Introducing the Official community mod for Alpha 26

[chrstgtr]

52 minutes ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

yeah ive done some tests and it works pretty well. I need to set up the precision value in the templates, and then test for OOS. Then there's also the performance side of things.

Great. I'm interested. Sounds like it's still in development, though, and has awhile to go before it makes it into primetime. 

Edited June 26, 2024 by chrstgtr

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

14 hours ago, chrstgtr said:

But making archer dmg equal to sling or jav dmg is certainly wrong. Same goes for walk speed

I didn't suggest that either value has to be greater than or equal to corresponding slinger or skirm values. damage and walk speed are continuous variables here of course. Its good you bring up the crossbows because those are even more challenging to balance. I think real tabasco's thing with range precision could help them reduce overkill a lot. 

Edited June 26, 2024 by BreakfastBurrito_007

[chrstgtr]

39 minutes ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

I didn't suggest that either value has to be greater than or equal to corresponding slinger or skirm values. damage and walk speed are continuous variables here of course. It’s good you bring up the crossbows because those are even more challenging to balance. I think real tabasco's thing with range precision could help them reduce overkill a lot. 

You said increase dmg “on par” with jav/sling. If that isn’t what you meant then, yes, should an augmentation of the dmg is in order just like some nerf was necessary before.

Walk speed has a bunch of problems that’s been discussed. Even if you find a middle ground that won’t help much with “stand and fight” situations (aka the majority of the time) since units don’t walk within the fight. 

Just saying we should stay within the basic principles I outlined before. There’s obviously some wiggle room  within those parameters

On overkill issue, I’ve already said how I think Tabasco’s idea will really only work for fights where armies are highly congested, so helpful but partial. Also, any effect will be shared across all range unit types, so skims/slings will get better at same time as archers. The magnitude might be different but I’m skeptical it will make a trash unit as good as skirms/slings. 

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

2 hours ago, chrstgtr said:

On overkill issue, I’ve already said how I think Tabasco’s idea will really only work for fights where armies are highly congested, so helpful but partial. Also, any effect will be shared across all range unit types, so skims/slings will get better at same time as archers. The magnitude might be different but I’m skeptical it will make a trash unit as good as skirms/slings. 

Two variables are important for how the range precision affects overkill and unit performance. The ratio of range to target and target spacing (largest for archers), and firing period (biggest for xbows). These are not constant for ranged units so we can be sure that the change will affect some units more than others. I do agree that it will mainly be noticeable when battles are large and congested, but this is by no means a rare thing in 0ad. "on par" was in reference to the overall unit performance and not specifically the damage/walk speed values needed to achieve that parity, my apologies for not being clear.

[chrstgtr]

26 minutes ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

Two variables are important for how the range precision affects overkill and unit performance. The ratio of range to target and target spacing (largest for archers), and firing period (biggest for xbows). These are not constant for ranged units so we can be sure that the change will affect some units more than others. I do agree that it will mainly be noticeable when battles are large and congested, but this is by no means a rare thing in 0ad.

Sure. This is all to say it won't be a silver bullet, which I think is obvious. 

[chrstgtr]

39 minutes ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

"on par" was in reference to the overall unit performance and not specifically the damage/walk speed values needed to achieve that parity, my apologies for not being clear.

Ok. That's different then and compatible with what I was saying. 

I would say buffing dmg and fixing sniping are the obvious steps to take to archer/xbow. Changes to walk speed should be disfavored as they don't address "stand and fight" situations. I also think @ChronA is right that we shouldn't open the can of worms that walk speed would bring. 

Edited June 26, 2024 by chrstgtr

[Philip the Swaggerless]

So we played a gulf of bothnia game and here are my impressions.

I don't think I would make boats to take water control anymore.

Boats used to be effective for fighting land troops. (They were WAY too effective.)

Now they must be extremely weary of land troops because they will get sunk very easily by ranged infantry.

Boats firepower vs each other is also felt lackluster.  They take a long time to kill each other.  If you are trying to transport soldiers, I wouldn't be too worried about making a bunch of boats, just make a few and they'll probably survive to the other side unless hit by a fire boat.

