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Feedback for 1.3

A topic by Ursom created Aug 18, 2021 Views: 324 Replies: 10
Viewing posts 1 to 7
(1 edit)

Hi, that's me again, and thanks for a new release!

Here are some minor issues, nothing critical:

1. So old saves are not versioned and appear broken on the list... it's not a big issue, we discussed that already.


2. Throw nade, kill enemy, press undo - this will not undo the kill and not return nade in inventory. works like extra AP.

3. swapping broken and non-broken weapon places good one to broken list... but only once.

Questions:

1. What are the key-bindings? I found that space moved camera to current Merc and "D" starts game after placing Mercs in start zone. how do I call a list during the game?

2. Battle at Jury, where I play with allies ended on second turn without my participation, that is fine, since allies live their own life... but there was a message saying, they received several AKs and like 10 nades as trophy, and I got nothing... how is it calculated, who gets what? by % of kills?

3. is snipe scope and 7.62 silencer available somewhere?

4. I guess walk route calculation should first offer the best route. Below left image is what it gives by default when I move mouse straight down. To get route from the right image, i need to move mouse around a bit... I mean, it still works but I'm trying to understand what was the intent behind this logic...


The rest is awesome! nades are doing good, and the fact that enemy uses them actively adds much fun to the game! Hard mode is not too much hard, but good enough, takes about 4-5 hours to complete for me - like that :)

Developer

> 1. So old saves are not versioned and appear broken on the list... it's not a big issue, we discussed that already.

yeah, That's just a mater of changing the error message. I'll fix that next version

> 2. Throw nade, kill enemy, press undo - this will not undo the kill and not return nade in inventory. works like extra AP.

Good catch. I forgot to program the undo for grenades. Easy to fix

> 3. swapping broken and non-broken weapon places good one to broken list... but only once.

yes, I will fix that too.

>Questions:

>1. What are the key-bindings? I found that space moved camera to current Merc and "D" starts game after placing Mercs in >start zone. how do >I call a list during the game?

Pressing 'H' pops up the hotkey list

>2. Battle at Jury, where I play with allies ended on second turn without my participation, that is fine, since allies live their own life... but there >was a message saying, they received several AKs and like 10 nades as trophy, and I got nothing... how is it calculated, who gets what? by % of >kills?

Yes, it's proportional to the damage you inflicted on the enemy. For instance, if allies inflict 40% and your squad inflicts 60% on enemy, then loot distribution is 40-60

>3. is snipe scope and 7.62 silencer available somewhere?

Sniper scope is only available in full version of game. Send me a email to edwelch@astronautz.com and I will send you the full version of 1.3. Silencers are only available for 9mm and 5.56mm caliber.  

> 4. I guess walk route calculation should first offer the best route. Below left image is what it gives by default when I move mouse straight down. >To get route from the right image, i need to move mouse around a bit... I mean, it still works but I'm trying to understand what was the intent >behind this logic...

It's just the nature of the A* pathfinder algorithm. Sometimes it does not get the perfect path.

>The rest is awesome! nades are doing good, and the fact that enemy uses them actively adds much fun to the game! Hard mode is not too much hard, but good enough, takes about 4-5 hours to complete for me - like that :)

That's good to hear. Thanks very much for the feedback!

(7 edits)

> Pressing 'H' pops up the hotkey list

Not obvious, make an icon or menu item

> Yes, it's proportional to the damage you inflicted on the enemy. For instance, if allies inflict 40% and your squad inflicts 60% on enemy, then loot distribution is 40-60

That's the hard one. I guess you'd better add some limit to witch allies can attack enemy city, so player will not join at the very end of battle.  This game has  "overwhelming advantage" check, and it ends battle a bit earlier than complete annihilation. That's smart and works for city capturing.

> Silencers are only available for 9mm and 5.56mm caliber.

One more good thing I would mention - silencer actually works very well! It looks like enemy cant's see me if I hide right after I see them and silencer doesn't attract other enemies, if they shoot me with silencer.  So I was able to specifically play a full game round without disturbing them and killed like 4 of them in ninja way! Also, I've seen they doing area patrol - awesome, thanks for adding this feature! There could be improvements later on but it's good enough for this release. For future release, it would be cool if AI give a chance to hide when enemy noted player's location... so they run to a spot where player was, not to actual player coordinates. Maybe add "camouflage cape" instead of armor?

