Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by Forgon »

The "movement" property of Angel Missile and Archangel Missile is "INDIRECT" in campaign and tutorial games and "HOMING-INDIRECT" for the equivalent weapons in skirmish and multiplayer games.

Is there a good reason for this or could their campaign behavior easily be changed?

Edit: A patch that enables homing for campaign missiles is available in ticket #4850.
Last edited by Forgon on 23 Dec 2018, 21:39, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by Cyp »

HOMING-INDIRECT didn't actually do anything at the time the campaign was made. I'd guess it wouldn't really affect balance much in campaign.
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by Bethrezen »

Even if you put an formula 1 engine into a ford escort as you said the ford wouldn't be able to drive as fast as a formula 1 car because his wheels would get destroyed and other reasons. This means that you must have a special propulsion to drive the maximum speed an engine allows.
Actually that’s not completely true assuming it was possible to outfit a standard road car with a formula 1 engine and assuming you had a skilled racing driver and a race track to drive it on you could in fact drive your modified street car just as fast as an actual formula 1 car.

you would of course need to make a few additional alterations to the cars like changing the tyres\wheels so that you have the necessary traction and you'd need to add some fins to crate the necessary down force to keep you on the track, and possibly you may need a new gear box but you wouldn’t need anything more than that and you certainly wouldn’t need some special propulsion to drive at the maximum speed the engine allows and saying that you would is just faulty logic but of course this is besides the point.

The issue I have with the way things are currently set up and the point that I was getting at is that at the moment no matter how may engine upgrades you get you are never going to be able to go faster than 1.35 on wheels or 1.17 on half tracks or 0.75 for tracks and that simply flies in the face of common sense.

If I take the same vehicle and put as more powerful engine in it then I'm going to be able to go faster, now I'll grant you that my example of putting a formula 1 engine in a standard road car may be a bit unrealistic but that is essentially what the engine upgrades do they are making the engine more powerful either by tuning the standard engine to give higher performance or by replacing the engine with a better one either way the effect is the same the engine can deliver more power which in turn means that the propulsion can achieve a higher RPM and thus the maximum speed of the vehicle increase proportionately.

Ok so lets put this into context.

Currently a cobra body and haft tracks have a max speed of 1.17 if you put a medium cannon on there that drops to 0.84 on flat ground and 0.63 on hills.

Now assuming you where to go with my suggestion for engine upgrades adding 1 engine upgrade would increase those values by 10%

So the maximum possible speed of a cobra body and half tracks would increase from 1.17 to 1.287 and again if you put a medium cannon on there the speed of the medium cannon cobra body haft tracks would go from 0.84 on flat ground and 0.63 on hills to around 0.94 and 0.73 respectively, although since I'm not doing 10% of 1 then it would probably actually be slightly less than that so something like 0.92 and 0.69 respectively I'm not sure of the exact values but they should be close enough.

Either way you can see how the proposed change to how engine upgrades works would actually function in practise, first it would increase the maximum possible speed for a body and propulsion unit combo but it would also proportionally increases the current speed of vehicle when you add a turret if the current speed is lower then the current maximum possible speed, and in the case where the weight of the turret is not sufficient to make the vehicle slower as is the case for say the heavy machine gun then the speed of the vehicle would simply increase to the new maximum possible speed so a heavy machine gun on a cobra body and half tracks would go from 1.17 to 1.287

If you make the tracked propulsion too fast it would become the same situation as with an overpowered weapon.
Well that simply wouldn’t happen with what I'm proposing tracks would always be slower then half tracks the only difference would be that they have a slightly higher starting value and even very heavy turrets wouldn’t be slower then 1.00 on any body/propulsion unit combo

Which means in theory if you wanted to you could do viper heavy cannon wheels and get the benefit of faster/cheaper production without getting so severely penalised in the speed department due to the fact that the engine of the viper body isn’t that powerful as you would still be able to do the minimum speed of 1.00, now of course with a bigger more expensive body with a bigger more powerful engine you could perhaps go faster but it would also cost you more this way it gives you some options and means even in late game the light bodies would still have some use so all things considered I don’t think setting a minimum speed value of 1.00 is particularly unreasonable, and as for the proposed default values

Tracks 1.00,
Half Track 1.35
Wheels 1.50
Hover 2.00

Again I don’t see anything unreasonable or overpowered there because you have to remember that after you adjust the weights only the lightest units would achieve the maximum possible speed for every other unit the total weight of the vehicle would prevent that but you have to have the maximum possible speed slightly higher then the actually achievable speed once you take in to consideration the vehicles total weight in order for the engine upgrades to work or you get the situation we have now where after an engine upgrade units should get faster but don't because they are already doing the current maximum possible speed and the engine upgrade is not increasing the maximum possible speed like it should be.

As for needing a maximum speed value for each of the propulsion units well realistically you don't because the maximum possible speed would be determined by the default value plus the number of engine upgrades you have and the value that you set each engine upgrade to give now since there is at most 6 engine upgrades in the entire game then 6 upgrades at 10% per upgrade would mean that even hover units with a start value of 2.00 wouldn't get to more then 3.2 and that's assuming there are actually 6 engine upgrades, and your not using a heavy turret like the heavy cannon which would slow your speed further due to there weight as for the other propulsion units well they would each be proportionally slower then that.

on the specific point about increased engine speeds making the game easer, well actually this isn't necessarily true, if engine upgrades affect the computer too then actually far from making things easier it might actually make things tougher due to the fact the computers units can move faster as well, something to consider.

