Contingency - A Warzone 2100 Expansion Pack Mod (Preview)

[Rman Virgil]

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Ok, I c. I'm outta touch with High Oil. Not my cup of tea.

That said... do you think there would be performance issues raising the struct limit in those type games...?

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many players already have perfomance issues in version 3.1

high-oil games can be very laggy in 3.1 if both teams (in 4x4 game) have built many defenses and artillery we have 2 types of limits here

1) limit of each structure type per game

*for example you can have only 255 cannon fortresses

*another example - 5 factories per player - same thing limited to 5

2) limit of structure_stats which loaded from stats/structures.txt

*Shadow Wolf TJC talked about limit of possible types of structures

** i think we can load 10'000 structure stats from structure.txt without any perfomance issues (depends on memory)

so, i can make 255 cannon fortresses and next i can make 255 rocket fortresses and etc.. so structures really unlimited per game

==> if we increase limit for 1 structure type from 255 to 500 it doesn't matter, all will be same as we have now

So basically Shadow Wolf need not scale back his goals...?

Also - thank you for the carefully detailed response. You have educated me. I appreciate that, truly.

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[Shadow Wolf TJC]

For the record guys, I was talking about 255 TYPES of structures, not 255 of a single structure.

[Rman Virgil]

For the record guys, I was talking about 255 TYPES of structures, not 255 of a single structure.

That's what I thought in my first post was hard-coded for sure like Research slots was... The rest of the conversation was looking at the other limits as part of any total performance issue scenarios I wasn't sure about and Reg312 clarified for me.

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[Goth Zagog-Thou]

For the record guys, I was talking about 255 TYPES of structures, not 255 of a single structure.

That's what we're talking about as well. When we say 'Structure Limit' it's not how many of a single structure, but total number of them.

[aubergine]

IIRC there is also a game-wide limit for AIs/scripts of something like 999 objects. I can't remember where I saw this, or whether it actually takes effect.

[Shadow Wolf TJC]

OK. Just clarifying things just in case.

Anyways, I just finished adding the defenses, and their respective research topics. All I need to do now is to adjust the statistics of the weapons, research items, bodies, and structures, and work on a few more .pie models, then it should be ready for beta-testing.

[Shadow Wolf TJC]

Good news. That "snag" that I mentioned earlier turned out to be somewhat of a false alarm. Even though the error continues to appear in the log, it doesn't seem to have any negative impacts as far as I can tell. All my 200+ structures seem to load and function correctly, so I'm guessing that I won't have to cut them out after all. (It did set me back a couple days as I tried to re-add all my structures though. )

As for what was causing the problem, turns out that I needed to adjust numFuncs on one or more structures in structures.txt in order to fix the problem. numFuncs seems to be set to "1" if the structure is meant to function as a wall corner (or other things), and "0" otherwise. (I had to set numFuncs for each of my new defenses to "0" in order to get things to work properly.)

I'm finally at the point where I can adjust stats. In fact, I recently finished adjusting prices for research items in research.txt. Research items would now take, for the most part, no more than 2 minutes to finish per item (with most research items taking from 1 minute to 1 minute, 30 seconds to finish), and only the most end-game items would cost the full $450 (which is the price limit that the game sets for research items), including the LasSat Command Post, Satellite Uplink, Neural Synapse Research Brain Mk3, Plasteel Fortress Construction, Plasteel Firebase Construction, and several end-game cross-line weapons such as the Plasma Cannon, Gauss Howitzer, and Leadsprayer Gauss Gattling Gun to name a few. Moreover, since I'm adding research items like Hardcrete Bunker Construction or Supercrete Hardpoint Construction to sort of mimic the effects of researching certain defense "bodies", all defenses (except for fortresses and firebases) would each cost only $1, and take less than a second to research.

Since research prices cannot go above $450, I may have to downscale unit and structure prices, and power generation rates, to balance things out.

[Shadow Wolf TJC]

I'm happy to announce that I'm finally finished with rebalancing the mod. I just did some testing of my own to see how matches would play out against a normal NEXUS AI, and while the AI doesn't yet seem to take advantage of any of the new stuff, allowing me to steamroll it quickly, before I'm able to research into T2 technology, I'm kind of pleased with how everything works. Of course, I'm just one playtester, and I'll need other playtesters to help fine-tune this mod.

