Introducing the Official community mod for Alpha 26

[real_tabasco_sauce]

47 minutes ago, LetswaveaBook said:

We might do other things to improve fighting in p2, but why couldn't we do both? Also it remains to be seen how much else of other things we are actually doing.

well, we wouldn't want everything in p2, would we. However, the nice thing is this is a mod, not a release, so you are right: why not?

i'd say let's do it, and it's a simple change if we want to reverse it later.

 

[alre]

just nerf p3 upgrades. third level upgrade alone is senselessly strong, making units 44% more effective if you combine attack and defence. if you combine all p3 forge upgrades you get a 74% increase in value of all your units.

or alternatively: make third level upgrade exclusive to champions: cool but limited.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

@alre this is agreeable to me too, but the original complain was about the lack of upgrades in p2 limiting the potential of p2 attacks. 

I would say moving the level 2 forge techs would work for the above, and so would my proposed unit upgrades.

I'd say we could also look at nerfing the third tier of unit upgrades, but I think that should be another discussion.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

how do yoo guys like this for themostikles

1. Naval preparation:

Ships -50% metal cost -50% construction time, + 10 percent speed

<Themostikles rapidly developed the athenian navy to counter the Persian fleet, and also recruited many citizens to crew the vessels>

2. Re-fortification of Athens:

Stone walls, palisades -50 percent costs, -50% build time

<Athens was rapidly refortified in spite of the Spartans>

 

I will do pericles next.

Edited October 8, 2022 by real_tabasco_sauce

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

7 minutes ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

2. Re-fortification of Athens:

Stone walls, palisades -50 percent costs, -50% build time

<Athens was rapidly refortified in spite of the Spartans>

Maybe "Themistoclean Walls."

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Themistoclean_Wall

Edited October 8, 2022 by wowgetoffyourcellphone

[real_tabasco_sauce]

35 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Maybe "Themistoclean Walls."

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Themistoclean_Wall

sure, yes I am just referencing the walls made in part of rubble.

That works too

[real_tabasco_sauce]

Ok here's my idea for Pericles, I think its pretty unique:

Pericles:

<Periclean defensive strategy>

Soldiers, ships, buildings, and siege engines give 0 loot and + 10% damage, buildings + 50% capture points

<Democratic reforms and classical literature>

All technologies - 25% resource cost, -50% research time.

 

for periclean defensive strategy, I wasn't sure if +10% damage or +1 armor was better. An alternative would be Allies soldiers, ships, buildings, and siege engines give 0 loot. Im thinking that if armor/damage is involved, <Periclean defensive strategy> should operate under an aura, with the buildings capture points remaining global.

Im a little on the fence on this one, so if anyone has ideas for improvement, i'd love to hear it.

At least the new hero stats are useful now lol.

[Fabius]

What about centurions for Rome?  

[guerringuerrin]

 

@wraitii

I notice is there a 0.26.2 version of the community-mod.
I wonder if isn't counterproductive to release community-mod's updates that quiclky. Many people doesn't get used to this and now we have one new version.
Today I saw a player unable to play bc he updated to 0.26.2. 
Maybe a message in gitlab repo can advice players to ONLY get updates incorporated to in-game mod selection in order to avoid these problems?

I noticed 0.26.2 is already available at in-game mod selection.

I'm confused about what to do anyway

Edited October 8, 2022 by guerringuerrin

[dave_k]

1 hour ago, guerringuerrin said:

I wonder if isn't counterproductive to release community-mod's updates that quiclky. Many people doesn't get used to this and now we have one new version.

ChronA and I warned wraitii and others about these issues when the community-mod was first announced.

wraitii doesn't seem to know how the community managed to get a significant number of players using community-mod. Important team game hosters hosted popular games with it. valihrAnt hosted games with it. That was a good idea, but a time sink for valihrAnt. And, the changes were simple and important enough for people to voluntarily install it.
If you don't keep the changes simple and important enough, and ideally infrequent enough, then the player base will not cooperate.

How do you herd cats? You don't. You find out what they want, provide that, and then they voluntarily go to it.

Alternatively, I would suggest creating a separate mod called official-bugfixes. That one most people will probably use. And, community-mod can be kept for (minimal) gameplay balancing.

 

Edited October 8, 2022 by dave_k

[real_tabasco_sauce]

here is the branch for athen heroes.

https://gitlab.com/real_tabasco_sauce/0-a-d-community-mod-unit-specific-upgrades/-/tree/athen_heroes

my merge request: https://gitlab.com/0ad/0ad-community-mod-a26/-/merge_requests/7#notes

It seems the loot changes for Pericles are not working as well as the wall cost changes for Themosticles

I will work on them, but they seem awesome on paper.

multiply by 0 issue fixed by multiplying by 0.001

 

@Fabius i'm not sure. I guess it would be like the trumpet units from Gauls? Because the centurions were basically officers, right?

Edited October 8, 2022 by real_tabasco_sauce

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

@guerringuerrin

The first gameplay changes were just fixing the han fields. I would guess we would gradually introduce more comprehensive changes to see what can be accomplished with the mod. For example, @LetswaveaBook's idea about house women training is not a drastic overhaul so I think it would be an easy next step for the mod.

Adding gameplay features quickly can still leave time for people to comment on them so long as they dont interfere with each other. For example, the sparta overhaul followed by a cavalry rework can be tested and evaluated independently in the same mod. But we should certainly leave time for players to evaluate and play new features before we add ones that are dependent on those earlier additions.

