wowgetoffyourcellphone's gameplay design

[Skhorn]

Maybe a mechanic where you have to take the remaining soldiers from the battalion close to the barracks and an option to replenish them.  That's one of the most realistic approach you can have

Edited April 7, 2017 by Skhorn

[Servo]

Replenish without spending resources like another fantasy? Then what happens to the experience? Promotions? Can the new replenishment be of equal experience with the surviving battle tested units? It's like an enchanted barracks or buildings?! Lol .Idk what they want to do. 

So why mess up a quite good existing mechanics?! The formations/stances that are presently working just fine with corresponding benefits or even beauty wanted to be replaced with fantasy is just not right. 

 

Edited April 7, 2017 by Servo

[Skhorn]

I forgot to mention that, of course that resources should be needed for that. A given % depending on the units needed to fill the battalion

 

Edited April 7, 2017 by Skhorn

[Servo]

How would they replenish if the units that must come out is also another battalion consisting of 20 units? Will you turn the battalion production off and resort back to individual production? Then they will combine the inexperienced replenishment with experienced ones? What kind of mechanics is that? Engineering Mechanics? 

[Lion.Kanzen]

2 hours ago, Skhorn said:

Maybe a mechanic where you have to take the remaining soldiers from the battalion close to the barracks and an option to replenish them.  That's one of the most realistic approach you can have

I need Praetorians you can merged the battalions.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

10 hours ago, Servo said:

So if I have maximum pop cap then I go to battle with 3 battalions consisting of 20 units each then I lost 10 units each per battalion I am not allowed to make any more units? Are we going to wait until divine intervention comes and those dead units come alive? Is that what you mean?

No, I'm not saying that. The opposite, actually. If that battalion lost half its men, then it loses half its pop cost too, freeing up that pop for you to train other units.

I can also foresee some mechanics where you could task the understrength battalion to a barracks and it would automatically get reinforced slowly with new recruits, reducing its overall experience, but beefing up its troop numbers to maximum.

I could see being able to combine your battalions of like-troops as well. So, hoplites to hoplites, archers to archers, combining understrength battalions to form full-strength battalions, averaging-out the experience.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

8 hours ago, Servo said:

Then they will combine the inexperienced replenishment with experienced ones? What kind of mechanics is that? Engineering Mechanics? 

How exactly do you think battalions of men were reinforced in real-life? Usually, in war, with raw recruits and often during peace time with troops of lesser experience or length of service.

[Servo]

Ahaa now I can see that the mechanics that you're trying to have is like BFME. In this case no more healers thru temple and temple units and no more wounded units. Barracks units will reinforce in barracks and or stable units will reinforce in stables. 

Now there will come a scenario that players could hack their units to produce more than allowed pop cap. In 0AD this will be easy. 

[Servo]

Btw, I agree that you can reinforce any battalion with any units but taking out some experience from an experienced unit seems to have no sense. In fact experience units should even be able to acquire more experience when combined with other units because they could become mentors. In addition experience units could form an elite groups thru further trainings or studies or further promotions. 

Edited April 8, 2017 by Servo

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

9 hours ago, Servo said:

Ahaa now I can see that the mechanics that you're trying to have is like BFME. In this case no more healers thru temple and temple units and no more wounded units. Barracks units will reinforce in barracks and or stable units will reinforce in stables. 

 

That's not exactly how BfME2 worked. In that game, each soldier had their own health, just like in 0 A.D., it's just the health bars were turned off by default. Healing could definitely work just like it does now. In fact, if you read the proposal, I proposed a cool mechanic for the healer to keep them relevant to the battalion system.

 

9 hours ago, Servo said:

Now there will come a scenario that players could hack their units to produce more than allowed pop cap. In 0AD this will be easy. 

No, I have told you how this would be prevented. Pop cap would affect everything, even reinforcement.

 

8 hours ago, Servo said:

Btw, I agree that you can reinforce any battalion with any units but taking out some experience from an experienced unit seems to have no sense. In fact experience units should even be able to acquire more experience when combined with other units because they could become mentors. In addition experience units could form an elite groups thru further trainings or studies or further promotions. 

