War of the Worlds on CMMODS

[Moonslayer]

No one would have believed in the last four months or so of the twenty-first century that this mod was being written keenly and slowly by intelligences greater than a cactus and yet as interesting as one too; that as Hubert busied himself about his various projects he was scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as Normal Dude with a bitmap might scrutinise the transient shadows that swarm and multiply in a jpeg image. With infinite complacency men went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire in SC2. It is possible that the players of Hearts of Iron do the same. No one gave a thought to the older members of this forum as sources of SC2 mods, or thought of them only to dismiss the idea of creativity from them as impossible or improbable. It is curious to recall some of the mental habits of those departed days. At most terrestrial men fancied there might be other men upon the boards, perhaps inferior to themselves and ready to welcome a missionary enterprise. Yet across the gulf of cyber-space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this game with envious eyes, and slowly and surely crafted their mods for us.

*Cue music*

Yep, it's here. Had enough of beating up poor old Fascists? Now it is time to beat up on the non-humans. Want to defend Earth from technologically superior enemy? Or do you just fancy beating up on poor ol' peeps? You decide.

This mod has taken over four months of my life to create so please download it and give me me your thoughts. I haven't tried it pvp yet so I am particularly interested in hearing how these go. There is a fairly extensive readme included with the files so please read that for extra background.

I hope you all enjoy this one... I certainly have enjoyed creating it.

[ April 17, 2007, 02:01 PM: Message edited by: Moonslayer ]

[Agent Smith]

65mb :eek:

:cool:

[Agent Smith]

Originally posted by Agent Smith:

65mb :eek:

:cool:

-ULLAH!

[Moonslayer]

Yeah... there are one or two new bits in there

[Kuniworth]

My reflections on the scenario:

I love it, very good indeed.

GOOD

- Music and sound is outstanding, did I notice some Waterloo-artillery sound?

- Humour is nice, you showed that it is underrated in wargaming - love it!

- units are cool

BAD

- Shouldnt heat-rays be more powerful?

- Martians are too weak, they advance too slow. Maybe you should lower human defence or reduce number of units?

- Thunderchild is cool, but what about other iron clads? Not a big deal, just wondering?

- Graphics - the almost neon colors of green and red are terrible. Sorry but I can't stand it, my eyes are bleeding!

In all very enjoyable.

[Blashy]

Cool units, very nice details of the environment.

The graphics, they are all so similar that it makes it difficult on the eyes.

I would have the GREEN grass and darker green.

More to come.

[Moonslayer]

Originally posted by Kuniworth:

My reflections on the scenario:

I love it, very good indeed.

GOOD

- Music and sound is outstanding, did I notice some Waterloo-artillery sound?

- Humour is nice, you showed that it is underrated in wargaming - love it!

- units are cool

BAD

- Shouldnt heat-rays be more powerful?

- Martians are too weak, they advance too slow. Maybe you should lower human defence or reduce number of units?

- Thunderchild is cool, but what about other iron clads? Not a big deal, just wondering?

- Graphics - the almost neon colors of green and red are terrible. Sorry but I can't stand it, my eyes are bleeding!

In all very enjoyable.

Cheers for the feedback... always welcomed.

Yes I pinched some sounds from waterloo... I should give you some credit in the readme (I honestly meant to but forgot when I wrote it). I will ensure this is done for the first update.

Heat rays are devastating once your units are in good supply and you are using the best tripods. One hit is often sufficient to wipe out a unit. I did increase their effect just before releasing it as they were a little weak. The problem is that you need to give the humans a little chance of holding back the invaders to make a game of it

I wanted to include the Thunderchild for obvious reasons but didn't want to give the humans too many tripod-busting units. I guess more could be given to the human AI on harder difficulty settings though.

I wanted to give the game a bright sci-fi style appearance so the colours are meant to be bright. I suppose toning them down for the first patch wouldn't hurt too much

Glad you like it... I wanted to showcase what the editor could do and feel that it sends a message of just how customisable the game can be.

[Moonslayer]

Originally posted by Blashy:

Cool units, very nice details of the environment.

The graphics, they are all so similar that it makes it difficult on the eyes.

I would have the GREEN grass and darker green.

More to come.

Thanks for the feedback (thus far).

The graphics are meant to be a little similar as this is a city it takes place in and there are limited slots to use up. However there are a few spare graphics slots that could be utilised for extra buildings graphics... I will look into this for the first patch.

Another criticism of my choice of colours eh? I am seeing the pattern and will change this in the first patch

[Retributar]

Heyyy!!!...im finally settled in at the 'Athabasca Camp'!,...and for the 1st time in my life they actually provide the internet for/to the room's ["Already paid for with modem too!"]. As well there's a telephone & a 20" T.V. set in here with free cable-T.V.!. Meal's & room maintenance are also part of the package!,...including Busing to the Job-Site and back!.

