Leaderboard

There are many animals to hunt but there is no ducks. I think it would be nice to replace chicken by ducks on some map.

now this, this is beautiful. Make stone walls cheaper, faster to build, a little smaller and with less hp and the "cav problem" is gone. Because the cav cant realistically engage the actual enemy army (which consists of up to 100 spearman) without heavy losses and with more useful walls, they cant really disrupt your economy (if you prepare sufficiently).

The champion is strong and should remain that way, especially the cavalry. The real problem is how fast you can train this cavalry once you get p3. I mean, you don't see complaints from Han players abusing cavalry. If I'm in Athens, I'll hardly be able to create champion soldiers as fast as Gauls, because I need to build gyms. The real problem is in trainable champions in the barracks and stables, we need to put them in appropriate places, for that, we need new contraction models I think.

Ducks are on their job. They're helping us - developers to write code P.S. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging

I've found this old, yet interesting thread. Might be a fun (re)read.

It has been tested and proven that having <5 very strong units is never a problem and is a fun addition to the boring cs spam. but the number is always the problem. The hero is incredibly strong as an unit but nobody complains, because it is alone. The same applied for fire Cav in A25 and spear champ now. 5 ultra op spear cav can't completely break the game but 40 just slightly above-average merc sword cav broke A25

10% is a lot actually. Caracutos (brit speed hero) is 15%. Also, speamen do not need to beat champcav in a 1:1. They currently win decisively in a 2:1 engagement (which is less spearmen than a resource-balanced fight). The issue is that a champcav player will almost never need to take a 2:1 engagement against spearmen. first you kill some vulnerable economy to buy some time and later strike with closer to a 1:1 ratio. The massive mobility gap allows that (as high as 230% between spearmen and mace champcav+hero), not so much the strength of the unit. Also, such high mobility means champ cav can always be dealing damage, while infantry must spend a lot of time simply walking. persian and seleucid champ cavs are now "cataphract" units, which are a bit more expensive, and even stronger, but slower. Has anyone else noticed their popularity slip a bit compared to gaul, mace, or roman champ cav? So I think a few options are good here: close the mobility gap a bit by removing the extremely cheap, global cav speed tech, improve the utility of palisades, walls, and buildings to constrain mobility, and if need be, bump the cav counter up a little.

@Atrik ok lets survival on historical so when you resign we can test it

To me it's obvious that it is better to allow players to have easier control over units behavior rather then hardcoding some mitigation logic. The latter might even lead to un-intuitive pathing which the game already have a good deal of.

Browsers will probably continue to receive security updates for a few years. Windows 10 won't disappear in October, numerous companies will continue to use it and pay the extended support. Google Chrome supported Windows 7 up to January 2023, 3 years after the end of the regular support. Google stopped to support Win7 exactly when the extended support ended. So most of the apps are getting updates up to 2028 for Win10.

For me, I don't believe that there shouldn't be some "reflex-oriented gameplay" or that there shouldn't be any mechanical skill. But inefficient game features for me are just frustrating. I get that for some it's somehow providing dopamine, but I just dislike when not being able to translate my will into actions. There are amazing features in 0AD, like free draw formations and a couple great hotkeys like call to arm, queue action etc... Some feel/felt broken to me. One example is sniping, where you need to make hundreds of clicks just to avoid an army from targeting a hero (see Box Targeting thread) when a proper feature could make it feel sooo much better with a 5 line of code patch. In vanilla UI, you also have no way of knowing if, or which buildings are idle, I don't find this fun as maintaining production in buildings is pretty basic. Add to this a treacherous feature like auto-queue that is totally unreliable and you'll have me find it hard to enjoy a game. If the game doesn't want to introduce these features because some people find these limitations enjoyable, I'm glad that I can still get them in a mod.

