Warzone 2100 Forums

A nice feature not too often made use of is to do some training with your combat units to improve their experiences level. I personally think these experiences could be much more important. Players often make tons of tanks without any experience but kick into the enemy base and that´s it. Even if the enemy would try to repulse that attack with five heroes maybe, they won´t perform much better than five newbies. These combat experence levels seem to be a nice feature when fighting with a hand full units against a very small enemy army, but in Warzone often a mass of units rules the match and makes the combat experiences of single units worthless.

And generally speaking, It's hard to get a lot of combat units up to experience. The best way to get a large group of units on higher experience levels is to use commanders, as they give their levels of experience, to the units attached to them. So one hero commander, can give hero levels to 20 or so units attached to it...

The problem with that is, it's harder to manage the commanders, whereas it's easier to roll in a bunch of tanks.

ClockWork wrote: The problem with that is, it's harder to manage the commanders, whereas it's easier to roll in a bunch of tanks.

no. Actually, once installed, commanders groups are very easy to manage. ALT-[1-5] select the whole group. You can control straight from the minimap up to 5 groups. They retreat and their units are replaced all by themself.

The problem in multiplayer is their price, they soon become a target of opportunity and they die prematuraly. So most players don't really know how to use them correctly since they don't use them.

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Do you think that, for example, simple Commander group retreat - advance - retreat - advance maneuver can be optimally executed in the present state and that it's just a matter of practice and Commander longevity ?

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Once they are viable, practice make them even better yes. Mostly because you can really fight on many front at the same time with a bit of training.

For exemple you can outmanoeuvre the enemy with 4 commanders while the 5th brake loose in the backcountry and hit hard on the opponent oil derrick. It's much harder and less efficient if you try to control your units manually.

This doesn't mean I think they can't be improved a lot more.

What sort of units do you use with your commanders Iluvalar? I've always struggled to get good control over their assigned units.

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I struggle too. I try to use Combined Arms in each Commander led group. I'm gonna take a guess and say that Iluvalar uses Segregated Arms.

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aubergine wrote:What sort of units do you use with your commanders Iluvalar? I've always struggled to get good control over their assigned units.

Indirect fire units dont work pretty well when assigned to a commander. I agree. Using heavy units allow the commander to control more "power" overall. In theory, but in the standard mod, you always play the heavier bodies anyway .

Rman, actually in real game situation, you dont make that choice at all. You build what you have best. You make choices in the research layer before hand. And you still often have commanders that have mostly older units from another branch that get replaced only slowly. So you can deal with different weapon modifier on the battlefield as well.

You rarely mix your units intentionnaly. They just happen to be 25% mixed, 75% pure.

lol, sorry we totaly Hijacked themac's post.

So to answer to his question directly, The is the "flagship" in NRS that allow the units to start as veteran. I believe it would answer themac's wish .

Rman, actually in real game situation, you dont make that choice at all. You build what you have best. You make choices in the research layer before hand. And you still often have commanders that have mostly older units from another branch that get replaced only slowly. So you can deal with different weapon modifier on the battlefield as well.

You rarely mix your units intentionnaly. They just happen to be 25% mixed, 75% pure.

Is that in T1, no bases, start ?

I think our thread author would find this all instructive, if I may be presumptive....

Your a numbers kinda guy Iluvalar, let me ask you a question.

In chess it's been estimated there are 10 to the power of 120 - possible games. Of that number, 10 to the power of 111 are possible - good games.

So roughly, how many possible good games do you think for stock WZ, T1, no bases, between players closely matched in skill ?

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None. in 3.x. If you ask me. I believe design flaws made the game mostly random. But I will answer theoricaly :

Most options in the tech-tree are weaved together. You never get the choice to research power, research speed, engine, engineering, armor, bodies etc... Sadly.

There is 3 different "stance" you can chose in the game :
*low research, medi research um research, high.
One of the player could eventually realise he need to change

You have also 5 classic opening:
*FFR,FR*,RF*,RRF,FRC

You have 4 main weapon paths :
*mg, flamers, cannon, rockets
Their efficiency is affected by the research stance and the opening (assuming map is well proportionate). But let's forget that...

