Kelly's Heros
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Posts posted by Kelly's Heros
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How bout we schedule something after the holidays. I know you're busy with the new release and hopefully by then things will have settled down a bit. :-)
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Have fun Boris
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Well, I've been on Battlefront from the beginning and I can tell you that releasing games before they're ready for prime time is nothing new. CM and SF both suffered major issues early on and poor reviews as a result. The developers stayed with them and now they have very substantial games that are well supported.
It costs a lot of money to build a game and eventually the developer has to release it in order to start making money or run out of time. Since Brit is working on this by himself, I assume he is up against time and money constraints as well.
As long as he patches the game and makes it right, I'm sure in the long run he'll do well. I have yet to see a decent game come out of the shoot perfect. If you look at the number of patches that happen to most games in the first year, you know that this is very common even at battlefront, which is a very dedicated team of developers.
As for the AI, well, I've played the game and it will keep you entertained. It needs work and I'm sure that now that Brit has released the game, he is working overtime to get it adjusted and working properly.
I spend most of my time right now playing WITP AE and they are releasing their second major patch in 5 months. This second patch is significant and still won't correct all of the problems with the AI and other issues. However, we grognards stay with it because we know it is getting better each time. I know EOS will get better as long as we support Brit and don't slam him on the boards.
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Cool, I'm in Highlands Ranch. We ought to get together some day. I'd like to chat with you about the game and your experience with building a game from scratch. I'm very interested in tackling this someday myself.
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From my experience, the AI doesn't attack until it starts running into conflict situations. It tries to stay neutral until it is forced into war. If you want to fight the AI, then attack it. Once you do, you'd better be ready to fight. I always wait until I'm ready for the fight, but I don't always get the chance to make that decision.
Maybe Brit needs to add a type of AI that is aggressive early on to please those who like to be rushed. :-)
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Brit are you in Denver?
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I was expecting it in early December. Looking forward to hearing from folks who are the early adopters. I will have to put this on my Christmas list as I'm looking forward to the full game.
I'm envious of those of you who have the game. Chime in and let us know how it's playing :-)
Congrat's Brit and good luck with the release.
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Brit,
Thanks for the great detailed response. Sounds like you have plenty of work for EOS 2 or post release patches. :-)
How is the game coming? Are you still on track for an early Dec release?
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Brit,
How easy is it going to be to mod EOS, like swap out unit icons and add or change music tracks? Not that what you have is not very good and usable, but I'm sure when we get a hold of the ruleset editor we may want to create specific units like Tiger tanks, etc.
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Ehm... what? From what I've seen, it doesn't look anything like it.
Not sure if that Ehm what was directed at my response, but my point was that group random distribution is wrong. Combat is very seldom random, it is based on target type, and distributing damage across all units in a group is not real. Tanks will attack tanks first, then infantry. Battleships are bombed before destroyers. Nothing random about that, however there is always some randomness to war, so if on occasion a destroyer is sunk before the battleship, then so be it :-)
Now if you let us target individual units in a group then I'm fine with that.
So, based on N3rull's comments, I say change group damage allocation.
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Hmm, group damage seems to be an anomaly. In war, individual units are usually singled out, I find it odd that by putting them in a group that damage is distributed. Can this be changed in the ruleset? If not, I would request that we revisit this as I'm not sure it makes sense. I also believe that higher value assets would be attacked first in a group.
In WW2, the carriers were hit first, then the BBs, CAs, and then the DDs. I think transports were always targeted first when found. So even distribution of damage diminishes the way real world targeting works. IMHO :-)
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Yeah, I think everyone is just waiting for something new to test. The last release was more fixing and the simulator. You'll see it pick up again once we have something to talk about :-)
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Well done considering you're doing this without any help from an engine. Thanks for the info. I'm sure that interfacing to the old MFC is easier in c++ than a newer language.
I like the small size of the code base. It downloads quickly. :-)
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Hey Brit,
Great tool that really helps explain why combat results are coming out the way they are in the game.
Most of us on the board have a good appreciation now for the behavior, but newbies will really struggle with some of the combat results. I believe you should correct the ruleset sooner than later as to not disenfranchise new players.
The game just keeps getting better.
Keep up the good work. I'm looking forward to the final release so I can play some new maps and try out some of my own ideas about the rulesets. I think that this capability is a very powerful addition to the game.
By the way, what language are you writing this in? C++ or C#? Also are you using XNA or another engine or is this your own creation?
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Thanks for the fixes and the game is coming together nicely. Well done and should be a big hit.
Now I'm looking forward to balancing and AI improvements.
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Yes, I've seen this inconsistent accounting of battles as well. Combat should follow the rule of minimum astonishment. What makes sense will usually happen unless something unusual occurs. There are many cases in history where overwhelming forces were defeated by a smaller contingent, but it had to do with leadership which is not represented in this game. A shrewd leader can change the course of a battle. Since this game assumes that all leaders are equal, I would say the battles should represent respective odds. 3-1 odds means 1 loses, but he might take out 2 units if he gets a lucky roll. One unit shouldn't take out 3 superior units and survive, that is astonishing and breaks the rule. :-)
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Well, it depends. Sometimes you can just click on land and sometimes not. There seems to be some sensitivity due to terrain types that I've encountered. In general, with the latest build, you select the transport to dock and then you can select the troops to move onto land even while the ship is in transit. It works a lot better now than in the earlier builds. :-)
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The dudes won't unmount in the screen shot and the program crashes to desktop. See the move line drawn from the top of the screen. I haven't seen this before. Also note that the ship is not docked, still shouldn't crash. New bug.
