Introducing the Official community mod for 0 A.D. Empires Ascendant

[real_tabasco_sauce]

I don't think there is enough agreement here to move forward with the forge changes directly into a27.

16 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Possibly worth considering for A28's comm mod. 

As I said in my previous post, I think we should make the com mod in a27 more experimental. More frequent releases with a small-ish number of ideas to test in each one, then we start with a clean slate each time. We could test a lot more ideas more quickly and get decent community involvement since the mod is very available. And we can try really big ideas that might have been too risky with the current setup.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

1 minute ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

I don't think there is enough agreement here to move forward with the forge changes directly into a27.

As I said in my previous post, I think we should make the com mod in a27 more experimental. More frequent releases with a small-ish number of ideas to test in each one, then we start with a clean slate each time. We could test a lot more ideas more quickly and get decent community involvement since the mod is very available. And we can try really big ideas that might have been too risky with the current setup.

Another big idea. I agree with increasing the cost of the Forge, but then also increase the cost and research time of Forge techs. Then we could have a tech pair in Town Phase that's "Forge techs -50% cost" vs. "Forge techs -50% research time."

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

I’m in favor of Philip’s suggestion maybe with 200->100 metal, instead of removing building requirements. I think players intending to attack in p2 will have a better idea of what to prioritize so the “stay in p1” encouragement might not be so bad. In addition it might make it harder for the player who stays in p1 to catch up with techs.

There is also the option to go from 3 to 2 prereq buildings. This gives more flexibility especially in the event that these buildings get more expensive. 
 

Can I extraneously voice my support for unit specific upgrades?

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

40 minutes ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

Can I extraneously voice my support for unit specific upgrades?

Yes, but I would like more flexibility in the UI code to be able to place these upgrades directly beneath the unit in the panel. More general techs would be placed at the bottom of the panel. 

[Vantha]

5 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Yes, but I would like more flexibility in the UI code to be able to place these upgrades directly beneath the unit in the panel. More general techs would be placed at the bottom of the panel. 

Sounds simple enough on paper. But what, for example, when the trainable units take up more than the first row?

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

1 hour ago, Vantha said:

Sounds simple enough on paper. But what, for example, when the trainable units take up more than the first row?

That would be a lot of units though right?

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

1 hour ago, Vantha said:

Sounds simple enough on paper. But what, for example, when the trainable units take up more than the first row?

Should design for the most likely case. But with this outlier we'd just squash the techs downward.

[Vantha]

10 hours ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

That would be a lot of units though right?

Yes. But it can still happen when selecting multiple structures at once, e.g. barracks, stable, and fortress.

9 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Should design for the most likely case. But with this outlier we'd just squash the techs downward.

We have to account for the edge cases too, as rare as they might be. What if the space below isn't free?

[Vantha]

This happens all the time to me when forgetting to let go of the shift key for five minutes or so:

Just kidding . It seems excess icons are pushed out to the bottom. I guess we could hide simply hide the technology if there's no space for it below the assigned unit. This is already done for (vertically placed) technology pairs right now.

[Lion.Kanzen]

5 hours ago, Vantha said:

This happens all the time to me when forgetting to let go of the shift key for five minutes or so:

Just kidding . It seems excess icons are pushed out to the bottom. I guess we could hide simply hide the technology if there's no space for it below the assigned unit. This is already done for (vertically placed) technology pairs right now.

How about dividing military buildings from economic ones?

[real_tabasco_sauce]

So I think the sparta p1 champs are still not really viable in the com mod. We don't have time for a community mod release, but I was thinking to let the building itself grant a pop space of 10, like a house would. This provides a selective benefit to their use early in the game, and since it is a "mess hall" it reasonably could support population space.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

Ok, I have heard questions about this, so I'll answer here. We will do a community mod for a27, however there will be changes to how it works.

In a26, we had issues where the mod would split the multiplayer community into mod players and non-mod players. Also, because the mod fixed a couple of bugs, development on the mod was a constrained by the requirement that each change be a clear improvement. This hampered experimentation.

So the main change will be that each community mod version will be a clean slate, no changes from the last version will remain. What this means is that the mod serve the purpose of a "Community Test Environment", or CTE. Essentially, its a way for gameplay-oriented changes to be run by the community before being committed to the development version of 0ad.

My hope is that we can make release turnaround fairly quick, and test a lot of ideas. Players can certainly continue to submit PRs, but I'd like to invite developers to submit their gameplay-oriented PRs too.

Some stuff I hope to experiment with:

• capture vs destroy balance
• walls delete trees
• 3x cavalry counter
• added economic unit to address boom = turtle
• ship balance
• Improve Han gameplay

[Atrik]

Does this mean no 'relaunch' are planned for a27?

[real_tabasco_sauce]

3 minutes ago, Atrik said:

Does this mean no 'relaunch' are planned for a27?

no it won't disrupt work towards a potential re-release.

[Seleucids]

I believe you can work with Leif on the historical rebalance mod. He has some of these already and you can implement these into his mod. Ideally we can get historical patch onto mod.io to make it more accessible. 

[Dunedan]

14 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

• capture vs destroy balance

Not sure if it's just me, but capturing feels too easy with a27.

