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StopKillingMe

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Everything posted by StopKillingMe

  1. Select: Multiplayer -> Game Lobby - and sign up - you can get a game there pretty easily.
  2. That is kind of the purpose of me getting involved at this level of detail - all I can do is hope that you will understand this. I don't think anyone is questioning what you are doing, the concern is more about how you are doing it. Good/Bad/or Indifferent - what you are changing needs to be logged. Really the only reason why, is that in the unlikely event that your changes have unintended consequences, we need to know how it happened and what needs to be done to backtrack. It's really that simple. My personal opinion? You should be tracking this stuff yourself, the fact that I have to do it for you is incredibly disappointing to me. But I am invested enough in this game for it to be worthwhile.
  3. Understood. I'll keep digging through it an enumerating what is different from vanilla, if we need to move what I am doing from a thread or to phabricator or whatever of course I will comply. My feedback and questions in my docs are just my opinions, they don't necessarily mean much more than that. The only thing I am vehement about in my opinions is that things that are unique to a civ should not be mooted by so called balance changes, and I also see zero purpose in removing the ability to train men and cav from the CC - I won't ever agree that something like that has anything to do with game balance. Other than those two things, I'm not here to argue with actual game balance changes, whatever makes sense, makes sense.
  4. I will be as thorough as possible, making sure I get everything listed out. And please feel free to move this thread if it is posted in the wrong place.
  5. "0 A.D. is released as open source: you can freely use, copy, modify and distribute the game's source code and data files, as long as you include attribution to Wildfire Games and let anyone freely modify and distribute any of your own modifications to the game's files." I am not doing anything that the 0ad license does not allow me to do. You do not have a right to complain about this.
  6. This will be a project to carefully document with as much detail as possible what is being changed in the Borg gameplay Mod offered for download on mod.io New Balance. New Technology Trees. New Bonus. New Auras. New Units. New Buildings and much more. All of these changes need to be enumerated and tracked, as this mod or parts of it may end up being rolled into a future release of 0ad Alpha (vanilla). This is being done so that current vanilla 0ad players can make informed decisions about how to adapt current strategy to these significant changes should any or all of these changes make it into the next or some subsequent Alpha release. The approach will be, first, to communicate the changes from the actual experience of playing the Mod against the AI, to second, loading the mod into the Eclipse IDE and finding the actual changes that are being made and clearly enumerating what they are. For the purposes of clarity, I will as much as possible list what the current stat of a unit or tech is in the current release, and then what the new values are in the mod. This will give the players complete transparency on the changes. Phase One: Apparent Changes from actual GamePlay Test One - Britons against the AI on Oasis 1. CC has been changed - cannot train citizen soldiers, only women. (need to verify if this is the same for all civs now) Concerns: Training male unit types in the CC was not the same for each civ - so this is a very significant change that is effecting each civ in a non-uniform way. Must now build three different buildings to get the same type of units out that were available in the CC before this change. Barracks produce Melee units, Archery Range produces ranged units, Stable produces Cav units. Please note that all three of these unit types were previously able to be produced by the CC. 2. Two new techs in CC - "Siege Rations" and "Peasant Laborers" ( will need to find and enumerate in IDE) & (need to verify if this is the same for all civs in game) - "Siege Rations" described in game as "+5 Health for all organic units" cost is 500 food time is 20 seconds - "Peasant Laborers" described in game as -10% build time for all structures cost is 100 food time is 20 seconds Concerns: Do all civs build structures at the same speed? If not, if the civs that build structures at a faster speed research "Peasant Laborers" early in the build order, they will now have a massive advantage over those that don't and have slower build times. (need more data) 3, Wardog Kennel now build-able in Age 1 Concerns: This gives what is already considered an OP civ in vanilla the ability to harass early resource gathering of opponents. 5 war dogs plus the starting dog for Brits is a significant capability. The cost for these dogs is only food, women have a bonus for gathering food. Not really sure why this is being moved from Age 2 to Age 1. Test Two - Persians against the AI on Oasis 1. Persian stables now the same as stables for all other civs- there was a differentiation in a24, where as - all other civs built barracks only, but Persians could build both barracks and stables. Concerns: Unique attribute of the Persian civ has been affected, perhaps unintentionally. (need more data) Test Three - Seleucids vs AI on Oasis 1. Elephant Stables can now be built to produce elephants. There is no limit on the amount of these stables that can be built. Elephant Stables significantly cheaper and faster to produce than Fort. Concerns: The ability to make Elephant Stables is a unique Mauryan tech in a24, giving this to other civs negates that unique tech. The "Elephant Stables" are significantly cheaper to make than the Fort (in a24, Seleucids must build a fort to train Elephants), and forts are limited to 10. This means Seleucids can now produce more elephants much faster (this needs much more investigation, will be testing the addition of Elephant Stables extensively in the coming days) - (need to carefully investigate all elephant producing civs in both a24 and borgmod) (to be updated as I make progress)
  7. Not sure I can agree with the statement that "women shouldn't be available to a faction unless there is good precedent for them having a larger role". What would be the point of removing the ability to train women from some factions? Didn't all of these societies indeed have women in them?
