25 replies to this topic

[MilkaCow]

First of all 'elo everyone. Discovered this mod only recently (Wednesday) when i finally finished my last exam for this semester. Played two GC (Outer Rim - Imperial, Inner Rim - Rebel) so far and tons of skirmishes, just to get the hang of the units. The mod is great so far, but i noticed some problems:

 

General stability / FPS is fine, loading/saving take long, but this is expected by this variety of information. I've only come across one major slowdown in a battle. I think i still have the savegame, was a pretty early rebel landfight and even though the amount of units was not that big, something seemed to have caused trouble. I suspect either Elite infantry or RHTT-6 Transports filled with those infantry units. Several things happened - a.) One of the transports was partially loaded (slots used), even though no unit was inside. b.) Two units were below average strength when departing the transports; c.) after filling the transports the game slowed down by ~factor 6. Countdown in the end (20 seconds) took around 2 minutes (eventually auto-resulted the fight, since it already took over 30 minutes and pretty much everything was still on the way to the opponent ^^). But well, besides this encounter everything went fine.

 

Next thing i noted was again as Rebel, i did more than i think even your mod is able to: I seemed to have occupied the enemies starbases. Had a small number of ships in an imperial orbit and a relief fleet tried to free it. So far no problem. Tactical game started, i pushed my ships behind the starbases and... suddenly the starbases spawned Tie-Fighters. That was pretty much the moment when i thought - hey, this is hostile orbit, i shouldn't have any starbases here. In fact, there shouldn't be any starbases here at all. I am not entirely sure what caused this problem, but it may be tied to another one. Capture a planet and start building structures. Retreat all forces and leave it open - the enemy will most likely capture it. Now quickly recapture the base - your started buildings will reappear as being built and start from a higher (non 0%) value. I could not test so far if it is the percentage at the time of capture or even higher.

 

Now for the unit placement. The amount of units / research sometimes is simply too much for the (small) space to show them. I am entirely unsure how far any solution is prohibited by the engine, so i simply throw in a couple of them, maybe one works:

- Put all Building / research options in the top row. Use the bottom row to "switch" which top row is displayed (I.e - Step 1 allows buildings to be build, with each new shipyard one new "Building" is added. This building has a cost of 0 and is build very fast. It does nothing, but change the unit-row to the class of the chosen shipyard).

- Scrollable in the X-Direction. Considering that the placement in top/bottom row seems to be final (probably since it originally was buildings/units) and does not break at the end of the line, any placement using all space (top/bottom) row combined will probably impossible. Still, this may allow a scrollbar (eventually though just a hotkey triggered one).

- Using the land building row for space research. This row is only utilized until all ground building spots are used, afterwards it's empty. As long as research is always placed right of buildings, this may allow a better placement.

- Use two different kinds of shipyards (A, B), each with every size (1 to 5). Shipyards of type (A) will place the units on the top row. Shipyards of type (B) will place the units on the bottom row. First shipyard is type (A), second is Type (B). From there on only allow the same shipyards (For example A1 and B3) to be build alongside non shipyard space-stations. If all Shipyards of a type get destroyed, allow to build another one of that type. This may only allow 2 classes of shipyards per planet, but these should be without overlapping and well, usually 2 is pretty much all you need, rarely 3.

 

Another point is was missing from the manual - what effect does it have, if you build several stations of the same kind? Decrease in build time? Simply redundancy, should one be destroyed?

 

Next point - Heroes, or more specifically their descriptions. Though the information given about armaments is usually quite good, this only goes as far as they are not upgraded. For example, take any fighterpilot and his upgrade. The upgrade may note the name of the new ship, but not what type it is. It's usually just Heroname + "with " + Shipname. Once you are in the tactical view you get a detailed description of the ship. Since i am already talking about heroes - maybe also note under which circumstances a hero can be upgraded. Considering the amount of information that yields compared to the current size of the descriptions, i guess that would not hurt. So far i tried the exhaustive search method - send to different planets until figuring out it is not upgradeable/finding the fitting one.

 

Guess that's it from me. I guess i'll play another round. After all, i have to make up for almost 24/7 studying the recent months

 

PS: This post is mostly focussed on problems / negative parts. Simply assume everything i did not mention is fine - would be too much work to say what's good

 

[Edit] Added some more points that resurfaced in my mind, once i re-read the text.

Edited by MilkaCow, 16 March 2013 - 10:50 PM.

[evilbobthebob]

Thanks very much for the detailed feedback! It's always good to hear from our playerbase. I'll try and handle some of the issues you've experienced, but most of them are outside my purview and the mod leader who can definitively answer is on holiday for a week.

