Avoiding endless lines from barracks

[Grugnas]

20 hours ago, stanislas69 said:

Yeah but Disabling them cause angryness confusion and sometimes even insults. Here it's more a use at your own risk kinda of way

I don't really understand that conseguence, but let's look at them objectively. F.i. there was some code fore stamina, then the whole concept was abbandoned and removed.

I am not saying to completely remove the formations concept from the game but to look at their impact on the game, despite they are a feature wanted by players and devs aswell.

Soldiers on formation cause lag, and that ruins the gaming experience and perhaps induces people to cry about lag.

Often soldiers in formation don't attack and that creates frustration especially in dynamic games. F.i.  spear cavalry is supposed to outrun ranged cavalry but trust me, I can provide a replay in which camels outrun by A LOT spear cavalry because camels enter into running state in order to reach the right place in the formation.

Not mentioning the fact that running units can dodge most of the javelins thrown at them (which may be even interesting), reason why people constantly keep to set and disrupt formations; but that is 1) boring and annoyingly clicky. 2) not realistic.

I didn't go in depth, pheraps there are only few formations broken and the less problematic one may stay.

Some formations could be removed and annunce their implementation in future releases in order to get things more bug proof and keep interest on the game. I can't imagine a trailer with an annunce saying "improved formations", while saying "new added formations" would be more catchy. It isn't a commercial game tho.

 

[Stan`]

3 minutes ago, Grugnas said:

don't really understand that conseguence, but let's look at them objectively. F.i. there was some code fore stamina, then the whole concept was abbandoned and removed.

Yeah I know. I was working on it just before it got removed. However that feature was not complete and more importantly not in a buggy usable state, and mostly leftovers of old stuff before the simulation rewrite which is why it's called simulation2 btw. 

5 minutes ago, Grugnas said:

am not saying to completely remove the formations concept from the game but to look at their impact on the game, despite they are a feature wanted by players and devs aswell.

Soldiers on formation cause lag, and that ruins the gaming experience and perhaps induces people to cry about lag.

Sure. But people don't read.  What is the third point in the popup dialog when you open the game ?

Maybe we could make it more explicit, but the idea is here.

 

8 minutes ago, Grugnas said:

Some formations could be removed and annunce their implementation in future releases in order to get things more bug proof and keep interest on the game. I can't imagine a trailer with an annunce saying "improved formations", while saying "new added formations" would be more catchy. It isn't a commercial game tho.

We did that, in like A19 or something, and then people started asking us in loop to bring formation back. They were reenabled after that https://code.wildfiregames.com/rP17028

 

What we need now is @wraitii's fixes. With them work on formations will become easier.

11 minutes ago, Grugnas said:

Soldiers on formation cause lag, and that ruins the gaming experience and perhaps induces people to cry about lag.

Often soldiers in formation don't attack and that creates frustration especially in dynamic games. F.i.  spear cavalry is supposed to outrun ranged cavalry but trust me, I can provide a replay in which camels outrun by A LOT spear cavalry because camels enter into running state in order to reach the right place in the formation.

Not mentioning the fact that running units can dodge most of the javelins thrown at them (which may be even interesting), reason why people constantly keep to set and disrupt formations; but that is 1) boring and annoyingly clicky. 2) not realistic.

I didn't go in depth, pheraps there are only few formations broken and the less problematic one may stay.

Some formations could be removed and annunce their implementation in future releases in order to get things more bug proof and keep interest on the game. I can't imagine a trailer with an annunce saying "improved formations", while saying "new added formations" would be more catchy. It isn't a commercial game tho.

I'm sorry you have to undergo that. A solution would be to provide a disable formation mod on modio. That's like two or three files to edit mostly;

ps/trunk/binaries/data/mods/public/simulation/templates/template_unit.xml

 

[wraitii]

Erh, my patches might improve stuffs a bit the whole concept remains fundamentally flawed in my opinion.

[coworotel]

@DarcReaver It seems that the game is already in such an advanced stage that changing completely all the mechanics like you suggested would be more like creating a fork of the game. Not saying that it cannot be done, but you know. 0 A.D. started as a mod of AoE and has evolved for years to be an AoE-like game. This revolutionary change in the gameplay seems more like an entirely new project than just a couple of new alphas. It's like if when Microsoft was with AoE2 95% implemented somebody suggested "hey, let's make this 3D turn-based with formations" or something.

[Anaxandridas ho Skandiates]

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Edited April 8, 2021 by Anaxandridas ho Skandiates

[Stan`]

10 minutes ago, wraitii said:

Erh, my patches might improve stuffs a bit the whole concept remains fundamentally flawed in my opinion.

Yeah but your head isn't limited to D13, I'm sure you can figure stuff out.  It's more a "won't happen before a few stuff are reviewed and committed"

[Guest]

37 minutes ago, stanislas69 said:

[insert a comment about manipulating numbers to make them say what you want] 

[insert another comment about having ran the commands and verifying it]

=============

The following is just what I have perceived from my time here. It's not necessarily how things actually are.

The way I see it, the main issue is not having a particular "direction" in terms of gameplay. Nobody would be working on some fancy new features such as historically accurate naval combat or even perhaps charging cavalry if they know that it would pretty much be discarded, ignored and forgotten. I think even I posted something describing two gameplay changes on a thread somewhere. Both about making the game more  historically accurate. I think it was about making cities actual cities and farming on actual farmland or something. Which of course suffered the same fate as the dozens of such posts here. Although, it was pretty bad and rushed that it turned out for the better.

The gameplay is pretty much final at this point whether you like it or not, at least don't expect any major changes to it. I would love to be proven wrong though.

