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Author Topic: Acer's Feedback  (Read 3715 times)

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January 16, 2012, 01:40:42 PM

Offline Acer18

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Acer's Feedback
« on: January 16, 2012, 01:40:42 PM »
ok, just started examining the beta.

1. On Skirmish mode, on easy setting cause this is a new mod without any guidelines.
skirmish ai get 100,000 credits on easy mode and the human player get 10,000.... Absolutely NOT.

Easy mode is for learning what you changed in your mod from what other mods are. It's the opening to your mod and if easy level is too hard or frustrating, then you loose many potential followers!

so redo AI credit down to 20,000 if you really need the AI to cheat so bad on the easy level. let it where u have it for medium level.

2. the splash screen for "fiery Demise" map is all "Missing".. this needs to be fixed.

3. it took 35 seconds for this skirmish battle to load up and i have a fast system.

AMD 4 core 965 black edition and Geforce 550ti card 4 gig mem for XP os.

4. Change the pop cap back up to where you had it in 1.2. If the don't like it that high then they can change it themselves or learn to like hugh space fleets in battle.

This is RTS, not tactical crappy commands like call of effing duty with a squad of idiots... sorry if i bashed first person shooter games, but them.

5. if i place a squadron next to a buildable, it takes me more than 5 seconds to get it to turn color and give me the buildable icon..... that's too long. reduce it to no more than 3 seconds.

This is skirmish mode, that means fast decisions and fast buildables too.

It also seems like the AI gets to build faster than the human does.... that's wrong once again for easy mode.

You want people to want to play the rest of the game. This mod is absolutely gorgeous video wise, and your concept that you advance in tech levels by killing off the opposing leader is excellent.

Oh, apparently, you have these rotten settings for even if the AI and human is the same side. Bad choice; unless you only want the under 20 crowd playing your game... 

Also if the mod is too hard to learn, they will just say Eff it.

I'm gonna try a GC now. I've NEVER had a crash issue with the 1.2

January 16, 2012, 01:53:50 PMReply #1

Offline Acer18

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« Reply #1 on: January 16, 2012, 01:53:50 PM »
so i timed how long it takes for the actual mod to load... it takes only 28 seconds for the mod to load.. that's pretty good.

SO why does it take your fiery demise skirmish map 35 seconds to load?

also... what the hell is with the AI's ships moving twice as fast as the human player's ships????? You can see the fighters for the AI move considerably faster than the fighters for the human player.... This HAS to be fixed. It's not cool at all.

January 16, 2012, 04:52:26 PMReply #2

Offline Corey

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Acer's Feedback
« Reply #2 on: January 16, 2012, 04:52:26 PM »
Here's Zeron's post back:

Quote
ok, just started examining the beta.

1. On Skirmish mode, on easy setting cause this is a new mod without any guidelines.
skirmish ai get 100,000 credits on easy mode and the human player get 10,000.... Absolutely NOT.

Easy mode is for learning what you changed in your mod from what other mods are. It's the opening to your mod and if easy level is too hard or frustrating, then you loose many potential followers!

so redo AI credit down to 20,000 if you really need the AI to cheat so bad on the easy level. let it where u have it for medium level.

2. the splash screen for "fiery Demise" map is all "Missing".. this needs to be fixed.

3. it took 35 seconds for this skirmish battle to load up and i have a fast system.

AMD 4 core 965 black edition and Geforce 550ti card 4 gig mem for XP os.

4. Change the pop cap back up to where you had it in 1.2. If the don't like it that high then they can change it themselves or learn to like hugh space fleets in battle.

This is RTS, not tactical crappy commands like call of effing duty with a squad of idiots... sorry if i bashed first person shooter games, but them.

5. if i place a squadron next to a buildable, it takes me more than 5 seconds to get it to turn color and give me the buildable icon..... that's too long. reduce it to no more than 3 seconds.

This is skirmish mode, that means fast decisions and fast buildables too.

It also seems like the AI gets to build faster than the human does.... that's wrong once again for easy mode.

You want people to want to play the rest of the game. This mod is absolutely gorgeous video wise, and your concept that you advance in tech levels by killing off the opposing leader is excellent.

Oh, apparently, you have these rotten settings for even if the AI and human is the same side. Bad choice; unless you only want the under 20 crowd playing your game... 

Also if the mod is too hard to learn, they will just say Eff it.

I'm gonna try a GC now. I've NEVER had a crash issue with the 1.2

1. After some testing yes, this seems to be a bit much. The AI seems to have gone off a bit, although it's less because of the credits and more because of the shifted AI behaviors because of them.

2. Fiery Demise doesn't represent a specific planet, so it doesn't have any of those. As well, finding(+ making up) and writing these details for the hundreds of planets we have in the mod is honestly a very low priority.

3. Not much we can do about the loading times, some of the maps in this mod are very graphics intensive. If the loading times bother you, try playing a less intensive map.

4. The pop caps are where they are so that people without super high tech computers can actually play the mod. If you want them back up, what you said applies to yourself so just change it back up.