We already increased the accuracy of the Mini Rocket Pod. You can see the current value in the weapons.json file at longHit. If I remember my calculations right the Mini Rocket Pod would be twice as powerful as the Lancer if you set the longHit value for both to the same. So the longHit value for the Mini Rocket Pod has to be significant lower than the value for the Lancer or the Lancer would become a no longer viable choice.
Well since mini rocket accuracy is still less then the heavy machine gun would I would do is increase the accuracy to the same as the heavy machine gun I would then reduce the rate of fire to the same as the heavy machinegun but I would give the mini rocket a slightly higher damage per shot then the heavy machine gun this way the mini rocket would be kind of like the heavy machine gun mk2

And if that resulted in the rocket pod ending up stronger than lancers and cannons then I would simple buff lancers and cannons slightly you could also stagger the damage upgrades as well the say way we have for other weapons because currently on alpha 06 you only get 1 damage upgrade for lancers but 2 for mini rockets so I think that would sort the issue.

It's intended that Anti-Tanks weapons are less effective against structures but maybe we made them too weak. Maybe we have to do some adjustments but it's still the goal that Anti-Tank weapons are less effective against structures than Allrounder weapons.
Well that’s why I suggested a value of 50 for hard targets and 35 for bunkers because that’s still lower then all rounder but it's not so harsh that it's rendering those weapons all but useless against hard targets and bunkers, because I think getting your damage reduced against hard targets by 75% is to much a 50% reduction for hard targets and 65% reduction for bunkers is more sensible, at least as far as the anti tank modifier goes as for the anti personnel again I recon a 75% reduced against hard targets is to much and as for bunkers well that should either be the same as or lower then anti tank since infantry carried weapons are not as big or as powerful as tank mounted versions and there for shouldn’t do as much damage against hard target and bunkers which is why I suggest a value of 40 for hard targets and 25 for bunkers for anti personal which is 10% less for both than anti tank

Afaik, not at the moment. What about new buttons where you can set every weapon at "fire only at units", "fire only at structures" and, "fire at anything" like "fire at own will"? But we would have to find someone to implement this.
Which is why I suggest increasing the rate of fire and possible making bunker busters also able to damage enemy units, while this doesn't really solve the problem it does at least mitigate it some what.
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by WZ2100ModsFAn »

Cyp wrote: 23 Dec 2018, 18:29 HOMING-INDIRECT didn't actually do anything at the time the campaign was made. I'd guess it wouldn't really affect balance much in campaign.
Homing Indirect is for the archangels to target units on the move. so are you sure you want to remove homing-indirect?
which is not recommended.
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by alfred007 »

Bethrezen wrote:Now assuming you where to go with my suggestion for engine upgrades adding 1 engine upgrade would increase those values by 10%
Not really. I looked into research.json and an engine upgrade increases the power of the body by 5 percent. You can find the formula for speed here. The speed of the propulsions is coded in propulsion.json. You have also propulsiontype.json with some multipliers. But I don't know how these multipliers are working. I suppose the formula for speed is hardcoded. If this is the case you have to convince Berserk Cyborg to change the hardcoded speed formula. And if this formula is also working for MP games your suggested change has also an influence on MP games. That would make it a bit more complicated and I guess we can't change the speed formula into increasing the maximum speed.


Bethrezen wrote: on the specific point about increased engine speeds making the game easer, well actually this isn't necessarily true, if engine upgrades affect the computer too then actually far from making things easier it might actually make things tougher due to the fact the computers units can move faster as well, something to consider.
Good point.

The current maximum speeds for each propulsion are:
Tracks: 0.98
Half Tracks: 1.17
Wheeled: 1.37
Hover: 1.56
Legged: 1.76
VTOL: 5.47

Based on your suggestion I suggest the following maximum speeds:
Tracks: 1.00
Half Tracks: 1.25
Wheeled: 1.50
Hover: 1.75
Legged: 2.00
VTOL: 5.47 (I'm open for suggestions if anyone wants a change)

We can also think about to increase the value for the engine upgrade from 5 to 10 and/or decreasing the weight of the tracked propulsion slightly (from 13000 to 12000).


Bethrezen wrote:Well since mini rocket accuracy is still less then the heavy machine gun would I would do is increase the accuracy to the same as the heavy machine gun I would then reduce the rate of fire to the same as the heavy machinegun but I would give the mini rocket a slightly higher damage per shot then the heavy machine gun this way the mini rocket would be kind of like the heavy machine gun mk2
You should think about that the Mini Rocket Pod is an anti-tank weapon and the HMG an anti-personnel weapon. With the current values in the mod, the Lancer is doing damage of 1840 per minute against a tracked NP unit with Scorpion body, if all projectiles hit. In the same situation, the MRP is doing damage of 2625 per minute, if all projectiles hit. This shows, that the accuracy of the MRP has to be lower than the accuracy of the Lancer. I think with the current values the Lancer is a good reference and no weapon should be better against tanks than the Lancer. If you still think that the MRP is not powerful enough (and I don't think so) it's way easier to change only the accuracy instead of changing all three weapon stats.


Bethrezen wrote: I also think the build cost for medium cannons is a bit too high and as a consequence you don’t really have the necessary resources to use it at this pointing the game because at the start of alpha 6 you only have 3 oil wells and around 3000 oil and that’s not really enough so I would perhaps reduce the build cost for medium cannons on halftracks and cobra body from 212 to 187 the same as for mortars and lancers on a cobra bodies and half tracks.
Now I had a look into my saved games and I have more than 6000 oil at the beginning of Alpha 06. I'm able to rebuild all of my combat units twice during Alpha 06. First at the beginning and then again after the better weapons are researched. I think it's time for you to think about your power strategy.
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by NoQ »

the Lancer is doing damage of 1840 per minute against a tracked NP unit with Scorpion body, if all projectiles hit. In the same situation, the MRP is doing damage of 2625 per minute, if all projectiles hit. This shows, that the accuracy of the MRP has to be lower than the accuracy of the Lancer.
With the same DPS, having lower ROF is sometimes a large advantage.

