Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Discuss the future of Warzone 2100 with us.
Bethrezen
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by Bethrezen »

The problem is that there are two formulas for speed and the speed that is slower is used in the game. The second formula is: Propulsion Max Speed x Unit experienced bonus. And no matter how fast you can get a unit, if the speed of this formula is lower, this speed is used. This formula gives you the limit you can reach.
As i see it the problem with engine upgrades is that base speed is a fixed value that never changes but base speed shouldn't be a fixed value base speed should be determined by engine power, for example

Base Speed = Engine Power / Total Weight x Terrain Modifier x Propulsion Modifier

so for example a half track light cannon cobra unit has

engine power 15,000
weight 11,000

Speed on Flat ground - 15,000 / 11,000 x 1 x 0.86 = 1.17
Speed on Hills - 15,000 / 11,000 x 0.75 x 0.86 = 0.88

and if you add 5% to the engine power you get

Speed on Flat ground - 15,750 / 11,000 x 1 x 0.86 = 1.23
Speed on Hills - 15,750 / 11,000 x 0.75 x 0.86 = 0.92

as you can see my way works correctly and all units get faster as engine power increases

its still possible to get the same effect with the current setup but you have to go about it a slightly different way because speed is a fixed value that never increases.

so you need to do

upgrade = engine power + (engine power x 5%)
and
base speed = base speed + (base speed x 5%)

15000 + (15000 x 0.05) = 15750
1.17 + (1.17 x 0.05) = 1.23

so you see you get the same result doing things this way, and the benefit of this is that you don't actually have to change the hard coded formula you just add an extra step to the engine upgrade so as well as increasing engine power by 5% it also increases speed by 5%.

In theory you should be able to do that by adding

Code: Select all

{
"class": "Propulsion",
"filterParameter": "PropulsionClass",
"filterValue": "Droids",
"parameter": "Speed",
"value": 5
}
to the engine upgrade, trouble is this doesn't seem to work, and i think the reason that it doesn't work is because there is no propulsion class because one was never implemented in the conversion from INI to JSON which means that in order for the above to work, you would need to know where the body class, weapon class etc are defined so that you can create a new propulsion class.

The issue there though is that if that's hard coded then it's not something that we could mod, if however this is being handled by scripting in say the libcampaign.js or rules.js for example then it would be possible for us to address this, it really just depends on how and where this has been implemented.

while i get the point you are making about the lower value always being used i don't think that would actually matter if you are having an upgrade add 5% to the top speed because both calculations should use the new speed value so

Speed = Base Speed × Speed Penalty × Unit Experience Bonus
or
Speed = Propulsion Max Speed × Unit Experience Bonus

would be

Speed = 1.17 x Speed Penalty × Unit Experience Bonus
or
Speed = 1.17 × Unit Experience Bonus

before the upgrade and

Speed = 1.23 x Speed Penalty × Unit Experience Bonus
or
Speed = 1.23 × Unit Experience Bonus

after the upgrade of course I cant be certain about that but I would assume that is how it would work.

With regards to the engine upgrades I have been looking into this a bit more and i found this because I wanted to know if it would be possible for us to mod this or not.

Code: Select all

"class":
"filterParameter":
"filterValue":
"parameter":
"value":
The following values are mandatory

"class": is the upgrade category (eg 'Weapon' or 'Building'),
"parameter": is the ability to change (eg 'Range'),
"value": is the increase in percentage

'filterParameter' and 'filterValue' are optional values that narrow which entities to change down to matching parameter and value pairs only.

now I'm assuming that the reason

Code: Select all

{
"class": "Propulsion",
"filterParameter": "PropulsionClass",
"filterValue": "Droids",
"parameter": "Speed",
"value": 5
}
doesn't work is because there is no Propulsion Class, now I could be wrong about that because I'm not sure where the code that handles upgrade is actually looking, I would assume the .json files in the stats folder, the thing of it is though is when i open say structure.json for example i don't see "class": "Building" so evidently there is still something that I'm overlooking.
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by ThinkSome »

So far :
- "incoming transmission" screens are often empty (in git).
EDIT1:
- the load transport icon in top left of the screen overlaps with console messages. This makes it difficult to discern units by clicking them and reading their textual description.
- I don't know which mission I am playing, can this info be put into escape menu or some other unobstructive place?
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xNEXTx
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by xNEXTx »