5. It's from vanilla, we haven't exactly changed that. Build pads and buildables are very powerful, that your squads are vulnerable in those crucial five seconds is important.

I can't tell if you've actually played or just loaded it up, but the AI gets these things because quite frankly it's not very good. In actual gameplay they do not make the AI super powerful, they make it able to keep up with a player who plays on easy. Not to mention that in skirmish you start with both a Golan I and a Golan III, which means that even playing badly you have a very large margin of error. The Golan III being a very large margin of error.

The AI and Human ships have exactly the same specs. If they're going faster, either they have a better commander or you are moving your fighter with your ships. When a group of ships is moved together the faster ships will all either match speeds or go to their minimum. If you only select your fighters and move them you will find that they go exactly as fast as the AI's.
« Last Edit: January 16, 2012, 04:56:14 PM by Corey »
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January 17, 2012, 12:48:09 AMReply #3

Offline Corey

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Acer's Feedback
« Reply #3 on: January 17, 2012, 12:48:09 AM »
1. On Skirmish mode, on easy setting cause this is a new mod without any guidelines.
skirmish ai get 100,000 credits on easy mode and the human player get 10,000.... Absolutely NOT.

That's not even true, and I have pictures to prove it.
[Click Here]
We don't control the starting credits for AI in skirmish. We can edit their build times and credit accumulation rates, but not how much they start with in skirmish. We make them start with a lot more in GC so they're less picky about how it's spent, and to make sure it does get spent.


so redo AI credit down to 20,000 if you really need the AI to cheat so bad on the easy level. let it where u have it for medium level.
Every game makes the AI cheat. They get free units and altered income, etc in the base game, and in virtually every other game in existence. In order to make the AI do what's desired, it's necessary. In fact, the only real difference between difficulty levels in EaW is the amount of cheating at each level.


Quote
3. it took 35 seconds for this skirmish battle to load up and i have a fast system.
so i timed how long it takes for the actual mod to load... it takes only 28 seconds for the mod to load.. that's pretty good.
SO why does it take your fiery demise skirmish map 35 seconds to load?
It's not like we code in load times and decided "map x should take this long, map y should take this long". You're comparing apples and oranges, it's loading different things. The only way for us to make it take less time to load is making the map smaller and removing objects from it, but we want that map the way it is. We're not editing a map we're happy with to save a few seconds of loading time.

If you have a problem with how the engine handles indexing or memory or whatever, you're taking it up with the wrong people. We don't have any control over the engine and system resource allocation, whatsoever. Petroglyph at least had the luxury of compiling the game files into MEG files, which we do not since the game wouldn't read them properly.

The Missing text on loadup is a legitimate bug, however, which will be fixed.

4. Change the pop cap back up to where you had it in 1.2. If the don't like it that high then they can change it themselves or learn to like hugh space fleets in battle.
This is RTS, not tactical crappy commands like call of effing duty with a squad of idiots... sorry if i bashed first person shooter games, but them.

The pop cap is exactly where we've had it since the first public release of Imperial Civil War, 40. You've mentioned a pop cap of 140 in another post I believe, but that would have been something you did if it's true. I don't see why your argument works in one direction and not the other. If you don't like it at 40, then you can raise it. There are several reasons for the pop cap being where it is. The team is happy with the 40, most other people seem to be as well, and I don't think it's considered good form to tell a mod team to change something in their mod and "learn to like it".

The maps aren't big enough to support 140 population per side and allow any meaningful movement. Above a certain point you're not going to have much control over it anyways at that point. The Galactic pop cap tends to not get much higher than 700 per side regardless, so if you actually filled all 140 slots for a single battle, you're probably in a rare situation, especially considering that that number has to be split between land and space. The AI is never going to decide to risk ~1/4th of its entire force on one planet.


Quote
5. if i place a squadron next to a buildable, it takes me more than 5 seconds to get it to turn color and give me the buildable icon..... that's too long. reduce it to no more than 3 seconds.
This is skirmish mode, that means fast decisions and fast buildables too.
Part of skirmish mod is being able to hold what you take. If you can't hold it long enough to build, that's all just part of the game. It's something most control/capture the flag gametypes get right in our opinion. And that's what this is, an opinion about what's better. This isn't a bug or some glaring conceptual error, it's a difference of opinion.

It also seems like the AI gets to build faster than the human does.... that's wrong once again for easy mode.
You want people to want to play the rest of the game.
I'll paste the exact code for the difficulty adjustments entries for easy mode on this.

<Galactic_Build_Time_Multiplier>0.8</Galactic_Build_Time_Multiplier>
<Space_Build_Time_Multiplier>1.0</Space_Build_Time_Multiplier>
<Land_Build_Time_Multiplier>1.0</Land_Build_Time_Multiplier>

As you can see, in skirmish their build rates on easy are the exact same as the player, in GC something that takes the player 10 seconds to build takes the AI 8. Once again though, I take issue with your characterization of this as "wrong."


Quote
also... what the hell is with the AI's ships moving twice as fast as the human player's ships?? You can see the fighters for the AI move considerably faster than the fighters for the human player.... This HAS to be fixed. It's not cool at all.

