this will be a lot more work for balancing than giving the medium cannon from the end of alpha 05 on as it is at the moment. One way could be giving the cannons two damage upgrades back to back, the lancer only one and making the medium cannon this way a useful alternative to the lancer. In alpha 08 we give the cannons their third damage upgrade and the lancer the second and after the heavy cannon gets researched in alpha 11 we give the lancer his third damage upgrade making the heavy cannon the useful alternative to the lancer. But this would mean that the light cannon will never be an alternative you use because in alpha 05 you will not rebuild your units to use the light cannon and in alpha 06 you have the medium cannon.
I think you may well be over thinking this just a bit.

What I would do is make the heavy cannon equivalent to the lancer, which means that when both have all 3 damage upgrades they should have roughly equal performance, there by giving the player a free choice which to use once you have both, because previously I would simply default to using lancers since they did more damage but if both the heavy cannon and lancer have the same damage then I can use either, so there use becomes more a question of the circumstances of the level and your particular play style, rather then just using the one that’s stronger.

With regards to the lancer upgrades ultimately you are going to need to have all 3 by alpha 10 because otherwise you are not going to be able to stop the new paradigm counter attack, so we will need to figure out where best to place the upgrades if we are not giving them back to back but this is something we can get to in due course.

Alpha 10 is also the reason I'm skittish about reducing lancers base damage any more that it already has been because you might find that lancers become to weak which could make completing Alpha 10 all but impossible, particularly give that you don't have heavy cannons till alpha 11, now a realist this causes some problems on Beta with lancers being a bit to strong but this is more of a problem for VTOL mounted lancers than it is the ground based ones, the balance for the ground based ones isn't actually to bad so long as you are not getting 3 damage upgrades back to back.

For the light cannon that should probably resemble the heavy machine-gun so like the heavy machine-gun it has a higher rate of fire but pound for pound each shot does relatively weaker damage when compared to the medium and heavy cannons, as to where i might choose to use the light cannon well since cannons are a general purpose weapon like the heavy machine-gun and since it has rapid fire like the heavy machine-gun then i might choose to use the light cannon as an alternative to the heavy machine-gun when I'm facing hordes of light units like cyborgs for example

Where before i would just default to using heavy machine-guns however if both heavy machine-guns and light cannons have roughly smiler performance then that gives me a free choice of which to use, for that job.

As for the medium cannon that should probably be equivalent to the mini rocket pod in terms of performance but of course this is something we can get to in due course, because the mini rocket pod needs some fixes because while it may have a damage per min of over 4000 it doesn’t do any where close to that much and part of that is due to its really bad accuracy.

With regards to how to stagger the damage upgrades for the cannons, we could try starting off giving just 1 on alpha 05 and see how that is if that proves a bit to weak then we could give 2 since we get 2 cannons on alpha 5 and then give the third when you get the heavy cannon. Now obviously I realise that making the performance of these match as you grant upgrades is tricky which is why I'm not aiming at that, I'm more looking at the global picture, so that is to say how they stack up against each other and what there performance is like when all the weapons have all there upgrades.

With regards to how to stagger the mortar damage upgrades what we could do is give 1 mortar damage upgrade on alpha 4 give the second on alpha 6 and give the third on alpha 8 when you get the bombard, otherwise i think we can probably leave the mortar alone because its balance seems fine.

And lets not for get about the flamers because currently they are still useless against new paradigm structures so they are going to need buffing some as well, and what I would do is make the flamer and the bunker buster equivalent to each other, while the flamer isn’t going to be much help against the New paradigms units due to there higher thermal resistance it should still work on there structures.

With regards to the bunker buster these need there modifiers and rate of fire adjusting some which will necessitate reducing there damage proportionally, I'd also look to see if there is a way to fix the auto fire for bunker busters so they wont auto fire on enemy units since they can't damage them any way.

like i said before i have actually taken the time to think this stuff through, even if my calculations might be off due to using the wrong formula and the like I think the over all idea is sound.
I'm talking about the scavengers that get produced in the new southern factory. If you give them an assembly at the north exit of their base they get often stuck because of all the troops that are already in the base. In one test I made 3 units were stuck with the result that after every newly produced unit the AI thought the group size of 4 for an attack is reached and I get attacked by one unit after the other and not by a group of 4 units as it should be. If you give the factory an assembly at the western exit no unit get stuck and they attack as a group. But then they move north on the western side of the hill in the middle in direction of the players LZ. When I give them an assembly at the north exit they move north on the eastern side of the hill in the middle and attack my units that fight the NP. So what I want to know is if you more like if they attack my troops that fight the NP or if you more like if they open a "second front" by attacking my LZ.
with regards to the scav's coming out of the new factory on the hill getting stuck because of the units that are already there that shouldn't happen for a couple of reasons.

