a27 weekend gameplay testing

[real_tabasco_sauce]

Hi everyone,

I am trying to get together some gameplay testing for the release candidate so we can make appropriate balance decisions if needed before a27 is released. Also it would be great to see what improvements to 4v4s might be made possible by the hard work the devs have put into performance.

below is a whentomeet poll (no password or sign in required) that asks you to fill in your 0ad username and enter the times you could play.

https://www.when2meet.com/?20172866-g4yFd

Once you have entered the times you can play the RC, you can close the site, no need to hit 'submit' or anything.

@MarcusAureliu#s@Stockfish @LetswaveaBook @Player of 0AD @chrstgtr @ValihrAnt

Edited May 25, 2023 by real_tabasco_sauce

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

Please test the player colors and respectfully suggest any desired changes. 

[real_tabasco_sauce]

I like all of them to be honest, but I will tell you if I see complaints.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

40 minutes ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

I like all of them to be honest, but I will tell you if I see complaints.

Individually, they're nice. But in a team match is where issues might crop up.

[chrstgtr]

13 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

Hi everyone,

I am trying to get together some gameplay testing for the release candidate so we can make appropriate balance decisions if needed before a27 is released. Also it would be great to see what improvements to 4v4s might be made possible by the hard work the devs have put into performance.

below is a whentomeet poll (no password or sign in required) that asks you to fill in your 0ad username and enter the times you could play.

https://www.when2meet.com/?20172866-g4yFd

Once you have entered the times you can play the RC, you can close the site, no need to hit 'submit' or anything.

@MarcusAureliu#s@Stockfish @LetswaveaBook @Player of 0AD @chrstgtr @ValihrAnt

I can't commit to any specific time this weekend, but I will generally be around. Pls ping me if you see me in lobby

[ConfusedRose]

Would love to play but I have a port forwarding issue that just popped up. Good luck testing A27!

[Stan`]

5 minutes ago, ConfusedRose said:

Would love to play but I have a port forwarding issue that just popped up. Good luck testing A27!

Should be fine if you don't host?

[Player of 0AD]

23 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

Hi everyone,

I am trying to get together some gameplay testing for the release candidate so we can make appropriate balance decisions if needed before a27 is released. Also it would be great to see what improvements to 4v4s might be made possible by the hard work the devs have put into performance.

below is a whentomeet poll (no password or sign in required) that asks you to fill in your 0ad username and enter the times you could play.

https://www.when2meet.com/?20172866-g4yFd

Once you have entered the times you can play the RC, you can close the site, no need to hit 'submit' or anything.

@MarcusAureliu#s@Stockfish @LetswaveaBook @Player of 0AD @chrstgtr @ValihrAnt

Do we have a changelog which shows the differences between rc27 and a26+communitymod?

[real_tabasco_sauce]

https://trac.wildfiregames.com/log/ps?action=stop_on_copy&mode=stop_on_copy&rev=27652&stop_rev=&limit=100&verbose=on&sfp_email=&sfph_mail=#

Well, there is a changelog in the other discussion:

But I think the link I first shared is more complete. I am pretty sure the log messages typically say that a given change is from the community mod.

One thing I didn't see in the changelog was decreasing catapult range to 85, but also decreasing the minimum range.

[Vantha]

Do you still need players? I would like to participate, but I'm just ~1300. Is there anything like minimum level requirements?

[real_tabasco_sauce]

No, there is no minimum level, we will just balance accordingly.

Looks like Saturday and Sunday are available for people beginning at 5:30 UTC. Only 4 people filled out the form, so I will just plan to be available for much of the time window.

[seeh]

14 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

No, there is no minimum level, we will just balance accordingly.

Looks like Saturday and Sunday are available for people beginning at 5:30 UTC. Only 4 people filled out the form, so I will just plan to be available for much of the time window.

for all: please look the link, then you see it with your time-zone

[real_tabasco_sauce]

metadata.jsoncommands.txt

Alright the first posted multiplayer game of a27 rc.

Not very balanced, and I had a rough eco.

The elephants I trained as @Philip the Swaggerless attacked did unreasonably well, so I think a nerf is warranted. I am thinking 20 hack 20 crush for the splash, and then add back the 10 crush to the direct attack.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

4 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

then add back the 10 crush to the direct attack

This counteracts the reason for the rebalance to begin with (remove the explicit anti-building function of the elephant).

[real_tabasco_sauce]

1 hour ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

This counteracts the reason for the rebalance to begin with (remove the explicit anti-building function of the elephant).

splash attack -10 crush 

+

direct attack + 10 crush

One could even move all crush to the direct attack to streamline a bit. Something like direct: 30h 60c, indirect: 20h

Edited May 28, 2023 by real_tabasco_sauce

[alre]

15 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

metadata.json 20 kB · 1 download commands.txt 152 kB · 1 download

Alright the first posted multiplayer game of a27 rc.

Not very balanced, and I had a rough eco.

The elephants I trained as @Philip the Swaggerless attacked did unreasonably well, so I think a nerf is warranted. I am thinking 20 hack 20 crush for the splash, and then add back the 10 crush to the direct attack.

maybe they wouldn't have been so effective if he had known how effective they could be and he had taken counter action? just an idea - micro play can be pretty effective against splash damage in general.

[Player of 0AD]

11 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

This counteracts the reason for the rebalance to begin with (remove the explicit anti-building function of the elephant).

Whats the point of making elephants a super OP anti-unit champion?

[ChronA]

26 minutes ago, Player of 0AD said:

Whats the point of making elephants a super OP anti-unit champion?

