bartbert

My mind is certainly open to different ways of making the match-ups work better. However, I'm not sure I understand the point about the post-demo pilots causing bad match-ups. The demo pilots were limited to 100 XP. If that demo pilot were to continue as a "full version" pilot, he would start out at 100 XP and continue from there. Even if that pilot was showing a million XP on the web page Leader Board, he still would start out at 100 XP within the "Manage Pilots" screen in the game. When picking AI pilots, we look at the cumulative XP showing in the "Manage Pilots" screen, not what shows on the Leader Board. With regard to basing match-ups on the value of skills actually possessed instead of on cumulative XP, I would just like to throw a couple of things out there for you guys to think about. There are a lot of paths that a pilot can take from "newbie" to "uber" status. That is quite intentional. Some pilots will hoard their XP's until they can purchase that next great permanent skill. Others will spend the bulk of their XP on expendable skills that give them a quick return on their investment (particularly early in their careers). And of course there is a whole spectrum of choices in between these two extremes. What we found during our testing is that the pilots who made it to "uber" status (say 1500+ cumulative XP), will typically end up with roughly the same capabilities regardless of which path they took to get there. That is, they will have roughly the same number of permanent skills, but the mix of skills will vary somewhat. The reason they all end up with about the same number of permanent skills is because with each permanent skill that you purchase, the cost of the next permanent skill goes up exponentially. We did this because we didn't want to have a bunch of pilots who had every possible skill. The pilot who saves his XP and only buys permanent skills may "max out" on permanent skills at 1500 or 2000 XP. The pilot who buys a lot of expendable skills and occasionally buys a permanent skill may not "max out" until 3000 or 3500 XP. But they both hit a plateau sooner or later. I guess my point in all this is that whatever system we use to figure out match-ups, it should NOT be something that "forces" players down one path versus another. If a different system encourages players to try out different career strategies, that's a good thing. [ October 07, 2005, 03:53 PM: Message edited by: bartbert ]

I am currently testing a version of the game that should correct any problems around drawing cards from the deck (e.g., you should no longer see the IMS 2: Destroyed show up twice in a row, etc.) Hopefully it will be ready to put out on the server early next week.

Promotions are based on two factors: 1. The pilot must have accumulated the number of "Rank Points" required for the next rank. The rank points are earned based on the mission results (ie, a "Minor Victory" would provide more rank points than a "Draw"). 2. Once you have the required number of rank points for the next rank, there is a random percentage chance each time that pilot flies a mission that he will be promoted. The higher the rank, the lower the chance of being promoted. For example, I think the chance of being promoted to General is around 5%. So in your case, it sounds like your leader has the required number of rank points, but he just hasn't hit the random percentage yet. Perhaps he has pissed off his superior officer and is being passed over for promotion.

Yes, there should be a check box at the top of the screen. If you un-check the box, then they should no longer open when you start up the game.

The Wildcat has not been released yet. I'm not sure what the official release date is, but you should be hearing something pretty soon.

I've tweaked a couple of configuration settings to allow for a few more retries and longer timeouts. Once the server administrator is able to reboot the server, we'll see whether that helps cut down on disconnects.

The .NET framework is a runtime environment similar to the way Java works. The pros and cons will vary quite a bit depending on who you talk to, and whether they think Microsoft is the evil empire or not.

Those are good points, and it's something that we can certainly keep an eye on. If we start to see the stratification problem you mentioned, we can adjust the way match-ups are calculated. All those changes would be on the server, so with one update, we could get things back in line.

It's been awhile since I looked at it, but as I recall the pilot value is based on his XP divided by 33. I suppose that basing the point value on cumulative XP instead of purchased skills puts human pilots at something of a disadvantage relative to AI pilots because human pilots will tend to spend a lot more XP on non-permanent skills. But that is kind of intentional since it helps level the playing field (the AI does do some dumb things at times). I'm not sure if the aircraft point values are published anywhere. Maybe Dan knows. If not, we could put that information out somewhere for those who are interested.

That's odd that the demo version would work but the full version doesn't because they use pretty much the same code. Could you run a "dxdiag" command and send the results to difadmin@battlefront.com along with information about the type of internet connection you have (cable, dsl, wireless, etc.)? Hopefully we can figure out what's going on.

I can tell you that there is no intentional code that would allow the AI to "cheat". The AI draws randomly from the same deck as the players, and there is no code to make sure they get better cards than humans.

Do you still have the Demo version installed? If so, can are you still able to play online games with it?

Well, how about this for a solution that I could implement quickly: "Most Kills per Mission" and "Most XP per Mission" are calculated by taking the total number of Kills or XP (respectively), and dividing them by 3 or the total number of missions flown, whichever is higher. So whether you have flown 1, 2, or 3 missions, your score will be divided by 3. If you have flown more than 3 missions, your score will be divided by the number of missions flown. This change has been implemented, and did result in the leader being different.

Hmmm. A couple of questions: 1. Does this only happen on campaign games? Are you able to play a regular dogfight against the AI online? 2. Did you previously have the Demo version installed, and if so, were you able to play the Dukirk demo campaign?

It should increase the wingman's hand size by 1. So if the aircraft he's flying would normally provide 2 cards when the wingman attacks, he would get 3 cards instead. Is it possible that the opposing wingman had the "Sweep Tail" skill? If so, that would essentially cancel out the "Teamwork" skill.

Hmmm. That is a little bit baffling. I can't think of any reason why it would make any difference whether you access the web site via the lobby, or just opening up a browser manually. Do you have any browser toolbars/plugins installed? Go to Tools/Internet Options on your browser. Click on the "Programs" tab and then click the "Manage Add-ons..." button. There is a drop down list at the top of that form. Pick the item that says, "Add-ons currently loaded in Internet Explorer". You might try disabling some of the items in the list, at least temporarily, to see if it resolves the problem.

It should be that many cards over the course of the entire dogfight, not per round. A couple of other players have reported problems where the AI is getting more than the expected number of extra cards, so there may be a bug there that I need to look into.

No, you shouldn't have to re-register. It seems like someone else reported a problem logging onto the web site awhile back, but I can't recall the exact circumstances. I thought it had something to do with the browser they were using (Firefox maybe?) or perhaps it was just that when they tried to log on from work they couldn't, but when they tried from home it did. Is there another computer that you can try to login from?

It looks like you don't have the .NET framework installed. Go to the Windows "Start" button on the task bar. Then "All Programs/Battlefron/Down in Flames Demo/Install .NET Framework". This will launch the installer.

Hmmm. I'm not sure why that would be happening, but I sent you an e-mail with a possible work around.

Go to "C:\Program Files\Battlefront\Down In Flames DEMO\bin" and find the file "pilot.db" and copy it to "C:\Program Files\Battlefront\Down in Flames\bin". That should be all you need to do in order to move your pilots over.

Good input. I'm keeping a list, and with the full version, we can periodically push out updates that will have these kinds of fixes in them.

I think it shows up on the Windows start program menu: "Start/All Programs/Battlefront/Down in Flames/DiF Manual". It should show with a PDF icon.

If you check out the Credits screen (under the Help menu in the lobby), you will see that Bob "Tomb" Jones is one of the play testers. So, he has had a full version of the game for quite some time.

No offense taken. The cards are the heart of the game, so if there are problems there, we want to get them addressed as soon as possible.