Each weapons have 3 complementary options + 2 complementary weapon + choosing to not have an option
Focusing on one weapon is obviously better, you make more damage overall thatn spreading on different weapons. However, there is a counter to each weapon. So you need a plan B. Ready to be used.

We end with 120 main opening possibilities on both side. (it's around 10 millions in NRS due to the star shaped research tree)

Finaly you get along the course of the game some boolean options which can hardly be all taken into acccount. But you can figure out it's multiply by 2^n the number of possible options.
Repair center, hover, vtols, arty...


What I really meant in that quoted post, is that players should build their main weapon until one of them discover he need to switch (this is more a constraint than an option at that point). But then, he will switch his research priorities and productions at once. So the main become the ALT. But even then, he will not "mix" the unit, he will still produce only his new main weapon. Then, the initiative go on the opponent side who will need to eventually adapt to the new threat.

Depending on the age of the commander and if he lost units, the commander will control mostly the main weapon or the alt weapon. While it's not intentionnal, you can still use it on the ground in you strategy.

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Thank you Iluvalar for sharing in detail your deep insights into WZ MP GPMs. They are instructive and stimulate us to dig deeper into our assumptions and understandings about the game.

Lets take a moment to circle back to how we got here.

themac wrote:A nice feature not too often made use of is to do some training with your combat units to improve their experiences level. I personally think these experiences could be much more important. Players often make tons of tanks without any experience but kick into the enemy base and that´s it. Even if the enemy would try to repulse that attack with five heroes maybe, they won´t perform much better than five newbies. These combat experence levels seem to be a nice feature when fighting with a hand full units against a very small enemy army, but in Warzone often a mass of units rules the match and makes the combat experiences of single units worthless.

To which the first response was:

ClockWork wrote:And generally speaking, It's hard to get a lot of combat units up to experience. The best way to get a large group of units on higher experience levels is to use commanders, as they give their levels of experience, to the units attached to them. So one hero commander, can give hero levels to 20 or so units attached to it...

The problem with that is, it's harder to manage the commanders, whereas it's easier to roll in a bunch of tanks.

IMO, both make legitimate points about the state of WZ MP.

Now let me backtrack a little more.

Most peeps first exposure to WZ is through the Campaign and the campaign is entirely constructed as an asymmetric conflict where you the player are in the weaker position of power throughout after your intitial triumph over scavs.

The promise of this type gameplay is not fullfilled in MP. Not even close. What happened ? Basically, a hard retail release deadline and Commanders were a major casuality in their original design development. But this is greatly expanded upon in another thread so I'm gonna leave it at that and continue on the asymmetric track.

It is a historical fact that in asymmetric wars, the weaker force WINS 30% of the time.

How's that possible ? Good question. And there is a long answer. But that's beyond the scope of this post. My point here being that the possibility, the opportunity, for viable asymmetric conflict is very powerful, very compelling, and the campaign demonstrates that - for 14 years now. (Yes, the campaign gets easy after you done played through it a couple times. And, it can be improved. However, that doesn't invalidate the initial experience of it, or this argument.)

And in keeping with the definition of a game as a construct that inspires the voluntary effort to overcome unnecessary obstacles, what could be more compelling than the possibility of winning the conflict from an ostensibly weaker position.

The question becomes HOW can you model a 30% asymmetric win possibility in WZ MP ?

For this post, I'm gonna give a brief answer based on a simple definition of power.

Power is the ability to cause or prevent change.

Bluffing, sacrifice, miss-direction..... could be seen in those terms - the asymmetric excercise of power from the force strength weaker position.

Question is - how do you model gameplay to facilitate such opportunities ?

One answer involves Commander / Experience mechanics - advancing their current state such that they are a viable choice in MP gameplay..... for a 30% chance win possibility vs greater force numbers.
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