Introducing the Official community mod for Alpha 26

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

2 hours ago, MacWolf said:

i hope he doesnt change siege towers atleast.

This kind of attitude prevents improvement. Siege Towers are pretty weird at the moment, but because some folks have managed to use that weirdness to their advantage we shouldn't improve them?

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

4 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

The main thing is that ship gameplay won't be a total snooze fest XD.

We need to surrect a clone of @Stan` to improve the ship models.

1. Reduce their size by about 20%. This requires their animations to be re-exported. But would definitely help with pathfinding! 

2. Ramming Ship animations. Something akin to the battering ram actor moving back and forth, while the entity itself doesn't need to move. The whole affect only needing to occur in the animation and no need for new unit motion code.

3. The Roman and Carthaginian Quinquiremes are pretty ugly compared to the Ptolemaic one. Probably just need an all new model.

[ShadowOfHassen]

31 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

At least one good random map for naval play is sorely needed. Something good enough that it could be played semi-regularly in rated. There are some great skirmish maps, but they are mostly limited to 1v1 or 3 players. 

My favorite sea map was the Caribbean from age of empires III. Everyone would start on a separate island and there'd be another island with treasure on it.

[Feldfeld]

13 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

What is different about our "engine" that makes non-random arrows not play well?

Currently 0 A.D. has quite high scale fights and I find it absurd that all the fortress garrison would focus a single unit to oblivion. All arrows follow the same path, it is ugly and hard to tell what is happening, is the fortress effectiveness reduced because of overkill, or missed arrows? I would also find it not nice having to keep valuable units out of a fight under fortress from fear of having them focused with all arrows by the enemy without drawbacks.

Not more than exactly one unit is damaged in a volley. It's weird that all defenders perfectly coordinate and are perfectly accurate (not as in "the unit will be hit", but the arrow follows exactly the intended path). There is no deviation, there is not a single other unit that will be hurt by a missed arrow.

Meanwhile, random arrows are spread into the enemy army, for me that is a behavior that makes more sense with a strong fortification in a large scale fight. Arguably, they were spread too perfectly, which is also unnatural in the other direction, but I still prefer it over the alternative.

And there are the concerns about rushes mentioned by @chrstgtr already.

[Stan`]

Can't we have a system were depending on buildings, up to max n arrows can be focused on a unit ? That number n would be the max between the value in the template and a ratio of the current number of arrows with the max number of arrows that can be shot from that building.

[chrstgtr]

11 minutes ago, Stan` said:

Can't we have a system were depending on buildings, up to max n arrows can be focused on a unit ? That number n would be the max between the value in the template and a ratio of the current number of arrows with the max number of arrows that can be shot from that building.

So random arrows but there can be manual targeting for some arrows? Sounds worth trying to me 

[Feldfeld]

13 minutes ago, Stan` said:

Can't we have a system were depending on buildings, up to max n arrows can be focused on a unit ? That number n would be the max between the value in the template and a ratio of the current number of arrows with the max number of arrows that can be shot from that building.

Imo that would be an improvement but I still also would like to see deviation with arrows being able to hurt a different unit than the target, not sure if that's possible without hurting performance

[Stan`]

1 hour ago, chrstgtr said:

So random arrows but there can be manual targeting for some arrows? Sounds worth trying to me 

Yep. Either a ratio, or a max of two or something.

1 hour ago, Feldfeld said:

Imo that would be an improvement but I still also would like to see deviation with arrows being able to hurt a different unit than the target, not sure if that's possible without hurting performance

I think arrows can still miss and hit something else, which is probably the reason of the lags @maroder noticed when there are many enemies.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

9 hours ago, Feldfeld said:

Currently 0 A.D. has quite high scale fights and I find it absurd that all the fortress garrison would focus a single unit to oblivion

So is it a realism argument?

9 hours ago, Feldfeld said:

there is not a single other unit that will be hurt by a missed arrow

Missed arrows damage nearby units.

9 hours ago, Feldfeld said:

Imo that would be an improvement but I still also would like to see deviation with arrows being able to hurt a different unit than the target, not sure if that's possible without hurting performance

To be fair, the accuracy pretty effectively accomplishes this, especially for forts. Also, the natural movement of units often spreads damage over a handful of units, as the "closest unit" changes often.

9 hours ago, Feldfeld said:

I would also find it not nice having to keep valuable units out of a fight under fortress from fear of having them focused with all arrows by the enemy without drawbacks.

If the player notices this (not easy, to be fair) keeping that unit in motion will dramatically improve its survival and even decrease the effectiveness of the building arrows. So there is ideally a nice back and forth should a player use the manual targeting like this.

9 hours ago, Stan` said:

Can't we have a system were depending on buildings, up to max n arrows can be focused on a unit ? That number n would be the max between the value in the template and a ratio of the current number of arrows with the max number of arrows that can be shot from that building.