first off the units that are already up there will activate when you attack the scav's base where you get the light cannon tech so they should already be gone before the new base activates.

second the new base shouldn't activate until you either go up the hill which will trigger the fmv, and the new paradigm base or till you enter/attack the new paradigm base, but the scav force that is upon that hill by default should have already moved out by the time either of those events have occurred, and if you trigger the base by going up the hill before heading to the new paradigm base, then you will run face first in to the detachment of scav's that are up there any way so again this becomes a mute point and it simply shouldn't happen.

if this is happening then that indicates to me that the new factory is activating to soon so what needs fixing is the factory activating before it should.
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by Bethrezen »

alfred007 wrote:
WZ2100ModsFAn wrote:When will there be plans for nullbot to be in campaign?

Noq mentioned that there would be a version of campaign with nullbot implemented

instead of the regular ais
One step after the other. First, we have to get the campaign stable again. Second, we have to get a better balance. And after that, we can talk about implementing other AI's.
Indeed there remains much that needs to be tended to before we start looking at tending to the AI in campaign mode because the AI in campaign mode is actually really really simple by comparison to multiplayer AI if anything i hesitate to call the campaign AI an AI at all because strictly speaking its not instead the campaign AI simply follow a few simple directives defined the in the scripts for each level as far as I'm aware so implementing a full blown AI I'm campaign mode that is a kin to a multi player AI is no small task
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by Bethrezen »

Later I had implemented (untested) some of the suggestions in this commit. Mostly mortar upgrade staggering so: damage 1 depends on light-cannon, damage 2 and ROF 1 depend on medium-cannon, and damage 3 depends on bombard.
humm... to me that doesn't make a lot of sense, why would upgrades for mortars be dependant on cannons ?

I can understand new upgrades for mortars having previous mortar upgrades as prerequisites, that makes sense but some how i cant see it being a good idea having upgrade for one weapon be dependant on an entirely different and unrelated weapon.

Now to be fair there are a couple of areas where that might make sense, in the case of say pepper pots needing rotary tech first, or lancers needing rocket tech first for example.

my issue with this however at least as far as it pertains to pepper pots anyway is that from a progression point of view it makes no sense to get pepper pots near the end of beta since they are automatically obsolete as soon as you get them and realistically where you get the pepper pot tech on beta you should be getting the hellstorm howitzer, and pepper pots should be granted at the end of alpha and the most reasonable point for that is the same place you get the bombard of course this would mean giving the new paradigm pepper pots as well to keep things fair but i don't see that being a big issue and at least this way pepper pots are going to be useful for a few levels till you get howitzers and ripple rockets, and would give players a choice.

where this might be an issue is if you gave the collective pepper pots on beta 1 that really could make things way to difficult, since Beta 01 is already a difficult level as it is.
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by alfred007 »

Bethrezen wrote:humm... to me that doesn't make a lot of sense, why would upgrades for mortars be dependant on cannons ?

I can understand new upgrades for mortars having previous mortar upgrades as prerequisites, that makes sense but some how i cant see it being a good idea having upgrade for one weapon be dependant on an entirely different and unrelated weapon.

Now to be fair there are a couple of areas where that might make sense, in the case of say pepper pots needing rotary tech first, or lancers needing rocket tech first for example.
I understand that you have problems with upgrades for mortars depending on other weapons. So if you have an idea staggering the damage upgrades for mortars that makes more sense, tell us.
Bethrezen wrote:my issue with this however at least as far as it pertains to pepper pots anyway is that from a progression point of view it makes no sense to get pepper pots near the end of beta since they are automatically obsolete as soon as you get them and realistically where you get the pepper pot tech on beta you should be getting the hellstorm howitzer, and pepper pots should be granted at the end of alpha and the most reasonable point for that is the same place you get the bombard of course this would mean giving the new paradigm pepper pots as well to keep things fair but i don't see that being a big issue and at least this way pepper pots are going to be useful for a few levels till you get howitzers and ripple rockets, and would give players a choice.
I don't agree. I use pepperpots for example in beta 11 and gamma 04 to gain experience fighting nexus cyborgs. And if a player wants, he can also use them wisely in other gamma levels. Howitzers and Ripple Rockets often miss running cyborgs due to the long time their projectiles are moving and their long reload time. So in my eyes, pepperpots are a useful weapon if you want to fight cyborgs over a relatively short distance without the risk that your units get destroyed. Giving the player pepperpots at the end of alpha mission is too soon in my eyes.
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by Bethrezen »

