Game Updates- A litany of problems

[bjarmson]

It's appreciated that you guys are updating like crazy, but the last couple of updates (1.1.3 & 1.1.4) have made the game less playable (at least in standalone) and the scoring weird. My main complaint used to be the vulnerability of dropships while making their landings. Gee, for the good old days.

Dropship evasion seems to have opened all sorts of problems (the living-dead dropships of 1.1.3) and despite your claims of having fixed it, I've still seen turtled dropships. They also seem to have lost all ability to determine where they should make a drop. In two games of Dead Gulch I've watched as dozens of vehicles got dropped into the gulch. Sometimes dropships come down virtually ontop of several enemy units or drop on impossibly steep slopes or inaccessable areas. And the Cobra AA missle seems to have no range limits, if the intial firing takes place when the dropship is within its already vast range (I've had several dropships killed well outside the max-range indicated, when this happened).

Now 1.1.4 gives us mortar barrages like WWI offensive artillery preparations, only with uncanny accuracy by the bots (who seem to be able to target unseen flag carrying units and nonmoving emplacements with godlike precision). Some games end with hundreds of huge craters. I'd appreciate knowing why a single mortar round can make a crater about 100m across and 50m deep, yet it takes 9 hits with them to take out an AAD tower. There are so many huge explosions taking place all the time that virtually the only way to survive is to keep going at max speed all the time. Of course, this makes oversight of your bots impossible and removes tactics from the game. Who has time for tactics when you're rushing around madly trying to keep from getting killed by the uncannily accurate artillery barrages.

And what's with the scoring in CTF games? I used to have relatively close scores like 32-24. Now the bot side seems to be able to ring up 99 points on about 23 kills. I have not a clue. In a game recently the bots rang up well over 100 points without a flag score, I had about 24 points. Please explain the new scoring system.

My humble suggestion. Stop with the tweaking upgrades and work to return this game to stability and playability. No more additions or gimmicks until things become relatively stable. When I started playing 1.0, things worked well. Sure we all had suggestions "to make the game better," but it was very playable like it was. Each update since seems designed to make the game more complicated, but also adds more gliches, which manifest themselves in all sorts of weirdness (I used to play all games to their end, now I stop a lot of them because some gliche has rendered the game unplayable-like having all my bots useless in turtled dropships in 1.1.3). I'd like to see the game evolve more slowly. You've made 5 updates in about 2 months and they are causing the game to spin out of control. Updating is not a virtue when it results in a less playable game (and in my opinion that's what has happened with 1.1.3 & 1.1.4). You've got the foundation of a great game here, don't ruin it by over tweaking.

Oh, and please, please, get us an updated game manual. I'm tired of trying to suss out all the changes on the job. The original manual is outdated, obsolete, and really wasn't up to snuff in the first place. A new one is long overdue.

[ August 30, 2006, 11:52 PM: Message edited by: bjarmson ]

[ClaytoniousRex]

1.1.5 is a "fixes only" release. No new features will be added until all of the serious problems are fixed.

[Dark_au]

A lot of what you are saying is related to problems I've been trying to point out. Without bieng inflamatory the game design itself appears to be one of the major flaws. The "Why" of most of the equiptment is not really apparent. Plus some of the base elements of the game appear to lend themselves to this sort of problem and the nessecity for run-around type playing.

First and foremost the scales are all wrong. The mission maps need to be larger scaled to allow room to manaeouver The time scale for the objective needs to be longer so that attrition can play its part and so desisive actions can be planned in more detail and without such a frentic pace. The objective themselves need to be made more sensible and more of a challenge to achieve rather than just scoring for one enemy unit. Objectives scoring should be more based on relative strengths in the zone rather than just allowing a single unit to score. Objective scores also need to be able to change quicker to allow for the ebb and flow of attack and counter attack.

