Introducing the Official community mod for Alpha 26

[alre]

1 hour ago, hyperion said:

The only sensible thing is to remove the diminishing returns for all civs, @maroder had such a plan, a hidden bonus to a hidden feature doesn't make sense at all. Just because a parameter exits doesn't mean it has to be tweaked. Increase gather rate for a civ if you want a farming bonus.

I think this is also true for acceleration, which could also possibly go away. I don't like the idea of having technologies, by their own description, "increase spead and acceleration". Just say it gets faster.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

1 hour ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

Also, I just made an icon for the Nisean war horses upgrade so that the "chamfron" upgrade can use the chamfron.png icon.

@wowgetoffyourcellphone 

now all the icons are taken care of.

 

This was a good idea for a tech icon. https://trac.wildfiregames.com/changeset/27274

Edited December 6, 2022 by wowgetoffyourcellphone

[real_tabasco_sauce]

@wowgetoffyourcellphone thanks for adding these icons to the development version. Should I change the names of the .png files currently used in the branch to the ones you renamed in the source files? I am worried that the discrepancy could be very confusing if/when the mod should be incorporated into the main game.

[Philip the Swaggerless]

I made some tweaks to the Alexander changes I mentioned on page 25. https://wildfiregames.com/forum/topic/83784-introducing-the-official-community-mod-for-alpha-26/?do=findComment&comment=533216

Here is the current summary:

• Removed "Imperialism" Structures +10% Territory influence Aura
• Added "Rapid Conquest" Aura: Radius 60 Meters, Own Soldiers Attack Damage +10% Movement Speed + 15%.
• Added "Undefeated" Aura: Radius 30 Meters, Enemy Soldiers, Structures Attack Damage -10%.
  • Since attack de-buffs are strong, especially in team situations, I reduced the radius to the same range as the Roman Cavalry Hero Marcus Claudius.  Actually receiving this benefit requires taking some risk for the Hero as he will be in range of enemy attackers.
• Retained Conqueror Aura: Radius 60 Meters, Enemy Civic Centers -50% Capture Point Regeneration Rate

The merge request can be found here:

https://gitlab.com/0ad/0ad-community-mod-a26/-/merge_requests/26  (Thanks @real_tabasco_sauce!)

[real_tabasco_sauce]

Centurions added as a merge request:

https://gitlab.com/0ad/0ad-community-mod-a26/-/merge_requests/27/diffs

rank 3 (elite) swordsmen may be upgraded to centurions via a salary of 100food and 50 metal each. There is a concurrent limit of 8.

They take 12 seconds to upgrade and upon upgrading they take the form of a sword champion with an aura of 30 meters. The aura is a 10% damage buff as well as a -25% promotion experience effect on CS.

They will be the strongest sword champion in the game with 14 hack compared to 11.

They are also very cool!

Edited December 6, 2022 by real_tabasco_sauce

[chrstgtr]

3 hours ago, Philip the Swaggerless said:

• Removed "Imperialism" Structures +10% Territory influence Aura

3 hours ago, Philip the Swaggerless said:

• Retained Conqueror Aura: Radius 60 Meters, Enemy Civic Centers -50% Capture Point Regeneration Rate

 

I think it would be cool if this was replaced with a roaming territory influence aura. This would encourage players to make really aggressive attacks into enemy territory because after a certain amount of time the attacker could gain control of barracks and other buildings. 

I really like the rest of your proposal (it also really bugged me that the greatest(?) conqueror of all time was a pretty unhelpful hero)

Edited December 6, 2022 by chrstgtr

[chrstgtr]

1 hour ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

They take 12 seconds to upgrade and upon upgrading they take the form of a sword champion with an aura of 30 meters. The aura is a 10% damage buff as well as a -25% promotion experience effect on CS.

I like this a lot. Only concern here would be computing concerns--I believe similar features have caused lag concerns in the past. 

1 hour ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

They will be the strongest sword champion in the game with 14 hack compared to 11.

I'm generally not a fan of making the "same" units have different stats because it makes the game harder to learn. Perhaps the aura means this isn't the same unit, though. 

Also, query whether this is necessary given the aura above. 

1 hour ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

rank 3 (elite) swordsmen may be upgraded 

This feels quite restrictive--melee units are already very hard to promote up to rank 3 and melee units often die shortly after reaching rank 3. I would consider removing in order to make this a more used unit. 

-----

Overall, this seems nice

[Fabius]

2 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

Centurions added as a merge request:

https://gitlab.com/0ad/0ad-community-mod-a26/-/merge_requests/27/diffs

rank 3 (elite) swordsmen may be upgraded to centurions via a salary of 100food and 50 metal each. There is a concurrent limit of 8.

They take 12 seconds to upgrade and upon upgrading they take the form of a sword champion with an aura of 30 meters. The aura is a 10% damage buff as well as a -25% promotion experience effect on CS.

They will be the strongest sword champion in the game with 14 hack compared to 11.

They are also very cool!

I think the Aura should be restricted to melee infantry and champions and not include ranged Infantry as I don't think centurions were leading velites persay. But I could be wrong in that regard. 

[Fabius]

1 hour ago, chrstgtr said:

This feels quite restrictive--melee units are already very hard to promote up to rank 3 and melee units often die shortly after reaching rank 3. I would consider removing in order to make this a more used unit

4 minutes in the barracks gets you rank 3 on a hastati, but thats not overly ideal for games that often run quite short. I would prefer just a straight limited recruitment from the barracks or some other place like an army camp.

