81 replies to this topic

[ArkhanTheBlack]

Okay, it took a while, but the next beta should be ready now.

Changes:

- Several changes to increase the T1 presence:
=> Only 2 caturers and capture plans (We'll see...)
=> Researches more specific and and dependent on army strength
=> Harassing bugs fixed
=> Higher army strength forced in T1

- 4 build strategies for sisters and dark elves

- Campaign should work now

- Fixed compatibility problems with heroes and fortress mod

- Sisters immolator upgrade delayed until T3. In T3, they have a 50% chance to upgrade

- Necron Lord won't try to possess anymore to avoid a CTD

- Eldar harlequins 'auto-loose' ability disabled (We'll reactivate it if Relic fixes the economy bug)

- Destroyed HQ's should now be replaced more reliable

- Lots of other fixes


Thudo will inform you as soon as it's ready to download...

[thudo]

Ah nuts.. I think I nailed the 4 BOs for the Sisters last nite: I reworked em entirely for 3+ hours. Now they have a much greater chance of winning against SM. They still massively suck b*lls in their Tier3 (gawd they have nothing against Preds, Dread, and LandSpeeder spam) and the stupid Petinent Engines come too late. Doesn't help the AI is hardcoded NOT to allow focus-fire but thats been known since Day0. I guess I'll submit my Sister changes for Beta4.

Btw, the Missionary does use his abilities when attached - problem is unlike the DarkEldar Soul bug where the AI can cast as much HQ Abilities without considering # of Souls. the Sisters are bound by their Faith points. Ugh.. the faction that needs the AI to cheat could have used that loophole the DarkEldar enjoy. :(

[Smokeskin]

Btw, the Missionary does use his abilities when attached - problem is unlike the DarkEldar Soul bug where the AI can cast as much HQ Abilities without considering # of Souls. the Sisters are bound by their Faith points. Ugh.. the faction that needs the AI to cheat could have used that loophole the DarkEldar enjoy. :(

In this replay http://forums.revora...mp;#entry578992 I play as Tau, build the tau commander first and immediatedly jet him to harass, and the canonness casts Purifying Light on him. I don't think there's any way that they could have enough faith for that, unless they're also "cheating"? I don't think they had even upgraded their lps with the faith thingy. I'm at work so I can't check it myself.



Great with the beta 3, looking forward to trying it out

Too bad you didn't get the tweaked sister BOs in Thudo

[thudo]

U mean "Divine Light" and that costs 30 FaithPoints. Hmmmm.. Interesting..

Well I just submitted my changes to the team moments ago.. it *may* make it in.

[LarkinVB]

=> Only 2 caturers and capture plans (We'll see...)

3 at gamestart is probably fine. My suggestion was to reduce capture plans after the initial fixed build order. Currently there are always two plans if possible. If army is low on squads one should be sufficient.

[thudo]

Sisters are different.. the only success I had that was reliable on all maps was to immediately-force 4 Missionaries to immediately cap then the 5th unit was a Servitor. This has huge repercussions for the early game economy as it immediately takes the initiative right away from the enemy and allows the Sisters to at least survive much longer. The problem is in Sister's Tier3 which is hit-miss but its a toss-up. I saw the Sister's win percentage go drastically up for the Sister's AI when 4 Missionaries were immediately deployed as they also act as early harassers. Also, I immediately attach em to squads in Tier1 (rather than Tier2) once they have capped everything they can as they act to keep the B.Sister Squads alive (it would seem). Sisters are REALLY a p*ss-poor Guardsmen.. so incredibly fragile and hard to get right.

Edit: Arkhan.. in the buildprograms when I set say a major addon/research which is responsible for tier changes to a VERY high ArmyStrength value of 4000 (normal is 800 in Tier1-2, 2000 in Tier2-3, and 2500 in Tier3-4), the AI still builds it even though it nowhere near has the current army size available. Is this working as designed? This has always been a problem I find but curious if there is something else going on?

[ArkhanTheBlack]

3 at gamestart is probably fine. My suggestion was to reduce capture plans after the initial fixed build order. Currently there are always two plans if possible. If army is low on squads one should be sufficient.

I don't understand what you mean. The starting capture plans are only active in the harassing phase (ca. 5 mins), after that all are deleted except one.

Edit: Arkhan.. in the buildprograms when I set say a major addon/research which is responsible for tier changes to a VERY high ArmyStrength value of 4000 (normal is 800 in Tier1-2, 2000 in Tier2-3, and 2500 in Tier3-4), the AI still builds it even though it nowhere near has the current army size available. Is this working as designed? This has always been a problem I find but curious if there is something else going on?