The dropships themselves aren't believable. When you give a drop order imediately it is there in the upper atmosphere. What are all these friendly and enemy dropships just hanging around together in orbit over this 25x25km area?. Explain the physics behind them bieng able to achieve geosyncronos orbit only a few KM up. Anyone who would know anything about orbital mechanics could tell you that Geosync orbits are only possible at very high orbit. If its coming straight from the liveship then what are there 2 liveships up there within the 25km square and they aren't shooting each other or each others dropships. Someone is going to say Oh but its Sci-fi. Well if they have some magic antigravity why don't tanks have it. If they are in proper orbits then what about some realistic times for arrival.

Tanks.. Calling the Thor a Main battle tank is a joke. An MBT should be something absolutely terryifying. If its a slow behemoth like the Thor then it should be double all the dimensions, Armed with a 300mm Mass driver with scoops under the body which it scoops raw material and exposes it to the heat and magnetism of the reactor before kicking it out at high speed from a linear accelerator. The impact of this should be enough to turn a shrike to goo, They should not be so puny that even infantry aren't fearful of them. Each side should get 1 or 2 of them. If they are going to be the current size then they should be faster and more agile. Its gun shopuld be finger of death to most things lighter than itself. As it is the Appollo is more of an MBT than the thor.

Artillery from the ground is dumb. If you can drop pods from orbit so quickly and easily then why would you need a ground based arty unit which kicks the round up so high. Why not simply fire plasma bolts the way they drop pods.

The infantry should have HE grenades instead of ATG for use against infantry. AT should be a specialist job not just the standard riflemans job.

[bjarmson]

I hear what you're saying Dark_au, but we have to work with what we have. I've made my dissatisfaction with many on the AFVs known in other threads.

I think the multiple dropship format should be changed, at least some of the time. One side should be the defensive and only able to use Deployment Zones as reinforcement areas. The other should be the protagonist (aggressor) and have dropships at his disposal. It makes sense because a lot of these resources are from planets who should make up the defensive force (where do they get dropships from). This would end the multiple dropships from both sides chaos that the battlefield area too often becomes. The aggressor side will have the edge in mobility and deployment capability. I think this would remove a lot of the anarchic chaos that too often happens now and allow for more tactics and planning. I'm hoping the game becomes more than just a shooter with tanks.

I'd also like to eventually see both sides with different equipment (plantary forces could have larger amounts of inferior equipment).

But that is for the future. What needs to be done now is return the game to stability and playability. And that is what Clay seems to be shooting for in next upgrade.

[Alexander SquidLord Williams]

The problem for the defender as the Objective games are currently designed, should it be set so that defenders have to reinforce from zones only, is that the attacker gets a massive advantage, in that they can reinforce directly on-site once they dislodge the main force of defenders. The defenders get stuck a good 2min drive away, which is forever in the frenetic pace of DT's hyper-mobile combat. Combine that with the new affinity the bots have for the Thor-HM, and you get a defender's nightmare. Even with a Hermes and a Bacchus, there are only so many inbounds you can take out, and the attacker can (and generally does) use its superior mobility and force concentration capabilities to swarm the defenses from multiple directions.

With equal numbers of directing forces on each side, immobile set-piece combat is just impossible.

If the defending force has access to dropships, the difference in force concentration speeds goes away, somewhat. If the defender were limited to dropping within X metres of controlled facilities, there'd be reason to hold onto those far-flung facilities when they get dislodged. If the defender's reinforcement zone is smack over the defended territory, then we can model, somewhat better, the idea that they are there in force, despite how many elements are "live" at a given moment. Being 2min+ away in a predictible direction once dropships are expended is murder for the defender. If, during the initial defense, the defender is using the local DZ and saving their DS while the attackers are burning theirs, if dislodged, the defenders can switch to DS outside the umbrella to re-mass and re-push in.

It makes sense to use DS as the primary way to move vehicles around the battlefield, even on a local basis, if they're the high-speed drop-anywhere heavy transport answer. Where do they come from? Next area over, probably a better fortified, better air/space-defended facility or city that explains why our forces are where they are, hitting the fringe areas.