But the trees, the berries, the hunt... Can't see unless I replace their meshes and skins with some GUI mod Too much messy grass on the ground... Need GUI mod to clean it up! thats what GUI mods are for. Idk why automation is a part of this. Automation mechanisms will touch simulation so it's not a pure GUI mod anymore

Do they? I could just not use them (like the current vanilla autoqueue). So its just as easy to pick up and play. We all agree on that one. But that will always be the case as long as its a strategy game. Because the better strategy thats being executed well will always beat a poor strategy. Or find some likeminded individuals and play with them, that's always fun! Especially if you can speak with them in voicechat while playing. I agree, but not everyone will and not everyone has to. I mean, the problem this thread is trying to discuss is whether the "reflex-oriented" part of the gameplay is so essential that we should try to inhibit modifications that reduce the amount of necessary inputs in any way, is it not? And when two people (or more) have a different opinion on what this game should "focus" on, we need to either talk with each other until we find common ground or decide in one way and risk losing some members of the community. @WiseKind (for example) believes we should not have any "reflex-oriented" gameplay, being able to "click fast" should not matter. @real_tabasco_sauce and I (for example) disagree. But this thread is for discussing why we disagree and bringing forth arguments for our "sides". @WiseKind argues that the challenge should never be a mechanical one, the game should be purely won by strategic decisions (or did I get that wrong?). But my question is... why? The importance of APM has been an aspect of all rts games (I know of) so far, so much so that it has become a core trait of the genre itself. I think most rts players enjoy this aspect of the game. Of course, 0ad does not have to "do the same" as any other rts, it could become the first rts where APM truly doesnt matter. But if you argue for such a strong deviation from the norm (which works very well for other titles of this genre), you have to make a sufficiently strong argument.

Exactly @real_tabasco_sauce. OP, I think you are missing the point on several issues. First and foremost, a game should be easy to pick up and play. Automation tools introduce unnecessary complexity. Second, the game should be hard to master. Skilled and experienced players should be able to play better than new players. That rewards effort put into the game. Third, any game can be played casually. It's up to you how seriously you want to play. If you just want to relax, hop on a team game with all Easy AIs, for example. But, RTS game should be a game, not a job. If you want a job instead of a game, try playing Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance (in addition to StarCraft 1 that I've already recommended )

This is a false dichotomy. We can and should have both these aspects of gameplay. The skill curve comes from strategy and multitasking ability, it has never been and nor should it be exclusively be one or the other. Skill curves/learning curves are important for a game's long term enjoyability. The vision also states this: This should disqualify macros and large-scale automation scripts from being compatible with the vision since these are very unintuitive. One of these automation mods has an added GUI panel and additional settings slots for configurations. Compare this to simply clicking a building and then clicking a unit.

I think you'd love StarCraft. The original one, I mean. No, really. Try it. The best RTS ever, for a reason.

I'm almost done with that for place and select hotkeys for buildings and selecting units. I need some time (and help) to do the PR

I had read that a new push mechanic was added to the game, and I wanted to try it out. This is a comment on that feature. Tag to @wraitii as he/she wrote it. I love the idea, but I don't think it plays out too well. With this new feature, formations are totally worthless, because people move even too well. Since there are no chain bumps slowing down mobs, there is almost no friction when moving blobs of people, which makes retreat very easy. I don't think I like the idea: the damage taken retreating is a big element in game strategy. Also, if moved to point when not in formations, people can form very dense masses that are both OP and weird. I suggest to raise the distance at wich there is repulsion. Another thing I noticed, is that when moving people and rams together, people can pass trough rams like they are made of air, but rams can't do the same, with the result that moving rams is possibly even more frustrating than it already was. Is it possible to add "mass" to rams and elephants, so they can push other people and maybe not be forced to make long roundabouts to avoid people and instead push it? Formations could do the same thing.

In ancient battles, only a handful of men were usually killed during each battle, most kills were scored while pursuing the retreaters. I don't think we should make retreating easier with this new pathfinder, without balancing things out in some way*. Cutting the retreat with additional forces is helpful and always will, but shouldn't be necessary for inflicting reasonable losses to a retreating force. But maybe I'm exaggerating the role of the pathfinder. *@ChronA already mentioned running charges and directional armor, other options that come to my mind are slowing people down when hit, or having soldiers moving at randomly different speeds when not in formation. That's very possible. Also, I don't see any other way to differentiate the many avaiable formations. But to be honest, I'd like it more if formations had benefits by themselves, rather than being a liability that needs a hard bonus to be useful.