The framerate bug with the transports sounds odd and is probably just an issue with the game engine. No idea if there's a specific issue with that transport or the units you were loading.

The station ownership issue is something we have come across from time to time and is again probably an issue with the game engine. I don't think there's anything we've done that would cause that to happen except possibly the sheer variety of units in play.

We're very aware of the user interface issues but there's not much we can do about them without a LOT of scripting (essentially making buttons to filter out unit types etc, which is very very time consuming and repetitive scripting). Your suggestions are good but our current upgrade system makes them difficult to implement.

The manual is still a work in progress, but I can answer your question: multiple shipyards decreases production time for units of that type. In general you should specialise your planets.

Tooltips are unfortunately a bit of a low priority at the moment, but since you're the second person to specifically mention this about heroes we may well look into it for the next release.

 

Thanks very much for the feedback!

[MilkaCow]

Thanks for the quick feedback

 

The specialized planets are fine, but in the beginning of the game you usually don't have that luxury.

Another problem is a dedicated research planet. Since research is incredibly rewarding, yet consumes a lot of time and credits it is mostly done on planets with boni. To get most of it, you have to spread your shipyards/land buildings. Yet, this may give you the possibility to have more research options, while on the other hand also blocking several of those. For land bases you can work around this by building/dismantling one type of production building after the other, but this does not work on space stations, where any building is final, as far as i know.

 

And well, since i am already writing again:

The hardpoints issue is mentioned in another thread, noting that it would be too time consuming / problematic to reintroduce them. So why not leave them out, but simulate the damage to a ship by a decrease in allround effectiveness? Several automatic triggering "abilities" at 1/4, 2/4, 3/4 hull which result in a percentage decrease of rate of fire/damage and other stats.

[evilbobthebob]

Yeah there are a number of problems that are unfortunately caused by the limited user interface space which is exacerbated in smaller campaigns. Currently it is probably best to think of it as a restriction that you have to live with that promotes careful decisions about what kind of research you wish to pursue. Also, to access research that is off the interface, you can try queuing up research that you can see (thus removing them from the build menu) until you can see the research that you actually want; add that to the end of the queue then cancel the ones you didn't actually need and you can continue to research what you want.

That's an interesting suggestion, though I think it would require (as with many things) a lot of scripting which would have to check the health of every capital ship in tactical battles; that would probably cause performance issues, unfortunately.

[johnchm.10]

what about having the research station and bases be able to access/upgrade all ships/upgrades without having the requisite shipyards be required, and have the ability to build more than one station and base to speed up upgrades? so like you could take a planet that can only support one or two stations or ground facilities and have them become worthwhile areas to defend. or you could take the Maw, which in mod, can support like 5 stations, iirc, and have a bunch of Research stations and a Golan or 2 to defend the station.

 

oh, another tool-tips related thing, this time for planets. have a line or sentence or whatever that states how many total stations like shipyards can be built in orbit around that planet

[evilbobthebob]

Multiple research stations without shipyard requirements is an interesting idea. I like it, but it would seriously clutter the UI if any shipyard was built as well. There are a lot of upgrades available!

Previously the number of shipyards etc per planet was in flux every release, so tooltip information about them would have probably been made obselete very often. Now we have a set of carefully calculated values it's a bit more reasonable to add this in, if we have the time.

[MilkaCow]

This idea is not final, i'm still tackling it to enable better "balance".

 

Keep the current Space-Colony in it's form.

Give each planet fourdifferent kinds of buildings:

- A.) Major Stations

- B.) Major Utility

- C.) Minor Stations

- D.) Minor Utility

 

Category A := {Shipyards 5, Shipyards 4, Shipyards 3, Shipyards 2, Shipyards 1, Research Station, Defense Outpost}

Category B := {Golan 3, Utility Station (Major), Trade Station (Major)}

Category C := {Shipyards 3, Shipyards 2, Shipyards 1}

Category D := {Golan 2, Golan 1, Utility Station (Minor), Trade Station (Minor)}

 

Shipyards 1 to 5 are unchanged.

Research Station cost is increased, hull/shields are increased slightly. It should be an expensive, yet necessary building that needs to be away from the frontline. It allows research of everything of size same or below the space rating of the planet (Rating 5 => All, 4 allows Shipyard 4 and below research and so on). Space Colony 3 needed to build.

Defense Outpost could be an improved Golan III with an added hangar and therefor a defensive fleet. It should be able to keep up with anything up to medium fleets. High defensive value (several times as if used to build fleet units) at the cost of an A building spot and mobility. Space Colony 4 needed to build.

Golan 1 to 3 are unchanged.