Random scenario idea: The target is one of the inevitable big Hellbore-class artefact planet-based orbital defenses, largely automated. Both sides get no dropships, because the local airspace is deadly because of the AAD on the thing. Truly monsterous, and its object animation has it hurling massive bolts into the sky of scintilating energy every few minutes, trying to hit the orbiting LS. Defenders have several patches around its base they can spawn from; underground tunnels, etc. Attackers have gone high-mobility and are coming in across two entire map edges with Apollos, Paladins and Shrikes. It is, of course, necessary for the attackers to capture several facilities (non-AAD) to disable the orbital cannon. The Defender simply has to keep that from happening. Let's say drop pods are available for both sides, just to keep it interesting (ballistic-insertions on both sides, coming in too low and fast to trigger AAD ... much.

(No, I have no specific plot in mind to lead to that, uh uh.)

Objective scores, as is, are a bit whacked in terms of how fast they advance. My suspicion is that they need to be slowed to a rate equal to how many "points" in vehicles that you have in the necessary locations. Base it on chassis, Thors > Apollos > Paladin > Shrikes > Infy. The defender gets an advantage there, but that's as it should be. Its hard to get and keep a Thor in a base against an agressive flanking force, they just don't maneuver fast enough.

The dropships themselves seem like a reasonable abstraction. Waiting for a 20min orbital transfer before you can get back on the ground again, or a 6min if you don't care about impact speeds, is just no fun. And while others may eschew that aspect of it, I think fun is one of those things that make a game popular. Crazy, I know. Steel Beasts makes their compromise by letting a commander jump from element to element, and gives them multiple units of elements to command, thus, they're not out of the action for minutes after one bad engagement. Since DT doesn't have that going on, as yet, the alternative is to get the reinforcements on the ground and in control without much of a wait.

So, in game pseudo-justification? Linear-rail boosting away from the DS in high orbit to lower atmo, with several DS in orbit, evasive, at any given time for an area. The pool of elements you get to choose to drop is what is on-station and ready to drop as designated for your battle. If its considered an important battle, you'll have scads of dropships and elements ready to go, wheeling and probably dueling overhead where you cab't see. If not, you get skimped on DS assets, vehicular assets, and you have to make do. So delivery isn't from orbit ... it's from high-atmo resource pools. Thus why there's a limited number of things.

This also suggests a new option, that is, ordering up a shiny new Thor from the LS ... assuming you can wait the 6min until its ready to go. Deploy now with limited avail vs deploy later with exactly what you want. Better hope to Hell that ship comes down somewhere safe that wasn't just Cobra'd.

Oh, and Dark ... we have anti-matter cushioned tanks; the Tempest and the Hurricane. Apparently, its borderline lostech, which is why the whole force isn't a high-mobility hover force. That, and they're fragile as glass. Reading the backstory is good.

I have no idea where you get your idea of "what an MBT" is. The modern military surely doesn't see the Abrams or Leo2 as a crazy monster that can stomp anything it sees. Its an integrated part of a combined arms force, because it does many things well, and some things but poorly. They have a tendency to be very pricy for a big bang, which is exactly what DT has them doing. Three Thor hull-down on a target area makes things moving through that area fear the finger of God in an ugly way. But they're vulnerable on the flanks to infantry and anti-tank IFVs. ... just like an Abrams or Leo2.

For someone so comfortable impuning my skills with Steel Beasts, you seem to have missed the strategic implications of the environment provided on the battlefield.

I, honestly, don't see how you can reconcile wanting to simultaneously have "more modern-like tactics" and "have MBT's be the finger-of-God to anything lighter than them." You might make the contention that vehicles in DT need to be higher tech, which I can only respond to with vague hand-waving and grunting about lostech, because its part of the suspension of disbelief for the setting. You might make the contention you'd like tactical choices to be more like modern doctrine, at which point I'd have to suggest the elements would have to be more like the capabilities of modern vehicles to have reasonable reason for modern doctrine.