I understand that you have problems with upgrades for mortars depending on other weapons. So if you have an idea staggering the damage upgrades for mortars that makes more sense, tell us.
i already did in the above
Bethrezen wrote:With regards to how to stagger the mortar damage upgrades what we could do is give 1 mortar damage upgrade on alpha 4 give the second on alpha 6 and give the third on alpha 8 when you get the bombard, otherwise i think we can probably leave the mortar alone because its balance seems fine.
I don't agree. I use pepperpots for example in beta 11 and gamma 04 to gain experience fighting nexus cyborgs. And if a player wants, he can also use them wisely in other gamma levels. Howitzers and Ripple Rockets often miss running cyborgs due to the long time their projectiles are moving and their long reload time. So in my eyes, pepperpots are a useful weapon if you want to fight cyborgs over a relatively short distance without the risk that your units get destroyed. Giving the player pepperpots at the end of alpha mission is too soon in my eyes.
Oh I don't know depends on how much damage they are doing, personally i never used pepperpots in beta or gamma because you get the tech way to late and it's automatically obsolete as soon as you get it, for a couple of very simple reasons first they are to weak and don't do enough damage for them to be useful against anything but cyborgs, and second they don't have enough range so trying to use pepperpots against the collective or nexus is a waste of time because they will just counter battery them to death with there ripple rockets etc.

yeah there may be a few neesh uses for pepperpots but really, for them to be of any meaningful benefit you need to get them sooner, preferable before the computer gets counter battery towers and artillery that can shoot half way across the map, because otherwise there is no point in them being in game at all, as they are completely useless by the time you get to beta and are facing off against ripple rockets than can just Massacre your pepperpots from half way across the map.
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by nearo »

Bethrezen wrote:For the light cannon that should probably resemble the heavy machine-gun so like the heavy machine-gun it has a higher rate of fire but pound for pound each shot does relatively weaker damage when compared to the medium and heavy cannons, as to where i might choose to use the light cannon well since cannons are a general purpose weapon like the heavy machine-gun and since it has rapid fire like the heavy machine-gun then i might choose to use the light cannon as an alternative to the heavy machine-gun when I'm facing hordes of light units like cyborgs for example

Where before i would just default to using heavy machine-guns however if both heavy machine-guns and light cannons have roughly smiler performance then that gives me a free choice of which to use, for that job.
Umm...I don't know much about balancing, but please don't try to make weapons too much useful against targets where they get damage penalty. LCs are all rounders, their damage to cyborgs is reduced to 65% before armor, while HMGs are anti personnel weapons, which have 150% damage against infantry.

Check these tables to see the intended purpose of various weapon types. For example if you want good alternatives against cyborgs use flamers or artillery.

My opinion about LC:
I only use them in the last third of alpha6 and in the first third of alpha7. Usually in alpha6 I blow up the scav base with my initial units, grab the tech, and when the research is completed I immediately make 10 LC vipers half-tracks and lift them in. I only start the siege on the NP base when they arrive, so they can help against the NP units - I think they are stronger against them than the HMGs.
In the first part of alpha7 I don't care about upgrading my army to cobras. I push forward until I destroy that NP outpost which have the artifact for tracks. I build some defenses there against incoming attacks from the north, and upgrade all my units to cobra tracks, and after that I only use MCs.

If I really wanted to give more uses to LCs, I would make the research available at the start of alpha6 (like you could research composit alloys2 and python right from the start of alpha9). Maybe the scav base at alpha6 could drop mini rockets, and the scav base in alpha7 would drop only lancer and bb. This way you could use LCs in the whole alpha6 mission, and mini rockets would help to do the first part of alpha7.
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by alfred007 »

Bethrezen wrote:i already did in the above
Bethrezen wrote: With regards to how to stagger the mortar damage upgrades what we could do is give 1 mortar damage upgrade on alpha 4 give the second on alpha 6 and give the third on alpha 8 when you get the bombard, otherwise i think we can probably leave the mortar alone because its balance seems fine.
You told us when, but I'm asking for the "how".
Bethrezen wrote: it's automatically obsolete
No, it's not. My use proved the opposite.
Bethrezen wrote:for a couple of very simple reasons first they are to weak and don't do enough damage for them to be useful against anything but cyborgs, and second they don't have enough range so trying to use pepperpots against the collective or nexus is a waste of time because they will just counter battery them to death with there ripple rockets etc.
I wrote that you can use them for relatively short range, so why do you argue with the missing long range? With the same argument, you could say ripple rockets are obsolete because you can't use them for short range. It's clear that you can't use them as long as the counter batteries of the collective or nexus are working. But after you destroyed the enemy artillery with howitzers or ripple rockets you can use them. And in the two levels I called there are no counter batteries. Even If you don't see any benefit of pepperpots for the way you play the game, I see a benefit for the way I play the game and I also see benefits for other ways to play the game.
Bethrezen wrote:Well the answer to that is simple enough you have to try and put your self in the position of what other players would do, and not would you would do personally, because otherwise you end up with bad balancing.
And you argue about pepperpots only from your position. You contradict yourself.
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by Bethrezen »

