Introducing the Official community mod for Alpha 26

[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?

[Emacz]

On 19/11/2024 at 5:49 PM, chrstgtr said:

I think a better idea would be to get rid of the building requirement to go p3. 

It would open up more build orders. You could do forgo any blacksmiths to get quick siege and push with a weak army. Or you could build a bunch of blacksmiths to get a strong army with multiple upgrades. Or maybe you do something in between. 

 

I like this idea, i think ill experiment with my version!

[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

[Emacz]

1 hour ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

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

you really dont need to split the community, you can just test things on historical  Granted the base stats are the same.  But tehre are a few different types of "eco" units if you want ideas/see how it could work.  3x counter already exists as well. What about Han gameplay needs improvement?

[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. 

[Emacz]

2 hours ago, Seleucids said:

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. 

thanks @Seleucids I think there are 3 main reason people dont try out historical. 

1 they are afraid of change

2 Nonone wants to work anymore, everyone wants to play... the younger generations 

3 they prefer tgs

3 is simple fix, everyone tries it out and there are more tgs But as i posted earlier regarding some of @real_tabasco_sauce idea's, the problem on historical will be the base stats of a lot of things are different as well. Like why should ranged units have more health than melee units? Aren't "all men created equal"  Obviously we then had to tyr and balance differently from there as well.

Edited Wednesday at 22:43 by Emacz

[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.

[Emacz]

2 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

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.

Thank you @real_tabasco_sauce Although it really isnt my mod anymore  I got it going, but i have now had a lot of help along the way, including from you!