Now you're nitpicking just to nitpick. How "experience" is governed is not a huge issue for me. It just made sense to me that the overall experience of a group, if by experience we're just talking about some abstract number or value, would go down if you add inexperienced people to that group. Call me crazy. Add cold water to warm water and they average out. Not a difficult concept. btw, mentoring someone does not magically give that person "experience" either, only insight, preparedness even, but not experience which by definition a raw recruit does not have.

Edited April 8, 2017 by wowgetoffyourcellphone

[Servo]

BFME works in battalions and if you lose 4 units from a battalion you can avail extra 4 units for production. If you have 2 battalions and you lost 4 units of each then you have 8 units cap to produce another battalion. You can do this repeatedly and you will end up having more units than allowed. I have done this many times that I could end up having 240 pop on a 200 pop max pop cap if I remember. Therefore a good player can hack to have more units. Until you can make provisions for this not to happen then the mechanics will always end up like this. If you can prove to me that this is not possible in BFME then explain why. I haven't read any explanation from you or anyone that this pop hacking can't be done. You only say it's not. Now I give a little insight as to the BFME now prove that I'm wrong.

Now with regards to experience when you combine inexperienced to experience and then by average the battalion of course could change in experience if you can do programming. Not my worries actually but my worry is you are trying to take away from what an experienced unit has achieved! Soldiers are rewarded, they get medals, monitary and other rewards and you will deprive them? 

Im not trying to take away your visions, hard work and desire to better this game in fact I like some of the changes you want for this game but not your military battalion mechanics.

I'm not nitpicking I'm just a meticulous person who likes to pay attention to details. I'm trying to pay attention as to what real things could happen. And one of the best feature 0AD have is this individual unit promotions. As I said I'm fine with production in battalions from barracks but just in a batch training style. If I'm a soldier I want to be like those heros who rose to fame because of their achievements. If I'm an emperor I will promote those heroic, may put them in the company or level of those who had done glory before him. 

 

[WhiteTreePaladin]

3 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

That's not exactly how BfME2 worked. In that game, each soldier had their own health, just like in 0 A.D., it's just the health bars were turned off by default.

I think they were visible on hover and selection (might just be in BFME2 or maybe it was a setting, but I do remember times where there was a sea of health bars).

1 hour ago, Servo said:

BFME works in battalions and if you lose 4 units from a battalion you can avail extra 4 units for production. If you have 2 battalions and you lost 4 units of each then you have 8 units cap to produce another battalion. You can do this repeatedly and you will end up having more units than allowed. I have done this many times that I could end up having 240 pop on a 200 pop max pop cap if I remember. Therefore a good player can hack to have more units. Until you can make provisions for this not to happen then the mechanics will always end up like this. If you can prove to me that this is not possible in BFME then explain why. I haven't read any explanation from you or anyone that this pop hacking can't be done. You only say it's not. Now I give a little insight as to the BFME now prove that I'm wrong.

I don't think that worked. I'm pretty sure I tried it. Either that, or it was fixed in BFME2. I get some things mixed up between the two.

Edited April 8, 2017 by WhiteTreePaladin

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

The "sea of healthbars" was definitely a setting turned off by default.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

2 hours ago, Servo said:

BFME works in battalions and if you lose 4 units from a battalion you can avail extra 4 units for production. If you have 2 battalions and you lost 4 units of each then you have 8 units cap to produce another battalion. You can do this repeatedly and you will end up having more units than allowed. I have done this many times that I could end up having 240 pop on a 200 pop max pop cap if I remember. Therefore a good player can hack to have more units. Until you can make provisions for this not to happen then the mechanics will always end up like this. If you can prove to me that this is not possible in BFME then explain why. I haven't read any explanation from you or anyone that this pop hacking can't be done. You only say it's not. Now I give a little insight as to the BFME now prove that I'm wrong.

