5129 replies to this topic

[Zhang Jian]

 

This isn't true for regular CNC is it? If you kill their ore trucks, they rebuild them. And if you keep killing them til they run out of money, they stop building ore trucks and stop attacking as well. They simply sit idle because they're out of funds. I'm not sure I've ever seen an AI sell buildings in order to afford another ore truck.

That ain't part of the attack script. I think they just do that in another part of the script. I believe that would be dictated in rules.ini
 

Why is this not an issue currently then? If they build 3-4 tanks before sending them to attack in a group, by your logic all 3-4 tanks would be trying to occupy one single cell and failing and lagging the game and never attacking? How is it they're able to mass up 3-4 tanks before attacking but they can't mass up 5-6 or 7-8? Or why can't they mass 3-4 of multiple unit types and send them in a single group? I'm not asking for the AI to mass 100 tanks in front of their base, but I'd like to think they could do a little more than 3-4 at a time?

My bad, I believe they can at least put 9 tanks in and around that one waypoint, as long as they stand still afterwards, but that's the maximum and even then, it's probably sketchy enough not to attempt
 

Also, why does the game start to lag when we play together online? When I play 1v3 Mentals offline the game runs smooth and fast, but when we've previously played 2v2 online together the game slows to a crawl? If it's too many units onscreen wouldn't that be an issue in Offline Skirmish too? Is there something we can do to fix the online experience?

  This is the terrible state of TS Engine's multiplayer code (Red Alert 2 uses TS Engine, yeah). While other RTS games will usually cause the lagging client to speed up in order to catch up with the game's current state on the host's own end, such as for example, Warcraft 3, TS Engine games like Tiberian Sun and Red Alert 2 will slow down all clients depending on who's the slowest plus the state of your network connection. So if one of you lag so bad, so does the rest of you. That's not something anyone can change as far as I know
 
And the lag is not just from on-screen units either. The unit's movement pathfinding itself is quite laggy when done en-masse, which is why maps like Juggernaut mission and many many many custom challenges that involves massive enemy reinforcements wave are very laggy by default, even if you're not looking at the moving unit

I suggest that Armadillo have less HP while Pangolin have less fire. See details here: https://forums.revor...36#entry1103653

....What is this 'Pangolin'? Or were you talking about Borillo?

 

My plan:

Armadillo (HK -- Havana Kingdom), Borillo (RK  -- Russian Khanate), Pangolin (KK -- Korea-Kashmir)

Armadillo: 2 WP flamethrowers.

Borillo: 8 transport slots (the other two are 6), immune to radiation.

Pangolin: HP 820 (the other two are 700), immune to EMP.

See more details and discussions: https://forums.revor...36#entry1103653

[Nox667]

The thing with hijacked opentopped/carrier type units is known and im pretty sure it happens occasionally with mc aswell. The issue is theres no way to actually make the passengers switch alignment with the carrying unit thus resulting in this behaviour where the passengers still fire at their original opponents despite the carrying unit having been mc'd/hijacked. Amphibious hijackers sounds good until you realise they can disguise, resulting in gis, conscripts or somesuch walking on water and looking really weird.

[MCFLYYY]

As far as im aware, the possibilities for AI are very limited in this engine, as hande pointed out already. Pathfinding and how waypointing works is screwy to say the least, a difference of one unit in the selection or presence of one unwalkable tile can mess things up big time already. For ai this seems ot be even worse.

They are already "countering" your units, since they have scripts that trigger certain teams to deploy when the player gets certain stuff, but its in no way dynamically feasible, mostly extends to them sending dogs whenever you get some spies. Even if such counter teams were more pronounced, the way attack scripts for the ai work would still leave the units braindead in the field. They attack their originally designated target (a miner for example) until something shoots them, and if they are attacked, they retaliate and ignore anything but the unit that attacked them first. This in turn would result in the counter teams becoming pointless since the units will still run into defenses and die and we are back to square one.

Another heavy limitation is that AI can not be made to respect shroud at all, they are always omniscient. Stealth is only respected to a limited degree. As soon as a stealthed unit has been revealed, the ai will send attack teams/throw support powers at it, and this stuff might arrive/attack the target long after the unit has been cloaked again. Disguised units can and will be attacked by ais supportpowers even though their units respect the usual engagement rules on them.