Utility Station (Major) and (Minor) boost the buildings in their category. A Major Utility Station speeds up research / building times from Yards 4/5, while a minor does the same for Yards 3/4/5. A utility station for a defense station increases the standing fleet / adds some tugs or improves the shielding or sth. Need some better idea here

Trade Station (Major) and (Minor) are similar to the current version, with the (Major) one being more efficient than the minor one.

 

Now who can build what:

Each planet can have at maximum one A and one C building. The amount of B and D is not capped.

The buildings still have a tech requirement (space colony level).

 

What the changes would do?

HUD: You could put Category A to the top row and B to the bottom row, making it more unlikely that any row is filled completely.

Gamechanges:

- Each planet would be able to max build 2 shipyards.

- Specialization of planets is increased. You can no longer have a major shipyard and a research station at the same position.

- New major defensive building for those worlds that can't support a standing fleet and don't need a shipyard.

- Increased usefulness of trading stations on planets with higher space ratings (due to major version).

- Research only on planets with a 3+ space rating, yet better dedicated research stations.

 

Just a rather raw, not yet completely refined idea steaming from the earlier one (A and B shipyards) i had. I guess i'll revisit this post if i find improvements.

I'm currently just not that happy with the system and thought a fresh voice might help you improve it

Edited by MilkaCow, 18 March 2013 - 04:49 PM.

[evilbobthebob]

It's an interesting idea, though it may be difficult to understand for many players. Also, building a research station at a world that supports all levels of research would fill the build bar instantly. Aside from that, I have a strong feeling that it would be very difficult to implement in-game. I'll tell you the way the game works with this stuff so you can get an idea of what we have to work with:

• There are only two types of space structure the game recognises: A 1-5 level Space Station (colonies in the mod) and space "Special Structures" (shipyards, Golans, Research stations, XQ5 platforms, etc). You can definitely implement per-planet limits on structures (see: research station) but that is controlled by the structure itself not the planet it is located on. For planets, only the maximum level of Space Station and the number of Special Structures can be defined.
• Space Special Structures can have a pre-requisite Space Station level that unlocks them (which is why high level shipyards require a high level colony). However, I do not know if space Special Structures can require other structures before they can be constructed (like ground structures in the vanilla game). There are provisions for it in the XML that may work.
• There are provisions in the XML for specific planets being required for the construction of Special Structures on them (for example the Cantina or Spy Network). I don't know if this would work with space Special Structures.
• Structures can lock and unlock other structures through the tech system we use. However, we would prefer not to add to this system because it is already large and sprawling for units. It is required to be used if you want structures to lock out other structures because otherwise the game will allow construction up to either the maximum instances per planet or the total Special Structure count available at the planet, whichever comes first.
• Structures can be restricted/unlocked via the classic vanilla tech tree, which we do not have implemented in the mod (everything is tech level 0).
• Structures can be restricted/unlocked via the "timeline" scripting system which may not be functional (it unlocks stuff as the current story script reaches a certain timeline, as far as I know; the story script system is how our tech tree works so this may conflict).
• It may be possible to do more advanced things via Lua scripting but that tends to be very opaque to the player and it is likely to cause performance issues.

I think that's everything that can be done with space stations and space structures. If you have any more questions and suggestions, try and keep them within this framework since that's what we can do in the game.

Edited by evilbobthebob, 18 March 2013 - 05:24 PM.

[johnchm.10]

personally, i would set up one or two planets as pure R&D facilities. like at the Maw, or a planet where it has at least a decent number of buildable stations, relatively easy to defend in terms of number of ways in, i.e. one or 2 bordering planets, where i could have a defensive fleet which could retreat to the Maw with its own defensive structures and fleet. i would have a pair of the strongest Golan stations available, a late model Destroyer, like a Vic-4, supported by a quartet of late model Dreadnought Heavy Cruisers, a couple of late model DP20s or Lancers, and however much room would be left over would be given to what i like to call Expeditionary wings. an IW is basically 4 Squadrons of fighters. 1 squadron of Heavy Bombers, two of Fighter-Bombers, and one of Interceptors. this way ive got Interceptors to run down fighters and bombers, Bombers to sortie against Capital Ships, and one squad of fighters to support each of the other two groups. and i might have some ATR groups

 

oh, another tool-tip idea. with the units, putting the population cost for both tactical and strategic mode. i know that strategic gives you the pop-cost in fleets of heroes, ground troops, and income producing units, and that the general ideas are in the manual, but im sure that being able to have it a moments look would be invaluable

[MilkaCow]

As far as i understood the ordering of buildable items is the following:

Buildings, (Unit; Upgrade of the Unit)*

 

The space for such is two rows of 13 positions each.