First of all, the first volley of lancers will kill a few enemy tanks instantly, decreasing DPS of the enemy considerably.

Then, most importantly, if lancers are on faster tanks (say, hovers), they can afford to avoid staying within enemy range, but only get there when they are fully charged and ready to shoot, and then immediately run away to get out of range and prevent the enemy from shooting back. This decreases enemy DPS dramatically.

Additionally, lancers have longer range. They are the most long-range direct weapon in the game at this point, which allows faster (or even same-speed) lancer tanks to never be in range of the enemy army (unless the enemy uses mortars).

I'm pretty confident that 10 scorpion lancer hover tanks will easily win a fight against 10 scorpion minipod tracked tanks, even if damage modifiers against tracks and hovers were equal (in practice, it's even better). Even half-tracked lancers should be pretty good.
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by alfred007 »

NoQ wrote:
the Lancer is doing damage of 1840 per minute against a tracked NP unit with Scorpion body, if all projectiles hit. In the same situation, the MRP is doing damage of 2625 per minute, if all projectiles hit. This shows, that the accuracy of the MRP has to be lower than the accuracy of the Lancer.
With the same DPS, having lower ROF is sometimes a large advantage.

First of all, the first volley of lancers will kill a few enemy tanks instantly, decreasing DPS of the enemy considerably.

Then, most importantly, if lancers are on faster tanks (say, hovers), they can afford to avoid staying within enemy range, but only get there when they are fully charged and ready to shoot, and then immediately run away to get out of range and prevent the enemy from shooting back. This decreases enemy DPS dramatically.

Additionally, lancers have longer range. They are the most long-range direct weapon in the game at this point, which allows faster (or even same-speed) lancer tanks to never be in range of the enemy army (unless the enemy uses mortars).

I'm pretty confident that 10 scorpion lancer hover tanks will easily win a fight against 10 scorpion minipod tracked tanks, even if damage modifiers against tracks and hovers were equal (in practice, it's even better). Even half-tracked lancers should be pretty good.
Our goal is to make the MRP, the Lancer and the Medium Cannon viable choices in the campaign. In the current master version, Lancers are overpowered, that's why we decreased the damage of the Lancer, increased the damage of MRP and Medium Cannon and also changed the modifier stats. It's clear that from the moment on when the Heavy Cannon is researched you will have to make a decision between the Heavy Cannon and the Lancer and the MRP will be no longer a viable choice because of the stronger armor the NP have from this point on.

In the Alpha campaign, we fight the (stupid) NP and not (more or less) smart human players. I'm open for changes for the MRP but I'm afraid that the MRP becomes too powerful with the same accuracy the Lancer has. As Bethrezen and I often noticed, the truth is in the game and not in calculations. So we will test how much we can increase the accuracy of the MRP without making it overpowered.
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by NoQ »

Hit-and-run and kiting advantages are even more powerful against stupid AIs.
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by Bethrezen »

Not really. I looked into research.json and an engine upgrade increases the power of the body by 5 percent. You can find the formula for speed here.
True enough but I think you miss read what I said and you missed the point that I was making. What I said was

Assuming you where to go with my suggestion for engine upgrades

Ergo I'm quite well aware that what is in the game files and how things are currently implemented is different from what I I'm proposing.

The problem with the current implementation as I see it is that it's convoluted and unnecessarily complicated, more over it doesn't appear to of been done correctly, if it had then when you apply the engine upgrades the maximum speed of every propulsion type would increase accordingly.

Now I had a look at the link you posted and it doesn't make any sense I can't make head nor tales of it.

For example If you look in the propulsion.json you see a speed value of 150 for half-tracks, so my first question is how are you going from a speed value of 150 to a speed value of 1.17 which is what you see in game

My next question is after you add a turret like a medium cannon for example how are you going from a speed value of 1.17 to a speed value of 0.84 for flat ground and 0.63 for hills

My next question is why do you even have a speed value in propulsion.json in the first place because it's completely unnecessary if you are calculating the base speed based on the engine power of the body and the total weight of the vehicle.

Why not just do

Engine power / total weight x propulsion modifier = max speed on flat ground
Engine power / total weight x propulsion modifier x terrain modifier = max speed on hills

This way you don’t actually need a speed value in propulsion.json and you can eliminate a whole bunch of unnecessary steps and make the whole system simpler, further more its much easier to control how fast a given units is because all you have to do is

a.) alter the engine power
b.) alter weight
c.) alter the propulsion modifier

The other benefit of this is that when you apply the engine upgrades they would actually work correctly and increase the maximum possible speed for all propulsion method like it should.

Now having looked in the propulsion.json it looks like the way this was going to be handled originally was by having a mk1, mk2, mk3 for each propulsion type so for example

Half-tracks 1
Half-tracks 2
Half-tracks 3

And as far as I can tell the only difference between mk1, mk2, mk3 is that they get a bit lighter so I can understand why pumpkin changed there mind about this because handling things that way is a bit of a kludge and really this should be handled properly and the implementation should be fixed so that when you apply engine upgrades your propulsion units get faster because otherwise there is no point in having the engine upgrades in game at all because they do nothing for like 90% of the games units and where they do have an effect the effect is so small that it's completely meaningless.

What this ultimately boils down to is that the current implementation needs to be reworked, because the way things are at the moment base speed is a fixed value which means that you can increase engine power all you want and it will never make a difference since the base speed calculation is imposing a hard cap on the maximum speed, so in order for engine upgrades to work right base speed needs to be variable, and unfortunately there isn’t another way around this.

Good point.

