a research guide

[neosmolf]

Those who have played Warzone2100 since the dayes it was bought in stores and the Python body was the largest. We do not think about what buttons to press when researching. But for everyone else its another story.

I have been trying to get my friends to play Warzone2100 for years with limited amount of luck.

The research system seems to be the biggest problem, It too hard to understand what things you need to research to get to the designated technology.

The best possibel system I could think of was If you select eks. "Gauss Cannon" and then the research facility would recearch the things needed to get the "Gauss Cannon" automaticly. But that might be a hard nut to crack so I was thinking we need something like this build into the game http://warzone2100.ivanov.eu/techtree/

I know reprogramming a game is hard work, but I hope there is a brilliant mind out there ready to take on the challenge.


Tell me what you think of a build in research guide to make the game more approachable to newcomers.

[elio]

would be fine
check out viewtopic.php?f=3&t=2277

but get it ingame is another story..

[whippersnapper]

..
Couldn't resist this one...... (Walking away can be on a par with resisting an addiction, don't ya know...)

WZ MP vets know exactly what to research to have a good chance of winning at any T-Level. Practice till it becomes rote and
if you have good manual dexterity you can micro-manage all other tasking while engaging the proper research click-fest advance.
Vets that know these techniques will whip-on newbies pitifully till the cows come home - & the inevitable and predictable outcome becomes
unsatisfying for both winners and losers. This area is WZ's greatest Achilles heel GPM-wise... esp. when it comes to extending the audience beyond die-hards that are content with the status-quo GPMs. You may be able to deduce from Zarel's WZ Guide the current set of
winning strats if you have a gift for logical analysis and the fortitude of continuous play-testing, making of yourself a human guinea-pig
in a process that closely resembles more hard work than fun gaming. 'Course achieving such a competency is a short lived reward
in and of itself, to boot.

What neosmolf is also suggesting is NOT the WZ Guide made available in-game but rather what I would call "Smart Research"....
"Smart Research" would not alone resolve this Achilles heel of WZ MP GPMs but for the sake of illustration let me show a quick,
down and dirty, UI mock-up of something along these lines (i'm sure there are other ways of designing this)..... like so:

[Zi-Chan]

I don't vote for a System, where you click on an Item and the Research Facilities research everything needed for that Technology. That would mean, that you already know every Development beforehand - that makes no Sense, because you don't know, what the Future brings. Sure, you do know it as an experienced Player, but this is something different, because this is your Reality and the Game has its own one. Right, what is Reality? Might mean, that everything could and should be possible in a Game, but i'm for our own one inside it - that's why i mostly don't like Fantasy-Games.

My Recommencement is a System, where you can see inside the Game, what is needed for the next Step - but not for totally Future-Developments far away. So in my Opinion the Way whippersnapper goes is the right Way, i like those much Informations, but i am against Automatism. In Reality and in Games. Automatism would make the Game too easy IMHO. It's an essential Part of the Game, to research yourself. And i would find it boring, if i would not need to. Because the only Thing, you would have to do then, is building Structures and producing Units. Might be easy for Beginners and People, who can't click that fast as others do, but for me, it's just, that a whole Gamepart would get eliminated. If everything researched automatically till a certain Item you selected, you don't really notice the Developments till then - a very interesting Part of the Game, to read those Informations about new Items and to notice every single Improvement (like noticing the Difference between Machine Gun 10 Damage and 13 Damage), IMO. I like those small Things..

I vote for a complete Documentation inGame too. Because if someone can't connect to the Internet, he can't access the Informations he might want and need. At my Router, a "FRITZ!Box", the Help is completely stored online. If the Router can't connect to the Internet, i can't access the Help and find out exactly, why it doesn't connect - i wonder, how much Beer somebody has to drink, to program something stupid like this.... Sure, you can make those Informations accessable as a File inside the Game-Folder, but i would find it better inside the Game to reread everything. Even while a running Game, you should be able to access all those Informations. With a Function, to search for something certain, to find your desired Information fast.

[lav_coyote25]

when i did the documentation project - i experimented with the windows help file system... basicly it was a form of zip - and could take 200 mb and pare it down to 20 mb... (just a ferinstance.).

said file could be downloaded and run from the desk top with all pertinent info at hand 24/7. it wasnt fancy but it did do the job.

[Skrim]

IMO, all those upgrade technologies should be removed - we have way too many of these, with damage, ROF and accuracy upgrades for each weapon sub-class, 4 categories of HP upgrades and 2 categories of thermal armor upgrades, along with 3 different kinds of factory production upgrades, plus power generation, research rate, repair facility efficiency and VTOL rearming rate upgrades.

IMO, things should just go directly from one unlock-tech to another. It doesn't matter if they're each made 3-4x more expensive to compensate for the missing research in between them.

[whippersnapper]

IMO, all those upgrade technologies should be removed - we have way too many of these, with damage, ROF and accuracy upgrades for each weapon sub-class, 4 categories of HP upgrades and 2 categories of thermal armor upgrades, along with 3 different kinds of factory production upgrades, plus power generation, research rate, repair facility efficiency and VTOL rearming rate upgrades.

IMO, things should just go directly from one unlock-tech to another. It doesn't matter if they're each made 3-4x more expensive to compensate for the missing research in between them.

If this were done as a Mod, my sense is that sooner than later, most MP games would be played with it rather than "stock" WZ research mechanics. This is an area of WZ complication in "stock" form that actually detracts from fun gaming because it makes the game more of a dexterity click-fest contest than any real strategy cogitation . I do think it would have to be introduced as a mod just to avoid all the argumentation about violating the "sanctity" of the original Pumpkin GPMs. So much energy in the past has been expended on those debates when the fact is that a mod that blows the original mechanic to obsolescence is more than sufficient to make the case sans need for a mountain of verbiage...

.

[Deus Siddis]

IMO, all those upgrade technologies should be removed - we have way too many of these, with damage, ROF and accuracy upgrades for each weapon sub-class, 4 categories of HP upgrades and 2 categories of thermal armor upgrades, along with 3 different kinds of factory production upgrades, plus power generation, research rate, repair facility efficiency and VTOL rearming rate upgrades.

IMO, things should just go directly from one unlock-tech to another. It doesn't matter if they're each made 3-4x more expensive to compensate for the missing research in between them.

Wow, that idea is as excellent as it is simple. You've got my vote.

[lav_coyote25]

yes!! what whippersnapper said... and scrim suggested.

[Zarel]

If Betawidget had an HTML renderer, it wouldn't be too hard to get [my] guide inside. I don't think it does, though. It's not too hard to recursively generate a research prerequisite tree, so I guess it might be possible. I think we have plans along those lines.

[ThunderBuns]

If I had all the images for the researches I could make a flow chart.

And, of course, the proper order...