Developer

Thanks for the feedback Ursom, below are my answers

> Pressing 'H' pops up the hotkey list

> Not obvious, make an icon or menu item

I'm planning on having online help selectable from the main menu

> That's the hard one. I guess you'd better add some limit to witch allies can attack enemy city, so player will not join at the very end of battle.  This game has  "overwhelming advantage" check, and it ends battle a bit earlier than complete annihilation. That's smart and works for city capturing.

I don't see the problem. If allies have done all the work, they should receive all the rewards. Most times the play will not arrive late in the battle. 

> One more good thing I would mention - silencer actually works very well! It looks like enemy cant's see me if I hide right after I see them and silencer doesn't attract other enemies, if they shoot me with silencer.  

Sometimes you can see the enemy, but they can't see you. In this case you will notice "zzz" in the target indicator above their head. 

> So I was able to specifically play a full game round without disturbing them and killed like 4 of them in ninja way! Also, I've seen they doing area patrol - awesome, thanks for adding this feature! There could be improvements later on but it's good enough for this release. 

That's great

> For future release, it would be cool if AI give a chance to hide when enemy noted player's location... so they run to a spot where player was, not to actual player coordinates. 

It already does that.

> Maybe add "camouflage cape" instead of armor?

That feature will have to wait for future versions.

(1 edit)

A quick feedback on version 1.3 after playing about 70% of a campaign at skill level hard:

Nades. Awesome! Now i want a bazooka, too! Nades  offer  new tactical options when an enemy is camping or attacking with too many soldiers in one area. The attacking range and the damage inflicted in relation to the APs required to throw nades are in good balance, i think. Things that could be improved:
- the timer could be much shorter. When enemies and allies throw nades it slows down the game because i always have to wait for the nades to explode although they are fighting in remote areas where they can do no damage to me.
- a turn can be over altough the nade has not exploded yet (due to the nade's timer still counting).  When you are lucky you can still  move away from the nade before it explodes. In a turn based game all attacks should be executed before the next player's turn starts.
- when enemies or allies throw nades in remote places i still can see the smoke. I think this should be hidden by the fog of war. Spotting the smoke makes it pretty easy to locate enemies and allies.
- sometimes the nade path indicates green light but anyway my soldiers manage to throw the nade against a wall etc. and it will bounce back to them. Is this meant to be this way? (is the nade path indicator meant to be inaccurate to some extent? In that case there should be a waiver of liability :)

AI improvement: very well done. Especially allies don't behave like lemmings anymore. When they see that there is little possibility to attack they take cover and wait for the enemy. Some ideas:
- i have the feeling that allied AI has improved much more than the enemies AI. Maybe it depends on who is attacking and who is defending or how many soldiers are on the map. But enemies still tend to make massive attacks without any cover when my soldiers are well hidden and covered. Often they rush out of their cover when i send a single soldier to attract their attention (or even better: let my allies draw their attention). Then i move this soldier back to cover and the enemy will keep attacking without any cover. Usually AI tries to escape when it is too late, when only one or two soldiers are left.
On the other hand i found the enemy AI chose a defensive strategy on one map, hiding the soldiers in buildings all the time, which made it very hard to attack.
In short: I think the enemy AI should try to take more cover and hide in buildings etc when they are overpowered.
- enemies and allies often throw nades with a low path when the opponent is covered behind an object. AI should try to get closer and throw with a high path.
- when the AI tries to throw a nade and it comes back bouncing off an object, it shouldn't try to make the exact same throw from the same position again.

Strategic Map:
Allies are overpowering in last quarter of the game and keep attacking enemy cities with waves of soldiers (each wave with a strength of about 200 or more). This results in battles of 25 or more (very poorly armed) allies - this makes these battles almost unplayable: i have to wait more than 3 minutes until the AI finally completes its turn (including the above mentioned delay caused by nades). Maybe there could be an option to speed up / skip the animation of the AI's turn or only show those actions that happen next to my own soldiers or could have an effect on them.