I don't think we should be afraid to add gameplay elements that we are not 100% sure are improvements, because getting player feedback is essential to improving the game, and the mod can be changed and updated semi-continuously.

We should look into ways to ensure only the most recent version of the mod is playable, because players could have the tendency to settle on the older version and not care to try anything new, which is what the mod is all about (as I understand it).

[guerringuerrin]

Ty for the answer, @BreakfastBurrito_007. I understand what u mean.

I still think maybe some update schedule would be nice to have. Once a week, once a month. Idk. Right now lobby is a mess, there are three types of games mainstream, 0.26.1 and 0.26.2. In order to encourage people to follow this "mod update methodoly" I think it's important to have good communication strategy and also some kind of order.

18 minutes ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

I don't think we should be afraid to add gameplay elements that we are not 100% sure are improvements, because getting player feedback is essential to improving the game, and the mod can be changed and updated semi-continuously.

Totally agree with this. But we need to show some consistant strategy.

Question apart.

I want to know if I interpreted well the changes has been done in 0.26.2 in order to avoid misscomunications in the standard message i'm giving in lobby:

* Fix the victory conditions infinite loop bug with A27 files
* Speed up rams by improving the turn rate and acceleration of siege units

Could u give me an answer? 

TY

Edited October 8, 2022 by guerringuerrin

[real_tabasco_sauce]

5 minutes ago, guerringuerrin said:

* Speed up rams by improving the turn rate and acceleration of siege units

@guerringuerrin, I didn't see this in the 0.26.2 branch. Where did you find this? I can verify the other statement tho.

[guerringuerrin]

@real_tabasco_sauce here:

https://gitlab.com/0ad/0ad-community-mod-a26/-/commits/siege-acceleration-change

[real_tabasco_sauce]

oh i see, @guerringuerrin, this is in the siege-acceleration-change branch, but not in the 0.26.2 branch. So basically it is being worked on, but not yet included in a release.

I double checked by applying the 0.26.2 version in 0ad and comparing stats before and after.

[guerringuerrin]

@real_tabasco_sauce ty. I guess I need to learn more about gitlab interface.

Then I should only care about of changes listed on this page?
https://gitlab.com/0ad/0ad-community-mod-a26/-/commits/main

Edited October 8, 2022 by guerringuerrin

[real_tabasco_sauce]

2 minutes ago, guerringuerrin said:

@real_tabasco_sauce ty. I guess I need to learn more about gitlab interface.

Then I should only care about of changes listed on this page?
https://gitlab.com/0ad/0ad-community-mod-a26/-/commits/main

yes, if I understand things correctly.

I am also new to gitlab.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

https://gitlab.com/0ad/0ad-community-mod-a26/-/merge_requests/8

fixed merge request XD.

Edited October 9, 2022 by real_tabasco_sauce
technology discount is actually 10 percent btw

[real_tabasco_sauce]

10 hours ago, guerringuerrin said:

I wonder if isn't counterproductive to release community-mod's updates that quiclky. Many people doesn't get used to this and now we have one new version.
Today I saw a player unable to play bc he updated to 0.26.2. 

yes, I was worried too, but 0.26.2 is already widespread!

[wraitii]

I released 0.26.2 hoping to fix a bug quickly (though it seems I might've messed it up) but the idea is to release a bit less often that that. Thankfully, it's fairly easy to know if you haven't got the latest version from the lobby.

I've created the merge request for siege: https://gitlab.com/0ad/0ad-community-mod-a26/-/merge_requests/9

[alre]

does any update to the main branch make up for a new release? I hope not, use a develop branch instead.

[LetswaveaBook]

@wraitii I created a repository on gitlab for big houses producing women in 25 seconds instead of 30 :

https://gitlab.com/LetswaveaBook/0adtest2/-/tree/main

Also I allowed Carthaginians to create women in 20 seconds in an apartment without the fertility festival requirement.

When I tried to make a merge request, Git asked me either to verify with a credit card or send an email. Is it necessary to do a merge request by one of these two options, or are there other options?

[wraitii]

43 minutes ago, alre said:

does any update to the main branch make up for a new release? I hope not, use a develop branch instead.

No, to make a release one has to:

• Increment the mod version
• Run the 'release' CI job
• Run the 'sign and upload' CI job.

The latter two tasks can only be done by Maintainers, aka me or Stan.

35 minutes ago, LetswaveaBook said:

When I tried to make a merge request, Git asked me either to verify with a credit card or send an email. Is it necessary to do a merge request by one of these two options, or are there other options?

Mh, I think that's because of the CI pipeline, but you should be able to create the merge request without it, no ?
I'll give it a try with a newly created account to check how things work.

We definitely don't want to force people to verify a credit card...

[vinme]

Make ptol "cheaper buildings" have proportionally less caputre points, so 35% is the amount i think, the cheapness gives op broken eco boom, coupled with food trickle early on which is less relevant, at least this will give some logical/reasonable cost since hp is already affected.

so storehouses, farmsteads houses.

Id even strongly advise, to make this advantage smaller, to begin with, maybe halve it at least, to 10-15% cheaper.

It really is an overly unfair advantage.

Make mele dmg techs affect war elephants, since ele are soldiers, get affected by armor techs, so i dont see who not mele tehcs, also im 99.9% sure this is a bug to begin with.