I suppose a max number of attackers value could be used sort of like something @wowgetoffyourcellphone proposed a while ago. IMO this approach is heavy-handed.

One idea I brough up on overkill discussions was this: add a new range query for determining the closest unit with a flexible degree of rounding. In these large scale battles mentioned by @Feldfeld, what is currently "the closest unit" could be 2 to 5 units, or maybe more.

@Stan` is there already some sort of tiebreaking mechanism when two targets are exactly the same distance?

 

[ShadowOfHassen]

What if instead of a building focusing on only one person, it focuses on a few like 2 or 3?

[real_tabasco_sauce]

1 hour ago, ShadowOfHassen said:

What if instead of a building focusing on only one person, it focuses on a few like 2 or 3?

I was thinking something like this would be an elegant way to achieve this effect:

2 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

One idea I brough up on overkill discussions was this: add a new range query for determining the closest unit with a flexible degree of rounding. In these large scale battles mentioned by @Feldfeld, what is currently "the closest unit" could be 2 to 5 units, or maybe more.

[chrstgtr]

2 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

I was thinking something like this would be an elegant way to achieve this effect:

4 hours ago, ShadowOfHassen said:

What if instead of a building focusing on only one person, it focuses on a few like 2 or 3?

I don't think this addresses any of the underlying concerns with buildings' strength in early or late game. It is the same system just watered down and it will have the same effect as decreasing arrow damage, which has already proved undesirable. 

[Feldfeld]

13 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

So is it a realism argument?

Also valid as a gameplay argument. I'd like my fortress to damage multiple units at a time and I even find it strange some people don't want that.

21 hours ago, Stan` said:

I think arrows can still miss and hit something else, which is probably the reason of the lags @maroder noticed when there are many enemies.

 

13 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

Missed arrows damage nearby units.

 

13 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

To be fair, the accuracy pretty effectively accomplishes this, especially for forts. Also, the natural movement of units often spreads damage over a handful of units, as the "closest unit" changes often.

That may be possible in theory but in practice I didn't really feel that much. In AoE2 even towers can kill multiple units at a time.

13 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

If the player notices this (not easy, to be fair) keeping that unit in motion will dramatically improve its survival and even decrease the effectiveness of the building arrows. So there is ideally a nice back and forth should a player use the manual targeting like this.

That could be an interesting thing, but if every arrow goes for that unit then the player probably won't have the time to react before the unit dies. Also, having distinguishable arrow volleys would help with that (not saying that's not the case right now, I didn't play recently enough to remember)

[Stan`]

16 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

@Stan` is there already some sort of tiebreaking mechanism when two targets are exactly the same distance?

I'm not sure but IIRC units have preferences with regards to their target e.g. the Elephant class.

[hamdich]

2 hours ago, Feldfeld said:

So is it a realism argument?

 

 

It is not just a matter of realisme but effectiveness as well  .  As a player who play every week for a while now with a mosty havely agressive oriented playstyle i noticed that the arrows focus targeting of defensive buildings is not that effective against all kinds of rush , on papers they should be better against rush because of number of arrows and 1 unit target only  but  in reality it is worse for obvious reasons like arrows are in stream per 4 seconds which can be dodged easier  than before with cavalry and that the max number of arrows is actually like  40% less . Beacsue of that a decent army of melée can actually sit under cc for minutes , same thing for towers and forts  . 

i understand the reason for it to be a stream not all at a time arrows + the less max  number of arrows is to avoid  arrows miss all at once and avoid over kill  so for that i think the best way would be to keep it random targeting as it used to before with possibilty of manually targeting 1 units when player wishes with also augmenting the number of maximum arrows and lowering to stream time to a number to be figured  and tested .

 

[alre]

47 minutes ago, Stan` said:

I'm not sure but IIRC units have preferences with regards to their target e.g. the Elephant class.

first, units select palpable targets from the preferred class enemy units within range, then minimum distance is used for the final choice.

[ChronA]

On 22/05/2024 at 1:19 PM, real_tabasco_sauce said:

I'll die on the hill that ultimately a non-random system is superior, but I can agree that the implementation of non-random arrows haven't hit the mark I was going for: Manual targeting isn't used much, some buildings are too effective, and others like the fortress are still fairly ineffective.

I'll put out an update sometime removing the non-random arrows, which may also help to serve as a negative control. I will bring them back at some point, with improvements for user control, cursors, audio cues, and more careful balance.

I'd like to applaud @real_tabasco_sauce for the moderation of this opinion, and endorse it as my own view. Ultimately the non-random systems seems like it will have better implications for gameplay. However its balance implications are so convoluted and far reaching that trying to implement it all at once into a larger incremental-rebalance mod is just going to scramble all the other balance goals.

However, this idea of having an adjustable number or proportion of arrows, per actor, be non-random sounds very promising to me. I think it should be discussed further.