In my opinion, the most important problem of balance in the company is the army limit of 100.
Having 100 units is not a problem to overcome any defense and enemy units.
When before still on PSone played and had 40 units this was difficult.
I agree that in case of 40 units did not make sense to build VTOL and cyborgs, but the game was interesting.
Now:
Built limit of 100 units the army and "was crushed by a crowd" of computer.
The game company was created for 40 units. Deviation from this limit leads to a broken balance.
40 it's a little army, but it's right for the company.
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by Bethrezen »

So far :
- "incoming transmission" screens are often empty (in git).
EDIT1:
- the load transport icon in top left of the screen overlaps with console messages. This makes it difficult to discern units by clicking them and reading their textual description.
- I don't know which mission I am playing, can this info be put into escape menu or some other unobstructive place?
these are already know issues as you can see here Outstanding general issues

I have been keeping a list of stuff like that we ran into while testing that still needs fixing unfortunately the current master builds wont run on XP so its tough to know if these have been fixed or not, but i do try to keep this updated as best as i can.

with regards to your specific comments about console message i had already suggested that the console be moved below the buttons, to stop that from happening it just hasn't been done yet, one other issue with the console is that when there is to much text to fit on one line the rest of the text is just cut off instead of being wrapped to a new line.

In my opinion, the most important problem of balance in the company is the army limit of 100.
Having 100 units is not a problem to overcome any defense and enemy units.
When before still on PSone played and had 40 units this was difficult.
I agree that in case of 40 units did not make sense to build VTOL and cyborgs, but the game was interesting.
Now:
Built limit of 100 units the army and "was crushed by a crowd" of computer.
The game company was created for 40 units. Deviation from this limit leads to a broken balance.
40 it's a little army, but it's right for the company.
to be honest I'm of the opinion that the unit limit was more a function of the fact that back when warzone was released computers where significantly less powerful so in order for game performance to not suffer the number of units that where allowed was artificial capped you see this sort of thing in other RTS games that where around about the same time although what they did is rather than artificial capping the number of units you can have they just limited the amount of resources which had the same effect capping the amount of units you can have at any one time, the problem how ever is that oil in warzone is unlimited and never runs out so a resource cap wont work, hence the artificial unit cap.

The bigger problem in warzones campaign mode is that it needs a proper AI, because what we have at the moment is just a bunch of scripted events, the problem with that method is that its overly simplistic so the computer never adapts to your strategy and never tries to counter you, you do however you see this sort of a thing in newer RTS games though.

For example if you are using a lot of armoured units the computer will try to counter you by building more anti armour units.

hopefully the balance changes we are working on at the moment should help with this some as they make for example the computers defence turrets more dangerous as mobile units with the exception of artillery can't out range them now, and things like flame turrets are now more dangerous, on some levels that where to easy like alpha 3 we added some additional defences and a scav factory to make the level a little tougher, so the first 5 mission are not as easy as they where before, scavs are now a good deal more dangerous as they level up with you, to get a true taste of the changes you would need to play the game on insane though, as we haven't adjusted the easier difficulties yet.

if you want to try out the changes you can find the last build of the mod here

to use this download it and then put it in the auto load folder, and then load the game up and start a new game on insane difficulty.

It would be nice to see the unit cap removed and warzones campaign given a proper AI but i don't see that happening any time soon because that would be a lot of work, plus there are other fundamental issues with warzone that need fixing first before that would be possible like pathing for example which is pretty poor and results in units frequently geting stuck so that would definitely need fixing first, then of coures there are still a whole lot of bugs that need fixing.

While my self alfred and Berserk Cyborg have identified and fixed a lot of the issues particularly in Alpha Campaign which has been tested extensively there are still issues that need addressing in the Beta and Gamma Campaign plus a bunch of more general issues that are not related to any specific level.
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xNEXTx
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by xNEXTx »

I decided to play the company at the level of difficulty insane.
I have downloaded the latest master.
These "camBalance" changes are not included in the latest master version?
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by Forgon »

xNEXTx wrote: 01 Feb 2019, 14:15 I decided to play the company at the level of difficulty insane.
I have downloaded the latest master.
These "camBalance" changes are not included in the latest master version?
No, they are not. You have to download the camBalance mod and apply it if you want to help testing.
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by xNEXTx »

