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wraitii

WFG Programming Team
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Posts posted by wraitii

  1. I think this Greek Colony idea is good.
    Here's a quick rundown of what I'm thinking:

    • Start in a small coastal town. You control a unit of some kind, and need to walk around the city, gathering stuff. Maybe at some point you get in a fight with another guy over insurance money 'cause that's showbiz baby. The goal is to get your ship ready, and get underway.
      • Walking around, some light resource collecting, some light attacking.
      • It looks cool.
    • You get diverted by a storm and must pause for repair on some unspecified Mediterranean island.
      • More resource gathering, scouting
    • You land in you new place.
      • More scouring, more resource gathering, more base building & starting some actual fighting
    • And then we'll see where we go from there.
    • Like 1
  2. Just now, chrstgtr said:

    There are game setting options that already do that. There are also options that provide more res at the start. We shouldn’t restrict player choice when it is not necessary. I see no reason to do that here.

    Mostly I wonder if the "300 of everything" is the best choice. I'd probably prefer to have 300/300/100/100 settings or some such.

    That being said, this is tangential, but same as we balance for maps, we must balance for the usual game settings (300 pop, standard res, ...)

  3. 19 minutes ago, smiley said:

    Just the day, I saw a differential to get rid of the mauryan elephant from the CC

    Diffs can be opened for anything, it means little and less.

    ----

    Our current design calls for all resource to be important for all civilisations, in various doses. We could have a setup where some civs don't really need resource X but resource Y instead, but things are really not setup like that right now, and I agree with Thorfinn that the gathering differences aren't interesting enough to justify it.

    I'm seeing some ideas that I agree with. Now we need to get real concrete and start making some diffs:
    - Making CCs cost more stone, less metal
    - Making military buildings cost stone for all civs - we can still make it slightly different depending on the civ, but it ought be balanced. Balancing against wood is likely a poor idea, since wood is much more accessible in general.
    - Making more buildings cost stone.
    - Making some techs cost stone ("which" is the question).
    - ...

  4. 13 hours ago, alre said:

    I'd be fine if retreating would be as harmful as it already is (particularly when in a bad position), my point is that I fear the new pathfinder changes that, and thus I'm asksing for a counterbalance.

    I'm not sure how much of a difference it makes, since it's also easier to chase units (and efficient kiting would already use formations).

    15 hours ago, Thorfinn the Shallow Minded said:

    I think that this feature in moderation could add some nuance to the game.  In general ranged units probably could have little directionality to their armour by virtue of them rarely wearing much.  Instead it could be focussed on melee infantry, making things such as flanking them a relevant way of countering them.  A way I could see this particularly working well would be that a simple kiting manoeuvre would be suboptimal since the ranged unit would basically just strike in the direction with the most resistance. Instead it would be a matter of surrounding the force to hit their vulnerable sides.

    That could work, but it could lead to issues: javelineers, with their lower range, will have trouble flanking melee units. If we increase their damage to compensate, they'll become OP from the back. And/or it relegates them to being anti-ranged units. Flanking is mostly a cavalry thing. And how much would it change DPS in combat situation? Archers are already close to being OP, and this could make the more powerful (but it could also be a large nerf).

    That being said, the anti-kiting potential is interesting. I'm not certain directionality is the way to go, but maybe it'd be a useful addition for this particular setup.
    I'm not _opposed_ to the idea, as I do see how it could add tactical depth, I'm just quite wary of unintended side effects.

  5. 3 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

    You might as well merge stone and metal into one resource or something. Or Wood and Stone.

    I mean, it's been done. I don't really have a strong handle on how our different resources play together and whether having one more or one less would make a huge difference.

    But here I'm mostly agreeing with you, I think. If we keep stone, it should probably have a well defined meaning, such as 'military, defensive buildings & CC', and not be civ-dependent unless we completely change it up for a given civilisation.

    4 minutes ago, Dakara said:

    Kill nomad  :( 

    What's the usual starting resources setting for nomad?

  6. It's quite straightforward: is the existing difference in building stone cost meaningful differentiation? Does it make the civilisations unique enough that it's worth keeping and re-balancing instead of just discarding and thinking of something else?

    It seems to me that it fails to clear the bar. It's kind of a boring difference, and it makes balancing un-necessarily harder since it has indeed a large impact on resources available.

    • Like 1
  7. 1 hour ago, ChronA said:

    What makes you say that? The technical implementation is trivial (and you have at least one contributor--me--offering to put in the legwork) so I assume you mean that it's not a good time in the game's balance evolution to try such a massive change. However, are you really expecting there to be a better time down the road? It sounds more to me like they simply don't fit the vision anymore. If that's the case, then fair enough, but then what's the plan B?

    I don't really have an answer to any of these questions. All I know is that an RTS like 0 A.D. is a complex system, and this looks like it could have a lot of subtle impacts, and I'm not convinced it would actually make the game more _fun_, or even more interesting to play.

    I'm just not very involved in gameplay at the moment (well, really, since forever), because I'm currently more interested by engine changes (including e.g. pushing, though I recognise it has gameplay impacts). I think the 0 A.D. gameplay is kind of coincidental, and we should mostly focus on improving what we have rather than changing it, because we don't have a very good plan on where to go if we were to do that, but we do have players that enjoy the gameplay right now.