 

I am sure that we may be talking about 2 different games or we were talking about different mechanics. Either way, I don't see how, even if this was possible, it would help you to have 200 1-man battalions, which is what the logical endgame of this kind of "tactic" is if you take it to its extreme. My design doesn't limit the actual number of battalions in any way, so if you want to waste time creating a bunch of smaller battalions, then go ahead. There can easily be some sort of penalty, or suite of penalties, in effect for smaller battalion sizes, call it morale, call it discipline, to promote reinforcement/decommissioning/combining battalions over something akin to the hack you're talking about. Reduced responsiveness, loss of charging ability, loss of trample, lower attack, can't buy upgrades like officers or noisemakers, etc.

But I don't know why I had to come up with this to begin with. Surely, if you saw this "flaw" then you could have come up with the same solution I just did with a modicum of thought?

This whole proposal is DOA anyway. So, nitpick away.

Edited April 9, 2017 by wowgetoffyourcellphone

[Servo]

BFME not BFME 2 my bad. Though I never had the game installed anymore but just in case I can still activate it. I bought almost 3 sets of each cd/DVD almost 2 anthology and one individual cd/DVD and not to boast for the love of that game spent almost or more than $500. 

BFME has no safeguard for pop hack. RoN has 3 heads of1 infantry unit but probably since there's no promotion the pop hack won't work 

[DarcReaver]

8 hours ago, Servo said:

BFME not BFME 2 my bad. Though I never had the game installed anymore but just in case I can still activate it. I bought almost 3 sets of each cd/DVD almost 2 anthology and one individual cd/DVD and not to boast for the love of that game spent almost or more than $500. 

BFME has no safeguard for pop hack. RoN has 3 heads of1 infantry unit but probably since there's no promotion the pop hack won't work 

"pop hack" ? Are you serious?

That's not related to the "gameplay". It's related to performance. And sloppy programming.

To use BFME as example - it uses C&C Generals SAGE engine. Generals had no pop cap and so it suffered from bad performance in team games. Since BFME used a heavily modified engine version and had stuff like "global weather effects", Aura particle FX and whatnot, there was Pop cap used to reduce bad performance in team games.

And tbh if you would've done this in a real game your castle is destryed even before you finished to reach your maximum pop cap. This is irrelevant to a point where I say that the same is easily done by adding a higher pop cap limit. Or even a "no popcap" mode that will simply crash with an engine error when too many units are on the field.

[Servo]

I don't know about the technicalities of making games but I can make more units than allowed during gameplay and in BFME there was no safeguard. Here is how to do and it's very simple. 

Spam units as much as you can and send them to battle. In BFME I used and like Gondor units. Micro units so that you don't totally lose the whole battalion. Keep the survivor inside the castle and away from the healing building. You might end up having so many unheald single units either cavalry or foot soldiers. Once you reach maximum population which I think 200 then begin healing those units. As long as units are not promoted they won't auto heal. Once you have the banner carrier the units self heal. 

If 0AD has this kind of mechanics I can just make a cage get a wolf and put the units until the battalion has one unit left. As long as you don't upgrade the temple for organic units to heal you can spam more units than allowed.

[DarcReaver]

15 minutes ago, Servo said:

I don't know about the technicalities of making games but I can make more units than allowed during gameplay and in BFME there was no safeguard. Here is how to do and it's very simple. 

Spam units as much as you can and send them to battle. In BFME I used and like Gondor units. Micro units so that you don't totally lose the whole battalion. Keep the survivor inside the castle and away from the healing building. You might end up having so many unheald single units either cavalry or foot soldiers. Once you reach maximum population which I think 200 then begin healing those units. As long as units are not promoted they won't auto heal. Once you have the banner carrier the units self heal. 

If 0AD has this kind of mechanics I can just make a cage get a wolf and put the units until the battalion has one unit left. As long as you don't upgrade the temple for organic units to heal you can spam more units than allowed.

So? doing this in a remotely competitive game - be it against (multiple) hard computers or against a "real" player will lead to a defeat while you're trying to accomplish that. It's just a random exploit of coding weaknesses under unreal condititions and serves no purpose at all except for showing "it's possible to overcome the pop limit of the game".

In case you didn't notice : It's certainly not intended. I have no idea why on 0 ad there should be something like this be considered to be put in "on purpose". This is so irrelevant in terms of game mechanics that I don't even know why you bring up such a random thing tbh.