To the subject at hand now!!!,... im not familiar with "Thunderchild",...but another 'Dreadnought' in the H.G. Well's Classic was infact called..."DREADNOUGHT"!. So,...if more battlewagon's are needed, maybey that name can be used???.

I just finished getting here to the Camp, including registering for the room and unloading my van to move my stuff to my quarter's,... so ive had enough for now!,...it's time to crack open a beer and unwind a little!. There is a 4:30AM start for breakfast, then at 6:00AM and again at 6:15AM the Work-Buses leave for the 'Albian Sands Construction Project'.

Yuuukkk!....oh well, what the hell!. Ohhh!...God!,...i 'Love My Job'!.

[Terif]

Good work and a totally different scenario - makes fun to play .

Here some feedback :

Against the AI it is no problem to win with either side on highest difficulty level - but with the human side mainly because of all those refugees runing around, liberating the key points and keeping enemy units busy... .

As Martian it is a clear walk through, usually within 2 weeks, only a few strength points lost, not the slightest chance for the humans - martians simply wipe them out from the distance with concentrated firepower .

As human the martian flying machines are much too strong and range is too high - they destroy 2-3 human units each turn with their high range and can´t be attacked. All martian ground forces got killed and humans achieved victory - but also every single human unit got wiped out by the flying machines...mutual destruction, but no martian ground units alive to occupy the empty buildings .

Concerning play balance:

Between 2 human players at the moment the martians will clearly win, no chance for the human race to survive...

Main problem are the flying machines: range should be halved and also their attack values (or their numbers halved..). At the moment they have free shots and can´t be attacked since they are too far away.

Another thing are the too few human units - numbers should at least be doubled so they have a slight chance, better trippled (or the martian unit numbers reduced ). Usually the martians will stay out of human range anyway and kill them from the distance since they have a much larger strike and spotting range - but even in close combat the humans are no match for the martians when they are commanded by a human player that knows the basics of how to attack .

[TaoJah]

Everytime I open this tread, I get spammed for a userid and password from ccmods.

Is there a way to fix this, so that non-members (or people that don't want to store the data of their membership) can see this tread without the popup ?

[Kuniworth]

Originally posted by TaoJah:

Everytime I open this tread, I get spammed for a userid and password from ccmods.

Is there a way to fix this, so that non-members (or people that don't want to store the data of their membership) can see this tread without the popup ?

TaoJah...are'nt you the guy that Biowizard accused of cheating?

[Gorgin]

I am getting CCMODS demand for a userid and pw too on this thread. What is that all about?

[FerrisB]

The demand for a UserID & PW is just to see the pic Moonslayer posted.

(It`s located in a protected area so you need to log in to see it)

MOONSLAYER

I`ve dll your mod two times, both downloads were "invalid" (?) Is it hosted somewhere else?

[Night]

Sounds great what is the link?

[Moonslayer]

Sorry about the login requests folks... I didn't realise that linking to the cmmods pic would cause that. I will replace the cmmods pic at a later date but for now it is gone.

@FerrisB

No idea what could be causing that problem... maybe a cmmods problem? It is hosted there.

@Terif

Many thanks for the feedback... glad you liked it. The AI is always going to be beatable, I agree. I am surprised even you managed to wipe out the land forces of the martians as they were pretty unbeatable for me and I thought I knew the mod backwards! I guess you are a cut above just about everyone else so I don't expect this to be a major problem The martians are supposed to be technologically superior to the humans so it should not be a fair fight. All the human player can do is slow down the advance sufficiently to make the martians run out of time. There was never any intention for the humans to be able to win militarily (Although it can be done on every level of difficulty except the highest in my experience). I was toying with the idea of giving the human AI more units on higher difficulty levels... I think I shall do that on the first patch. The martian ai gets twice the air units than the 'human' martian player does so I don't think they are a problem in pvp... however I am prepared to be talked round on this and any issue if players actually play it pvp and find the air units too overpowering.

Edit: I have just played very aggressively (a la Terif?) as the Martians on highest difficulty and agree that it is a walk in the park with the game being won by 25th June... almost a week early. I will weaken the air units and lower their range as you suggest. I think an extra regiment for the human AI for every difficulty level would be a good plan too.

[ April 17, 2007, 01:50 PM: Message edited by: Moonslayer ]

[Hubert Cater]

Moonslayer, finally had a chance to take a quick look and I have to say the mod work is a fantastic adaptation using the SC2 engine... love the sounds too

Hubert

[TaoJah]

Originally posted by Kuniworth:

TaoJah...are'nt you the guy that Biowizard accused of cheating?