Historical accuracy? As far as I can tell the idea of elephants being used as siege weapons is largely a modern conceit. While they might be capable of bashing down a gate, these were very expensive and unpredictable animals, and enemies in a fortified stronghold are more likely to have presence of mind to effectively deploy countermeasures. Pretty much everyone had better options for breaking fortifications. (I admit I could be wrong about this, if someone wants to bring in actual sources let's differ to them.)

What elephants could do, which basically nothing else in the ancient world could, is bash their way through the middle of a dense formation of heavy melee infantry and trigger a rout. Given that ancient military tactics were so heavily based on unit cohesion, this made them insanely effective, compensating for the fact that the animals were so expensive and unpredictable. Given the way 0AD simulates ancient warfare, the only way to represent this is to make elephants OP heavy infantry killing machines. The trick is you also need to represent their counters. (Light and/or ranged infantry being the main one.)

If you want to construct a counter cycle of it Elephant > Melee Infantry > Ranged Infantry > Elephant

[NitroVicky]

Hi, I played a few Death Match games this weekend with many AIs at the same time, on the testing version. I would like to share some comments:

 

What Went Well:

1. Realistic landscape and characters

2. Very little lag, even in 7 players full-scale wars. I think it has improved since the previous version. 

3. So much content! Different maps, Game Modes and very detailed settings. 

4. The automatic production feature is very helpful. 

Even better if:

1. Make the icons and panels a bit larger? For higher resolution screens, the icons are very small so it's difficult to see what they symbolise and even harder to click on the thing you want. Maybe I am too inexperienced, but the icons certainly can make more use of the excess space in the panel. 

2. Bigger rabbits or different coloured rabbits? It's very hard to find them and click on them, even if they are standing right next to your horse. The dotted grass of Anatolian Plains certainly isn't helping. 

3. Units should scream loudly as soon as they are hurt, not when they are already dead. Too many of my men either suffer in silence or shout when they are already dead, which doesn't make sense and isn't helpful. 

4. Enable capturing by default. I had to reset all of the hotkeys to be able to capture buildings, but units still try to vandalise them by default until I specifically order a capture. In my opinion it would be better to capture by default, then only vandalise in special situations, because it's often easier and more useful to capture than to completely smash it. The default attacks hotkey scheme could be set to be more considerate to new players. 

5. More Campaigns? I would love to see something other than demo and tutorial. A single-player Campaign with increasingly difficult levels would be perfect. Even better: allow friends to participate in my campaigns as well!

6. Make it easier to capture people? I see a "units captured" list in the summary page but I don't know how (or if it is even possible) to capture people, as they have no loyalty bar. 

7. The AI bots can be a be improved. They like to build tons of civic centres and towers, then waste time attacking my walls with pikeman instead of engaging with my moves, which is neither smart for them nor is it fun for me. It would be better if AI soldiers are automatically attracted towards the player's human units instead of trying to steal their buildings all the time.

 

Hope this helps!

Edited May 28, 2023 by NitroVicky

[Gurken Khan]

25 minutes ago, NitroVicky said:

Make the icons and panels a bit larger?

Did you try the GUI scale in the graphics settings?

25 minutes ago, NitroVicky said:

Bigger rabbits or different coloured rabbits?

Maybe the minimap or the silhouettes of the rabbits can help.

27 minutes ago, NitroVicky said:

People should scream loudly as soon as they are hurt, not when they are already dead.

Now we don't want a bunch of whiners, do we?

But seriously, you can catch wounded units with an area selection + "o", and you can set the threshold for what's considered wounded with a slider. I set it to 50%, because with the turn and acceleration times it's no help otherwise.

AFAIK you can't capture humans, only siege units; I'm not even sure if that's currently a thing.

I totally agree that the new default behavior of attacking buildings instead of capturing sucks big time.

The AI is pretty stupid, but I guess we just have to take what the volunteers working on it can provide.

[seeh]

1 hour ago, NitroVicky said:

4. Enable capturing by default. I had to reset all of the hotkeys to be able to capture buildings, but units still try to vandalise them by default until I specifically order a capture.

i also was missing it. now i use mod :

{
    "name": "old-capture-behavior",
    "version": "1.0",
    "label": "Old Capture Behavior",
    "description": "Press the attack key to attack buildings, instead of pressing the capture key to capture buildings.",
        "ignoreInCompatibilityChecks": true,
    "dependencies": ["0ad=0.0.27"]
}

 

Edited May 28, 2023 by seeh

[Gurken Khan]

6 minutes ago, seeh said:

i also was missing it. now i use mod

If that behavior makes it into A27 I'll do that too.

[seeh]

8 hours ago, Gurken Khan said:

If that behavior makes it into A27 I'll do that too.

i don't found the download (for you). was searching here but dont found it. was from here in the forum.  so i will upload it here:

its from @causative =>

 

 

BTW with this in a26 i sometimes deleted nearly all of my troups by mistake. if you not selected the building , selected by mistake your attacker. but anyhow.

Edited May 28, 2023 by seeh

[real_tabasco_sauce]

1 hour ago, NitroVicky said:

6. Make it easier to capture people? I see a "units captured" list in the summary page but I don't know how (or if it is even possible) to capture people, as they have no loyalty bar. 

There was a time you could capture catapults and bolt shooters.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

3 hours ago, alre said:

maybe they wouldn't have been so effective if he had known how effective they could be and he had taken counter action? just an idea - micro play can be pretty effective against splash damage in general.

Its true, but I had a huge upgrade disadvantage, slightly outnumbered, and somewhat poorly placed my pikemen. @Philip the Swaggerless probably wasn't aware just how powerful they were, but I think the eles did too well in that fight.

You can do unit tests if you want. You will find that 10 eles can kill 100 spearmen and only lose 1 elephant.

So either their damage should be adjusted:

https://code.wildfiregames.com/D5008

or maybe their HP reduced, now that they are not an alternative ram.