Issues:
-I am testing on Ubuntu 20.04: when moving objects or dragging the walking  path for soldiers, the bars showing AP, health etc start to flicker in different colours. When i release the mouse button, the flickering stops. 
- when picking up an object from the ground it replaces the currently held object, which is fine. But the replaced object appears to be on the ground now although it is stored in the backpack.

Keep up this excellent work, Ed!

Developer

Hi Petf,

I'm glad you like the new features. Below are my answers

> Nades. Awesome! Now i want a bazooka, too! Nades  offer  new tactical options when an enemy is camping or attacking with too many soldiers in one area. The attacking range and the damage inflicted in relation to the APs required to throw nades are in good balance, i think. Things that could be improved:

> the timer could be much shorter. When enemies and allies throw nades it slows down the game because i always have to wait for the nades to explode although they are fighting in remote areas where they can do no damage to me.

Yes, I agree. I will reduce it.

> a turn can be over altough the nade has not exploded yet (due to the nade's timer still counting).  When you are lucky you can still  move away from the nade before it explodes. In a turn based game all attacks should be executed before the next player's turn starts.

Yes, I thought it would be interesting to give the player a chance to avoid the grenade, but it does break the logic of turn-based games. I will change that.

> when enemies or allies throw nades in remote places i still can see the smoke. I think this should be hidden by the fog of war. Spotting the smoke makes it pretty easy to locate enemies and allies.

Ok, I will fix that.

> sometimes the nade path indicates green light but anyway my soldiers manage to throw the nade against a wall etc. and it will bounce back to them. Is this meant to be this way? (is the nade path indicator meant to be inaccurate to some extent? In that case there should be a waiver of liability :)

Yes, the trajectory calculation is not thorough enough. I will fix.

> i have the feeling that allied AI has improved much more than the enemies AI. Maybe it depends on who is attacking and who is defending or how many soldiers are on the map. But enemies still tend to make massive attacks without any cover when my soldiers are well hidden and covered. Often they rush out of their cover when i send a single soldier to attract their attention (or even better: let my allies draw their attention). Then i move this soldier back to cover and the enemy will keep attacking without any cover. Usually AI tries to escape when it is too late, when only one or two soldiers are left.

No. Allied AI is more defensive. It'll only fire one shot, which leaves more APs to retreat further to better cover. However, this leads to the soldier constantly moving back and forth. That's OK for allies, but it makes for an annoying enemy to fight against. So, the normal AI tries to take cover, without moving out of range - that leads to less back and forth movement. I don't think it's a problem, because the objective is to make the AI challenging, but not unbeatable. 

> On the other hand i found the enemy AI chose a defensive strategy on one map, hiding the soldiers in buildings all the time, which made it very hard to attack.

> In short: I think the enemy AI should try to take more cover and hide in buildings etc when they are overpowered.

The enemy will randomly adopt a "defend buildings" ploy for 20% of the battles. That means they will wait for the enemy inside the building instead of charging forward. I could change it so they use the "defend buildings" ploy only when they realise they are over-powered.

> enemies and allies often throw nades with a low path when the opponent is covered behind an object. AI should try to get closer and throw with a high path.

The AI sometimes throws the grenades high, but the algorithm is not very sophisticated. I prefer to keep it that way. If it were too clever it would make it very hard for players to defend against grenade attacks.

> when the AI tries to throw a nade and it comes back bouncing off an object, it shouldn't try to make the exact same throw from the same position again.

Each enemy soldier has only one grenade, so that shouldn't happen very often. 

Strategic Map:

> Allies are overpowering in last quarter of the game and keep attacking enemy cities with waves of soldiers (each wave with a strength of about 200 or more). This results in battles of 25 or more (very poorly armed) allies - this makes these battles almost unplayable: i have to wait more than 3 minutes until the AI finally completes its turn (including the above mentioned delay caused by nades). Maybe there could be an option to speed up / skip the animation of the AI's turn or only show those actions that happen next to my own soldiers or could have an effect on them.

If the fighting between militia occurs out of visual range the animations are already speeded up. I can reduce the grenade delay time, which will improve things. Also, I will cap the maximum amount of allies in one battle.

Issues:

> I am testing on Ubuntu 20.04: when moving objects or dragging the walking  path for soldiers, the bars showing AP, health etc start to flicker in different colours. When i release the mouse button, the flickering stops. 