The current maximum speeds for each propulsion are:
Tracks: 0.98
Half Tracks: 1.17
Wheeled: 1.37
Hover: 1.56
Legged: 1.76
VTOL: 5.47

Based on your suggestion I suggest the following maximum speeds:
Tracks: 1.00
Half Tracks: 1.25
Wheeled: 1.50
Hover: 1.75
Legged: 2.00
VTOL: 5.47 (I'm open for suggestions if anyone wants a change)
Well I can see a couple of issues with that first off legs and never going to be faster than wheels, so legs would need to be decreased.

Second the increase for hover needs to be bigger because hover units are riding on a cushion of air which means they should suffer only about half the penalty from terrain that other propulsion methods do which is why I'd recommend an increase of 0.50 for hover but only 0.25 for other propulsion methods, as for vtols they are probably fast enough as is.

We can also think about to increase the value for the engine upgrade from 5 to 10 and/or decreasing the weight of the tracked propulsion slightly (from 13000 to 12000).
Both of which are largely pointless at this junction, changing the weight of tracks to 12000 does almost nothing, I already tried that, and as I already noted increasing the power of the engine upgrade is also pointless until the implementation is fixed because engine upgrade will not in fact make tracks faster, with the current implementation the only way you can address this is by increasing the base speed of tracks and making the weight of very heavy turrets like the medium and heavy cannon lighter so that there speed remains at or above 1.00, because in my opinion anything less is to slow to be practically useful.

You should think about that the Mini Rocket Pod is an anti-tank weapon and the HMG an anti-personnel weapon. With the current values in the mod, the Lancer is doing damage of 1840 per minute against a tracked NP unit with Scorpion body, if all projectiles hit. In the same situation, the MRP is doing damage of 2625 per minute, if all projectiles hit. This shows, that the accuracy of the MRP has to be lower than the accuracy of the Lancer. I think with the current values the Lancer is a good reference and no weapon should be better against tanks than the Lancer. If you still think that the MRP is not powerful enough (and I don't think so) it's way easier to change only the accuracy instead of changing all three weapon stats.
Question where you are getting 2625 damage per minute for the mini rocket pod? because if you adjusted the mini rocket pods stats as I suggested that would give the mini rocket pod the following stats

Damage per shot 32
Rate of fire 107
Accuracy 50%

So doing the math the numbers turn out like this

32 x 107 = 3424 damage per minute assuming a 100% hit rate

3424 / 100 x 50% = 1712 damage per minute with a 50% hit rate

and that’s not even factoring in the targets armour which is going to reduce the damage further so I don’t see how increasing the accuracy and slightly decreasing the rate of fire is somehow going to make the mini rocket pod stronger than the lancer if anything you would probably need to slightly buff the mini rocket pod in order to keep it competitive with the lancer.

Especially when you consider that the lancer has at this point in the game only had 1 upgrade where the mini rocket pod has had 5, 2 damage upgrades and 3 rate of fire upgrades.

so even if what you are suggesting did happen that's not a problem just stagger the upgrades a bit more, just like we did with the lancer, therefore eliminating the problem.

so given all of this i see no good reason for the mini rocket pod to have such poor accuracy, also let us not forget that the modifiers against structures for anti tank weapons still need buffing a bit because they are to low.

Now I had a look into my saved games and I have more than 6000 oil at the beginning of Alpha 06. I'm able to rebuild all of my combat units twice during Alpha 06. First at the beginning and then again after the better weapons are researched. I think it's time for you to think about your power strategy.
Oh?? I wonder how you mange that because when I get to alpha 06 I only have around 3000 power, guess it must be differences in play styles since you always did use less units than me, having said that it still doesn't invalidate my point that the build cost for medium cannons is a bit too high

Our goal is to make the MRP, the Lancer and the Medium Cannon viable choices in the campaign. In the current master version, Lancers are overpowered, that's why we decreased the damage of the Lancer, increased the damage of MRP and Medium Cannon and also changed the modifier stats. It's clear that from the moment on when the Heavy Cannon is researched you will have to make a decision between the Heavy Cannon and the Lancer and the MRP will be no longer a viable choice because of the stronger armor the NP have from this point on.
Not necessarily, because you could just buff the mini rocket pod a bit more to keep it competitive, because unlike with the flamer where it is more or less useless against the new paradigm due to there heavy resistance to thermal damage the mini rocket would only require an extra upgrade or 2 to keep it's damage competitive, so for example you might buff its damage or maybe its rate of fire or maybe its accuracy, i don't supposed it would matter to much which one you went for all would give a similar increase in damage.
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by alfred007 »

Bethrezen wrote:For example If you look in the propulsion.json you see a speed value of 150 for half-tracks, so my first question is how are you going from a speed value of 150 to a speed value of 1.17 which is what you see in game
The map is split into tiles, every tile into 128x128 pixel. When you take the speed of 150 and divide it by the 128 pixels you get the speed in tiles per second.
150/128=1.17 (rounded down)
Bethrezen wrote:My next question is after you add a turret like a medium cannon for example how are you going from a speed value of 1.17 to a speed value of 0.84 for flat ground and 0.63 for hills
That's something I also don't understand at the moment. What I understand is that the turret increase the weight and the heavier a unit is the slower it moves. But I can't recalculate the resulting speed shown in the game.
Bethrezen wrote:My next question is why do you even have a speed value in propulsion.json in the first place because it's completely unnecessary if you are calculating the base speed based on the engine power of the body and the total weight of the vehicle.
That's part of the formula. The unit moves with the calculated speed belonging to weight, engine power and so on or with the maximum speed in propulsion.json multiplicated with the experience bonus. Whichever is lower.
Bethrezen wrote:Why not just do

Engine power / total weight x propulsion modifier = max speed on flat ground
Engine power / total weight x propulsion modifier x terrain modifier = max speed on hills

This way you don’t actually need a speed value in propulsion.json and you can eliminate a whole bunch of unnecessary steps and make the whole system simpler, further more its much easier to control how fast a given units is because all you have to do is

a.) alter the engine power
b.) alter weight
c.) alter the propulsion modifier

The other benefit of this is that when you apply the engine upgrades they would actually work correctly and increase the maximum possible speed for all propulsion method like it should.