The two other points I struggle with are ships being too weak and siege weapons packaging and movement being too fast. In a game I had serious problems countering siege weapons even with champion horsemen, because of how fast they've been able to get back behind enemy lines again.

[guerringuerrin]

why not PR some of the historical changes into community-mod instead of working on a totally new base stats rework?

[real_tabasco_sauce]

yeah there are a few items from @Emacz's mod that fit with vanilla 0ad. We could certainly take inspiration from it and try things out. That's the beauty of the CTE approach.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

Ok the next release of the community mod is near. I have heard a lot of player concerns and with this release we can try out some changes to see if they improve the situation.

• Walls may be placed over trees, causing the tree's destruction once complete.
• Additionally walls give to the garrisoned troops a range bonus in addition to the existing vision range bonus.
• When destroying walls, they will do damage in a 10 meter wide box (length the same as the wall). Destroyed walls would create a cascade of rubble that would be dangerous to attacking and defending troops.

Players have been complaining a lot about hero baiting, so I have some ideas implemented to fix that.

• Hero acceleration is greatly reduced down to 5 m/s^2.
• To compensate for being very easy to shoot, they gain an additional 1000 hp.

Since the Han have been lacking, I made some changes to the ministers to make them more interesting for dynamic gameplay.

• In p1, they gain 5 hack damage for each unit they kill.
• in p2, they gain 10 m/s movement speed.
• in p3, their last modification is that they trade the sword for a club and do 50 crush damage. This last part is a bit of a stretch historically but I think it will make for an excellent contribution to the way the Han play.

 

Let me know your feedback, and lets get ready to play!

 

 

(April fools)

[Seleucids]

17 minutes ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

acceleration is greatly reduced down to 5 m/s 

You mean ms^-2 , right? (sorry pedantic physicist here) 

 

Also Iberian walls a bit broken; they let enemy army inside then the gate closes and traps a huge enemy army inside. The enemy then captures your CC. 

Edited April 1, 2025 by Seleucids

[real_tabasco_sauce]

49 minutes ago, Seleucids said:

Also Iberian walls a bit broken; they let enemy army inside then the gate closes and traps a huge enemy army inside. The enemy then captures your CC. 

The destruction damage will help with this, since your own units inside the walls will die from the destroyed wall.

[Seleucids]

13 minutes ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

The destruction damage will help with this, since your own units inside the walls will die from the destroyed wall.

That's probably even worse...

Can we prevent non-friendly units from passing through unless authorised?

 

[chrstgtr]

3 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

• Hero acceleration is greatly reduced down to 5 m/s^2.
• To compensate for being very easy to shoot, they gain an additional 1000 hp.

 

If hero changes are made to discourage luring then these don’t make sense. First one makes luring worse. Second one make luring easier. Second one will also have knock on effects of making it harder to ever kill heroes. I would just do the first and adjust to appropriate level.

On this, I also like your idea from the other night where hero would be a non preferred unit and attacking units would refocus on preferred classes when in range.
 

3 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

• In p1, they gain 5 hack damage for each unit they kill.
• in p2, they gain 10 m/s movement speed.
• in p3, their last modification is that they trade the sword for a club and do 50 crush damage. This last part is a bit of a stretch historically but I think it will make for an excellent contribution to the way the Han play.

This changes the idea of ministers from being an eco unit that has some fighting ability to just being another fighting unit. That’s fine but it’s a pretty big shift in the unit’s intended purpose (I would personally go the other way and make them more like movable Kush pyramids but whatever).

with that said, some thoughts on the changes…
 

P1: This change makes no sense to me. It just makes the minister suicide rush stronger (it’s already strong). This doesn’t change how you’ll play with ministers or how many ministers you’ll make sine can’t be trained in p1. If you want to give ministers this buff just give it in p2.

P2: so a total speed of 19 m/s? That seems really fast/OP. It would be quicker than every(?) other unit. At this point, you’re basically just making the minister a faster and stronger version of fanatics that’ll be able to take down buildings easily in p3. 
 

P3: fine but see above re speed. I generally like the idea of having quick moving units that can quickly kill buildings but others may disagree. I also think this idea would be better served by just creating a different unit that does these things instead of changes the Han unit from an anti unit raider to becoming an anti building raider (ie, why shouldn’t there be an anti unit raider in p3?). 
 

4 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

Walls

I can see pluses and minuses with these. They just need to be tested. 

[Arup]

5 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

Players have been complaining a lot about hero baiting, so I have some ideas implemented to fix that.

• Hero acceleration is greatly reduced down to 5 m/s^2.
• To compensate for being very easy to shoot, they gain an additional 1000 hp.

please tell me this is a joke XD

[Arup]

5 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

Since the Han have been lacking, I made some changes to the ministers to make them more interesting for dynamic gameplay.

• In p1, they gain 5 hack damage for each unit they kill.
• in p2, they gain 10 m/s movement speed.
• in p3, their last modification is that they trade the sword for a club and do 50 crush damage. This last part is a bit of a stretch historically but I think it will make for an excellent contribution to the way the Han play.

this sounds fun hahaha maybr this can be part of a little aprilfools silly mod ?