Dont know if different AI personalities akin to CnC3 are possible in the engine, but since i dont know any mod that attempted implementing smth like it im suspecting its outright impossible, or just not worth the effort.
About ressource issues, one word: spies. AIs near infinite cash makes it the best money source in the game. Outside of that, bear in mind that the game is and always will be balanced around pvp, not pve. Thus any changes to economy will have to be taken according to pvp balance, and as such, stronger eco for long slog type games is rather improbable. Reprocessor in general is a troublesome thing, for both pvp and pve though. I'd wish its bonus would just be completely changed for smth else, though i dont know what the replacing bonus could be.

Online play will always run less smooth than offline, since data has to be transferred over the net between the players. It gets worse the more units are on screen/on the map, since all these units, their current state, position, etc. etc. all needs ot be synced between the players.
Only things that can be done about that is picking a stable tunnel server thats preferably close to all participating players, avoiding to play with people on the other end of the world and improving the local internet connection of each player, though thats usually not in the affected persons hands. Even with ideal conditions an online match will always run slower than an offline one.

 

Interesting on most of that - I obviously am not very knowledgeable on how AI works or is programmed, was just trying to make some suggestions to improve offline play. But I get it that PVP is the main focus of the mod anyway.

 

Spies are very difficult to use against mentals though because of their ability to detect spies and having a steady stream of dogs/terror drones coming out of their base.

 

I also get that online play runs less smooth because the data has to transfer through the server between players. But every online game is like that, how come this one slows down so much? Is it just the sheer volume of units being produced by the multiple mental AIs? Is this not an issue with PVP online?

[MCFLYYY]

 

This isn't true for regular CNC is it? If you kill their ore trucks, they rebuild them. And if you keep killing them til they run out of money, they stop building ore trucks and stop attacking as well. They simply sit idle because they're out of funds. I'm not sure I've ever seen an AI sell buildings in order to afford another ore truck.

That ain't part of the attack script. I think they just do that in another part of the script. I believe that would be dictated in rules.ini
 

Why is this not an issue currently then? If they build 3-4 tanks before sending them to attack in a group, by your logic all 3-4 tanks would be trying to occupy one single cell and failing and lagging the game and never attacking? How is it they're able to mass up 3-4 tanks before attacking but they can't mass up 5-6 or 7-8? Or why can't they mass 3-4 of multiple unit types and send them in a single group? I'm not asking for the AI to mass 100 tanks in front of their base, but I'd like to think they could do a little more than 3-4 at a time?

My bad, I believe they can at least put 9 tanks in and around that one waypoint, as long as they stand still afterwards, but that's the maximum and even then, it's probably sketchy enough not to attempt
 

Also, why does the game start to lag when we play together online? When I play 1v3 Mentals offline the game runs smooth and fast, but when we've previously played 2v2 online together the game slows to a crawl? If it's too many units onscreen wouldn't that be an issue in Offline Skirmish too? Is there something we can do to fix the online experience?

  This is the terrible state of TS Engine's multiplayer code (Red Alert 2 uses TS Engine, yeah). While other RTS games will usually cause the lagging client to speed up in order to catch up with the game's current state on the host's own end, such as for example, Warcraft 3, TS Engine games like Tiberian Sun and Red Alert 2 will slow down all clients depending on who's the slowest plus the state of your network connection. So if one of you lag so bad, so does the rest of you. That's not something anyone can change as far as I know
 
And the lag is not just from on-screen units either. The unit's movement pathfinding itself is quite laggy when done en-masse, which is why maps like Juggernaut mission and many many many custom challenges that involves massive enemy reinforcements wave are very laggy by default, even if you're not looking at the moving unit

I suggest that Armadillo have less HP while Pangolin have less fire. See details here: https://forums.revor...36#entry1103653

....What is this 'Pangolin'? Or were you talking about Borillo?

 

 

 

Very interesting. As far as the lag goes, I have a 200MB connection and my buddy is playing on a Gig network and we're about 10 minutes away from each other. I get we have to exchange data through a server, but I don't feel internet speed is an issue here - I play other FPS like CS Go and PUBG without any kind of lag.

[Zhang Jian]

The thing with hijacked opentopped/carrier type units is known and im pretty sure it happens occasionally with mc aswell. The issue is theres no way to actually make the passengers switch alignment with the carrying unit thus resulting in this behaviour where the passengers still fire at their original opponents despite the carrying unit having been mc'd/hijacked. Amphibious hijackers sounds good until you realise they can disguise, resulting in gis, conscripts or somesuch walking on water and looking really weird.