Now having looked in the propulsion.json it looks like the way this was going to be handled originally was by having a mk1, mk2, mk3 for each propulsion type so for example

Half-tracks 1
Half-tracks 2
Half-tracks 3

And as far as I can tell the only difference between mk1, mk2, mk3 is that they get a bit lighter so I can understand why pumpkin changed there mind about this because handling things that way is a bit of a kludge and really this should be handled properly and the implementation should be fixed so that when you apply engine upgrades your propulsion units get faster because otherwise there is no point in having the engine upgrades in game at all because they do nothing for like 90% of the games units and where they do have an effect the effect is so small that it's completely meaningless.

What this ultimately boils down to is that the current implementation needs to be reworked, because the way things are at the moment base speed is a fixed value which means that you can increase engine power all you want and it will never make a difference since the base speed calculation is imposing a hard cap on the maximum speed, so in order for engine upgrades to work right base speed needs to be variable, and unfortunately there isn’t another way around this.
I totally agree with you that the current system is too complicated and unintuitive. So I suggest you open a topic in "Ideas and suggestions" so we can discuss this with more player.
Bethrezen wrote:Question where you are getting 2625 damage per minute for the mini rocket pod?
As I wrote this is the specific damage per minute against a tracked NP unit with Scorpion body and if all projectiles hit and with all upgrades the MRP get in Alpha 06.

You calculated the damage without any upgrades. This damage per minute doesn't describe the situation correctly because you have to include the armor of the enemy. For example, the Light, Medium and Heavy Cannon are having the same damage per minute before any upgrades. But because the Heavy Cannon is doing more damage per shot a, less power of the shot is absorbed by the enemy armor and in the game, the Heavy Cannon is doing more damage to an enemy unit than a Medium Cannon and a Medium Cannon is doing more damage to an enemy unit than a Light Cannon.
Bethrezen wrote:and that’s not even factoring in the targets armour which is going to reduce the damage further so I don’t see how increasing the accuracy and slightly decreasing the rate of fire is somehow going to make the mini rocket pod stronger than the lancer if anything you would probably need to slightly buff the mini rocket pod in order to keep it competitive with the lancer.
We already decreased the ROF of the MRP by decreasing the percentage in the upgrades because the MRP was too strong at the first tests. And that's the reason why I'm more restrained with increasing the accuracy. I'm not against a try giving the MRP a higher accuracy. I just think it's way easier to change only one variable (accuracy) and look at how it works in the game instead of changing several variables. In my eyes, it makes no sense to change so many values and making the MRP too strong and then we have to decrease some values making the MRP again useful. I think it's easier to increase the accuracy slightly step by step until we are satisfied with the result. And at the moment the MRP is competitive with the Lancer in my eyes. I made several tests in Alpha 06 that way that I started at a specific time with combat groups that had only MRP's, Lancers or Medium Cannons and looked how long I needed to win the level. And with a combat group with only MRP's I needed the same time I needed with a combat group only with Lancers. Once again: If you want to make some tests with a higher accuracy for the MRP, I'm fine with that and will test it too. But I see no necessity to change so many variables at the same time.

Bethrezen wrote:that the modifiers against structures for anti tank weapons still need buffing a bit because they are to low.
Indeed
Bethrezen wrote:... guess it must be differences in play styles since you always did use less units than me
I think so too.
Bethrezen wrote:... having said that it still doesn't invalidate my point that the build cost for medium cannons is a bit too high
Give me an argument that convinces me, that is not basing on your specific situation that you have not enough power.

Once again, the intention of implementing insane difficulty is to force the player to think about his play style/strategy/tactics and also to force him to change it. Now I think it's the time that you have to think about your play style instead of claiming that the game should be changed that way that you don't have to change your play style. Instead of claiming that the situation in the game gets adapted to your play style you should more think about to adapt you play style to the situation in the game. I apologize if this sounds too harsh.
Bethrezen wrote:
Our goal is to make the MRP, the Lancer and the Medium Cannon viable choices in the campaign. In the current master version, Lancers are overpowered, that's why we decreased the damage of the Lancer, increased the damage of MRP and Medium Cannon and also changed the modifier stats. It's clear that from the moment on when the Heavy Cannon is researched you will have to make a decision between the Heavy Cannon and the Lancer and the MRP will be no longer a viable choice because of the stronger armor the NP have from this point on.
Not necessarily, because you could just buff the mini rocket pod a bit more to keep it competitive, because unlike with the flamer where it is more or less useless against the new paradigm due to there heavy resistance to thermal damage the mini rocket would only require an extra upgrade or 2 to keep it's damage competitive, so for example you might buff its damage or maybe its rate of fire or maybe its accuracy, i don't supposed it would matter to much which one you went for all would give a similar increase in damage.
To make this possible we would have to implement a new artifact in Alpha 11 or making the Heavy Cannon a prerequisite for this upgrade. I think we should continue this discussion after we finished the testing of Alpha 10.
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by Bethrezen »

You calculated the damage without any upgrades. This damage per minute doesn't describe the situation correctly because you have to include the armor of the enemy. For example, the Light, Medium and Heavy Cannon are having the same damage per minute before any upgrades. But because the Heavy Cannon is doing more damage per shot a, less power of the shot is absorbed by the enemy armor and in the game, the Heavy Cannon is doing more damage to an enemy unit than a Medium Cannon and a Medium Cannon is doing more damage to an enemy unit than a Light Cannon.
Actually that’s not true, now if you set the base stats of the mini rocket pod to the suggested values and then applied the 5 upgrade that you get on alpha 6 on top then you would be right and that would make the mini rocket pod to strong but that’s not what I'm suggesting, so lets see if I can clear up the confusion.