OK. I will play with the mod and can help with testing. Are there certain points that you should pay attention to?
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Berserk Cyborg
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by Berserk Cyborg »

alfred007 wrote: 30 Jan 2019, 21:00 The reason why I'm thinking about it is the name of this thread. What we are now doing is making a new balance for 3.3 or later versions. This is no longer testing 3.2.x Campaign games. And maybe if we make clear in the name of the thread what we are actually doing more player are interested in to join us.
BTW, I have requested this thread to be locked when the 3.3.0 beta gets released. This topic has mostly deviated away from the "testing 3.2 games" aspect since that has been accomplished. Separate threads can be created in the balance forum or the campaign dev forum.
hogwartswarrior wrote: still having the transport glitch
You are probably playing a 3.2.x release. Those issues have been fixed already.
ThinkSome wrote: "incoming transmission" screens are often empty (in git).
Can someone remind me where one of these "incoming transmission" videos are?
ThinkSome wrote: - the load transport icon in top left of the screen overlaps with console messages. This makes it difficult to discern units by clicking them and reading their textual description.
This is a known problem.
ThinkSome wrote: - I don't know which mission I am playing, can this info be put into escape menu or some other unobstructive place?
Near the bottom left is the total elasped time spent playing in the campaign. Above it is the mission name.
xNEXTx wrote: OK. I will play with the mod and can help with testing. Are there certain points that you should pay attention to?
We have gotten as far as Alpha 10 (second home base defend mission). Latest mod can be found here. Other than that it's just a matter of feedback.

@Bethrezen
I tried your changes.

Flamer is too powerful against hardcrete. Tone down the burn damage, keep the previous structure
modifier, and everything should work out.

Bunker Buster is better than lancer. I can fight and beat all NP units (including cyborgs) with a few bunker busters. This weapon shouldn't be able to actually fight battles. It only needs a better ROF.

Track speed is fine on Cobra body but is messed up with python. Medium-cannon python tracks moves almost as fast as a halftrack python lancer. Which is OP given the higher HP of cannons.

Making lancer/BB depend on the factory module makes these weapons part of the Alpha 5 tech tree. It's
best too just go pod->lancer->BB, for story purposes. The other research order changes to the pod are fine.

With that I'll see what alfred007 thinks.
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by hogwartswarrior »

Berserk Cyborg wrote: 02 Feb 2019, 00:28
alfred007 wrote: 30 Jan 2019, 21:00 The reason why I'm thinking about it is the name of this thread. What we are now doing is making a new balance for 3.3 or later versions. This is no longer testing 3.2.x Campaign games. And maybe if we make clear in the name of the thread what we are actually doing more player are interested in to join us.
BTW, I have requested this thread to be locked when the 3.3.0 beta gets released. This topic has mostly deviated away from the "testing 3.2 games" aspect since that has been accomplished. Separate threads can be created in the balance forum or the campaign dev forum.
hogwartswarrior wrote: still having the transport glitch
You are probably playing a 3.2.x release. Those issues have been fixed already.
ThinkSome wrote: "incoming transmission" screens are often empty (in git).
Can someone remind me where one of these "incoming transmission" videos are?
ThinkSome wrote: - the load transport icon in top left of the screen overlaps with console messages. This makes it difficult to discern units by clicking them and reading their textual description.
This is a known problem.
ThinkSome wrote: - I don't know which mission I am playing, can this info be put into escape menu or some other unobstructive place?
Near the bottom left is the total elasped time spent playing in the campaign. Above it is the mission name.
xNEXTx wrote: OK. I will play with the mod and can help with testing. Are there certain points that you should pay attention to?
We have gotten as far as Alpha 10 (second home base defend mission). Latest mod can be found here. Other than that it's just a matter of feedback.

@Bethrezen
I tried your changes.

Flamer is too powerful against hardcrete. Tone down the burn damage, keep the previous structure
modifier, and everything should work out.

Bunker Buster is better than lancer. I can fight and beat all NP units (including cyborgs) with a few bunker busters. This weapon shouldn't be able to actually fight battles. It only needs a better ROF.

Track speed is fine on Cobra body but is messed up with python. Medium-cannon python tracks moves almost as fast as a halftrack python lancer. Which is OP given the higher HP of cannons.