But to suggest both simultaneously, in the same post? I'm not even sure how to answer that, in a real sense. Truly.

Clay's said that 1.1.5 will be a stability release, and I think its a good time for that. I'm content with that. We need to get the things out there working as intended, before we can decide if we like them or not. The tac interface and informational displays need some love, too, just for better situational awareness and ease of use. And, in the meantime, the active user-base (ie. us) need to work on the wiki as a better source of tactical and strategic understanding for new players, because writing documentation is hard. Try it professionally sometime; its a thankless, stressful job no one is ever satisfied with. Breaking it down across the active community is something that should serve to get more, faster, better.

TBG has their marching orders. We have ours.

[Dark_au]

Re read what I said. I said IF the Thor is going to be a lumbering behemoth. It should be bigger and scarier or it should be more agile and faster. A tank should be a terrifying prospect, part of their role is psychological. An infantry man should walk in fear of a tank not just chase them around.

Would you want to be in a brdm facing a M1 while you are out in the open?. The similarity between the BRDM ATGM or the Hummer with tow and the shrike are obvious. Neither of them would want to be in the open to either. Most assuredly a finger of death or the gunner doesn't know what he is doing. Difference between any modern tank and the thor is its slow speed. A current tank like the Leo2, T-80 or M1 is a fast, agile creature. The thor is more like a WW2 Jagdtiger a slow cumbersome cobbled together item that isn't really the battlefield superiority which is needed.

[bboyle]

Originally posted by Dark_au:

Re read what I said. I said IF the Thor is going to be a lumbering behemoth. It should be bigger and scarier or it should be more agile and faster. A tank should be a terrifying prospect, part of their role is psychological. An infantry man should walk in fear of a tank not just chase them around.

A thor...properly handled, is terrifying to infantry and isn't easy to chase around without the proper use of cover.

[adzling]

wow i'm really impressed (and happy) to see that you're time out has raised your level of discourse darky.

some really good points there.

i wholeheartedly agree that the Thor is nowhwere near as scary (or effective) a tank as it should be.

An M1 hauls ass and that's with a gas turbine engine let alone an anti-matter drive!

In my experience inf could care less about a thor, i know it doesn't scare me as much as a bot-driven 20mm paladin.

and that just doesn't feel right.

The turret traverse speed and slow drive speed combined with super flat side and rear armor of simply massive dimensions make it easier to kill a thor with inf than a smaller fast moving paladin.

a ring of those hammer-slammer type claymore defensive measures would help add survivability and credibility to the thor as an MBT (against both atgms and inf) but more important is the armor.

When an inf carried rpg can EASILY knock out an MBT from the side or rear almost every time then IMHO it's NOT an MBT.

It's a tank destroyer with a turret.

Look at all the hits m1's are taking from rpg's in Iraq and still surviving.

I say beef the speed, armor AND add the claymore-type atgm/inf point defense and then the Thor will at last be the MBT it's meant to be.

Realistic physics notwithstanding an accurate hit from a thor should simply shred a shrike, destroy it occupants and toss the whole mess down the road while it burns and rolls.

As it is i've pumped multiple rounds into a shrike and watched it sit there and continue to fire those atgms at me.

Perhaps it can't move, perhaps it's driver has a headache, mebbe he lost all his tires but that damn thing is still firing his atgm at me.

Picture an m1 hitting a jeep cherokee with a single round and tell me that fugger is in any way shape or form still functional.

My main reason for building the Mjolnir and and nemesis was to bring some facsimile of logical afv design to the game.

sloped armor and all.

once i get the texturing issues worked out we'll see if this helps out somewhat..

course i'm still waiting for those camo textures from the developers.....

I'm glad to see Clay is spending his time to right the wrongs of 1.1.4 and 1.1.3 before introducting any more changes.

I simply have not played it much at all the past two weeks what with the bot arty and the cobra-kills-all dropships.

