71 replies to this topic

[keraunos]

This question is mainly for devs: what changes have you introduced to land battles? I've heard that AT-STs are faster, but what else? And is it the case?

Obviously, I'm mainly asking because I'm fairly familiar with standard FoC balance etc, and I'll most likely start modding vanilla -stat units. Unless you rebalanced everything, to keep up with pirate changes you've made...

EDIT: Ok, I just went through the files, and I'm really positively impressed by the changes. Inf unit size doubled (Plex 150%), artillery disabled. What bothers me are some units speed. AT-ST is 10 times faster then inf, repulsor tanks even 20... That will need adjusting. Otherwise, units (stat-wise) seems to be balanced. Time to do some playtesting. On the good side, my mod might not be necessary after all

Edited by keraunos, 24 December 2008 - 07:34 PM.

[Phoenix Rising]

The speeds are currently in actual km/h as scaled to the map size, which is pretty small. The acceleration values are total guesses though, so they just might be too much. If you really hate it, just auto-resolve land; I realize it's not nearly as polished as space is.

[Casen]

Land is atrocious...to be frank, the only way land would be enjoyable is with larger maps and more EU vehicles...man, a big battle on wide-open plains with AT-ATs, or a canyon...man that'd be awesome.

[Phoenix Rising]

We don't have the personnel to pull off larger maps or new vehicles right now. I'll just keep tweaking the stats until they work for us. Obviously Space isn't totally canonical, especially with respect to ranges and speeds.

[keraunos]

With all this work you put into land garrisons, I'd hate to autoresolve Expect my mod to alter things soon Thanks for input on the subject.

As for actual speed, I prefer slower approach to the game, so I altered not only speed, but also HPs and range (AT-ST and AT-PTs can now shoot through entire map, which is not something I'd like to see frequently ). This is of course easily exploitable - just send in some scout unit, and your artillery-like-AT-STs will take care of the rest

[SpardaSon21]

AT-PT's are in Land? Sweet, I always liked them since they appeared onboard the Katana fleet.

[Valter]

AT-ST and AT-PTs can now shoot through entire map [...]

AT-PTs? I played land skirmish as the empire and I saw no AT-PTs on the build list for any of the factories. Are these units only available in Galactic Conquest, or did you actually mean Pod Walkers and referred to AT-PTs accidently?

I have one more question concerning the Storm Commandos - shouldn't their armor be black, not white?

By the way, thanks for the land changes Keraunos; Phoenix Rising land has the potential to be very enjoyable with some stat changes.

Edited by Valter, 25 December 2008 - 08:37 PM.

[keraunos]

Yup, I meant Pod Walkers - aren't they AT-PTs? That's how I imagined AT-PTs in Thrawn Trilogy - older, oversized walker That I wasn't interested in land stuff from Clone Wars doesn't help, either

No problem, as soon as 1.1.1 is released, I'll compare the files and release them Some serious playtesting will probably be needed, as I fear that many weapon ranges will be too short. For now, I simply kept (more or less) ratio that PR introduced, but many units range is simply too short. Pity that I cannot playtest it properly now, due to exceptions :(

[Valter]

Yup, I meant Pod Walkers - aren't they AT-PTs? That's how I imagined AT-PTs in Thrawn Trilogy - older, oversized walker That I wasn't interested in land stuff from Clone Wars doesn't help, either

No problem, as soon as 1.1.1 is released, I'll compare the files and release them Some serious playtesting will probably be needed, as I fear that many weapon ranges will be too short. For now, I simply kept (more or less) ratio that PR introduced, but many units range is simply too short. Pity that I cannot playtest it properly now, due to exceptions :(

No, this is an at-pt -







I haven't had any exception errors yet, so I'll be more than happy to give you feed-back on your land changes.
If the ranges are too short right now, why don't you copy the stats of the vanilla units to the Phoenix Rising units (the firing ranges of the vanilla units were ok imo)?

Edited by Valter, 25 December 2008 - 10:45 PM.

[SpardaSon21]

Yup, I meant Pod Walkers - aren't they AT-PTs? That's how I imagined AT-PTs in Thrawn Trilogy - older, oversized walker That I wasn't interested in land stuff from Clone Wars doesn't help, either

No problem, as soon as 1.1.1 is released, I'll compare the files and release them Some serious playtesting will probably be needed, as I fear that many weapon ranges will be too short. For now, I simply kept (more or less) ratio that PR introduced, but many units range is simply too short. Pity that I cannot playtest it properly now, due to exceptions :(

No, this is an at-pt -

I haven't had any exception errors yet, so I'll be more than happy to give you feed-back on your land changes.
If the ranges are too short right now, why don't you copy the stats of the vanilla units to the Phoenix Rising units (the firing ranges of the vanilla units were ok imo)?

Too bad those aren't in the mod. It's just like an AT-ST, except it is much harder for Ewoks to topple it with logs.

Edit: Removed quoted image.

Edited by Phoenix Rising, 26 December 2008 - 07:11 PM.

[Phoenix Rising]

Yup, I meant Pod Walkers - aren't they AT-PTs?

They're AT-APs - All Terrain Attack Pods.

[Pellean]

On the opposite end of the land spectrum, whatever explosive weapons the stormtroopers have are very short-ranged. What are they? I thought the only standard weapons for a stormtrooper was an E-11 or heavier blaster and their thermal detonators.

On the plus side, you get more troops to a regiment and we get to see stormtroopers in their awesomeness because it no longer unbalances the game (army troopers get to be the regulars).

