Ok, this small report isn't my final one that's for sure, and, according to what I just experienced, I might well do more than one. Thought this may just be jumping onto conclusions too fast. Well, I do hope so.
After I saw the new version was up for testing, I told myself "hey, why not try it right now in a map I like to play just for fun, and if there's something obvious let's report it".
On the Hard difficulty setting (I wanted to test Easy and Normal later), I played in Black Fortress. The number of players, eight, team-play (Eldar, Space Marines and two IGs for the "Allied", then two Orks & two Chaos as the bad guys). At the beginning of the game, I focused on the work of my allies, barely working in my own base. I didn't even want to finish the game. Not to win, nor to loose.
Everything seemed fine for some time.
Then, eventually, and soon enough, the Eldar died. Sadly ... I didn't support them. I gave them some Requisition, but too little too late. But that's not the point anyway ...
I'll try to make this short ... even though I'd take me a whole hour to write down all the things I noticed in that game.
With the previous Beta and public releases, I never had the same issues in Black Fortress. So I want to point out that what I'll describe here is the very first time I see that happening. Any maps considered.
On the "front line", the two IG factions, and me behing them.
At some point, all the enemy A.Is and even my allied A.Is refused to move on to the enemies location. They stood in the same areas ... sometimes moving back and forth within a specific radius.
The thing is ... as soon as they encountered each others (allied and enemies), the battle ensued, no problems there. They used appropriate tactics (even though I think I haven't seen jet-packs infantry actually jump, but I'll have to look at the replay again to be sure about that one), and of course tried to survive, or win. Usual stuff.
But, basically, nothing was going on at some point. Pure silence, both allied armies waiting for an enemy that surely did the same on their side.
I myself had to provoke the enemies to "attract" them. But as soon as my units died, and the fog of war kicked in again, no news of the enemies. Nothing happened.
Then ... at rare moments, some groups of enemy units eventually ventured in and around the IG bases, passing by them, only to go back-track the whole way up to their base or awaiting corresponding armies.
And ... near the end of the game, one of the Chaos faction suddenly decided to attack my main base, out of the blue. I never saw them coming. I barely had the time to react to the surprise attack. And to no surprise, my allied did not help me, nor did they actually saw the attacking groups themselves, so they stayed in their base doing nothing. Thankfully ... I did foresee such a scenario, and I had a secondary base, from which I resumed my valiant but useless military strategies.
Technically I was playing alone. Simply said.
There's also one moment I want to share in words here. I wanted to try a simple (yet efficient) group of artillery, seven of them, slowly advancing towards the ... the heretics. Only to eventually encounter what ? Nothing else than a superb Bloodthirster. Guess what he did ? No he did not actually expose his demonic rage upon my vehicles, he actually stood in the middle of them, probably wondering what the hell he was doing there. But since that big guy was in shock, he didn't move, nor even tried to use his wide wings and use the skies to get out of the humiliating situation.
Trying to stay serious.
Something's wrong somewhere guys. Probably only for Black Fortress, probably only for Hard setting, or .... something "trigered" a bug or malfunction, I'm still not sure. I'll have to test further.
One thing I do know and am sure about. Is that it was indeed Beta 4.
I saved the replay, it's a bit more than 4 MB un-compressed, and 1.2 MB compressed.
I will post it if you guys want to see that for yourself, but technically speaking, the end result was clear. I couldn't finish the game alone against two Orks and two Chaos, so I decided to end it suddenly, after a long, very long test. Pretty much all you see in that replay, especially near the end, is nothing but strange A.I behavior.
Well, I'll end this post with this.
I'll do more tests of course, 1 Vs 1's, 2 Vs 2's, free for all's, and so on.
Edited by Zenoth, 23 January 2006 - 06:51 PM.