- when picking up an object from the ground it replaces the currently held object, which is fine. But the replaced object appears to be on the ground now although it is stored in the backpack.

I will look into the flickering problem. The other issue looks like a bug.

Thanks very much for the feedback.

(1 edit)

Allied AI is more defensive. It'll only fire one shot, which leaves more APs to retreat further to better cover. However, this leads to the soldier constantly moving back and forth. That's OK for allies, but it makes for an annoying enemy to fight against. So, the normal AI tries to take cover, without moving out of range - that leads to less back and forth movement. I don't think it's a problem, because the objective is to make the AI challenging, but not unbeatable. 
...

The enemy will randomly adopt a "defend buildings" ploy for 20% of the battles. That means they will wait for the enemy inside the building instead of charging forward. I could change it so they use the "defend buildings" ploy only when they realise they are over-powered.

I completely agree with you that the AI should be beatable on skill levels easy to hard. But on very hard skill level in my opinion it should be almost impossible to win for causal palyers (as I am). Even for me the very hard skill level is too easy, especially when allies are involved, as they will always draw the enemies attention (and bullets). So I can stand back and make use of my sniper skills :-) When I play without allies things become much harder though.

To make it more difficult on this skill level you could improve some enemy AI skills:
- better nade skills.
- more tactical variety: it's really challenging to beat the enemy when he is camping inside a building. They could do this more often. And they could also use the allied tactics of "back and forth" sometimes. It may be annoying, but it is also challenging to beat an enemy who is well covered in his shelter.
- more discipline: the majority of the enemy soldiers sticks to their strategy. Anyway at the end of the match I always find some enemies who are hanging around somewhere else and not taking part in the battle at all. When the AI chooses to attack, all available soldiers should be involved.
- more discipline: when the enemy decides to camp, he should stick to this strategy and not be distracted when he spots my soldiers. Frequently all enemies begin to rush when I send a single  soldier.
Maybe on this sill level the allied AI could also be reduced to prevent a player (like me) from using allies as human shields and avoiding direct confrontation with the enemies.
- anti-camping skills: when I camp inside a building the enemy AI is great. They approach quickly and from different sides, which makes it really hard to defend. Anyway if crouching behind an object (fence etc.) the enemies keep trying to shoot at me, altough there is almost no chance of ever hitting (the old problem: there seems to be a line of fire and a hit probability, although there isn't). AI has already improved, as some enemies now try to flank when they realize that they are suffering casualties without ever hitting. However, they aren't really determined to flank: only few enemies follow this strategy and they only do it half the way, they still stay on the other side of that fence and don't get a better chance of hitting my soldiers. So again, maybe you could adjust the enemy AI to make all or at least most of them follow the  new  strategy of flanking.

Bug: At the end of the allies' turn the enemy had an interrupt. Then it was my turn, but the interrupt-message would not disappear and it was impossible to select and of my soldiers. So I had to restart the match. I got a message in  my console, but I am not sure when and if it has anything to do with it: <<ran out of objects!>>

 

After more testing the campaign mode (very hard level) here are some other issues / suggestions:

Weapon balance: Nades are doing a great job in about the first half of the campaign. But when the soldiers get better weapons (like the AKM or FN SCAR), nades become more and more useless. The AP/damage/range ratio for most nades is too bad, compared with these weapons. Especially when soldiers are armed with FN SCAR, there is no  way to get close enough for throwing a nade.  So usually I don't take the risk to get close to any enemy at this stage of the game. I rather try to take them out with long range weapons before they get too close. Suggestions:
- when long range weapons are available, there should also be better nades: with more power (like the RPG) and a better range (maybe by adding more bounciness the range could be increased)
- throwing skills could improve during the game

Inventory menu:

- when the available slots are occupied, the following occurs: when I drag and drop an object to the active (hand) slot, the current object is dropped to the inventory. But when I drag and drop an object to the secondary slots, I can't drop the object there. I first have to free that secondary  slot, then I can drop an object there.
- when I move a weapon from any slot back to the inventory it will appear in the broken-weapons-tab, if that tab was open while removing the weapon
- there could be an easier solution for getting the  attachments found on broken weapons from battle loot: I have to move the broken weapon to any soldier's weapon slots, move the attachment back to the inventory, move a new weapon to the soldier's slot, look for the attachment again and finally attach it to the new weapon. Suggestion: When receiving broken weapons as battle loot, the attachments should automatically be stored in the misc.- inventory. 