  8. My feedback on your mod is pretty simple: Giving all civs common startup techs from the CC, and removing the ability to train citizen soldiers from the CC. IMO, this is a considerable mistake. The male units that train from the CC are not the same for every civ, some can train skirmishers, some archers, some swordsman, some slingers, etc. You've removed a feature that makes 0ad unique. It now takes an incredible amount of time, and wood - to get up a barracks, an archery range, and a stable - in order to make the units that in vanilla you can make from the CC if you want. Even worse, if your starting horseman dies, you can't create another one until you get up a stable. IMO, the startup of phase of 0ad does not need to be changed. Taking away the ability of the players to make citizen soldiers and Cav that can hunt from the CC is not something that in my opinion needs to be done.
  9. Well just to be clear on what my issue is - I don't think the things that make 0ad unique should be removed. I believe it is possible to address MP gameplay balance issues without doing things like removing the ability to train citizen soldiers from the CC.
  10. Very easily. I have consumed the documentation that is published on this website - it is extremely easy to identity a suggested change that doesn't align itself with what is documented. If you look at what is published, every unit in this game has historical reasoning and research behind the way it is implemented. Inventing a new system to supersede that work and research, whether it becomes part of the game or not, is an abandonment of the very core of this game.
  11. My point remains that all this talk of drastically changing things is counter productive. There is a road-map for getting to the release of the game and quite obviously that road-map should be followed. More power to the modders for having fun and treating 0ad like it's a personal sandbox that allows them to change everything, but that process is/and should be - separate from getting the current vanilla 0ad code base into Beta and then release. And the fact that in some instances I am being personally attacked for this stance and having to put people on ignore, in my mind only serves to illustrate that the desire to rip apart 0ad in favor of a Mod is a real one, and one that should be opposed. From a project management perspective, it's just a bad idea to start doing things that are clearly out of scope and are potentially destructive to the success of the project.
  12. Of course they didn't, but they also didn't get everything completely wrong as some are suggesting. How the CC works and how resources are collected does not need to be changed.
  13. Moderation note: The posts in this thread were split off from here as it was increasingly off-topic. It shouldn't be.
  14. I very much enjoy the game, and yes it looks great
  15. I just simply don't agree. There is no way to get any kind of significant play of a mod, the game lobby is where the players are. Again, we all know that the Celts have a distinct advantage, and targeting them directly is the obvious answer. The code is in Alpha, it's not a released game, this makes the game lobby the perfect place for changes to take effect and get thoroughly vetted by a wide variety of players. The mod discussion or the reworking of how 0ad is designed, what units can train where, and the endless debate of what is "wrong" with vanilla just simply isn't productive. It adds zero value to what actually needs to be done, which again, is a very small and targeted patch that addresses the Celts.
  16. Yeah so what? That is simply an inherent risk of attacking, you had better win, or you will be behind. That's more about scouting and understanding what you are attacking then about the resources you lose from a minute of marching, and besides, if they are champion units, cavalry, or siege, your little formula doesn't even apply. IMO, you are making a big deal over something that is trivial, no player uses all the resources he is gathering down to the 0 level all the time anyway...I see no reason to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
  17. I don't really understand what you are saying - if I take soldiers off of gathering resources, the person I am attacking has to do the same thing to defend. It's pretty much a wash. And as pointed out, it's not a nightmare to put them back to work, it's a hotkey. And I guess you have never heard about an army plundering the land of its riches when it defeats them? The resources that the attacking army can gather in enemy territory basically represents plundering and looting, and there certainly is 'authentic historical' precedence for that. And then you go on to suggest that the micro to setup an economy be dumbed down? You build a farmhouse and that's all you have to do? Everything else is done automatically? You are describing "The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth II" whose game play became about running around destroying food producing buildings all game...exceedingly inane and boring. The whole point of having to micro things separates the men from the boys, if you stay 100% focused on micro-ing an attack, then you shouldn't have the bandwidth to boom your economy at the exact same time you are micro-ring archers or whatever it is that has taken your attention away from building farms or whatever, that is the whole point of real time strategy, being smart about what gets your attention, when - and where. Take that out of the game and you might as well just be a Total War MP clone. The whole point of 0ad resource gathering Meta right now is that women gather food faster, and men gather wood and metal/stone faster, but even faster yet with one women gathering with them. These details matter, yet for some reason you want to dumb all of that subtle strategy down to nothing. I have to say, that doesn't make a lot of sense to me. I don't get what the point is of taking strategy out of the economic part of the game. You're just removing things that make 0ad unique.
