Regenerative resources / Animal Fattening / Decay

[wraitii]

We can now have regenerative resources or decaying resources.

A few plausible use case for A25:

• Corral animal fattening over time
• Meat decaying (like in Age of Empires)

I'm not a fan of having regenerative berries, fish or trees -> IMO it'll end up being micro heavy for no real reason.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

Nice! Committed? 

 

9 minutes ago, wraitii said:

• Corral animal fattening over time
• Meat decaying (like in Age of Empires)

I like both of these. First one better than the second. I suggest animals start out with 50% of the current meat amount and fatten to the current 100%. We can then implement animal food trickle if garrisoned in the corral, so that there's a choice between a nice burst of food if you slaughter the animal vs. a slower, but steady trickle of food if garrisoned.*

Meat decaying can add a dimension to hunting. Making it possibly rewarding to micro hunting better. 

 

*Before anyone argues with me about this, this is what I will do with Delenda Est. Whether or not it's done this way in EA.

[Stan`]

8 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Nice! Committed? 

Yep really happy I pushed this. @Freagarach
finished it.

I think borg mentioned that one might lower max while at it.

I also want to allow for random amounts eg starting at 65 or 45 randomly

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

15 minutes ago, Stan` said:

Yep really happy I pushed this. @Freagarach
finished it.

I think borg mentioned that one might lower max while at it.

I also want to allow for random amounts eg starting at 65 or 45 randomly

template syntax?

 

[Stan`]

Edwarf had a good point: adding meat decaying will reduce micro a lot (which may or may not be a good thing with regards to hunting). Previously one could attack multiple targets then gather food. Now to prevent decaying as much as possible one will have a lot of gatherers on one single target, to maximise food income.

46 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

template syntax?

See http://docs.wildfiregames.com/entity-docs/trunk.html#component.ResourceSupply (Freshly updated today)

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

17 minutes ago, Stan` said:

Edwarf had a good point: adding meat decaying will reduce micro a lot (which may or may not be a good thing with regards to hunting). Previously one could attack multiple targets then gather food. Now to prevent decaying as much as possible one will have a lot of gatherers on one single target, to maximise food income.

While "just because Age of Empires had it" isn't a good reason, it didn't seem like it negatively affected gameplay in that game. 

 

17 minutes ago, Stan` said:

See http://docs.wildfiregames.com/entity-docs/trunk.html#component.ResourceSupply (Freshly updated today)

Thanks! Nice resource for modders. 

[Freagarach]

8 hours ago, Stan` said:

Edwarf had a good point: adding meat decaying will reduce micro a lot (which may or may not be a good thing with regards to hunting). Previously one could attack multiple targets then gather food. Now to prevent decaying as much as possible one will have a lot of gatherers on one single target, to maximise food income.

So, it _adds_ a lot of micro? You need to be sure to have as many entities on one animal as possible, else you're being inefficient?

About the templates, the state can be one or more of "alive", "dead", "gathered", "notGathered" and they can be mixed and matched. (So we can let animals fatten when alive and decay when dead and not being gathered from, or farms grow when being tended (gathered) and grow much slower when not.)

[Stan`]

2 minutes ago, Freagarach said:

So, it _adds_ a lot of micro? You need to be sure to have as many entities on one animal as possible, else you're being inefficient?

Not really you task everyone on one and let their do their thing.

 

[Freagarach]

Yes, if UnitAI would be smart enough to all pick the same target after that first one ^^

That is also the problem with fattening animals, UnitAI will gladly pick the closest, albeit not fully grown, cow while keeping the fat one out of harms way.

[badosu]

4 hours ago, Stan` said:

Not really you task everyone on one and let their do their thing.

Actually on competitive aoe the hunt micro is very intensive due to this, and to be honest it seems silly to me. I'm not advocating any way or another.

Perhaps @ValihrAnt or @Feldfeld can share their insight as both have experience on this topic.

[wraitii]

My opinion is that the very early game in 0 A.D. is easy and boring at the moment - I think we could do with a little more challenge, and microing animals sounds like an option.

That being said, I don't believe it'd be a huge problem for 'cavalry gathering chicken', since that goes so fast. It's just an additional debuff for hunting further away animals.

AFAIK, corral remains unviable for now I believe in the early game.

[badosu]

37 minutes ago, wraitii said:

My opinion is that the very early game in 0 A.D. is easy and boring at the moment

Not sure about that, at least for me it was the most stressing part of the game. You need to scout, decide on what do with you nearby resources, scout what your opponent is doing, respond appropriately, not lose scout, harass efficiently, etc. Any losses or kills at early game have deep impact on your later game.

Anyway, that's based on my limited experience. If players who experience hunt micro on aoe can advocate for that in 0ad I don't have anything against it, especially if it buffs corrals.

[Feldfeld]

1 hour ago, badosu said:

Actually on competitive aoe the hunt micro is very intensive due to this, and to be honest it seems silly to me. I'm not advocating any way or another.