So then what do you do with boats?

1. Fish,
2. Protect own fishermen, harrass other's fishermen
3. Transport soldiers

What do you not do?

1. Make combat boats for naval battles
2. Support land troops from the sea

I have no idea if this is more realistic so I won't comment about it.  But if this is the way it is to be, the fact warships still take 3-4 pop space means you better not make too many.

[chrstgtr]

9 hours ago, Philip the Swaggerless said:

So then what do you do with boats?

1.  
2. Protect own fishermen, harrass other's fishermen
3.  

Arrow ships are worthless against fishing ships too. Fire ships do literally zero damage against fishing boats. You're better off ignoring enemy war ships and building more fishing boats because it takes multiple minutes for an entire arrow boat to kill one fishing ship despite the arrow ship being more expensive in resources, build time, and ship cost. 

The tech tree is also unnecessarily extensive and complicated. A lot of this should just be consolidated into like two techs (if naval ever actually becomes a real aspect of the game it can be built out again but right now there are so many techs that each do such limited things that no tech would ever be worth getting). 

The scout ship seems to have no purpose. 

Overall, there is no reason to ever build a war ship to fight. Navy needs a bit of work

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

I'd like to be able to make scout ship in p1. I think given how long p1 usually lasts, having an opportunity to "rush" on water would be nice. I think the details of which ships are too op/ up in navy fights aren't clear yet, but definitely ships need to be be killing fishing ships faster.

Currently the best way to kill fishing ships seems to be making multiple ram ships and one arrow ship. Since ram ships take all but 2 hp from fishing ships, you can task ram ships on different fishing ships and use the arrow ship to finish them off. As for the techs I think its nice to have potent techs that make an effect on a particular ship type, that way you actually choose which techs to get according to the naval strategy you are going for instead of just clicking almost everything like eco or land military techs.

[guerringuerrin]

I think I would put main focus on improving the arrow ship. It feels pretty weird that this one fires only one arrow at a time and does so little damage. I would even try that by default it can have more than one target and that the player can, in any case, attack a single target if he wishes.
On the other hand, the lack of animations and foleys for the actions of the ships makes them feel very little "exciting"...

Edited June 27, 2024 by guerringuerrin

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

1. Foley/sound effects for ranged ships can be done if someone creates very simple idle animation for each one that we can use for the attack animation. For units, it is required to have an animation to trigger a sound. 

2. Ramming ships need a ramming animation. The Xiongnu battering ram serves as a good example of what could be done.

3. I do indeed would like to see Arrow Ships fire volleys of arrows instead of one at a time. I think there may be a patch somewhere for that. And then be awesome for the arrow ship tech to add arrows to this volley instead of reducing attack time.

4. Balance etc. This was a first draft of the ship stats. Put into the community mod for yall to suggest good stat values. I guess a few rounds of idle complaints are necessary before the real work is done. For instance, I would suggest (among other things!!2) tightening up the accuracy of warships so they are stronger against land units and fishing boats.

5. Let's hold off on making the tech tree as  bland and generic as the land tech tree please.

6. Things added despite flaws so that ppl may be inspired to fix them.

[chrstgtr]

1 hour ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

As for the techs I think its nice to have potent techs that make an effect on a particular ship type, that way you actually choose which techs to get according to the naval strategy you are going for instead of just clicking almost everything like eco or land military techs

Right now, the best strategy is to NO techs. The techs for boats right now are more numerous than for inf/cav despite boats being made about 1000x less often than inf/cav. That just doesn't make sense. 

[chrstgtr]

1 hour ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

I'd like to be able to make scout ship in p1. I think given how long p1 usually lasts, having an opportunity to "rush" on water would be nice. I think the details of which ships are too op/ up in navy fights aren't clear yet, but definitely ships need to be be killing fishing ships faster.

Totally disagree. I think the best thing that naval does (or used to do) is force a quick p2 to get war ships to kill fishing. If you put a fighting ship in p1 then fishing will be mitigated and people will just stay in p1 forever and make fields instead of bothering with fish. 