Making lancer/BB depend on the factory module makes these weapons part of the Alpha 5 tech tree. It's
best too just go pod->lancer->BB, for story purposes. The other research order changes to the pod are fine.

With that I'll see what alfred007 thinks.
playing master and still having it
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by Berserk Cyborg »

hogwartswarrior wrote: 02 Feb 2019, 03:53 playing master and still having it
I answered this in the ticket you made.
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by Bethrezen »

Flamer is too powerful against hardcrete. Tone down the burn damage, keep the previous structure modifier, and everything should work out.
The burn damage is difficult to judge since I'm not able to set my own units on fire which makes it hard to see precisely how much burn damage is actually being caused, I do however have an idea for figuring this out.

What I'm going to do is decrease impact damage to 0 so that the burn is the only thing causing damage then I'm then going to build a cage, I'll then spawn a New Paradigm Halftrack Scorpion Medium Cannon inside it, I'll then take 34 shots with a flamer and note how much damage is done, I'll then do this a few times to give me a good sample size.

Ok so the first attempt at this resulted in the New Paradigm Scorpion Halftrack Medium Cannon only lasting 25 shots before it died which means that the burn damage alone has to of been over 900 damage per minute which is way to much so I'll try reducing the periodic damage from 25 to 16 and try again

942 - 190 = 752
942 - 188 = 754
942 - 216 = 724
942 - 188 = 754

Humm…. Interesting it seems that each tick from the periodic damage is affected by the flamers accuracy, how curious I would have thought that each tick would have a 100% hit chance since it's not possible to move out of the way when you are already on fire, but that’s fine I can work with that, I also noticed that even when the impact damage is reduced to 0 the flamer still does 1 point of damage per hit so taking that in to account the above becomes

752 - 34 = 718
754 - 34 = 720
724 - 34 = 690
754 - 34 = 720

Which I think should be good for the burn damage

So now for the impact damage, to figure that out I'll use the give all cheat so that I can build a Scorpion Halftrack Medium Cannon with the composite alloys armour upgrade just like the New Paradigm units and since burn damage doesn't apply to friendly units that should allow me to see how much impact damage is being done per minute.

942 - 105 = 837
942 - 159 = 783
942 - 78 = 864
942 - 51 = 891

So the impact damage seems a little high so I think I'll try reducing the impact damage from 17 to 15 which will reduce the flamer from 52 damage per shot to 46 damage per shot.

942 - 194 = 748
942 - 260 = 682
942 - 238 = 704
942 - 216 = 726

so a damage value of 46 per shot seems good it gives a damage range similar to that of the burn damage which when added together gives the flamer a damage of around the 1400 damage per minute.

With regard to the HARD structure modifier a value of 40 for hard targets is to low, and doesn't make a whole lot of sense when the other modifiers are

Code: Select all

"MEDIUM": 140,
"SOFT": 160
However if you and alfred still think HARD 100 is a bit much then lets try HARD 80 now that I slightly reduced both the burn and impact damage and see how that is.

Bunker Buster is better than lancer. I can fight and beat all NP units (including cyborgs) with a few bunker busters. This weapon shouldn't be able to actually fight battles. It only needs a better ROF.
Oh? That shouldn’t be because a single shot from a lancer vs a Scorpion Halftrack Medium Cannon with the composite alloys armour does

942 - 614 = 328 damage

Which means that the lancer should have a damage range of around 2000 damage per minute depending on how many shots miss and there is no way the bunker buster with my changes is doing more than that and both the math and in game testing would seem to agree.

Lancer
Damage per shot 150 x 2 which we already confirmed to be correct above
Rate of Fire 10
Accuracy 60%
Scorpion body with composite alloys 16 kinetic, 12 thermal
Propulsion Modifier Halftracks 120%

(Damage Per Shot x Propulsion Modifier - Target Armour) x Rate of Fire x Accuracy

(300 x 1.2 - 16) x 10 x 0.6 = 2064 damage per minute

Now since the lancer is so much more powerful than the bunker buster I'll increase the hit points of the a Scorpion Halftrack Medium Cannon with the composite alloys by 5000 to make sure that it has enough health to survive taking 10 hits

7442 - 5966 = 1476
7442 - 5638 = 1804
7442 - 6130 = 1312
7442 - 4818 = 2624

As we can see the in game testing agrees with my math, Now let's contrast that with the bunker buster.