 

Hijacker

To solve the voxel problem: once a Hijacker is on water, the Hijacker changes his disguise to a Dunerider and moves like a Dunerider. We can even set Hijacker’s default voxel is Dunerider (instead of Initiate).

[BotRot]

Curious to ask, why is the quote "Disc in flight!" not moved into the regular voiceset (iirc it was there in v3.0 but not in v3.3), and the quote "Psychic ready!" removed for Epsilon Adept/Elite?

[zugg48]

Speedup the Plasmerizer please.

[Zhang Jian]

Speedup the Plasmerizer please.

 

Why? In fact, Plasmerizer is mainly a siege weapon with a defensive appearance.

[Daffa the Mage]

I don't play PvP, just like to play the AI in some skirmishes now and again with a buddy. But the Mental AI needs some tweaking. Giving them $4m, 3x production ability, and more frequent attacks makes facing them very one-dimensional: just turtle up.

 

1. You can't possibly match them with ground units given their financial and production boosts. So instead just mass base defense at choke points because you can repair those for cheap.

2. Mass AA defense to stop the waves of Kirov assaults

3. Mass some kind of air unit for mobile base defense (Warhawk, Wolfhound, etc).

4. Once you're completed defending from the total onslaught that is 3-4 Mental AI attacks, you can begin massing your own attack force. BUT, this attack force must always be air units because it is very difficult to seige a Mental (or 2 if they're spawned near each other) because of the river of units coming out of their base. So instead just mass some kind of air unit (Warhawk, Wolfhound, Queztel etc) and go to work.

5. Target their power plants first, because they always run right at max power. So taking down 1 nuclear reactor or a couple power plants will put them under power and de-power all air defense.

6. From their it's very easy to wipe out the rest of their power and delete the rest of the base, while they waste their time cranking SCUDs out of their 4 War Factories.

 

I get that making good AI is difficult. But giving them the ability to churn out 12x as many units as you can (with all their production bonuses) and unlimited funds means you can't use varying strategies to defeat them. Some suggestions:

 

1. They constantly use spy planes - why not actually put the intel gained from this to use. They should be spamming counter units to whatever it is you're building. Doesn't AOE do this?

2. They shouldn't constantly attack every time they build "X" number of units. Let them mass up bigger attacks that can actually defeat base defense. Have AI "types" that do different things at random. Sometimes they go air heavy, sometimes they go tank heavy. Sometimes they rush T2, sometimes they turtle up and wait for you to attack before countering.

3. Group units that defend each other together. Makes no sense to see them fly in 3 Kirovs undefended to get shot down every 5 minutes, and then 3 Wolfhounds come in 2 minutes later each time. Why not send them together? Why not send 10 Wolfhounds with those Kirovs? Why not wait and send 9 Kirovs at once?

 

I also feel like the Foehn Reprocessor is way too broken against Mentals, with the constant stream of units they send into your base defense it gives you unlimited funds while the other factions are entirely dependent on ore/gem deposits.

 

/rant

 

Love this mod. Can't wait to see what's in store for future updates. Just would like to see some balance and creativity used in the Mental AI program.

About those suggestions:

1. AI is omniscient. The information from spy plane and such is actually irrelevant. It's more of aesthetic and visual tbh.

3. In AI vs AI scenario, I find Kirov is pretty broken. Mental vs Mental can breach defenses. (this also applies to Armadillo problem I mentioned before)

 

Yeah, Reprocessor is sort of broken when compared to other three income bonus buildings. It's a challenge to figure something else, at least from my perspective.

 

 

As far as im aware, the possibilities for AI are very limited in this engine, as hande pointed out already. Pathfinding and how waypointing works is screwy to say the least, a difference of one unit in the selection or presence of one unwalkable tile can mess things up big time already. For ai this seems ot be even worse.

They are already "countering" your units, since they have scripts that trigger certain teams to deploy when the player gets certain stuff, but its in no way dynamically feasible, mostly extends to them sending dogs whenever you get some spies. Even if such counter teams were more pronounced, the way attack scripts for the ai work would still leave the units braindead in the field. They attack their originally designated target (a miner for example) until something shoots them, and if they are attacked, they retaliate and ignore anything but the unit that attacked them first. This in turn would result in the counter teams becoming pointless since the units will still run into defenses and die and we are back to square one.