The balance is just bad. All ships are underpowered and none are worth making to fight. That is very clear. Luckily balance stats can be fixed. But the next round basically requires brand new stats because the current situation isn't informative. Navy is still totally conceptual to me. 

[real_tabasco_sauce]

32 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

3. I do indeed would like to see Arrow Ships fire volleys of arrows instead of one at a time. I think there may be a patch somewhere for that. And then be awesome for the arrow ship tech to add arrows to this volley instead of reducing attack time.

I achieved this in my non-random buildingAI experiements. Tbh I think a faster fire rate would be fine too as an interim measure. This would be of interest anyway for onagers.

32 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

4. Balance etc. This was a first draft of the ship stats. Put into the community mod for yall to suggest good stat values. I guess a few rounds of idle complaints are necessary before the real work is done. For instance, I would suggest (among other things!!2) tightening up the accuracy of warships so they are stronger against land units and fishing boats.

I could do a round of updates at some point to address the points made here.

Edited June 27, 2024 by real_tabasco_sauce

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

We should definitely play some water maps so we are forced to make ships to help inform the ship on ship balance. It probably won't be fun, but it would be good navy is balanced upon a27 release.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

5 hours ago, chrstgtr said:

Luckily balance stats can be fixed. But the next round basically requires brand new stats because the current situation isn't informative. Navy is still totally conceptual to me. 

Ya supposed to suggest some numbers, broham. Yer a balancer? (Maybe I'm mistaken).

I got you a decent ship concept. Now suggest some stats. The whole point of this exercise.

[ChronA]

On 27/06/2024 at 9:22 PM, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Ya supposed to suggest some numbers, broham.

Somewhere I heard this advice and it has served me well: if a unit is initially OP, reduce one of its combat stats by half. If the unit is UP, double one of its combat stats. Keep doing this until the relationship flips, thereby bounding the balanced range for the statistic. Then start splitting differences until you converge on a balanced value.

The real big brain moment is realizing that this is is not just a good algorithm for converging on acceptable parameter ranges. It's actually easier to create stable Nash equilibria using strong dominance relationships, such as you get by sticking to powers of two stat-adjustments. The resulting strong counters will be much more stable against perturbations than a delicately fine-tuned dominance web.

I know 0 AD aspires to be a "soft counter" based experience, but I really think you guys will paradoxically make a lot more headway if you learn to be less cautious with your stat adjustments. When every piece of your balance web is fine tuned, adjusting any part is almost inevitably going to break other parts, creating obscure new problems as fast as you solve them. You end up needing to add compensatory adjustments across every node of the web, which in turn all cause their own adjustments that must be correctly compensated... it's an endless quagmire:

On 25/06/2024 at 10:48 PM, chrstgtr said:

We see a bunch of small problems with balance where things are just a little bit off. I can't put my finger on the exact problem or a solution but I think there is pretty wide agreement that balance isn't quite right. 

 

TL:DR - Try doubling the DPS of all boats. See how much that helps the UP-ness of naval units vs land ones. Then you will probably need to buff the HP of ram ships, since melee units benefit less from DPS changes than ranged ones. But after that you might be in the ball-park of the situation you want.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

 

https://gitlab.com/0ad/0ad-community-mod-a26/-/tree/main/community-mod/simulation/templates

May I suggest for ships:

 

template_unit_ship_warship

        <Pierce>12 20</Pierce>

      <PrepareTime>1500 1000</PrepareTime>
      <RepeatTime>3000 2000</RepeatTime>

 

template_unit_ship_warship_arrow

 -       <Pierce>15</Pierce>

    <Population>3 2</Population>

Line 36 tab -> spaces

 

template_unit_ship_warship_ram

        <Hack>200.0 150.0</Hack>

      <RepeatTime>8000 6000</RepeatTime>

    <Population>3 2</Population>

Line 51 tab -> spaces

 

template_unit_ship_warship_scout

    <Population>2 1</Population>

Line 27 tab -> spaces

 

template_unit_ship_warship_siege

        <Crush>125 150</Crush>

      <MaxRange>80 85</MaxRange>

        <Spread>6 3</Spread>

    <Population>4 3</Population>

Line 63 tab -> spaces

[real_tabasco_sauce]

ok, today version 10 is out! Be sure to check out the new sparta content and the updated values for naval units.