Bunker Buster
Damage per shot 120
Rate of Fire 10
Accuracy 70%
Scorpion body with composite alloys 16 kinetic, 12 thermal
Propulsion Modifier Halftracks 100%

(Damage Per Shot x Propulsion Modifier - Target Armour) x Rate of Fire x Accuracy

(120 x 1 -16) x 10 x 0.7 = 728

So the math predicts a damage per minute of 728 so let's test that to see if it's right.

942 - 110 = 832
942 - 110 = 832
942 - 6 = 936
942 - 214 = 728

It seems that once again the math and in game testing agrees, there is no possible way the bunker buster with my proposed settings is better than the lancer not even close it's in fact closer to the damage of the light cannon

So I don’t know how you are seeing issues with the damage of bunker busters against enemy vehicles because 700 to 800 damage per minute is actually pretty pathetic in the grand scheme of things now I'll grant you bunker buster are meant to be used against buildings and not enemy units but they still have to be able to defend them selves.

Which they can't with modifiers of 33% which reduces the damage against enemy units to around 250 per minute and that’s so low that you might as well have it set at zero for all the good it's going to do you.

So I think a damage of around 700 to 800 damage per minute is fine it's not so good that players are going to use them over other weapons but its not so poor that they can't defend them selves either, now if you reduced the modifiers from 100 to 90 then that would reduce the damage vs vehicles to around 600 damage per minute and to be honest I'm of the opinion that anything less then that and they wont inflict enough damage to be able to defend them selves.

I also did a little testing with the bunker buster vs buildings and discovered that the modifiers against building should probably be reduced by about 50% to 55% with my proposed settings or the bunker buster ends up way overpowered vs structures since increasing the rate of fire increases the bunker busters damage by 70% and reducing the damage from 157 per shot to 120 per shot only reduces the damage by about 10% to 15% so the structure modifiers still need to be reduced by around 50% to 55% to make the damage vs structures roughly the same as it was before increasing the rate of fire.

Track speed is fine on Cobra body but is messed up with python. Medium-cannon python tracks moves almost as fast as a halftrack python lancer. Which is OP given the higher HP of cannons.
That’s probably down to a combination of the more powerful engine on the python body and the fact I slightly reduced the weight of the medium cannon to address that I'll slightly increase the weight of the medium cannon from 3500 to 4000 that should fix it

Making lancer/BB depend on the factory module makes these weapons part of the Alpha 5 tech tree. It's best too just go pod->lancer->BB, for story purposes. The other research order changes to the pod are fine.
Oh I don’t know I though it actually made reasonable sense to have the factory module as a prerequisite.

While I get where you are coming from when you say that on a philosophical adding the factory module as a pre requisite makes then part of the Alpha 5 tech tree I look at it in the same way as medium bodies in order to make medium bodies you have to research and build the factory module, so from that point of view making the lancer and bunker buster require the factory module makes perfect sense because you can't build new technology till you upgrade your factory.

the only difference between that and what I presented is that I don’t know how to make it so you can't actually build rocket weapons till you have built the factory module in the same way as you can't build medium bodies till you build the factory module, if I did then I would have as doing so would be more or less transparent to the user any way and would let us achieve the desired result without having to add more artefacts and without having to research 1 weapon in order to research another which makes no sense.

Having said that changing the required research for the lancer and bunker buster was a bit of a kludge since removing the required research, from the lancer and bunker buster caused lancer and bunker buster to not show up at all and I wasn’t sure which bit of the libcampaign.js file I needed to alter to address that otherwise I would of just removed the required research for the lancer and bunker buster all together.

I'll make the changes above and post a modified version of the mod for evaluation shortly.
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by Forgon »

Bethrezen wrote: 03 Feb 2019, 20:46
Flamer is too powerful against hardcrete. Tone down the burn damage, keep the previous structure modifier, and everything should work out.
The burn damage is difficult to judge since I'm not able to set my own units on fire which makes it hard to see precisely how much burn damage is actually being caused [...]
You can attack your own units while the Alt key is pressed.
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by Bethrezen »

You can attack your own units while the Alt key is pressed.
yeah i know but even when you force fire on your own units with a flamer burn damage isn't applied only impact damage is.
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by Bethrezen »

Ok so here is an updated version of my preposed changes for alpha 06 and here is a list of changes made.