Currently there are 11 Buildings (Colony, Shipyards 1-5, Golan 1-3, Trading, Research) yet only a maximum of 10/9 is buildable at a time. If shipyard 5 is buildable, colony is not. I am unsure about the requirements of Golan III currently - if it needs Shipyard 5 it would max of 9, else 10 buildings. Not sure about the Golan. I rarely use Golans, since i consider them an utter waste of time and ressources. Low-tech fleets can kill them with ease with a lot of bombers, high-tech fleets outrange them

If this gets switched to allow the following buildings:

Colony, Shipyards 2-5 Type A, Shipyards 1-4 Type B, Golan 1-3, Research, Trading it would add 3 more buildings at maximum, still leaving all buildings in the queue.

Shipyards of Type B will be placed in the top row, Type A in the bottom row. It will still allow all combinations of two Shipyards to be built, the only restriction is that a yard of level 5 is always top and 1 always bottom row.

This may not completely solve the problem, but if used correctly (Call them Shipyard Top / Bottom and write something small in the description) it would allow to fully utilize the available space the way the user wants it.

It is necessary to place type 5 shipyards in the lower row simply for the fact of overlapping. Only a quite small number of planets starts with a Shipyard 5, while lots start with level 4. If one would place a Shipyard 4 in the lower row it would block a lot of units until all building slots are taken. Shipyard 5 only has a small number of units which have long build times - even without all buildings one is able to queue the remaining buildingslots, then the units, then cancel the buildings. Since this only rarely occurs it's not a great problem.

[abesinay]

I feel like the golans are a bit underpowered too, are they going to be amped up in 1.3?

[evilbobthebob]

Golan III requires Space Colony 4 or greater. Structures aren't really the problem with build bar space, units are, and every unit also has upgrades (or can be researched) so I don't see how moving structures up or down a row makes much difference.

The Golan stations are all a lot stronger due to the space combat changes we've made (for example, heavy torpedoes now have similar range to heavy turbolasers, and Golans have a lot of torpedoes...).

[MilkaCow]

I think you've missunderstood me there. I guess i should not write deep in the night when i am almost falling asleep. But how else to appreciate that one does not have to get up at 6/7 o'clock?

I meant a Type A Shipyards which place their units in the top row and Type B Shipyards which place them in the bottom row.

This would mean every shipyard has 2 forms and would increase the amount over the maximum of 13 (Shipyards 10, Golan 3, R, T, C = 16 with max 15 at one time), that's why i restricted one Shipyard to only Class A and one to only class B - this would allow all different buildings to be displayed and therefor built. From those Shipyards, choose one Type A and one Type B and you have one row of buildable ships (with upgrades, if Research is build) in the top row and one in the bottom. Which is where is completely your choice (Type A or B), and no longer prohibits some combinations (Shipyards 3 and 4 are pretty much mutex currently, for example).

 

 

I feel a bit retarded

There is one solution that without much changing would allow two different shipyards to be built on every planet without creating an overflow...

Currently every shipyard itself is able to place all it's units (and most research but not all, if i remember right, lvl 1 shipyard has max units/research) in one row.

So one would be able to build to yards if one uses the top row and the other the bottom row. I guess i liked that idea so much that i was blinded a bit

Why not use the current positioning of shipyard 2 for all shipyards? It's playing half it's units top, half bottom. That would allow any two shipyards to be

combined on any planet. Only with a third or a research station the overflow problem would reoccur.

Edited by MilkaCow, 19 March 2013 - 02:10 PM.

[johnchm.10]

hey bob, ive got a general question for you. in the XMLs, what equations do we use to translate move speed to MGLT, hull strength to RU, and the other equations? and on a related note, im looking into modifying the compliments of some of the ships, and in a couple cases, ive come across ships that use Clone Wars era fighters (ARC-170s and V-wings). so i go into the XMLs of the fighters in question, and i notice that there are upgraded variants such as the AF9 variant of the ARC-170. are these upgraded fighters usable if we just attach them to capital ships?

[evilbobthebob]

I have no idea what equations PR has used for speeds and health etc in the older versions of the mod. He has been completely redoing the system based on a much more natural set of units that should be easier for players to understand.

Any craft with full XML spec should be attachable to capital ship complements, just make sure you use the right faction variant.

[johnchm.10]

argh! oh well.

any updates on the update? 

[evilbobthebob]

It's coming along, but PR is on holiday this week.

[johnchm.10]

oh. where's he off to? hopefully not Alderaan. heard the weather there isnt so great lately

[skie9173]

[johnchm.10]

lmfao. i shall see you in hell skye