Hmmm ? Who, me ? When ? I don't know anything about this !

[Terif]

Yep, the AI makes a lot of fundamental mistakes - otherwise it would be impossible to wipe the martian ground units out :

- marsh terrain is used for the streets so when attacking from streets combat values are halved - the AI doesn´t care, humans should and move their units off the streets before attacking

- martians have a larger strike and spotting range, so all they have to do is to kill the humans from the distance...so except for the first turn the humans nearly never get an opportunity to even fire at human commanded martians. But the AI controlled martians go into hand to hand combat with their tripods so the human artillery can blow them to pieces.

- this is increased by the AI tendency to attack the wrong units (= entrenched scout units) and to go directly via the streets against its target building while ignoring the artillery and other stuff entrenched in the area around it. So the artillery can attack them from 1-2 tiles distance and do maximum damage (like rockets efficiency decreases with distance, so the nearer the enemy, the higher the damage).

- Also the AI only sends small groups of units, group after group, so they can be killed one after one. When all ground combat units are destroyed, it finally sends the HQs too into suicide mission .

- Nevertheless all human combat units will be destroyed later by the undestructable flying machines. But the main mistake of the AI is it has no anti-partisan functionality and doesn´t keep garrison units at the conquered important buildings (can be changed via scripts), so the refugees running around can finally liberate them all before the martians die .

Summary:

Defeating the martian AI makes a lot of fun - here it is crucial to place your units at the right place to have a chance against the numerically and technically far superior enemy .

Weakening the flying machines and halving their attack range will make it possible to attack them too and make it even more interesting .

The human AI needs either at least 30-40 more units to make it a challenge or combat values/tech need a change . The same applies for Human vs Human games - a human martian opponent won´t do all the heavy mistakes of the AI, so the human side needs a large boost to have a chance holding the martians off long enough .

[Moonslayer]

Wow, Terif, superb feedback thanks!

I had totally overlooked the swamp modifier to combat when I used them as road terrain... poor judgement from me. I may try and change this in the next version.

The martians should garrison the objectives as it has been scripted and in all the testing I have done they do garrison. I may have to relook at the scripts to see if I have messed them up somehow. Thanks for the heads up on this.

I have decided that I will be adding two further regiments (ie 12 units) to the basic human AI and pvp with an extra regiment per difficulty level (ie 36 extra units at highest difficulty setting). This should help and follows your opinion (for which I have the highest regard).

This kind of feedback is just what I need and far more than I could have hoped for... many thanks.

@Hubert

Many thanks for the kind words... If my mod is any good then it is only because you have created such a fine engine to work with. Now while I have your attention there are a few ideas I would like you to consider... Hubert? Where did he go?

Edit: I have found an error in all the Martian garrison scripts... no idea how that got past the proofreader... I'll sack mysel... er... him tomorrow. Apologies to all.

I will do a quick update at the weekend to fix this and add in the extra units for the poor ol' humies. If I get time I will have a go at lowering the colour intensity too

[ April 18, 2007, 03:50 PM: Message edited by: Moonslayer ]

[Night]

IMO:

As The Martains I found the best and easiest way to destroy the enemy was not a direct attack, which can get bogged down even with these advantages, but by using my advantage in manuever to encircle large portions of humans. The first main group you encounter to your east I simply went underneth and cut them off, then basicly did the same thing for the rest of the game. I ultimatly won only lossing 1 tripod to the Thunderchild. I think maybe the humans should have a more spread out defence (although it takes away from the surprise factor) so they are not so easily cut off. I Even crossed the river before taking the Palace and attacked to the east cutting off all forces in a large pocket, after that was over they barley had anything left to stop me.

[Moonslayer]

@Night

I think the modifications I am making to the human forces (and slight alterations to the aliens ;p) will reduce this problem a little. Should go up onto cmmods this weekend. Many thanks for the feedback.

[Night]

BTW I didn't mention I love the mod. Good originality and well done.

Sadly I think the SC2 AI kind of takes away from it :/

[Moonslayer]

Originally posted by Night:

BTW I didn't mention I love the mod. Good originality and well done.

Sadly I think the SC2 AI kind of takes away from it :/

Many thanks. From what I hear the next patch may help out the AI... maybe even give the computer a chance to win

[Kuniworth]

Originally posted by Terif:

- marsh terrain is used for the streets so when attacking from streets combat values are halved - the AI doesn´t care, humans should and move their units off the streets before attacking

Terif, where did you find this info? I can't find anything in the manual.