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PR v1.1 with Land Patch Observations


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#1 feld

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Posted 04 November 2009 - 11:35 PM

All - as I promised Ghost - here's a place to put observations and thoughts on v1.1 with Ghost's Land Patch. I'll start with mine from the original News thread.

Ok. Playing PR 1.1 Slim Inner Rim Campaign as Imperials. Week 7. Have tried a couple of raids...but no big space battles or land attacks. Already have some feedback/questions.

1. I like that you turned off Imperial raiding with large machines (such as AT-ATs). That seems realistic. The Empire takes over planets either through dark and dirty "diplomacy" or by owning the space above them and dropping bargeloads of AT-AT and troops. No space superiority = no planets...for the Imps. But my question is: what is the Empire supposed to do during the early game?

2. Is it just me, or is Vader somehow nerfed? Played some more and used him a bit in land. He gets his butt handed to him. A bunch (~30) of civilians armed with laser pistols killed him. His litghtsaber deflection skills seem to be more or less gone and his armor degrades pretty quickly. This just isn't right. My sense is that Vader could pretty much own an infantry company and probably could take out a tank platoon on his own. Even with the hit to his powers he took when Anakin got injured. Any idea why this is occurring? Is it from the patch or is it just the 1.1 land changes?

3. The generic Twi'Lek models have a scale issue. They're about 1.5 times the height of the stormtroopers.

4. The stormtroopers' have a "thermal detonator" icon but it doesn't appear to do anything.

5. Scout troopers and droidekars cannot participate in Imperial raids. I think that's a little extreme. Palpatine or Vader should be able to land with a few squads of scout troopers with a few bikes. It helps with #1.

6. Ran into a few squads of police. I was an imperial field commander + his 35 regular imperial army goons. The police stun weapons are pretty effective but I don't think that they should be. I mean, seriously, those cheesy silly looking imperial army trooper helmets must be good for something right? I figure that any infantry wearing those or similar helmets ought to have very high resistance to the police stun weapons. Like ... darn near immunity to it. Other wise stun weapons would be much more common in the battles we see in the movies and they're not.

7. Already, the patch is showing the same sorts of "combined arms" type synergies that PR Space shows. The aforementioned army troopers that I got geeked weren't killed by the police...oh no...they were mostly killed by infantry turrets shooting from half a map away. I think that this is a Good Thing (tm.).

8. Not entirely certain...but I think that the AT-ST's a tiny bit short. Screenshot if I get a minute.



Played a larger ground assault last night and . Vader, four AT-AT platoons, 2 scout walker groups, 6 stormtrooper groups, and a group of bikes vs. 1 group of heavy tanks, 2 groups of med tanks, a speeder group, and inumerable skiffs and infantry on Dressel. Won. Losses 1 AT-AT group and 2 Stormtrooper groups. Specific impressions

1. The rebel heavy tank group (8 tanks) took out the AT-AT platoon, but those were my most significant losses. The rest of the AT-AT's hung back and pretty much wiped out the remainder of the medium and light rebel stuff. I think that's how it pretty much should be. Though be prepared for people who value "balance" very highly to be annoyed. I'm not sure if the EAW/FOC engine is up to simulating all the different tactics through which the rebels beat AT-AT.

2. Ghost - I couldn't really assess your stormtrooper changes like you asked above. All I can tell you is that infantry...they die. Lots. Especially in an environment with skiffs, medium tanks, heavy tanks, and speeders. That's pretty cool and I think "starwarsistic" (like realistic...but star wars).

3. The role of the AT-AT as the ultimate troop transport is already very clear based on the changes you've made. The reason that I lost the stormies was that I didn't put them into the AT-AT as soon as they landed. Speeders and medium laser cannon fire really ate the infantry up. I REALLY wish that there was a way to load the stomries onto the AT-AT before combat began...but I know that the engine isn't made for that.

4. AT-AT kill speeders dead (as long as the speeder is in front of them) just like always. But now infantry fire doesn't. I think both of those are great elements and should stay.

5. Heroes, like infantry, appear to have a very short combat lifetimes. Even Vader lived only a minute or so, though he was subjected to concentrated laser cannon attack from speeders, skiffs, and maybe a few tanks. I think that's probably pretty good.

#2 Ghostrider

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Posted 05 November 2009 - 10:43 AM

All - as I promised Ghost - here's a place to put observations and thoughts on v1.1 with Ghost's Land Patch. I'll start with mine from the original News thread.

Ok. Playing PR 1.1 Slim Inner Rim Campaign as Imperials. Week 7. Have tried a couple of raids...but no big space battles or land attacks. Already have some feedback/questions.