Another heavy limitation is that AI can not be made to respect shroud at all, they are always omniscient. Stealth is only respected to a limited degree. As soon as a stealthed unit has been revealed, the ai will send attack teams/throw support powers at it, and this stuff might arrive/attack the target long after the unit has been cloaked again. Disguised units can and will be attacked by ais supportpowers even though their units respect the usual engagement rules on them.

Dont know if different AI personalities akin to CnC3 are possible in the engine, but since i dont know any mod that attempted implementing smth like it im suspecting its outright impossible, or just not worth the effort.
About ressource issues, one word: spies. AIs near infinite cash makes it the best money source in the game. Outside of that, bear in mind that the game is and always will be balanced around pvp, not pve. Thus any changes to economy will have to be taken according to pvp balance, and as such, stronger eco for long slog type games is rather improbable. Reprocessor in general is a troublesome thing, for both pvp and pve though. I'd wish its bonus would just be completely changed for smth else, though i dont know what the replacing bonus could be.

Online play will always run less smooth than offline, since data has to be transferred over the net between the players. It gets worse the more units are on screen/on the map, since all these units, their current state, position, etc. etc. all needs ot be synced between the players.
Only things that can be done about that is picking a stable tunnel server thats preferably close to all participating players, avoiding to play with people on the other end of the world and improving the local internet connection of each player, though thats usually not in the affected persons hands. Even with ideal conditions an online match will always run slower than an offline one.

 

Interesting on most of that - I obviously am not very knowledgeable on how AI works or is programmed, was just trying to make some suggestions to improve offline play. But I get it that PVP is the main focus of the mod anyway.

 

Spies are very difficult to use against mentals though because of their ability to detect spies and having a steady stream of dogs/terror drones coming out of their base.

 

I also get that online play runs less smooth because the data has to transfer through the server between players. But every online game is like that, how come this one slows down so much? Is it just the sheer volume of units being produced by the multiple mental AIs? Is this not an issue with PVP online?

 

Epsilon and Foehn can easily sneak spies from my tests. Epsilon has Shadow Ring to hide their infiltrator when detectors around, while Foehn is straight spamming + Spinblade combo (at least Foehn never fails me). Foehn AI is EXTREMELY easy to breach on Mental, if you just give at least two spies per target, and if you're China, just use EMP when detected by those pesky oddballs. If one add some efficient micro, sending a saboteur or spy is also as easy.

 

Allied: Stallion + Spy (+Seal)

Soviet:  Borillo/Armadillo + Saboteur

Epsilon: Shadow Ring + Infiltrator

Foehn: Spinblade + Clairvoyant

 

Speedup the Plasmerizer please.

I prefer less power cost to be honest. Their power consumption is like twice as much as Tempest.

[zugg48]

 

Speedup the Plasmerizer please.

 

Why? In fact, Plasmerizer is mainly a siege weapon with a defensive appearance.

 

 

What's the point of having a long-range weapon if it fires when enemies are close?

[Nox667]

Thing is... Plasmerizer has ridiculous damage and aoe. One shot vaporizes most ground armies, the very long precharge can be mitigated by manually force firing the thing to precharge, then force fire at your actual target after the charge has built up a bit. You also have your own army to deter your enemy from approaching the thing head on.
All its downsides are there for a reason, the thing is broken powerful. Imagine that being set up on your doorstep with nanocoat buff and blasticade protection. Imo its in a very good position and certainly does not need nor deserve any buffs.

Its not a real siege weapon btw, it sucks vs buildings, but units beware.

On another note, its affected by suppressors which is a bit silly...

Edited by Nox667, 09 March 2020 - 04:07 PM.

[Handepsilon]

For its range, plasmerizer is already fast enough. That thing is a super defense, but it's not supposed to be completely and utterly impenetrable. Besides, any players with half a brain would think twice before rushing into the range when they see that big ass recticle,

Edited by Handepsilon, 10 March 2020 - 06:55 AM.

[Daffa the Mage]

Is it worth the about 1K power it costs though? That power cost is the only thing that sort of being pretty deterrent to use the building. And other is the build space, though that is relative to the map. I agree when it comes to the raw power, Plasmerizer is already fine in term of defensive capability.

 

Ideally, you put forces in front of the Plasmerizer and have them prevent enemy approach while the tower turn the enemies into dusts.