Yes, in this case the force tech was active. If the AI hasn't reached a certain tier level at a certain time the build controller will stop all unit building / reinforcing (except the HQ is attacked) and spend all resource on teching until the designated tier level is reached.
The current time settings are 6 min for T2, 14 min for T3 and 22 min for T4. Those parameters are modified by the tech speed setting.

[LarkinVB]

I'm talking about this in function BuildBaseStrategy:Update()

if (self:PlanCount( "Capture Plan" ) < self.info.flag_capture) then
		self:AddPlan( CapturePlan( cpu_manager.start_pos ) )	
	end

self.info.flag_capture is 2. I think 1 is enough if the army is small. I'm talking about making it flexible, not just fixed 2.

[LarkinVB]

Some observations : T1 is getting more mass. Great.

Necron are slow building generators. Last time they did immediately build 4, now they are much slower. They even have idle builder (secondary) for some seconds instead of starting to build second generator.

Tau are the opposite. They did start with a very fast second generator which was not effective.

[thudo]

Necron are slow building generators. Last time they did immediately build 4, now they are much slower. They even have idle builder (secondary) for some seconds instead of starting to build second generator.

Hmmm.. I tried Beta3 (coming for the testers tonight!!) and the Necrons perfectly built 4 Gens as before. This was buildprogram3 mind you. This was me against the Necron AI and he summarily owned me near the end of the game. Bahhhhhhhhhh!

Tau are the opposite. They did start with a very fast second generator which was not effective.

Again, I don't know what build yer playing but the Tau AI built the 2nd gen just when it needed too (it was lacking power). This was Tau BuildProgram1..

So far the experience here is different. No idea why... lets take it to the betatesters... Onward!

[ArkhanTheBlack]

self.info.flag_capture is 2. I think 1 is enough if the army is small. I'm talking about making it flexible, not just fixed 2.

I've set it to 1 now. We'll see if it's necessary to make it flexible. After the starting phase there shouldn't be so much free strats left.

Necron are slow building generators. Last time they did immediately build 4, now they are much slower. They even have idle builder (secondary) for some seconds instead of starting to build second generator.

Hmm, actually I don't think I made any changes to them which could cause those problems. Necrons are so different that I left them pretty much unchanged except the required T1 army strength...

Tau are the opposite. They did start with a very fast second generator which was not effective.

All races except Necrons need to gather 750 army strength until they are allowed to build a second generator. That's almost the 800 (now 1000) which was required for T2 advancement before.

[thudo]

Down is up for the testers!

[Zenoth]

Report #1 for Beta 3

Description: CTD during Campaign, as Eldar, against Necrons.

The first thing I wanted to test with Beta 3 was the Campaign, to make sure that it works this time. With this build the Campaign launches just fine, that's the good thing. But...

I started with the Eldar, because I know that they have to face the Necrons from the start. You guys had CTD issues with the Necrons in Beta 2 (I hadn't experienced any, so far, but this time it's different, I must have been lucky before simply said), and I wanted to make sure that not only the Campaign worked, but that it would play fine during game-play itself, of course, but especially against the Necrons.

Well I've just had a CTD. I can safely say that the A.I I've seen playing is indeed that of your mod, it properly applies to the Campaign, that's for sure. No longer were the Necron units idling in base like in vanilla, making the Campaign uselessly easy. But with that said, as mentioned, I've got a CTD during my first mission, and I played on Hard. It simply crashed back to the Desktop without giving me any error messages, except for the usual irrelevant error log that you guys can't use to analyze possible errors related to this mod.

It crashed after approximately 10 minutes of play. I saw a Necron Lord, and not only saw it but he literally owned my early troops, in fact if it wasn't for the crash I would have been crushed like an insignificant insect. I barely had time to reach Tier 2 when the crash occurred. By that time, just before the crash, the Necrons had three Necron Warrior squads, I believe at least one Wraith and one, or possibly two squads of Flayed Ones, and of course the Necron Lord, all of them coming towards me at once, passing by my helpless Listening Posts and destroying them all as they advanced. Technically speaking, it has to do with the mod, because right now I do have a Campaign going on since a few days with the vanilla A.I, in the same context, playing on Hard, as the Eldar, against the Necrons, and it never crashed.

I will start a Campaign with another faction and I'll report back and tell if I experienced a crash or not. So basically this report is to point at a possible Necrons-caused CTD that is still present, and it affects the Necrons certainly both in Campaign and Skirmishes. I'll be back in a moment with the continued part of this report about other factions. I will also try to reproduce this crash.