[Feldfeld]

17 minutes ago, Grugnas said:

Not mentioning the fact that running units can dodge most of the javelins thrown at them (which may be even interesting), reason why people constantly keep to set and disrupt formations; but that is 1) boring and annoyingly clicky. 2) not realistic.

I don't understand that point, why would formations be used to dodge projectiles ? Currently dancing is more efficient, constantly setting and disrupt formation seem useless to me.
Also removing formation would lead to larger scale battles micro requiring more clicks and being more complex, I remember being quite successful with it at A21.

[Stan`]

As I said a few time someone is working on the design documents. It's not public yet.

[Guest]

Maybe, the lack of a design document isn't the problem.

People might also want to read this. Maybe that's just an unattainable goal at this point.

[DarcReaver]

1 hour ago, stanislas69 said:

[insert a comment about manipulating numbers to make them say what you want]

I don't think it's a problem of willing but of being able. Like Darc Reaver is willing to improve the game but not able to make the Pathfinder like a AAA game.

 

Indeed, because I'm no programmer, unfortunately. else I would've helped out in that regard more for sure.

And about the links from (-_-)
 Well thing is that the game isn't even remotely similar to the existing game design doc, that's why I compared the current game with the doc and pointed out various flaws about the whole thing in part II of the analysis. Also the 2nd post about that "written story" about how to play 0 ad is hella weird...

I do agree that some points about my doc need tweaking, but without some true vision there's no way to actually improve everything. From my current perspective I would rework the pop cap mechanics and food gathering/resource gathering stuff to a more automated system to focus more on fighting.

btw @stanislas69 who is working on the design doc?

 

Edited January 8, 2019 by DarcReaver

[Grugnas]

7 minutes ago, Feldfeld said:

I don't understand that point, why would formations be used to dodge projectiles ? Currently dancing is more efficient, constantly setting and disrupt formation seem useless to me.
Also removing formation would lead to larger scale battles micro requiring more clicks and being more complex, I remember being quite successful with it at A21.

Sorry if I have been not so clear but I didn't mean to say that formations are mostly used to dodge projectiles but I meant that, just like out running units, toggling formations is only useful for escaping from enemies and get your units out of enemy range without being damaged, which isn't (and perhaps shouldn't be) the reason why someone toggle a formation. Formations are supposed to give combat advantage and disrupted when retiring, not the contrary. (yeah maybe I amgoing too deep into micromanaging)

the unit increased movement speed is not a formation advantage but a conseguence of its "preparation" and this is reasonably realistic.

Formations don't provide any click reduction into managing own units, matter of fact a player can select more units by double click on it( in the case he wants to select the same type of unit on the screen) or by dragging the the mouse and select more units.

1 hour ago, Anaxandridas ho Skandiates said:

But what happened to Darc Reavers excellent idea of "Batallion" units? And then abandon the old formations entirely, If we could have both single units and batallion units. Then you just have to tweak THEIR balance, rather than endlessly fight with a gordian knot.

While in my opinion citizen soldiers shouldn't be battallion-only manageable because they also play a key role into the player economy growrth (obviously), Champions are trained units and perhaps not of much use when in few numbers thus the ideal candidate for battallion management from a balance POV. (training 1 champion at time is useless and training a batch of only 5 champions isn't really a big deal)

Formations could act as battallions anyway if the units toggled in it are all selected whenever a single unit whitin it is clicked (basically like assigning a group selection to the units in formation in an hidden way to the UI and removing the group selection when disrupting the formation). The only limitation would be about the battalion experience itself, unless someone wouldn't impose the limit of not being able to disrupt the battallion once it is toggled. But I don't think that someone would like to see his units not being able to gather anymore just because under attack of a bunch of troops.

[Stan`]

@DarcReaver:  @Prodigal Son is. His current task is to scrap everything from the old design document and make it usable again.  He has been working on it for a few months now, because the old one was a mess, and there were a lot of outdated stuff, stuff that didn't belong etc. From what I understood at the last conference I did with Itms, we will release it publicly when he is done. I'm not in touch with @Prodigal Son, only @Itms is, so if you want more informations about the ETA or the global plan you'd have to ask either one of them.

This document will be a GitBook Markdown document, where everyone can submit patches to make it evolve. As to who can review such patches, I don't know so I can't give an answer.

 

[Feldfeld]

18 minutes ago, Grugnas said:

Formations don't provide any click reduction into managing own units, matter of fact a player can select more units by double click on it( in the case he wants to select the same type of unit on the screen) or by dragging the the mouse and select more units.

They do if you want to manage them well, after all it's better to engage a fight with your units being grouped instead of sending them one by one

[DarcReaver]

1 minute ago, Feldfeld said:

They do if you want to manage them well, after all it's better to engage a fight with your units being grouped instead of sending them one by one

Which brings us straight back to the initial OP post about the manspam trains on the map that make managing groups/formations tedious due to constant dying and replacement of fallen units.

[Guest]

Currently formations are nothing more than aesthetic. If someone were to miraculously decide on fixing them for the next version, they should start with adding proper formation combat. Until then, its pretty much useless to talk about formation bugs.

[Anaxandridas ho Skandiates]

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Edited April 8, 2021 by Anaxandridas ho Skandiates

[Loki1950]

What is missing is the code infrastructure for any test saying test it is simply not possible at this time with out the underlying code to actually do it and writing that code is not repeat not a trivial task when there is no definition of expected behaviour which is that design document it all about so quit kibitzing and let them get back to work.

Enjoy the Choice      

Edited January 8, 2019 by Loki1950

[sarcoma]

10 hours ago, Feldfeld said:

I don't understand that point, why would formations be used to dodge projectiles ? Currently dancing is more efficient, constantly setting and disrupt formation seem useless to me.

Then you haven't met @ValihrAntThat's one of his many tricks