    • Like 4
  8. Indeed, as @nwtour wrote, the hotkeys will be translated in A25.

    Just to hopefully clarify what's going on: the default hotkeys refer to a QWERTY layout, but the game 'converts' that to your local layout in the in-game hotkey editor. So as you can see, it shows [ and ] as being 'ü' and 'Plus' for you (which hopefully are the right keys).

    The reason for that is that hotkeys tend to be about the position of the keys on the keyboard, and not really about the actual letter, and it's better if the default hotkeys are the same, position-wise, for everyone.

    To give a simple example, the camera hotkeys are "AWSD", which works well on QWERTY, but on AZERTY it's completely wrong if you use the actual letters and not the letter positions. So that's why we do the latter.

    • Like 1
  9. I have doubts about directional attacks so long as then engine doesn't really care about rotation for units (and it doesn't, for the most part). That being said, perhaps I'm a bit pessimistic on this.

    20 hours ago, ChronA said:

    [...] This is certainly what we see in AoE2.

    I won't lie, I'll finish that sentence with "and it works very well for them".

    ----

    Realistically, I don't think we'll get to directional damage in A25, and I am unconvinced (and have been for years) by talks of more advanced formation combat and such. 0 A.D. has a fundamental economic aspect and any fight system will suffer from the 'continuous reinforcement' effect, which is _completely_ unrealistic and breaks down any comparison with history or indeed games like Total War. And I personally don't particularly care to try and change it. I like Age of Empires a lot.

    Making retreating harder will simply make the fights even more snow-bally than they already are, and I fear that's not a great direction to go in right now.

    • Like 3
  10. Hey, thanks for checking it out :) 

    On 23/4/2021 at 7:11 PM, alre said:

    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.

    I will counter that by saying that you actually need some strategy to hit your enemy on retreat, e.g. putting some units in their path, instead of just getting freebies because the pathfinding is bad.

    I can see how you could dislike the change, but I think ultimately it's just different, not better or worse. And as you noted formations already allowed this smooth movement, so this is just straightening things out.

    Quote

    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.

    Yes, that is a bigger concern. I am not certain that it makes them OP, though.
    There is a limit on the distance at which units push each other, as things start behaving really badly if the numbers get too high, but there's probably room for improvement.

    Quote

    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.

    The one constraint the system has right now is that static units cannot push moving units, and so no, it can't fix the rams. That is there because otherwise things start going awry quickly, and i've not found a great solution.
    I am considering reducing the ram and formation "size" for A25 though, since there is a bit of overlap anyways, because I'm generally thinking better movement > some overlap.

    ----

    I think I'll give another look at the numbers when we get closer to the release.

     

    • Like 2
  11. 1 hour ago, Nescio said:

    This would allow elephants to have a melee attack and have independently acting archers, javelineers, and pikemen on top, wouldn't it? If so, great! This is something many people have wanted for years (also for chariots and ships).

    Not actually for now, unfortunately.

    The "carrier/elephant" doesn't have logic to get in range to the target on behalf of its turrets (for now). So to make this work the carrier/elephant must itself attack with a similar range (Edit: or a smaller one, in fact, so as Freagarach points out melee elephant works).

    I suspect Freagarach will want to work on that next, but it's a tricky issue.

  12. 46 minutes ago, hyperion said:

    What happens when the archer stops firing? Does the revealed region get unexplored?

    No, that's not really doable at the moment. The region stays explored.
    The feature as described above cannot be toggled in the options - could be a game setting option however.

    I'm reading some people that would rather have an indicator that "something" is firing in FoW. That's doable also.

    Note that yes, this will mostly only affect:

    • women who have a short vision range
    • structures that may get attacked by long-range artillery.

    In general other units will see their attacker, making the feature redundant.

  13. I reproduced your setup, and indeed on A24 I got a lag spike now and then. It's the Pathfinder this time, in one case I got a single pathfinding call for a single unit that took 8.5 seconds. It seems to be caused mostly by AI units trying to go to their garrison ship.

    I've investigated, and it's a bug (really, more like 'bad logic/unexpected edge case', that creates nonsensical requests. I'll fix it for A25.

    Edit: unfortunately I don't see an easy way to avoid the issue on A24. You can play smaller maps or avoid islands (since I think ship transport is basically the only situation in which it really happens), or just use A23 for these type of games, or just endure the lag. It'll be long, but occasional.

    • Like 2
  14. 6 hours ago, mysticjim said:

    I'd also like to re-iterate, again, this isn't an attack on the devs or trying to put anyones nose out of joint. Evidently there are some strong opinions, and maybe some misunderstandings or clashing philosophies on the subject.

    I imagine you invest a lot of your time in 0 A.D. content, and likewise we invest a lot of our time in 0 A.D.. it's easy to let things get a bit personal in these cases :) 

    I think this thread has been quite productive overall.

    ----

    I would second Freagarach - reach out to Sundiata (who I believe is quite busy lately) & see.

    • Like 2
    • Thanks 1
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