[Fabius]

1 hour ago, chrstgtr said:

I'm generally not a fan of making the "same" units have different stats because it makes the game harder to learn. Perhaps the aura means this isn't the same unit, though. 

Also, query whether this is necessary given the aura above.

Centurions are supposed to be highly proficient individuals so combat proficiency in excess of a champion is a good bar to set I would say.

[chrstgtr]

2 minutes ago, Fabius said:

4 minutes in the barracks gets you rank 3 on a hastati, but thats not overly ideal for games that often run quite short. I would prefer just a straight limited recruitment from the barracks or some other place like an army camp.

Yeah, I know, but that's a really long time. It limits your ability to fight and it causes a drag on your eco. (related note, I think this experience via garrisioning features needs a buff). 

[Fabius]

2 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

Centurions added as a merge request:

https://gitlab.com/0ad/0ad-community-mod-a26/-/merge_requests/27/diffs

rank 3 (elite) swordsmen may be upgraded to centurions via a salary of 100food and 50 metal each. There is a concurrent limit of 8.

They take 12 seconds to upgrade and upon upgrading they take the form of a sword champion with an aura of 30 meters. The aura is a 10% damage buff as well as a -25% promotion experience effect on CS.

They will be the strongest sword champion in the game with 14 hack compared to 11.

They are also very cool!

what do you have as the general stats for health and armour? there does not seem to be a mention in the merge request

[chrstgtr]

1 minute ago, Fabius said:

Centurions are supposed to be highly proficient individuals so combat proficiency in excess of a champion is a good bar to set I would say.

Yeah, but isn't that the point of al the champions? Champions were the best of the best for all of these extremely powerful civs that excelled in war. 

[Fabius]

3 minutes ago, chrstgtr said:

Yeah, but isn't that the point of al the champions? Champions were the best of the best for all of these extremely powerful civs that excelled in war. 

Hmmm, yes that is a fair point.

[Kampot]

Still there is no easy way to see what are current changes, why this is not available in-game via menu?

Please make it priority or people got confused with so many releases and not utilize all changes. Even looking for them here or some git or whatever is so diffucult. 

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

6 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

@wowgetoffyourcellphone thanks for adding these icons to the development version. Should I change the names of the .png files currently used in the branch to the ones you renamed in the source files? I am worried that the discrepancy could be very confusing if/when the mod should be incorporated into the main game.

Yeah.

[Stan`]

@real_tabasco_sauce Should the poll be updated? What should we do with the previous results? Feature freeze is in a month in theory.

[alre]

2 hours ago, Stan` said:

@real_tabasco_sauce Should the poll be updated? What should we do with the previous results? Feature freeze is in a month in theory.

what about practice?

 

how does everybody feel about changes to cc? I think we could take it a lot further. We haven't seen big changes to the meta in this regard.

[Fabius]

3 hours ago, Stan` said:

@real_tabasco_sauce Should the poll be updated? What should we do with the previous results? Feature freeze is in a month in theory.

well those results are for the previous version which is now released, so It seems reasonable that they get replaced with a new poll regarding features for the next version. Perhaps we need a feature freeze date ourselves and then discuss what all we are going to put on the new list and then post it for voting. Something like that. Otherwise we will all just keep coming up with new ideas lol 

[hyperion]

15 hours ago, alre said:

I think this is also true for acceleration, which could also possibly go away. I don't like the idea of having technologies, by their own description, "increase spead and acceleration". Just say it gets faster.

Acceleration I'd say should be an artist only property, make things looking and feeling good is the only legitimate purpose in my book.

[hyperion]

10 minutes ago, Fabius said:

Perhaps we need a feature freeze date ourselves and then discuss what all we are going to put on the new list and then post it for voting. Something like that. Otherwise we will all just keep coming up with new ideas lol

And only implement the top 5 changes in 0ad proper, so we don't end up changing everything every other release.

[Fabius]

1 hour ago, hyperion said:

And only implement the top 5 changes in 0ad proper, so we don't end up changing everything every other release.

Only taking 5 changes is a bit tight fisted, may as well keep with the community mod then.

Frankly the simple solution is to have one big poll and ask the player base what they want included in the Main AD game from the community mod. Then you don't have to worry.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

@Stan` I'd like to make a few changes to the more recent merge requests (change the names of icons in unit_upgrades) (adjust the centurions a bit as per above comments). I think I should also improve the descriptions on my merge requests to better explain them to voters.

After that, we could update the polls here with the new merge requests and begin voting.

I think while players are using the next version of the community mod over the month, devs could start updating SVN with some of the community mod changes and whatever bug fixes are necessary.

Around feature freeze time, balancers should have a good idea of how to balance the mod content.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

3 hours ago, alre said:

how does everybody feel about changes to cc? I think we could take it a lot further. We haven't seen big changes to the meta in this regard.

Not really a meta shift in TGs, but its overall more helpful. I do see them used more often.

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

@chrstgtr I think a good way to do it would be mixing in some healers, and training swordsmen already rank 2 from the roman army camp. I think it is great because it encourages using the CS swordsmen as damage dealing units rather than meatshield.