Ok so the base stats on the mini rocket pod before you do any upgrades are

Damage 20
Rate of fire 50
Accuracy 41%

After applying the 2 damage upgrades and the 3 rate of fire upgrades those values change to

Damage 32
Rate of fire 125
Accuracy 41%

Now since I'm suggesting increasing the base accuracy to 50% to match the heavy machine gun I need to turn down the base rate of fire or the mini rocket pod ends up to strong therefore I'd change

Accuracy from 41 to 50
Rate of fire from 50 to 42

This way when you apply the 5 upgrades you get on alpha 6 you end up at

Damage per shot 32
Rate of fire 107
Accuracy 50%

And as I already demonstrated above that would result in a damage per minute of 1712 which is just slightly less than the lancer and therefore there is no problem.

Now of course this isn’t taking into account the armour of the target which is going to reduce the damage further, thus you may actually need to buff the mini rocket a bit, but of course if that is the case you can always just turn up the accuracy a little bit more like maybe 1% or 2% what ever

So like I already said I don’t see how slightly buffing the accuracy and slightly decreasing the rate of fire is some how going too magically make the mini rocket more powerful then the lancer? because as I have already demonstrated that simply not the case.

We already decreased the ROF of the MRP by decreasing the percentage in the upgrades because the MRP was too strong at the first tests. And that's the reason why I'm more restrained with increasing the accuracy. I'm not against a try giving the MRP a higher accuracy. I just think it's way easier to change only one variable (accuracy) and look at how it works in the game instead of changing several variables. In my eyes, it makes no sense to change so many values and making the MRP too strong and then we have to decrease some values making the MRP again useful. I think it's easier to increase the accuracy slightly step by step until we are satisfied with the result. And at the moment the MRP is competitive with the Lancer in my eyes. I made several tests in Alpha 06 that way that I started at a specific time with combat groups that had only MRP's, Lancers or Medium Cannons and looked how long I needed to win the level. And with a combat group with only MRP's I needed the same time I needed with a combat group only with Lancers. Once again: If you want to make some tests with a higher accuracy for the MRP, I'm fine with that and will test it too. But I see no necessity to change so many variables at the same time.
Unfortunately you can't do balancing the way you are suggesting if you increase 1 stat you have to turn down another otherwise the weapon ends up being to strong now in the case of the mini rocket pod I choose to reduce the rate of fire because good accuracy is more important than a high rate of fire, as a high rate of fire only really benefit you when you are facing large numbers of weak units, and against scav's and cyborgs machine-guns are more effective.

Give me an argument that convinces me, that is not basing on your specific situation that you have not enough power.

Once again, the intention of implementing insane difficulty is to force the player to think about his play style/strategy/tactics and also to force him to change it. Now I think it's the time that you have to think about your play style instead of claiming that the game should be changed that way that you don't have to change your play style. Instead of claiming that the situation in the game gets adapted to your play style you should more think about to adapt you play style to the situation in the game. I apologize if this sounds too harsh.
Well that’s simple enough just look at how every other weapon is priced and then compare that to the medium cannon and answer me this why is the medium cannon so much more expensive ?

If the idea of equalising the damage of both cannons and lancers is so they are both viable choices then why would you make the cannon more expensive then the lancer because that is going to cause the very thing you are trying to avoid, and that makes no sense because the choice for the player when choosing either cannons or lancers should be do i want fast light units of do i want to go with slower but more durable units cost for both should be the same no matter which the player chooses, so given that i don't understand your objection ?

perhaps it would be helpful to try looking at the bigger picture before rejecting my suggestions out of hand, don't get me wrong sometimes it's justified because an idea is not workable for one reason of another or maybe it's not well though out or maybe it's going to have implications that i never considered and in those cases that's fair enough, but this is not one of those cases, nor does the suggestion have anything to do with my particular preferences / play style the fact that this is a minor benefit to the player is just that a fringe benefit.

To make this possible we would have to implement a new artefact in Alpha 11 or making the Heavy Cannon a prerequisite for this upgrade. I think we should continue this discussion after we finished the testing of Alpha 10.
Maybe maybe not it depends, just as we've moved some upgrades to later levels to stop weapons getting to strong to fast it's always possible that we could move some upgrades from later in the game and grant them a bit earlier, another way to go about this is slightly buffing the base stats and then moving some of the upgrades to later in the game so instead of getting 3 rate of fire upgrades and 2 damage upgrade on alpha 6 you might only get 1 damage upgrade and 1 rate of fire upgrade on alpha 6 and the others you would get later on, yet another way to handle this is to move some of the upgrade to later levels but have the upgrade provide a bigger boost, there are a multitude of ways to handle this but of course this can be dealt with when we get that far, if mini rockets end up being to weak.
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by alfred007 »

Bethrezen wrote:And as I already demonstrated above that would result in a damage per minute of 1712 which is just slightly less than the lancer and therefore there is no problem.
If you compare the damage per minute of two weapons without including the armor of the enemy you won't see the real effect in the game. Let me give you an example.

Weapon 1: ROF 10; Damage per round: 200; Damage per minute: 2000
Weapon 2: ROF 20; Damage per round: 100; Damage per minute: 2000

Two anti-tank weapons with the same damage per minute but different damage per round. We can ignore the modifiers because they have the same and the accuracy is also the same. Now the result against an NP tank with Scorpion body during Alpha 06.

Resulting damage per minute = (Base damage - armor) x ROF

Weapon 1: (200 - 23) x 10 = 1770
Weapon 2: (100 - 23) x 20 = 1540

As you can see, if you don't include the armor of the enemy into your calculations you think these two weapons are doing the same damage to an enemy unit but they don't.