  18. This is why: "That's just the nature of an open source project. Everyone has their own vision and they collide either creatively or destructively. I know I quit 'solo modding' after I honed my skills enough to get a feel for how things work. Modding is a waste of time at this point if you're looking for an end product. The thing is Terra Magna is a testing ground for civs so it wont break so often, Delenda Est and other balance mods are gameplay mods so you're going to be locking antlers with the dev team when we make any kind of progress/clean up code. You have to understand too, I'm sure many of the devs are just as embittered about this. I know I haven't really had fun playing 0 AD since A16 did away with multiplier counters, and later PA. Not to say I didn't have a smattering of fun games along the way. My job here is easy enough in that I just have to make things look pretty. I have my own vision for this game, but I'd rather see things centralized and strong than contribute to this 'warring states' period we're going through now." Posted 9/26/17 by LordGood Pretty spot on wouldn't you say? So using this statement from one of the dev team, I can no longer be accused of trying to create conflict, this problem of competing ideas of what the game *should be* being counter productive was predicted two years ago by an active member of the team. @DarcReaver has published a set of documents here on the forums that can only be characterized as representing the desire to produce an entirely new game, while simultaneously dismissing what we are all playing now as "nothing more than a tech demo". I will never agree with that assessment, I am actively playing 0ad, and having plenty of fun doing it. So yes, I do believe the "Mod" discussion and this whole "everything needs to be changed" stance on the game has gotten out of hand. There is nothing wrong with being loyal to the code base of what we are currently playing, nor is there anything wrong with the desire of wanting to see changes made to it in the right way. "Delenda Est and other balance mods are gameplay mods so you're going to be locking antlers with the dev team when we make any kind of progress/clean up code." "Modding is a waste of time at this point if you're looking for an end product." Not my words, so you can't say I'm the only one that thinks this way.
  19. This is my point about changing things that are core to the game - if you allow women to build everything you void a Spartan civ special tech. That's why changing out core functionality is a slippery slope and can't be done lightly. I will give you an example: History: Baguada means 'guerrilla'; an irregular combatant. Skirmishers, raiders, pirates, etc., would fit under such a designation. Such men were extremely common in Celtic armies. While positions were best held by dedicated spearmen standing in an ordered line and wall, the duty of softening an enemy, and even breaking weaker enemy positions, such as militia, would go to men carrying huge numbers of additional javelins. So many javelins did Celts bring with them, they were said in at least one instance in Galatia to 'charge following a black shadow so great sunlight is emptied from the sky', a poetic description of the enormous number of missiles they would put into the air preceding their main attack. History: Sling bullets are found in enormous numbers in Celtic sites, made of lead, though clay bullets would also have been used. Slings figure prominently in Celtic myth, and were not associated with any sense of shame. To the contrary, the great skill needed to use a sling well was highly rewarded and favored, so they found much more use in Celtic society for a ranged weapon than bows, outside of specific tribes. The god Lugos, in Irish myth Lug, is associated closely with many weapons, among them his sling. Slings were the primary weapon of Celtic hunters as well. In battle, men with slings would mainly be of the middle class, so better equipped than most slingers in other societies for melee. However, the heavy lead bullets so common to them makes their range shorter than average, compensated for by the puncture power of well-made bullets. So using this as an example, the effectiveness of the Brit Slinger Rush is based on a historical precedent. So balancing slingers needs to be done in a subtle manner, not in a way that essentially removes the slinger from the battle field as an effective strat for Celts. So the effect of slingers on buildings should maybe be addressed, but not their effectiveness in an actual battle as the objective.
  20. Massed slingers are the number one problem with 0ad right now - this needs to be addressed ASAP. I'm pretty sure there was never an intention that an army of slingers would rule this game. In 1v1 competitive play, I am finding little reason to make spears at the start - startup typically consists of women with ranged infantry as workers. The ranges men walk faster than spears, so there is a huge economic benefit to making them. Spears in Age 1 need to somehow become more important to make, because they are supposed to be the bread and butter of most armies from this time period.
  21. Spartan women are allowed to construct towers and palisades as a unique tech to the Spartans - therefore, in order to maintain this unique tech, all other women should not be allowed to do this. The ability of men to lay the foundations but women to build is in my view an unintended consequence that should be removed in order to preserve the unique tech of Spartan women.
  22. In my opinion the ability for women to be tasked to build military buildings should be removed. You should not be able to lay a foundation with a male then task women to build the military building, wall, tower, or palisade, unless of course it is a Spartan woman. The meta is going to soon become one of the starting men will lay a foundation for a rax and the women will build it - I'm pretty sure this is an unintended consequence, please remove this ability from women.
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