I imagine the implementation would be tunable on a per-unit-class basis through unit templates. That might be your solution to the balance problems. You could walk the proportion up for each building, just until it starts to cause problems, and then wait until a compensatory adjustment can be found before going further, without ever breaking the overall balance (if it were done very cleverly).

This would eventually let you transition entirely to non-random if you wanted, or find a happy middle where the gameplay objectives of non-random are achieved, but some random aiming is still present with its own beneficial effects on balance and presentation.

Edited May 24 by ChronA

[ShadowOfHassen]

19 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

So is it a realism argument?

If we're going with a realism argument, random arrows make more sense. However, if we were going like that, a good arrow hit would one shot the attackers. Even if they weren't dead I'm pretty sure none of us would get up from an arrow in the thigh.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

14 hours ago, Feldfeld said:

That could be an interesting thing, but if every arrow goes for that unit then the player probably won't have the time to react before the unit dies. Also, having distinguishable arrow volleys would help with that (not saying that's not the case right now, I didn't play recently enough to remember)

yeah I tried to set up a pause between firing rounds, but I couldn't figure it out. I think it would improve readability and the micro options.

Anyways thanks everyone for the ideas for improvement. I'll use these ideas to better refine the non-random approach the next time I introduce it sometime in a27.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

12 hours ago, Stan` said:

On 23/05/2024 at 10:30 AM, real_tabasco_sauce said:

@Stan` is there already some sort of tiebreaking mechanism when two targets are exactly the same distance?

I'm not sure but IIRC units have preferences with regards to their target e.g. the Elephant class.

Oh no, I was asking about the rangefinder (maybe its the rangefinder..). Ie, say 2 units are exactly the same distance away from my archer, how is the tie broken?

Even if it isn't wanted for building AI, I think it might be helpful for a number of reasons to have a "coarse" rangefinder for situations like these, ie finding the unit's position to the nearest x meters where x could be 5, 1, 0.5, 0.1, etc.

Then maybe x could be a property in the templates. For instance, archers have a bit of a problem with overkill, so you could set X to be 3 or 5, so that they more often choose different targets.

Then for short range units, something like 0.5 could be used.

In buildingAI, it could inherit an array of the closest units and target randomly from those. That way with the fort you could set x to 5 so that the closer units are shot when they are farther away, but when the fort is surrounded, you kind of have a "fire at will" appearance, shooting the closest at random.

might be kind of a mess though for buildingAI, because a ton of functions would probably need to use arrays where they don't already.

Edited May 24 by real_tabasco_sauce

[MacWolf]

On 22/05/2024 at 10:10 PM, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

This kind of attitude prevents improvement. Siege Towers are pretty weird at the moment, but because some folks have managed to use that weirdness to their advantage we shouldn't improve them?

i was saying siege towers are good rn, they are usable, before with random arrows they where useless, now atleast u can use the unit, any change is good if u can go back or balance if it doesnt work, but siege towers is working rn.

[chrstgtr]

6 hours ago, MacWolf said:

i was saying siege towers are good rn, they are usable, before with random arrows they where useless, now atleast u can use the unit, any change is good if u can go back or balance if it doesnt work, but siege towers is working rn.

Siege towers balance was just bad before. It's a unit that tends to go through cycles where it is useless or OP. It's really the same story with all ranged siege. There were alphas where players literally banned the use of old siege towers because they were OP.

The current siege tower mechanic is potentially problematic, though. Now, siege towers focus their arrows against their primary counter units (melee inf/cav). Changing dps is a really easy way to make siege towers better without using non-random arrows--it's a method that has been both too strong and too weak in the past, so the only thing that needs to be done is find the right balance. 

[real_tabasco_sauce]

[real_tabasco_sauce]

ok,

heres an idea: Let the carry capacity upgrades in the storehouse have a flat bonus to construction speed.

Why: Wicker baskets, wheelbarrow, and cart are fairly underused, since in many games it is preferable to just build additional drop sites when gathering becomes inefficient.

I think it would be great to add a small bonus to construction speed to each of these, something like 10%. It is perfectly realistic, and could add more options for civs that find themselves in need of many buildings.

just a thought, and it would be easy to do in the com mod.

[ShadowOfHassen]

13 minutes ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

ok,

heres an idea: Let the carry capacity upgrades in the storehouse have a flat bonus to construction speed.

Why: Wicker baskets, wheelbarrow, and cart are fairly underused, since in many games it is preferable to just build additional drop sites when gathering becomes inefficient.

I think it would be great to add a small bonus to construction speed to each of these, something like 10%. It is perfectly realistic, and could add more options for civs that find themselves in need of many buildings.

just a thought, and it would be easy to do in the com mod.

I do have a problem with those upgrades anyway. I just build more storehouses. If you have bigger capacity it just takes longer before I can have the 3 wood I need for the upgrade.