Tracks
Weight reduced from 13,000 to 10,000 ("weight": 650 to "weight": 500)
Base speed increased from 125 to 128

Bunker Buster
Cost reduced from 150 to 113
Damage decreased from 125 to 96
Rate of fire increased from 3 to 10 ("firePause": 200 to "firePause": 55,)

NEW: All weapon modifiers increased from 33 to 90 instead of 33 to 100
NEW: All structure modifiers reduced by 50%

Flamer
NEW: Damage increased from 12 to 15 instead of 12 to 17
NEW: Periodic damage increased from 14 to 16 instead of 14 to 25
NEW: Structure modifier "hard" increased from 40 to 80 instead of 40 to 100

Lancer
Cost increased from 100 to 113

Heavy Cannon
Cost reduced from 200 to 113
NEW: Weight reduced by 20% from 10,000 to 8000

Medium Cannon
Cost decreased from 125 to 94
NEW: Weight reduced by 20% from 5000 to 4000 instead of by 30% from 5000 to 3500

Rearranged the research order of the first Alpha 06 artefact

from
  • Medium cannon
    • Medium cannon hard point
  • Mini rocket pod
    • Mini Rocket Guard Tower
    • HE Mini Rockets
      • HE Mini Rockets 2
        • Fast Fire Mini Rockets
          • Fast Fire Mini Rockets 2
            • Fast Fire Mini Rockets 3
        • Lancer AT Rocket
          • Bunker buster rocket
          • HEAT Rocket warhead
          • Lancer Bunker
          • Lancer Hard Point
to
  • Medium cannon
    • Medium cannon hard point
  • Mini rocket pod
    • Mini Rocket Guard Tower
    • HE Mini Rockets
      • HE Mini Rockets 2
    • Fast Fire Mini Rockets
      • Fast Fire Mini Rockets 2
        • Fast Fire Mini Rockets 3
  • Lancer AT Rocket
    • HEAT Rocket warhead
    • Lancer Bunker
    • Lancer Hard Point
  • Bunker buster rocket
Changed Fast Fire Mini-Rockets required research

from ["R-Wpn-Rocket-Damage02"]
to ["R-Wpn-Rocket05-MiniPod"]

Changed Fast Fire Mini-Rockets Mk2 required research

From ["R-Wpn-Rocket-ROF01","R-Wpn-Rocket-Damage02"]
To ["R-Wpn-Rocket-ROF01"]

Changed Lancer AT Rocket required research

From ["R-Wpn-Rocket-Damage01"]
To ["R-Struc-Factory-Module"]

Changed Bunker Buster Rocket required research

From ["R-Wpn-Rocket01-LtAT"]
To ["R-Struc-Factory-Module"]

camBalance.wz
(176.35 KiB) Downloaded 368 times

[edit]
Ok so I was curious why even though statistically bunker busters are no where near as powerful as the lancers with my preposed values, you would think they are so i recycled 18 of my experienced units and turned them into half tracks cobra bunker busters, and tried it out, and i can see how it might appear as though they are better than lancers, its a different story with rookie units though, while if all 18 focus fire the enemy units they can kill them, they tend to go down pretty quickly if they are not supported.

so if we where to lower the modifiers again enemy units for bunker busters i probably wouldn't go lower than 80 because as it is bunker buster with my preposed values only do like 700 to 800 damage per minute vs enemy vehicles and if you reduce that by say 20% then that's 500 to 600 damage per minute and anything less than that and there not going to be able to defend them selves.
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Re: Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

Post by alfred007 »

Puuh, a few days not at the forum and so many things happened. I hope I don't miss something.

Let's start with the mod of Bethrezen.

Flamers are way too powerful. I started a new campaign and in alpha 02 flamers are running through the scavenger defenses like the defenses don't exist. And that before the upgrades you get in alpha 02. And also against hard structures in later levels.

In alpha 06 the Bunker Buster becomes as powerful as the Medium Cannon. That shouldn't be. A calculation against a tracked Scorpion body NP unit. Armor of the Scorpion body with one upgrade 15.6. For my calculation, I round up.