[Servo]

I play mostly against Hardest AI and mostly if not all winning against 1. Now playing against multiple AI is imo more fun so I need more population. I mostly neutralize AI or multiple Hardest AIs then play defensive. I don't enjoy beating AI easily. I don't enjoy playing much against humans since my skills are not good enough to become pro. I played with the best in RoN multiplayer but got tired of ossing or crashing games or even laggers.  But I enjoy playing multiplayer teaming up with very good humans against multiple AI be it in team games or diplomacy. 

At present I'm playing 0AD against 3 very hard and I'm enjoying it. I have all my units promoted to max 10 each of slingers, javeliner, hopelites, Athenian archers, cavalry skirmisher and cavalry swordsmen. Call me a cheater but I make sure I have no unit lost until I get my objective of walling, protecting the trees and animals from being destroyed. Once my objective is achieve I will let the AI to boom, advance to P3 so he can build armies and I guarantee you they can build massive armies and I will have huge battle ahead. 

If units are in battalions I guess it's very hard to play games like this. And I don't like this game become another BFME. RTS ganes like this may not really result in real battles where huge armies face each other in the battlefield due to the mechanics but it makes you to exploit and utilize every possible strategy to win the game. 

[DarcReaver]

So, you're saying that exploiting a programming exploit is good and should be possible for 0 ad aswell to beat the AI?

Wtf...

Ever considered that beating the AI behavior has NOTHING to do with battalions, pop cap and other stuff? This statement is just beyond me to be honest...

Edited April 9, 2017 by DarcReaver

[Servo]

42 minutes ago, DarcReaver said:

So, you're saying that exploiting a programming exploit is good and should be possible for 0 ad aswell to beat the AI?

Wtf...

Ever considered that beating the AI behavior has NOTHING to do with battalions, pop cap and other stuff? This statement is just beyond me to be honest...

Yes it's good to exploit defects in programming as long as you enjoy it. There will come a time that you will long for more harder difficulty like against maybe 7 hardest AI. It's going to be a big challenge. And pop cap will have effect in the end game. I normally don't kill AI. I play the game in such a manner that there will come a time when massive battle will occur. IMO AI in 0AD and most RTS games I played have weaknesses in raids. Their behavior is not intelligent enough to make it harder for human players to beat them. Now if you are only allowed to produce in battalions before you can even raid AI will swarm over you. If you don't produce raiders then AI will outboom you.

In multiplayer games most pro make sure that every unit works to maximize their efficiency. Any idle citizens or soldiers doing nothing are part of inefficient gameplay. 

[Servo]

0AD has battalion formations, WTH do you want more? All they gave to do is smoothen it up and everything will be fine! You can produce battalions from rax or stables but hey what's wrong with each unit in the battalion can move individually?!

Edited April 9, 2017 by Servo

[WhiteTreePaladin]

There are valid arguments against battalions, but I wouldn't use bugs in other games that implement battalions as reasons against including battalions. As far as pop cap and battalions are concerned, I think it would be relatively trivial to just assign a pop value to a battalion as a whole so that the pop space is taken even when the battalion is not at full strength.

[Skhorn]

@DarcReaver statement fits again for your answer. Exploiting a bug does not relate to the design gameplay, which in fact, it is still in design, not implemented, you can't even consider that the same bug will show up nor that it will affect playability as you will not be able to predict the outcome, my question is why is it more important for you to remark a bug in another game? Plus, implementing battalions will likely need to rework on the AI behavior and many other stuff. You just can't consider that implementing it will leave the other stuff the same way as it is.


 

[Servo]

Well I have no issues with pop cap at all. Whether there are safeguards or not. In fact I could neutralize 3 very hard AIs in 0AD before I can even have a hundred units including economic units. 

I think I very clear with my previous posts. My little knowledge in military structure battalions consist of companies, platoons, squads etc and each group or unit can perform different tasks. A squad leader can assign an individual to recon a target area for any purpose. Etc, etc. These are sample things that adds strategy that will be lacking when you do a fixed battalion unit. The more strategic activity an RTS game can have the more it becomes interesting.