[Handepsilon]

Meh, it's fine to me. I mean, if we look at the bigger picture, Last Bastion's already lucky enough to have 2 epic stuffs (Boid being the other one). Besides, windtrap is provides a large amount of power in of itself

[Zhang Jian]

Thing is... Plasmerizer has ridiculous damage and aoe. One shot vaporizes most ground armies, the very long precharge can be mitigated by manually force firing the thing to precharge, then force fire at your actual target after the charge has built up a bit. You also have your own army to deter your enemy from approaching the thing head on.
All its downsides are there for a reason, the thing is broken powerful. Imagine that being set up on your doorstep with nanocoat buff and blasticade protection. Imo its in a very good position and certainly does not need nor deserve any buffs.

Its not a real siege weapon btw, it sucks vs buildings, but units beware.

On another note, its affected by suppressors which is a bit silly...

 

Thanks for correcting me. I only have the experience of using Plasmerizer as a defensive weapon. I just heard someone said using it as a siege weapon.

On the other hand, what if it is also efficient against buildings?

[BotRot]

Since Dunerider deploy ability is removed, it would be nice to move their deploy quotes to the voiceset when ordered to attack. If you ask me, most of them fit in as attack quotes too.

[Zhang Jian]

It is not Kirov that is broken, it is AI that is broken. When AI Foehn vs AI Foehn, the winner is the one which first produces large quantities of Quetzals. Generally speaking, AI has serious problem of dealing with -- or NOT dealing with aerial units. I even saw several Rocketeers killed a health Centurion without any retaliation!
Since AI is omniscient, how about making AI (re)acts accordingly? For example, when enemy Kirovs are approaching, AI mobilizes all its anti-air units to attack them.
Set AI use units "restrictedly". Set Thor and Iron Dragon only attack units, ignoring buildings.
When conducting an offensive, AI always advances gradually (except aerial untis and support powers).

Moderated: Please stop with the giant quote pyramids.

[Handepsilon]

On the other hand, what if it is also efficient against buildings?

 

That would be OP

[Opus Custom Tank]

Just saying. A ability for Coronia that repair air units can be nice. Like a controllable nano-cloud.

[Daffa the Mage]

Meh, it's fine to me. I mean, if we look at the bigger picture, Last Bastion's already lucky enough to have 2 epic stuffs (Boid being the other one). Besides, windtrap is provides a large amount of power in of itself

fair point. I managed to test the weapon for once and apparently it's quite broken in term of damage. So yeah, no need for buffing. In fact, I think it only need to sort that Suppressor issue AND fix the glitch charge. The cost of power is deterring players, but I think that's it.

 

On the other hand, what if it is also efficient against buildings?

Pretty sure it's RA2 Grand Cannon 2.0 at that point, except it's limited in numbers.

 

Curious to ask, why is the quote "Disc in flight!" not moved into the regular voiceset (iirc it was there in v3.0 but not in v3.3), and the quote "Psychic ready!" removed for Epsilon Adept/Elite?

Psychic ready (and all Yuri Clone quotes) are moved to the Dybbuk-Seizer.

 

 

It is not Kirov that is broken, it is AI that is broken. When AI Foehn vs AI Foehn, the winner is the one which first produces large quantities of Quetzals. Generally speaking, AI has serious problem of dealing with -- or NOT dealing with aerial units. I even saw several Rocketeers killed a health Centurion without any retaliation!
Since AI is omniscient, how about making AI (re)acts accordingly? For example, when enemy Kirovs are approaching, AI mobilizes all its anti-air units to attack them.
Set AI use units "restrictedly". Set Thor and Iron Dragon only attack units, ignoring buildings.
When conducting an offensive, AI always advances gradually (except aerial untis and support powers).

Moderated: Please stop with the giant quote pyramids.

I think AI has a general problem dealing with rushes and focus fires, especially rushes. I have seen some matches where AI response slightly better recently on one of my tests. Borillo rush got engi-countered and thus fail due to engineers. I think that's a way for AI to start counter things?

 

Quetzal issue seems to lie more from them being absurdly long ranged (I mean Basilisk is also spammed, but their range is sufficient for AA to clear them). Kirov is one of the rush types, and health wise is pretty much only challenged by likes of Harbinger and Leviathan. Even players sometimes have a hard time responding to these blimps (unless you use Aeroblazes, Sentinels, Shadrays or Alanqas).

Edited by Daffa the Mage, 14 March 2020 - 10:43 PM.