Medium Cannon
Damage: 64
ROF: 30
Accuracy: 50

Bunker Buster
Damage: 120
ROF: 10
Accuracy: 70

Damage formula from Bethrezen: (Damage Per Shot x Propulsion Modifier - Target Armour) x Rate of Fire x Accuracy

Medium Cannon
(64 x 100% - 16) x 30 x 50% = 720

Bunker Buster
(120 x 100% - 16) x 10 x 70% = 728

That would make the Medium Cannon obsolete. Generally, I'm no friend of making the Bunker Buster too useful against tanks. To make them no longer totally helpless we can increase the weaponmodifier to 50 and increase the ROF a bit. But the Bunker Buster is a specialized weapon against structures and that's what he should stay.

With the weight changes for the Medium Cannon and the tracked propulsion, all units become too fast. In alpha 06 the Medium Cannon is running with MaxSpeed both with half-tracks and tracks. Also the Lancer. And that before the engine upgrade. That's too soon to run with MaxSpeed.

It looks for me that messing around with weight values for changing unit speed is more complicated than it looked at first glance. So I'm of the opinion that we should concentrate us on making several weapons valuable choices and wait with speed changes after we finished that.

Bethrezen wrote:ultimately you can't get away from the fact that the medium cannon is a weaker weapon then the lancer, and in every RTS game out there weaker simpler units are always cheaper then there more powerful counter parts take command and conquer as an example

light tank costs 600, medium tank costs 800, and a mammoth tank costs 1500
OK, I accept your arguments. But I think the weapons are still too cheap so I suggest the following costs:
Medium Cannon: 100
Lancer: 125
Heavy Cannon: 125
Bethrezen wrote:Maybe that is how it's written in the code but that is not how it is in game, since there seems to be some disagreement on this I have just checked this on v1.10 and once again there is one 1 artefact in the first scav base and here is what it gives you and the order it gives you in
That's right, in v1.10 is only 1 artifact in the scavenger factory. For this new balancing, we changed a lot of things in comparison with v1.10. In v1.10 the Light Cannon was obsolete after arriving because you got immediately the Medium Cannon in Alpha 05. That's why we moved the Light Cannon from Alpha 05 to Alpha 04 and the Medium Cannon from Alpha 05 to Alpha 06 so that there are some levels where you can use the Light Cannon. Because we staggered some damage and ROF upgrades it became necessary to add more artifacts into the game in comparison with v1.10 and also with v3.1.5 and v3.2.3. If you don't like the Medium Cannon artifact in the scavenger factory tell us where we should hide it.

For the research order to the Lancer, we can make the MRP the prerequisite of the Lancer and the Bunker Buster so that you get the Lancer and the Bunker Buster immediately after the MRP is researched. I still like the idea with the new artifact "Rocket Technology" but because Berserk Cyborg don't like it I think this would be a good compromise.
Lancer
Damage per shot 150 x 2 which we already confirmed to be correct above
Rate of Fire 10
Accuracy 60%
Scorpion body with composite alloys 16 kinetic, 12 thermal
Propulsion Modifier Halftracks 120%

(Damage Per Shot x Propulsion Modifier - Target Armour) x Rate of Fire x Accuracy

(300 x 1.2 - 16) x 10 x 0.6 = 2064 damage per minute
You are doing the same mistake as twice (if I'm right) before. A ROF for the Lancer of 10 shown in the screen in the game means that the Lancer is shooting 5 times 2 rockets per minute. Not 10 times two rockets as in your calculation. Also, you have to subtract the armor from every rocket. So the calculation becomes this:

(150 x 1.2 - 16) x 10 x 0.6 = 984

I calculated above the damage for Medium Cannon and Bunker Buster against a tracked unit and do it here for comparison again for your half-tracked unit.

Medium Cannon:

(64 x 1.05 - 16) x 30 x 0.5 = 768

Bunker Buster:

(120 x 1 - 16) x 10 x 0.7 = 728


As you can see the Lancer isn't so much more powerful.
Bethrezen wrote:Now since the lancer is so much more powerful than the bunker buster I'll increase the hit points of the a Scorpion Halftrack Medium Cannon with the composite alloys by 5000 to make sure that it has enough health to survive taking 10 hits

7442 - 5966 = 1476
7442 - 5638 = 1804
7442 - 6130 = 1312
7442 - 4818 = 2624

As we can see the in game testing agrees with my math, Now let's contrast that with the bunker buster.
I'm surprised that your testing in the game confirmed your wrong calculation so please explain to us what you exactly did for this tests. Maybe I made a mistake but I'm pretty sure that I calculated right.
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