Ok so just giving the latest iteration of the cambalance mod a go and I'm defiantly of the opinion that the new factory shouldn't be triggering till you go up the hill

Image

or enter/attack the new paradigm base because that really slows down the opening parts of the level, as you have to wait for more troops to arrive before you can do anything because the scav's keep blocking your LZ otherwise.

Now ordinarily I'd simply leave 1 or 2 units from my landing party at the LZ after activating reinforcements and dealing with the output of 1 factory they can hold the area till help arrives just about, but 2 units without support can't hold off the production from 2 factories long enough for help to arrive, especially not now that they have heavy machineguns and 3 damage upgrades, so that should be sorted out.

now so far as i can tell the reason the new scav factory is triggering becaue of this trigger point

Image

For some reason this is also triggering the new scav base when it shouldn't be, so for the sake of not messing up the opening parts of this level what i would do is only have the new scav factory trigger when you go up the hill

Image

or enter/attack the new paradigm base, now a I realise that this may be considered a little easy for insane but if that's the case then we can also have scav reinforcements come in from off screen

here
Image

or here
Image

or both if you wanted to be really mean :evil:

They did say we would be punished for attacking them after all.

Then of course we have to sort out the weapons balance.
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by alfred007 »

nearo wrote:
Bethrezen wrote:For the light cannon that should probably resemble the heavy machine-gun so like the heavy machine-gun it has a higher rate of fire but pound for pound each shot does relatively weaker damage when compared to the medium and heavy cannons, as to where i might choose to use the light cannon well since cannons are a general purpose weapon like the heavy machine-gun and since it has rapid fire like the heavy machine-gun then i might choose to use the light cannon as an alternative to the heavy machine-gun when I'm facing hordes of light units like cyborgs for example

Where before i would just default to using heavy machine-guns however if both heavy machine-guns and light cannons have roughly smiler performance then that gives me a free choice of which to use, for that job.
Umm...I don't know much about balancing, but please don't try to make weapons too much useful against targets where they get damage penalty. LCs are all rounders, their damage to cyborgs is reduced to 65% before armor, while HMGs are anti personnel weapons, which have 150% damage against infantry.

Check these tables to see the intended purpose of various weapon types. For example if you want good alternatives against cyborgs use flamers or artillery.

My opinion about LC:
I only use them in the last third of alpha6 and in the first third of alpha7. Usually in alpha6 I blow up the scav base with my initial units, grab the tech, and when the research is completed I immediately make 10 LC vipers half-tracks and lift them in. I only start the siege on the NP base when they arrive, so they can help against the NP units - I think they are stronger against them than the HMGs.
In the first part of alpha7 I don't care about upgrading my army to cobras. I push forward until I destroy that NP outpost which have the artifact for tracks. I build some defenses there against incoming attacks from the north, and upgrade all my units to cobra tracks, and after that I only use MCs.

If I really wanted to give more uses to LCs, I would make the research available at the start of alpha6 (like you could research composit alloys2 and python right from the start of alpha9). Maybe the scav base at alpha6 could drop mini rockets, and the scav base in alpha7 would drop only lancer and bb. This way you could use LCs in the whole alpha6 mission, and mini rockets would help to do the first part of alpha7.
The tables in the link you posted are for multiplayer games. We are testing the campaign. And for the balancing we are working on, we made new individual modifiers you can find here https://github.com/Warzone2100/warzone2 ... base/stats. In 3.2.3 for example cannons were no ALL ROUNDER as they are in multiplayer but they are ANTI TANK weapons like the lancer. We copied this idea from the multiplayer balancing to make it easier for us making cannons useful. With the current balancing in 3.2.3 cannons are absolutely underpowered in comparison to the lancer. And at the moment we are discussing a lot of things to find a solution that you can use all cannon types in a useful way.
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by nearo »

Oh, I didn't know that the modifiers were changed for mp.
Now it is a bit offtopic, but it would be a good idea to make a database for the campaign.
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