Issues: 

- nades sometimes crash the game: so far this has happend twice to me: an enemy soldier throws a nade but it doesn't explode. Instead it keeps turning around on the ground, resulting in a permanent loop with no way to skip. See this image (the soldier tried to throw the nade, it bounced off the wall and never exploded):


Developer

> Weapon balance: Nades are doing a great job in about the first half of the campaign. But when the soldiers get better weapons (like the AKM or FN SCAR), nades become more and more useless. The AP/damage/range ratio for most nades is too bad, compared with these weapons. Especially when soldiers are armed with FN SCAR, there is no  way to get close enough for throwing a nade.  So usually I don't take the risk to get close to any enemy at this stage of the game. I rather try to take them out with long range weapons before they get too close. 

You use grenades less, but there are still situations where they come in handy (for instance, sometimes several enemy will try to rush your position)

- when long range weapons are available, there should also be better nades: with more power (like the RPG) and a better range (maybe by adding more bounciness the range could be increased)

As a quick fix, I could make the M87 grenade even more powerful than the F1. In future versions I will add grenade launchers, maybe remote detonation devices

- throwing skills could improve during the game

I had planned to add this in a future version

- when the available slots are occupied, the following occurs: when I drag and drop an object to the active (hand) slot, the current object is dropped to the inventory. But when I drag and drop an object to the secondary slots, I can't drop the object there. I first have to free that secondary  slot, then I can drop an object there.

That's a good point. I will fix it.

- when I move a weapon from any slot back to the inventory it will appear in the broken-weapons-tab, if that tab was open while removing the weapon

I will fix that bug

- there could be an easier solution for getting the  attachments found on broken weapons from battle loot: I have to move the broken weapon to any soldier's weapon slots, move the attachment back to the inventory, move a new weapon to the soldier's slot, look for the attachment again and finally attach it to the new weapon. Suggestion: When receiving broken weapons as battle loot, the attachments should automatically be stored in the misc.- inventory. 

I will think about it

- nades sometimes crash the game: so far this has happend twice to me: an enemy soldier throws a nade but it doesn't explode. Instead it keeps turning around on the ground, resulting in a permanent loop with no way to skip. See this image (the soldier tried to throw the nade, it bounced off the wall and never exploded):

I know there are a lot of bugs caused by the grenade throw code. I am going to release a bug-fix version soon.

Some final remarks:

Weapon balance: in the final stage of the campaign the FN SCAR seems to be too powerful. If I manage to equip my soldiers with 2 or 3 of these guns, they are about invincible. It has a range that comes close to a sniper rifle, incredible accuracy and power and needs only 8 AP for a single shot. It therefore outperforms most of the sniper rifles. My soldiers have an average of 30 APs at the end of the game. So they can fire 3 shots with the FN SCAR, whereas most sniper rifles only allow 1 or 2 shots, depending if I have to move that soldier or not.

Issue: In the tactical game the "retreat" button is messed up with the "menu" button, when playing at the highest resolution (and moving soldiers to the retreat area, of course).

That's it for the moment. I am definitely going to do some more testing as soon as you are going to release the next version. 

Developer

> Weapon balance: in the final stage of the campaign the FN SCAR seems to be too powerful. If I manage to equip my soldiers with 2 or 3 of these guns, they are about invincible. It has a range that comes close to a sniper rifle, incredible accuracy and power and needs only 8 AP for a single shot. It therefore outperforms most of the sniper rifles. My soldiers have an average of 30 APs at the end of the game. So they can fire 3 shots with the FN SCAR, whereas most sniper rifles only allow 1 or 2 shots, depending if I have to move that soldier or not.

In the current version there are too many FN SCARs.  I will just reduce the amount

Issue: In the tactical game the "retreat" button is messed up with the "menu" button, when playing at the highest resolution (and moving soldiers to the retreat area, of course).

Good catch. I will fix