[Jack Carr]

I'm actually glad to see so many of you chiming in on certain game peculiarities. For a second I thought I was the only one who found the game to have gotten a bit out of hand. I too have experienced some problems since the DT battlefield's latest growth spurt. The good thing though is that the developer seems willing to attempt to address these issues. Even though I listed several things that I saw as problems since 1.1.3 in another DT thread, I am still playing the game and am confident that the developer is trying to get it right.

[poesel]

I agree with most of this thread. One thing though: I get the feeling from the messages that people feel that the cause of the problem is too many updates and that we are mere beta testers.

I think not so. To have the opportunity to activly participate in the development of a commercial grade game is a great thing. Where else do you get the chance to express your wishes for a game and actually get them fullfilled?

Yes we are beta testers but I like it. It means things are still in a flow and new things will happen.

We should have even more updates but they should have smaller changes. This way we can find bugs faster. Apart from that, I'm quite happy with the way of things here.

[konstantine]

What's this "hammer slammer" everyone's talking about? Is it like the Nahverteidigungswaffe?

Otherwise I agree with Poesel. And with regards to the Thor versus infantry...main battle tanks have been close assaulted by infantry since WWII. Granted perhaps more often in an urban setting, but that's why we have jet packs, ATGs and various support weapons types. Iraq is both a bad and good comparison. Abrams have been KO'd by close assault, just not that many--either way they're not indestructible by any means, and that's versus a very low-tech insurgency. Hizbollah didn't seem to have any trouble with the Merkava. Take something like the Kornet: fast forward a couple hundred years, and I can imagine a hand held version employable at close range. Correct me if I'm wrong, but there is no modern battle tank that isn't killable by an infantry deployed weapon. And as far as the MBT psychological issue...according to the backstory we are deploying "elite military units", "fearsome soldiers" who fight with "audacity".

Basically it comes down to employing an integrated defense (this is why few Abrams have been toasted in Iraq): MBTs can easily be supported by 20mm Paladins and infantry. When Thors are easily killed they are most often bots sunning themselves far from any proper support.

But I agree that the Thor should be faster (so should the Apollo) and should kill the Shrike with one HE/HEAT shot. Keep in mind however...the Shrike is pretty big. Stand an infantry next to it: it's not the same size as a Cherokee or a Hummer.

[bjarmson]

I'm glad to see my original post has evoked some interesting comments about the direction of the game. Please try to direct your comments toward that and not whether the Thor is a real MBT (start a thread about that if you want). Also about becoming in essence beta testers, I suppose that us who have played the game from its public release (or even before like many who post) don't mind, but think how some poor soul who came in at 1.1.3 or 1.1.4 must feel like. He likely isn't going to be telling all his friends what a great game it is if he can't get it to play satisfactorily or repeatedly gets killed by bot mortars before he can even orient himself on the battlefield. The game has to be fun, and to be fun it must be playable to more than just long time users. Think of games like Starcraft, etc, (which I grant are not quite the same as DT), you don't just have the mindless clash of opposing forces for no little apparent reason. You must struggle to gain an objective for some particular gain and using correct tactics plays an vital role.

About my comments for a defensive vs. an aggressor, they were sort of off the top of my head. Alexander ... obviously brings out some of the shortcomings of my suggestion. It was made because, to my mind, objective games have become too chaotic. Multiple dropships from both sides landing helter skelter everywhere and AFVs from both sides coming from all directions without any purpose other than to reach that objective dot don't really make for a satisfying game, in my opinion (the game really becomes nothing but a tank-based, run and gun shooter at that point). Objective games need to be more complex in their goals. Defensive positions should be constructed and utilized and several areas should have value (sometimes sequentially, sometimes altogether). And I have no problem with when the aggressor takes an objective, the defense has to muster reinforcements from 2 minutes away. After a certain time frame or when they have lost the objective, the defense could be given a counterattacking force twice the size of the dropship's aggressor force. Would make for an interesting later stage of the game (having to hold against greater numbers till you extract what you came for, etc).