Edited by Zenoth, 27 March 2008 - 04:33 AM.

[thudo]

Thanks Zenoth! Perhaps the DoPossess() call isn't maybe causing the Necron CTD.. have to play some more all Necron games to gauge it to ensure I can play three solid 3vs3 all-Necron AI games. Relic is listening too as I've informed em of both NecronLord AI's inability to possess either NB or Deceiver and the Hellion TrackingDevice bug.

[Zenoth]

Report #1 continued

Alright, I've tried a new Campaign, still on Hard, as the Space Marines, and played against the Orks, I won the first mission without a crash after about 12 minutes or so. Then I tried again with the Eldar, against the Necrons, in another province that time, and it crashed earlier, after about 8 minutes of play, or around that. It's definitely related to the Necrons, that means that we must keep an eye on them during Skirmishes indeed.

Also, I wanted to know something about the extensions in the Campaign. The extensions are activated by default right? I mean right now in the Campaign I clearly see that Heroes is activated, but Fortress isn't, and Massive Battles isn't, however I never chosen Heroes for the Campaign, as in any UI, like for pre-Skirmish settings. Is there any console command that can disable Heroes in Campaign before each mission or is it currently just part of the code? Additionally, right now the Dawn of Skirmish A.I only applies in the Campaign's actual real-time battles, but not during the turn-based battles in the metamap, am I right?

EDIT:

Also, to any testers reading this, if you didn't know about it, I'd like to point at how you guys can have the Campaign movies when playing with this mod. It's very simple. Simply copy the the Movies folder from the DXP2 folder in the main installation location of the game, and paste it inside the Dowai_mod folder of this mod, and voila, done. I don't know however if the scripted banter between the generals in some missions will occur, so far I haven't heard any, but it's too early in the Campaign.

Edited by Zenoth, 27 March 2008 - 05:16 AM.

[Zenoth]

Well I've just had a 32 minutes Skirmish on Testing Grounds (3 Vs 3). I was SM, and all others were Necrons, and guess what? I did not crash... strange. Just like in Beta 2, I myself never experienced a crash during all-Necrons Skirmishes, but then again it did crashed in the Campaign. Well that's beyond my guessing abilities. Are the Necrons doing something differently during battles in the Campaign than they do in Skirmishes? I guess that the code is 100% the same for both? Something has to be going on here...

Edited by Zenoth, 27 March 2008 - 06:00 AM.

[thudo]

I had a 3vs3 All-Necron HARD AI game and it CTD on the second game when the first Necron faction was killed off. Narrowing it down.. looks like it could be the Chronometron, Phase Shifter, or Solar Pulse ability. Had 5+ 3vs3 All-Necron games so far with the above 3 NL abilities disabled.. No issues. Narrowing it down.

[Zenoth]

A small report here for Arkhan especially, just to confirm that Fortress + Heroes now work properly. And good to know thudo that you're narrowing it down, a mere elimination process should do it indeed, if you're sure that it's just one of the three NL abilities that causes the CTD then it's a matter of time before you know which one of them is the direct (and let's hope the only) cause. I just wonder why in all of my Skirmish games with Necrons none of those abilities were used enough to cause a crash, but then in the Campaign it just took a single game. I guess it's fate!

[LarkinVB]

Hmm, actually I don't think I made any changes to them which could cause those problems. Necrons are so different that I left them pretty much unchanged except the required T1 army strength...

Watch necron at position 3 on the 8 player map cerulea. You will see what I mean. They seem to build fine on other positions though.

[Smokeskin]

Match: 1v1
Factions: SoB (Smokeskin) vs SM
Game Modes Used: Standard
Map: Shrine of Excellion
A.I Difficulty: Harder
Resources Rate: Normal
Resources Sharing: Off
Winner: Me

Comments:
I think you did a very good job with t1. On HARDER it plays about the level of beta 2 INSANE it seems. It makes a few but crucial tactical errors though. Good work

Strong squads capping
At 3:00, a tac squad is capping a relic instead of fending off my harass, while I'm fighting some scouts.
At 6:00, a 7-8 man tac squad is capping the CP while the major fight of the game happens nearby. Since the AI is missing about 30% of its units for that fight, I wipe out its army (I also have grenades and a few upgrades for my squads which also help).
This behavior really, really hurts it. Strong units shouldn't go capping.

Retreats for no reason
At about 3:40 it retreats from a big fight, though I think it actually had a stronger army. It could certainly have fought me off and reclaimed its SP.

No frag grenades
Frag grenades are incredibly powerful against infantry, I think the marines should research it as the first thing.

Attached Files

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