1. I like that you turned off Imperial raiding with large machines (such as AT-ATs). That seems realistic. The Empire takes over planets either through dark and dirty "diplomacy" or by owning the space above them and dropping bargeloads of AT-AT and troops. No space superiority = no planets...for the Imps. But my question is: what is the Empire supposed to do during the early game?


Get space superiority.

2. Is it just me, or is Vader somehow nerfed? Played some more and used him a bit in land. He gets his butt handed to him. A bunch (~30) of civilians armed with laser pistols killed him. His litghtsaber deflection skills seem to be more or less gone and his armor degrades pretty quickly. This just isn't right. My sense is that Vader could pretty much own an infantry company and probably could take out a tank platoon on his own. Even with the hit to his powers he took when Anakin got injured. Any idea why this is occurring? Is it from the patch or is it just the 1.1 land changes?



Ok. treat this as a bug for the moment. It looks like Hero armour got broken in the Land Patch. I'll see if I can fix it.

3. The generic Twi'Lek models have a scale issue. They're about 1.5 times the height of the stormtroopers.



Already fixed. Scale isses and an AT-ST bug that made AT-ST's vapourise everything have been dealt with.
Upload the revised Land Assualt Patch to fix.

4. The stormtroopers' have a "thermal detonator" icon but it doesn't appear to do anything.


I believe Thermal detonators can only be used on structures. They don't work on indigenous spawn houses though.

5. Scout troopers and droidekars cannot participate in Imperial raids. I think that's a little extreme. Palpatine or Vader should be able to land with a few squads of scout troopers with a few bikes. It helps with #1.


Too bad. We have had to blanket ban all vehicles or it makes raids too powerful. Infantry only - that down to game limitations i'm afraid.

6. Ran into a few squads of police. I was an imperial field commander + his 35 regular imperial army goons. The police stun weapons are pretty effective but I don't think that they should be. I mean, seriously, those cheesy silly looking imperial army trooper helmets must be good for something right? I figure that any infantry wearing those or similar helmets ought to have very high resistance to the police stun weapons. Like ... darn near immunity to it. Other wise stun weapons would be much more common in the battles we see in the movies and they're not.


Stun effects are the same for all infantry. The game mechanics won't allow armour to affect stun settings. You'll just have to learn top deal with them when they turn up.

As to the rest, glad you liked it. I'll look into the hero bug fix as well.

Ghost.

#3 feld

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Posted 16 November 2009 - 07:57 PM

More feedback.

Just finished v1.1 Inner Rim Campaign as Empire with the (updated) Land Patch. Starting Tech Level 1. Think I did 50,000 credits to start.

Ghost. First off, thanks. You've definitely made land fun again. I think it plays remarkably well and the campaign I just finished was a great experience. Some observations/questions/hints to other players. There are no bugs in this list.

1. If you order more infantry to board a transport than it can carry (say two stormtrooper squads to board an AT-AT) and the transport just stops when full and the remaining infantry just stand there, just select the remaining SOL infantry and give them a new move order. I've had that free up the transport every time.

2. Question: As a balance point, I lost three AT-AT squads (six walkers) to four squadrons of Rebel speeders (I think about a dozen per squad for roughly 48 speeders). I'm conflicted about whether or not that's in keeping with canon. On one hand, I had the general impression that only Rogue Squadron could reasonably execute the tow-cable kill and that your average Rebel pilot was pretty much out of luck against AT-AT because "that armor's too strong for blasters!". On the other, we definitely see a pair of snowspeeders destroy a downed AT-AT at Hoth by shooting at the neck joint.

3. Thoughts on "canonicity" and "balance": As an Imperial player, I'm liking the general feel and scale of the land game now. Speeders, AT-ATs, AT-STs are fast. Infantry are very slow. I think that's good and canon. The AT-AT armor is nice and thick (and nigh on invulnerable to most Rebel weaponry). Think that's also good and canon. That level of canon adherence has severe balance consequences for the Rebel player, however. The AT-AT is damned hard to kill except by massed Rebel turbolaser towers, heavy tanks, or LOTS of air speeders (see 2 above). Spec Force troopers with rocket launchers are also pretty effective (and that seems right to me).

Rather than weakening the AT-AT or just randomly giving the Rebellion bigger ground artillery than it had canonically, it might be possible to solve this problem in land map design. There are areas of the vanilla ground maps that are impassable to large vehicles but passable to infantry (believe Kashyyk has such an area on the left side of the map). Thinking back to Hoth, the AT-AT brought the snowtroopers too the base, but the AT-AT didn't actually *take* the base.