Perhaps @ValihrAnt or @Feldfeld can share their insight as both have experience on this topic.

There isn't much hunt micro in AoE2. If you decide to mill a pack of deer all you have to do is shift click.
If you're speaking of dealing with dark age and managing sheep, then yes it's a bit of effort to kill them one at a time while doing other tasks, however there isn't really any equivalent right now in 0 A.D.
(edit: and if you're thinking about luring deer all the way to TC, that is gather efficiency micro and avoiding to spend wood for farm/mill, not related to decaying)

About animal decaying in 0 A.D., I don't think it will have much impact on how hunting is microed, due to how the cavalry gathers meat quite fast. However that is still a nerf to hunting in general and some animals could take a higher starting food amount, even right now in a24 I feel 100 is a quite low, not to mention the 70 goats have.

Edited March 3, 2021 by Feldfeld

[Stan`]

3 minutes ago, borg- said:

To make 0a.d less boring, we could have more interactive maps. We could have some neutral mercenaries or neutral trade routes that we could team up with, this increases the range of strategies and makes it more fun.

@wowgetoffyourcellphone does this. It could be part of the A25 map overhaul. I'm not sure how hard it is to implement this in say, mainland though. Skirmishes is easy. Could be another thread.

4 minutes ago, borg- said:

 

I also find it interesting to start the game with scout instead of a spear / jave cav. Scout could hunt and have a bigger view than other cavs. Oher cavs could no longer hunt, so you can hunt with scout (limit of 1 per game) and you would need soldiers to hunt the other animals. For that, it would be necessary to increase the speed of hunting for citizen soldiers.

Could be another thread.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

7 hours ago, wraitii said:

My opinion is that the very early game in 0 A.D. is easy and boring at the moment - I think we could do with a little more challenge, and microing animals sounds like an option.

That being said, I don't believe it'd be a huge problem for 'cavalry gathering chicken', since that goes so fast. It's just an additional debuff for hunting further away animals.

AFAIK, corral remains unviable for now I believe in the early game.

RE: Corral

My ideas about capturing sheep/goats/cattle and garrisoning them into corrals for food trickle could add another dimension to early game. 

[Lion.Kanzen]

On 03/03/2021 at 1:11 PM, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

RE: Corral

My ideas about capturing sheep/goats/cattle and garrisoning them into corrals for food trickle could add another dimension to early game. 

have you been able to implement them in your Mod?

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

5 hours ago, Lion.Kanzen said:

have you been able to implement them in your Mod?

It is now possible, I just haven't yet. We need to be able to capture gaia animals though for the complete experience.

Edited March 5, 2021 by wowgetoffyourcellphone

[Freagarach]

You can just give them capture points? Or rather, just one capture point? You can't just walk by and get a sheep, but you can easily ranch them then.

[Stan`]

Just now, Freagarach said:

You can just give them capture points? Or rather, just one capture point? You can't just walk by and get a sheep, but you can easily ranch them then.

I supposr units can't something like territory influence for perf reasons?

[Lion.Kanzen]

5 hours ago, Stan` said:

I supposr units can't something like territory influence for perf reasons?

I suppose what we are looking for is to capture animals, When they come within the range of vision of any unit.

https://youtu.be/BHJs81pwtts

 

 

 

 

Edited March 5, 2021 by Lion.Kanzen

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

11 hours ago, Freagarach said:

You can just give them capture points? Or rather, just one capture point? You can't just walk by and get a sheep, but you can easily ranch them then.

The default action is slaughter so instead of capturing the sheep the unit will just kill it instead. At least, that's what happened when I first tried to make it work many moons ago. Perhaps changes since then have made it possible. 

 

6 hours ago, Lion.Kanzen said:

I suppose what we are looking for is to capture animals, When they come within the range of vision of any unit.

https://youtu.be/BHJs81pwtts

Yeah this is essentially the Age of Empires way. It has the benefit of being simple. The sound should be simple though, a cowbell strike or something. 

[Lion.Kanzen]

2 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Yeah this is essentially the Age of Empires way. It has the benefit of being simple. The sound should be simple though, a cowbell strike or something. 

I made is almost identical sound. The video implementation is obviously not mine.

The sound is the one that comes by default in the game.

 

I'm going to need a review from the sound department but with Samulis, our contact is by email.

 

-----

Pero ese es la implementación que se debe de hacer.

 

Capture in sight. By the way I do not know who is going to take charge of this implementation.

[Freagarach]

On 05/03/2021 at 5:30 PM, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

The default action is slaughter so instead of capturing the sheep the unit will just kill it instead.

Hmm, no I guess you'd have to mod gui/session/unit_actions.js for that.

Edited March 8, 2021 by Freagarach
Typo.

[Nescio]

https://code.wildfiregames.com/D3868

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

On 17/04/2021 at 1:27 PM, Nescio said:

https://code.wildfiregames.com/D3868

Anymore movement on this? Is there a ticket for sheep fattening?