With regard to garrisoning, why is each infantry unit now individually recognized instead of a squad? I don't have a problem with it, I just don't understand. Especially since, in the case of A6 Juggernaughts, a TIE Crawler or a speederbike take up the same amount of space as one man. Wouldn't squads make more sense?

[Phoenix Rising]

On the opposite end of the land spectrum, whatever explosive weapons the stormtroopers have are very short-ranged. What are they? I thought the only standard weapons for a stormtrooper was an E-11 or heavier blaster and their thermal detonators.

Concussion grenades (the fragmentation + stun variety).

With regard to garrisoning, why is each infantry unit now individually recognized instead of a squad?

Normally, infantry are supposed to have containers so they move/fire in synch, but when I used them, they refused to fire at all. Infantry units used to have WEAPON behavior so they could shoot, but PG never got inaccuracy to work in the manner, so anything that's a WEAPON never misses. I moved all weapons to hardpoints, which do allow for inaccuracy, but I had to disable the containers, so they have pathing and garrisoning issues and such now. Still working on a better solution.

[Pellean]

On the opposite end of the land spectrum, whatever explosive weapons the stormtroopers have are very short-ranged. What are they? I thought the only standard weapons for a stormtrooper was an E-11 or heavier blaster and their thermal detonators.

Concussion grenades (the fragmentation + stun variety).

Is it just a side effect of the scale conversion that they end up almost inside their own blast radius?

With regard to garrisoning, why is each infantry unit now individually recognized instead of a squad?

Normally, infantry are supposed to have containers so they move/fire in synch, but when I used them, they refused to fire at all. Infantry units used to have WEAPON behavior so they could shoot, but PG never got inaccuracy to work in the manner, so anything that's a WEAPON never misses. I moved all weapons to hardpoints, which do allow for inaccuracy, but I had to disable the containers, so they have pathing and garrisoning issues and such now. Still working on a better solution.

Actually I kind of like it- if you move troops out of a garrison they form up like a large regiment. It's fun to have 60 troops in a tight line formation. You can also control each trooper individually (I like micromanagement). It feels more like the RPG.

Since the infantry are now hardpoints, is it possible to let them fire while moving?

If you are not going to release a land fix soon, could you give me some advice on fixing the ranges? I changed all the <Targeting_Max_Attack_Distance> to equal the <Land_FOW_Reveal_Range>, and while it did help, the ranges are still unreasonable and, in most cases, still well outside the unit's line of sight.

Also, are the scales of range different for different units? Although I set both the Rebel and Imperial army troopers to a <Targeting_Max_Attack_Distance> of 300, the rebels seemed to be able to hit the Imperials from a greater distance than the Imps could fire back. This may have been a mis-observation on my part, but the rebels won quite quickly.

[Phoenix Rising]

Dear Phoenix, If you haven't already, take a look at some of the other good FOC mods, Awakening of the rebellion in particular and you might pick up some good ideas which could be implimented.

I can't exactly steal whatever models I like from whomever I like...

Is it just a side effect of the scale conversion that they end up almost inside their own blast radius?

The GRENADE projectile type (which I've used for grenades) is odd in that it requires its fire bones to be angled up 45 degrees or so to really work right - except all vanilla fire bones point forward and I haven't changed them yet. So they're basically throwing them straight at someone instead of lobbing them and the range suffers as a result. You can try changing the type to something different for now and it should work better.

Actually I kind of like it- if you move troops out of a garrison they form up like a large regiment. It's fun to have 60 troops in a tight line formation. You can also control each trooper individually (I like micromanagement). It feels more like the RPG.

The pathing is really bad now because of it (and probably more resource-intensive), so I wouldn't expect it to stay that way.

Since the infantry are now hardpoints, is it possible to let them fire while moving?

They do... sometimes. The main issue is getting the firing animation to cooperate with targeting something, otherwise their guns can be holstered and they'd still be shooting.

If you are not going to release a land fix soon, could you give me some advice on fixing the ranges?

I have no idea how exactly that will be dealt with, other than by decreasing it. I'll probably have to make all the numbers up myself like Space. As it stands, they're using ranges straight from d20.

Also, are the scales of range different for different units? Although I set both the Rebel and Imperial army troopers to a <Targeting_Max_Attack_Distance> of 300, the rebels seemed to be able to hit the Imperials from a greater distance than the Imps could fire back. This may have been a mis-observation on my part, but the rebels won quite quickly.

That tag tells the unit how far away it should start firing from, but the actual weapon ranges are on the hardpoints. And, actually, those two units have different weapons anyway.

[Kaleb Graff]

They do... sometimes. The main issue is getting the firing animation to cooperate with targeting something, otherwise their guns can be holstered and they'd still be shooting.

I have no idea how exactly that will be dealt with, other than by decreasing it. I'll probably have to make all the numbers up myself like Space. As it stands, they're using ranges straight from d20.

Why does it matter? This is 1.1, and I'd rather have realistic combat without good graphics. And are you going to full d20 ranges?

[Phoenix Rising]

And are you going to full d20 ranges?

Those are d20 ranges... and they apparently don't work so well in a RTS.

[Kaleb Graff]

I meant are you using range increment x10? That's a really high number in some cases. With normal people, it should be more like range increment x3-5.

[keraunos]

Nah, these are exact ranges. In meteres, IIRC. But the problem is, while 50 m (average range for granade) is ok, but the range of AT-ST (5000 m) easily covers entire map. I scalled them down (biggest value is 500, which is about double of how far AT-ST can see), and that's how they should make it in PRLA