Creative use of that "impassable to vehicles" terrain type as well as normal terrain features (mountains, valleys, and impassable jungle) could preserve canonicity while we simultaneously give the Rebels at least some chance.

Actually...I'm thinking that this is a pretty interesting mapping project...I've been reading the Essential Atlas. Sadly. I don't know how to map.

<Sigh> Guess I can learn later. Much later. After I get the house repairs started.

v/r
feld

#4 Phoenix Rising

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Posted 17 November 2009 - 01:03 AM

1. I had (have) a conundrum with infantry squads. If I use a container to group them nicely (as in just about any other mod), infantry cannot target with their hardpoints (which nobody else really uses). However, if they don't use hardpoints, inaccuracy doesn't work and everything has perfect aim. This is just one side effect of this problem...

2. According to the 1.5e d20 RPG, modified T-47s sport laser cannons that do 5d8 damage when fire-linked (by convention, that would be 4d8 separately) and AT-ATs have DR 15 armor, meaning they take damage on more than half of the potential rolls. That said, I think we're going to move away from those stats somewhat (which are probably biased towards heroes/infantry) and go with a uniquely PR system for land combat.

3. Yeah... expect Land to be kind of quirky and unfinished - even after the revamp - until we can find a vehicle modeler. As for maps, I think it's best for practicality's sake to mold the combat system around the existing vanilla maps so we don't have to wait around for a legion of mappers too.

#5 P.O._210877

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Posted 19 November 2009 - 07:25 PM

Well, this is my first post. So for starters, THANK YOU VERY MUCH! PR and Ghost (+ all the staff that I may not know about...) for this EXCELLENT mod. I was born with Star Wars and I hope it will outlive me; for that to happen it takes people like you guys to keep pushing in the right direction (as opposed to the more corporate minded LA developers).

Well now to the point at hand. I downloaded the land patch when it came out, no problems. I downloaded it again a few days back when I read a post regarding a recalibration concerning AT-ST's. And that is when I hit a snag. The game crashed, saying that I should expect unusual problems because of a syntax errors in "GroundInfantry_Alliance_Army_Trooper". So to make a long story short I narrowed it down to a problem regarding the new ROCKET ability. Without this ability the game plays great. I put it back in and again it crashes. Today, I read feld's post concerning the Pod cars and found out that there was some newer adjustments made to the patch. I downloaded and compared it to the one I had. I see no evidence of any changes made to the files since August. So, am I downloading the right patch? Am I missing something? Probably, but in any case any feedback will be appreciated.

If it's hard then it's worth doing.

 


- Alcor, Alcor pardonne-moi mais je ne veux pas que tu meurs. Je ne veux
pas que la planète bleue soit mise à feu et à sang par ces monstres. Je
me battrai pour les empêcher de détruire ce qui est devenue ma Terre.
Goldorak m'aidera. Au besoin, j'irai jusqu'au camp de la Lune Noire
puisque c'est là que Véga et ses monstres ont établi leur base. Et je la
détruirai.

 

Actarus


#6 Phoenix Rising

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Posted 20 November 2009 - 05:31 AM

Bienvenue, and thanks for registering on our forums. I couldn't agree more with the first part; we're certainly trying to advocate a particular understanding of the GCW that's perhaps becoming overshadowed by the CW in official publications.

As to your bug, sure enough, there's a problem in the patch. Fortunately syntax errors are the easiest ones to fix. It's a coding mistake - line 183 should not exist in that file. Deleting the entire line should fix it; otherwise you can simply redownload. Thanks for the report.

#7 blue4n

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Posted 07 December 2009 - 12:01 AM

Ok this might sound stupid but how do you install ghost's land patch thing? :lol:

#8 Ghostrider

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Posted 07 December 2009 - 05:14 PM

Ok this might sound stupid but how do you install ghost's land patch thing? :lol:


Download the file, drag it into your XML folder, unpack the zip file, and.... play.

It's not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but it's fun and it mostly works.


Ghost

#9 Henry X

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Posted 08 December 2009 - 03:06 AM

Now is it the revised patch that I downloaded a week ago or should I download again?

And I think you guys are doing a total conversion with the ground as well, so are you guys going to just shrink all units down with the existing maps or create giant new maps?

#10 Ghostrider

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Posted 08 December 2009 - 08:15 AM

Now is it the revised patch that I downloaded a week ago or should I download again?

And I think you guys are doing a total conversion with the ground as well, so are you guys going to just shrink all units down with the existing maps or create giant new maps?



Mapping normally takes a fair bit of time, and JDK is pretty busy at the moment....



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