If you really want to increase the accuracy of the MRP you shouldn't decrease the ROF as much as you suggested. Instead of increasing the firePause to 14 you should only increase it to 13. I don't see any benefit for gameplay by changing these values if the MRP becomes as powerful as before. But if you really want it, just do it, test it and tell us the result.

Regarding the costs of the Medium Cannon, this can be a part of the decision of the player. It's not only the question if you want to use fast but less strong units or strong but less fast units. The difference is also that Cannons are worse against units compared with Anti-Tank weapons but are better against structures and Cyborgs. That means, the player has to include several parameters into his decision and the costs can be one of it. I admit that there is no reason why the Medium Cannon is so much more expensive but there is also no reason why not. If you see one, just tell me.

If you want to make the Medium Cannon less expensive, you have to do it with all Cannons for consistency. And I don't know what consequences this would have for later levels. Farther, if you start to make the Medium Cannon as expensive as the Lancer you have to adjust the whole cost system. Because you have also had a look at Anti-Personnel and Artillery weapons. What are their costs compared with other weapon classes? And what should be the cost of the Heavy Cannon? With which weapon do you want to compare it? And what about the Light Cannon? I see a lot of work with not much benefit. Please don't understand me wrong: I'm not categorically against it. But this is a minor issue for me and the benefit I see is too low for all the work we would have to do.

By the way: Where is the price of weapons, structures etc. coded?

About our discussion of the speed calculation system, we should wait until someone told us if it's hardcoded or not. If it's hardcoded it will be way more difficult to change it because all changes would then also affect MP games.

And now up to the structure modifiers. I agree that it makes no sense that the modifier for bunkers is higher than the modifier for hard structures for Anti-Personnel and Anti-Tank weapons. After I had a look at the values I also think that the modifiers for Cannons are a little bit too high. So I suggest the following modifier:

ALL ROUNDER
Bunker: 70
Hard: 85
Medium: 100
Soft: 115

ANTI-PERSONNEL
Bunker: 20
Hard: 40
Medium: 65
Soft: 125

ANTI-TANK
Bunker: 25
Hard: 50
Medium: 75
Soft: 100
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by Berserk Cyborg »

I think "speed" upgrades and prices can wait for another time. The original purpose of this mod, to make useless weapons/units viable, should be the first goal. Then come back to these things later if need be.

alfred007 wrote: ANTI-TANK
Bunker: 25
Hard: 50
Medium: 75
Soft: 100
I think 25 is still good there. Rockets are all specialized to do some role and bunker-buster exists to hit structures.

alfred007 wrote: 12 Jan 2019, 18:18 By the way: Where is the price of weapons, structures etc. coded?
Each stat has "buildPower" in weapon/structure.json that is the price of the object.
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by alfred007 »

Berserk Cyborg wrote:
alfred007 wrote: ANTI-TANK
Bunker: 25
Hard: 50
Medium: 75
Soft: 100
I think 25 is still good there. Rockets are all specialized to do some role and bunker-buster exists to hit structures.
With the current values, the disadvantage of Anti-Tank weapons in comparison with Cannons in destroying hard structures is too big. Currently, the Medium Cannon causes the triple damage the Lancer is doing against hard structures but is doing just 30% less damage against a tracked Scorpion body unit. And even with my suggested values, the Medium Cannon is still causing the double damage. With being nearly useless against hard structures I'm afraid that players will move from Anti-Tank weapons to All-Rounders and the only thing we achieved is that the player will use Cannons till the end of the game without thinking about alternatives.

So the current values need an adjustment in my opinion in whatever direction.
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by Bethrezen »

If you compare the damage per minute of two weapons without including the armor of the enemy you won't see the real effect in the game. Let me give you an example.

Weapon 1: ROF 10; Damage per round: 200; Damage per minute: 2000
Weapon 2: ROF 20; Damage per round: 100; Damage per minute: 2000

Two anti-tank weapons with the same damage per minute but different damage per round. We can ignore the modifiers because they have the same and the accuracy is also the same. Now the result against an NP tank with Scorpion body during Alpha 06.

Resulting damage per minute = (Base damage - armor) x ROF

Weapon 1: (200 - 23) x 10 = 1770
Weapon 2: (100 - 23) x 20 = 1540

As you can see, if you don't include the armor of the enemy into your calculations you think these two weapons are doing the same damage to an enemy unit but they don't.

If you really want to increase the accuracy of the MRP you shouldn't decrease the ROF as much as you suggested. Instead of increasing the firePause to 14 you should only increase it to 13. I don't see any benefit for gameplay by changing these values if the MRP becomes as powerful as before. But if you really want it, just do it, test it and tell us the result.
I'm not sure what your point is here, because I already mentioned the fact I'm quiet well aware that I wasn’t taking into account the targets armour, and as such the damage value of 1712 is not the actual real world damage per minute and that the real world damage per minute is going to be less than this when adjusted for the targets armour

But that’s still isn’t explaining why you seem to think that slightly increasing the accuracy and slightly decreasing the rate of fire to compensate is suddenly going to make the mini rocket pod overpowered because that’s simply not the case, the fact is the total damage remains exactly the same against the same target.

If you increase the accuracy so the weapon hits say an extra 50 times per minute for example then you reduce the rate of fire by the same amount so that it also fires 50 less rounds per minute ergo the damage remains exactly the same against the same target.

Now of course the collation between rate of fire and accuracy isn’t exactly 1 to 1 so simply adjusting rate of fire and accuracy by the same amount isn’t going to produce exactly the result you expect but it does give you a starting point and this is where in game testing comes in and you can adjust the values up or down slightly until you get the result that you expect.

I was merely doing simple ball park calculations to demonstrate the point that you are wrong when you say increasing the accuracy and slightly decreasing the rate of fire to compensate is going to make the mini rocket pod overpowered because its not, not if you do it properly.