Zer covered this, but I just want to clarify the better commander thing. Many heroes give bonuses, including to speed.


Quote
Oh, apparently, you have these rotten settings for even if the AI and human is the same side. Bad choice; unless you only want the under 20 crowd playing your game...  

Also if the mod is too hard to learn, they will just say Eff it.
The AI settings have to be the same whether they're on your team or not. I'd disagree with the "awful" characterization as well, for the reasons I've given above.


Really, just in general I have to take issue with how you've approached making your suggestions. They come across way more often than not as demands, not suggestions. We're always open to suggestions and criticism, but for one thing, this thread is for bugs. There is another thread (<-- Click there) where we'd be more than happy to discuss balancing and AI, however your opinion that something should be changed does not make it true. Saying things like:

Quote
.... Absolutely NOT.
Quote
Change the pop cap back up to where you had it in 1.2. If the don't like it that high then they can change it themselves or learn to like hugh space fleets in battle.
Quote
This HAS to be fixed. It's not cool at all.

...Those don't sound like suggestions, they sound like demands.

Like I said, we're always open to constructive criticism, and you're even welcome to say something is "complete shit," that's how our team operates, and that's often a perfectly legitimate opinion to express, but making demands because of your own personal preference is not going to get you anywhere.

Frankly, in some areas it sounds like you're trying to lecture to a bunch of people clueless in the world of games and modding. We're not exactly new to this you know. In the almost-6 year history of this mod we've released 3 minimods, four open betas and two full versions of Imperial Civil War, with the third upcoming, not to mention the work of various team members on other mods. We're not perfect, far from it, but suggesting that in those 6 years and across all of those releases we've learned nothing about how to manage this mod or how to incorporate suggestions and feedback or that we've somehow missed the basic needs and wants of the mod community? Give us a bit more credit than that. Whatever anyone else may claim I think we have the fundamentals down by now. With all the feedback we receive via reviews, emails, comments, forum posts, etc each day we'd have to have our heads in the sand to not have some idea how this works by now. We don't do this because we think it'll make us famous or something like that, but regardless I think we can safely say we're past the point where we need to figure out how to build up a basic playerbase.

If you would like to discuss the AI or balance further, feel free to post in the discussion and feedback thread for the 1.3 beta, or make a new thread in Mod Discussion.

Edit: I've split this off into its own topic, so feel free to continue the AI discussion here.
« Last Edit: January 17, 2012, 06:14:32 AM by Zeron »
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January 17, 2012, 12:39:32 PMReply #4

Offline Acer18

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Re: Acer's Feedback
« Reply #4 on: January 17, 2012, 12:39:32 PM »
thanks corey and the other person for teh quite nice and constructive replies. Yes i'm sorry, sometimes my replies do tend to sound like they are demands instead of a benign suggestion... let's blame that on a career in the military.

I do like your mod a lot. it's an extremely refreshing difference to the general game play with how you make players change their tech level is fantastic.

I've looked at those same stats concerning the skirmish mode and i can't figure out why ONLY your mod's skirmish mode is so much harder.... It's just weird.

As to the "my fighters go slower than the ai's fighters...." , no that was just  in skirmish mode and all i had at the time was fighters. I know that fighters if they are near to bigger ships fly out a bit then back to their "mother ships" supposedly to refuel".


January 17, 2012, 09:30:28 PMReply #5

Offline Corey

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Re: Acer's Feedback
« Reply #5 on: January 17, 2012, 09:30:28 PM »
Well the problem is if we remove certain aspects of the AI, other parts stop working. I've halved the income rates at each level and changed a few other settings, but there's no real guarantee it will change much. If we could get some people to act as AI guinea pigs, we could probably do some more work on it, but as it is if we change too much too fast we run the risk of the 1.1 problem; complete brokenness.
« Last Edit: January 18, 2012, 03:06:58 AM by Corey »
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January 18, 2012, 06:50:32 PMReply #6

Offline Lord Xizer

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Re: Acer's Feedback
« Reply #6 on: January 18, 2012, 06:50:32 PM »
What do you mean by guinea pigs exactly Corey?
"I do not intend to be the Emperor's servant forever..."-High Inquisitor Jerec

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January 18, 2012, 07:01:46 PMReply #7

Offline Corey

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Re: Acer's Feedback
« Reply #7 on: January 18, 2012, 07:01:46 PM »
Furry little cute mammals, tend to be kept as pets. Failing that, we'll settle for volunteers to repeatedly test different AI changes in GCs and Skirmish.
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January 20, 2012, 10:36:29 AMReply #8

Offline Acer18

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Re: Acer's Feedback
« Reply #8 on: January 20, 2012, 10:36:29 AM »
umm, ok, i'll help you guys work on the AI thingie.

And, i'm still working on finding the mod which is really great at killing anything that the rebels has that can fly. The mod i'm talking about makes me NOT wanna even build flying units and i KNOW the extra strategic power of an air force.

But, yeah email me again Corey if you want me to help work on the ai thingie.

And i'll watch how i talk. I'm very sorry if i offended anyone. :(

 

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