[RangerK]

On 16/07/2024 at 5:49 PM, real_tabasco_sauce said:

ok, today version 10 is out! Be sure to check out the new sparta content and the updated values for naval units.

What is the best place to see release notes?

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

The popup in the main menu does a good job

[Philip the Swaggerless]

On 16/07/2024 at 4:49 PM, real_tabasco_sauce said:

ok, today version 10 is out! Be sure to check out the new sparta content and the updated values for naval units.

This is interesting.  I have one question about Sparta and the Neodamodes spearman they get in p3 for 30 food and 20 metal.  I assume their main benefit is the cheaper cost?

So it should be easier for the Spartan player to keep a high population. That is in addition to hoplite tradition tech making their regular spearmen train 25% faster.

Do we want Sparta to be a civ that can spam units easily? In earlier alphas Sparta had a -10% pop cap.  Was there a basis for that debuff? Or was that just hype around the famous "300" battle that didn't necessarily reflect Sparta over its strong period?

[real_tabasco_sauce]

6 hours ago, Philip the Swaggerless said:

This is interesting.  I have one question about Sparta and the Neodamodes spearman they get in p3 for 30 food and 20 metal.  I assume their main benefit is the cheaper cost?

So it should be easier for the Spartan player to keep a high population. That is in addition to hoplite tradition tech making their regular spearmen train 25% faster.

Do we want Sparta to be a civ that can spam units easily? In earlier alphas Sparta had a -10% pop cap.  Was there a basis for that debuff? Or was that just hype around the famous "300" battle that didn't necessarily reflect Sparta over its strong period?

The intent was for the neodamodes reforms to be kind of a last resort when sparta is low on military. IIRC the 180 pop debuff was there to justify superior infantry and champions, but it really wasn't worth it. When it was removed i think a lot of ppl were in favor of removing it.

The neodamodes are not intended to make sparta a spammy civ, so I think they should be made a little weaker than the regular hoplite infantry, and also maybe make them unaffected by leonidas.

Also, I think the p1 champs have turned out much less powerful than I anticipated, so I think i'll remove the train time penalty and move the movement speed tech to p1.

Edited July 25, 2024 by real_tabasco_sauce

[BeTe]

13 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

The intent was for the neodamodes reforms to be kind of a last resort when sparta is low on military. IIRC the 180 pop debuff was there to justify superior infantry and champions, but it really wasn't worth it. When it was removed i think a lot of ppl were in favor of removing it.

The neodamodes are not intended to make sparta a spammy civ, so I think they should be made a little weaker than the regular hoplite infantry, and also maybe make them unaffected by leonidas.

Also, I think the p1 champs have turned out much less powerful than I anticipated, so I think i'll remove the train time penalty and move the movement speed tech to p1.

Fyi, I tried 2 games vs CPU to rush those Spartan champions - but I don't think it can be done on time. Maybe I didn't optimize Bo, idk. But with normal BO your Barracks are ready around 3:00 (or so) and you will have stronger eco + outproduce champions build, right? 

Btw, in general, I am curious why champions are so expensive in 0AD? I mean they are stronger but can't gather resources which is direct harming eco - according to this, shouldn't they be at least equally expensive? I am just curious why it's designed that way?

[chrstgtr]

7 minutes ago, BeTe said:

Btw, in general, I am curious why champions are so expensive in 0AD? I mean they are stronger but can't gather resources which is direct harming eco - according to this, shouldn't they be at least equally expensive? I am just curious why it's designed that way?

Once you’re fighting with champions you’re generally engaged in constant fight. The fact that they can’t gather is irrelevant as you generally would never use them for that. 
 

They’re more expensive for the reason you identify—they’re stronger. 
 

One can argue on whether their costs, in terms of resources and train time, are property set