Regarding the costs of the Medium Cannon, this can be a part of the decision of the player. It's not only the question if you want to use fast but less strong units or strong but less fast units. The difference is also that Cannons are worse against units compared with Anti-Tank weapons but are better against structures and Cyborgs. That means, the player has to include several parameters into his decision and the costs can be one of it. I admit that there is no reason why the Medium Cannon is so much more expensive but there is also no reason why not. If you see one, just tell me.
To my mind if the ultimate aim of this is to make the heavy cannon and the lancer equal then actually the medium cannon should in theory be less expensive than the lancer due to the fact that its an inferior weapon when compared to the lancer, the fact that the damage has been tuned in such a way that at that point in the game the damage of both is roughly equal so that they are both viable choices is neither here nor there, so given that cannons are much simpler weapons than rocket systems and much easier to produce require less materials to produce, then it makes no sense for it to be more expensive.

More over the idea of balancing like this is so that everything is on the same curve and when you have a situation like this then it needs to be adjusted so that its sits at the appropriate location on that curve, currently the cost of medium cannon is set wrong making it an outlier therefore it should be adjusted to bring it back in line

If you want to make the Medium Cannon less expensive, you have to do it with all Cannons for consistency. And I don't know what consequences this would have for later levels. Farther, if you start to make the Medium Cannon as expensive as the Lancer you have to adjust the whole cost system. Because you have also had a look at Anti-Personnel and Artillery weapons. What are their costs compared with other weapon classes? And what should be the cost of the Heavy Cannon? With which weapon do you want to compare it? And what about the Light Cannon? I see a lot of work with not much benefit. Please don't understand me wrong: I'm not categorically against it. But this is a minor issue for me and the benefit I see is too low for all the work we would have to do.
I get the point that you are making here but you seem to be over thinking it somewhat because there is no need to adjust the cost of the other weapons because they are already at there appropriate location on the cost curve

So let's put this into context

The light cannon should be just slightly more then the heavy machine-gun which it is, the heavy cannon should be the same as the lancer and the medium cannon should be somewhere in the middle

So currently light cannon on halftracks and a cobra body costs 162 power, a lancer on halftracks and a cobra body costs 187 power, the difference between those 2 values is 25 therefore the medium cannon on a cobra body and haft tracks should be 174.5 which is exactly half way between the cost of a light cannon and a heavy cannon

Nice and tidy and simple and now the medium cannon is at its correct location on the cost curve

By the way: Where is the price of weapons, structures etc. coded
go in to the appropriate file and look up "buildPower"

About our discussion of the speed calculation system, we should wait until someone told us if it's hardcoded or not. If it's hardcoded it will be way more difficult to change it because all changes would then also affect MP games.
Actually I've been thinking about this and I don’t think we have to alter the calculations at all and here is why, ok so currently the engine upgrades appear to work like this

Engine power = engine power + (engine power x upgrade value)

So a cobra body has an engine power of 15,000 before upgrades each engine upgrade adds 5% so the math is

Engine power = 15000 + (15000 x 0.05)

That gives the cobra an engine power of 15750 after 1 upgrade and this is indeed what we see in game after applying the engine upgrade on alpha 6

Now the problem with the current implementation and why engine upgrades don't work correctly is because base speed is a fixed value, and because it’s a fixed value applying more engine power doesn't change the base speed this is incorrect implementation, therefore in order to correct this problem you need to do 1 of 2 things

Either you have to change the calculations in a manor similar to what I suggested before or you need to alter the engine upgrade which is probably the simpler approach and something that we can do

So instead of the engine upgrade doing just

Engine power = engine power + (engine power x upgrade value)

It needs to do

Engine power = engine power + (engine power x upgrade value)
And
Base speed = base speed + (base speed x upgrade value)

This way when you apply an engine upgrade it will increase the engine power by 5% but it will also increase the maximum possible speed by 5% as well this way when you add engine upgrade ALL UNITS get faster and not just the really heavy ones

I think "speed" upgrades and prices can wait for another time. The original purpose of this mod, to make useless weapons/units viable, should be the first goal. Then come back to these things later if need be.
true enough but i figure if you fix stuff like this as you go then it saves it being forgotten later on, i mean ultimately that's was the whole point of starting at alpha 1 and then adjusting things level by level, so we don't forget to address stuff like this.

I think 25 is still good there. Rockets are all specialized to do some role and bunker-buster exists to hit structures.
with regards to the modifiers Alfred is quiet correct and that's why i mentioned it, i get that anti tank weapons strictly speaking aren't supposed to be used on structures, but the reality is that the bunker buster isn't currently a viable alternative it does no damage to enemy units and therefore cant defend it's self, its rate of fire is way to low, and given that currently there is no way to make bunkers busters auto fire favour structures over enemy units they are simply not a viable alternative alone or as part of a combined arms assault and this is why i only ever use bunker busters on vtols and even then i only ever use then maybe a half dozen times in the entire game because they are largely useless and as such need to be completely reworked from the ground up.

At least flamers can damage enemy units so there not totally useless, although really flamers need more work because currently they are to weak to be effective against New Paradigm units due to there stronger thermal resistance.

i know this might be a totally crazy idea but I'm wondering if its possible to combine the bunker buster and the lancer in to a single unit and then simply have it fire the appropriate rocket depending on the target so if the target is a structure it will fire the bunker buster rocket if the target is an enemy unit it will fire the AT rockets.

I'm not sure if you have ever played dune but the imperial Sardaukar did this they where armed with both machine-guns and rockets and would fire the appropriate weapon depending on the target so if the target was infantry it would user machine-guns if the target was vehicles it would use rockets, and I'm wondering if something like this could be a viable work around, given all the issues bunkers busters have currently.
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