However, I still have one more thing that I need to do before releasing this for open beta-testing, and that is to create a few more models that would give each of the new turrets and structures a more recognizable appearance from eachother. Here's a picture of what .pie models I used for all the Howitzers:

On the left side of the screen, from left to right, starting from the top, we have:
the regular Howitzer; the Heavy Howitzer (which was formerly called the Ground Shaker); the Rotary Howitzer (which was formerly called the Hellstorm); the Incendiary Howitzer (now with a new look); the Heavy Plasmite Howitzer (which requires Plasmite Flamer as a prerequisite), the Rotary Plasmite Howitzer (which also requires the Plasmite Flamer); the Sureshot Howitzer (a howitzer that fires anti-tank rounds that home in to their target); the Heavy Sureshot Howitzer; the Rotary Sureshot Howitzer; the Ground Shaker (an anti-structure howitzer that fires shells designed to create miniature earthquakes to damage structures); and the Gattling Howitzer (which requires some research into the Machinegun line to unlock).

On the right side are railgun versions of those same Howitzers, with much longer range, and dealing more damage than their lesser counterparts, while fulfilling the same roles. They will, however, require the Needlegun as a prerequisite in order to unlock, so they won't come easily.

By the way, all these Howitzers are mounted on different bunkers with different levels of durability. Some are mounted on Supercrete Bunkers, others are mounted on Plascrete Bunkers, and all the Gauss Howitzers to the right are mounted on Plasteel Bunkers.

I've also done some work on some new Howitzer Firebases:

From top to bottom are the regular and Gauss Howitzer Firebases, the Plasmite Howitzer Firebases, and the Sureshot Howitzer Firebases. Now, while the more advanced firebases would also be more durable, I've yet to work on giving the firebases different appearances.

Finally, I've decided on a name for this expansion pack: Warzone 2100: Contingency.

[Goth Zagog-Thou]

Nice work! Looking forward to giving this a try.

[Rman Virgil]

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Looks good.

What are using to make the. pies?
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[Shadow Wolf TJC]

I'm just using plain old WordPad to edit the .pie stats, and WMIT to view what the model would look like in-game.

[Iluvalar]

You just added howitzer ?

the Sureshot Howitzer (a howitzer that fires anti-tank rounds that home in to their target)

You are aware that once the artywar is installed, the only hope for non-arty player is to attack with tracks ? What is the new solution now that the arty player have anti-tank ?

[Rman Virgil]

I'm just using plain old WordPad to edit the .pie stats, and WMIT to view what the model would look like in-game.

I c. Thanks.

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[Shadow Wolf TJC]

@Iluvalar: The anti-tank howitzers aren't going to be easy to get, even compared to the already-expensive howitzers. They're one of those cross-line weapons that I mentioned earlier, which are more likely to be researched in high-oil or team-based games, where there's much more power to burn.

They'll require some research into T2 rocket damage, accuracy, and rof upgrades in order to unlock (and, like the other weapon lines' upgrades, those upgrades aren't exactly going to be cheap either), meaning that players that try to unlock them in a low-oil 1 vs 1 game would be putting themselves at a high risk of being overrun by a rusher. By the time that players unlock them, the other player would most likely already be in T3, far ahead of the player in terms of research. In a high-oil or team-based game, where there's more oil to burn, by that time that they're researched, opposing teams would most likely already have some sort of long-range artillery of their own, along with counter-battery sensors or radar detectors (the latter of which the shorter-ranged mortars and MRAs can easily take advantage of).

Also, the anti-tank howitzers wouldn't deal any splash damage, and I've scaled down all of the Howitzers' dps quite a bit. The Heavy Sureshot Howitzer, for example, would have a damage-per-shot that's comparable to a Heavy Cannon, though with 1/2 of the rate-of-fire, and about 75% more expensive to produce. Taken together, this would make them less effective against Cyborgs due to how much overkill their shots would do, and due to their lack of splash damage.

If you still have some concerns about something or another, then I suggest that you wait until the mod is out before you jump to conclusions like that. Once it's out, I'll be taking requests for balance changes, and the possible addition of a few more weapons as needed.

[Iluvalar]

oh man... i did it again... i'm sorry.