See screenshot. I tried to upload save file but forum says it is too big, even zipped.
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The game is much more stable. NO crashes and I was able to save my games all the way up to the end of the game of well over 200 turns.
Unfortunately, one thing I did notice is that for some reason the Veteran AI is kind of brain dead so to speak. What's up with that? It just doesn't do anything. I would expect a challenge at Veteran level and it seemed like before it was a challenge, but now it is lethargic.
The aircraft seem to be a little more powerful, yet I still see tanks shooting down strategic bombers. NOT going to happen.
Subs are much better now too.
I love the new research for food. That really helped a lot. Resources seem to be much more usable now.
The zoom is still a little crazy. It jumps all over the place and I believe it is because of the way you have the world wrapped. What would be very cool is as you zoom out the flat map wraps around a globe that you can rotate. As you zoom in the map flattens out again. That would be an awesome effect and very novel. Maybe it is something you can work on after the first release Brit. I still don't like the overlapping range circles. Way too confusing.
Brit the software has come a long way in the past few weeks. Keep up the great changes.
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Hey Brit,
Any new updates this week or do you need more time to lay down some more code? Just curious. Actually, I won't have time to play until next weekend anyway. Looking forward to the next release. :-)
Hope all is going well.
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CMAK didn't sell, not because people were tired of CM, but because the theater of war is not as interesting and by the time CMAK came along the engine was dated and the competition was stirring.
Let's face it, had Steve revamped the engine earlier, CM WW2 would still be in the lead, but the CM team is small and it takes them much longer to respond to significant market changes. Once they switched gears to modern combat, CM was old school.
I am a huge CM fan and love the game, but the graphics engine is way out of date, even CMSF is no where near what much of the competition is offering. Look at TOW2.
CM1 sold well because it was the first (no real competition). Once everyone saw what was possible, the number of games exploded and CM no longer had strength in originality and others were doing things better. It's the price of being first to market, and not so easy to stay number 1.
To me EOS is a modernized Empire, which is nice, and much needed in the wargame genre. I guarantee if it is successful, there will be others out there who will do it better and glitzier.
I say, create some unique features that make the game fun. Make it very accessible to all player levels and keep the user interface streamlined and provide lot's of information to the player. The most difficult aspect of strategy games is not enough easy to read information about units, production, movement, and combat.
Just my two cents. By the way - I'm an avid gamer now for almost 30 yrs.
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Great discussion. I believe if you just want to focus on the military aspects of the game, then manufacturing capacity and supply are the critical elements. You could abstract the resources and provide a technology improvement factor. As all of you know, we can produce far more food today then we could 50 years ago.
What drives military commanders is supply and unit availability. Troops run out of ammo, food, weapons. Supply is far more important to a military commander than resources. Yes they are related, but if we want to focus this game on military aspects, then I vote for manufacturing and supply and move resources to abstraction.
Build bases that can be supplied and have transports that move supplies around. If you look at the battle for the atlantic and the pacific, it was all about getting the right amount of supplies to the right place at the right time. It was also about trying to stop those supply lines and trying to keep them open.
The large battles were based on having foward bases that contained enough supplies to support the big push forward. If the enemy was able to destroy the forward bases, the big pushes had to wait until the bases could be rebuilt and supplied.
This is the one area that abstract wargames miss out on, They presume that it is all about unlimited units that can be created and moved without cost to attack. This is true in many of the RTS games as they also become huge unit battles based on unlimited supply which is great fun I must say, but is complete fantasy and always will be. No matter which generation you live in, any war will be fought and won based on having enough materials and supply at the right place and at the right time to be effective.
With that said. I do enjoy RTS games and don't want EOS to become too complex. I do like the option to turn off resourcing and if there is a way to include supply and bases, it would be a new approach and a differentiator as we move this genre forward.
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Here's another enhancement request - what about resource stockpiles in cities that you loose when the city is captured? That'll put a twist on defending a city. Also, if we have stockpiles we're going to want to move them around.
Bases, what about engineers and building bases where we can get extra defensive bonuses and stockpile resources.
Another resource that would be useful is munitions. Factories should create munitions that can be stored in bases or transfered to other cities. Run out of munitions, can't fight.
Food for thought so to speak :-) I like the ability to create supply routes using transports for resupply. This would create a good use for subs and destroyers. What about trains on land?
I know, more complexity, but would definitely up the strategy elements.
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I had these same issues in the first release with saving games (this is not new). It was inconsistent when it happened and I was not able to repeat it such that I could provide specific feedback to Brit. I believe this is a bug. Brit if you have any mechanism we can help debug this with let us know. Such as turning on logging or something like that.
unit combat history
in Empires of Steel
Posted
I really like this idea. Good one Jonah. Definitely add this to the future feature pile Brit :-)