Jump to content

Non-bug Feedback Request


ClaytoniousRex

Recommended Posts

  • Replies 262
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

Originally posted by Ruud:

This is just an request. I really like that the preferences are saved in your homedir. But would you mind placing them in ~/.dropteam/ or something? Because having those files just in ~/ makes everything very distracting.

Yes, please consider!

Best regards,

Thomm

Link to comment
Share on other sites

A small feature request: disable "Cannot take control because you are currently dropping." message when dropping jammers/turrets etc and trying to take control of a bot. This will speed up the command interface, and make some things less frustrating. While making things less frustrating isn't always good, in this case I think it is smile.gif

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The drop ships always drop facing north. This can be annoying sometimes when the first thing you have to do is turn around (under fire). Couldn´t they drop towards the objective? That way the vehicle unloads with the thickest armour facing against they enemy.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Couldn´t they drop towards the objective? That way the vehicle unloads with the thickest armour facing against they enemy.
Yes, they certainly should. Maybe a better rule would be "toward the greatest spottable concentration of enemy units" or something, but I agree with the idea!
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Two things I've observed:

Drop ships can't extract an upside-down vehicle. When using a Command track, I constantly flip because I'm busy with the Tac Display. I shouldn't try to read the map while driving. :D

It would be nice with a progress bar in the Command vehicle to see how far facility capturing is progressing when bots or other players are doing the capturing.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

i also think that apollo needs at least 1 more zoom level. it's pretty hard to shoot with it on long distance, compared to the thor....

anyway i wonder what is the usuall first zoom level. to me it seems pretty low, not more than 3x. if the vehicles had more realistic zoom levels (e.g. 4x and 12x), there wouldn't be the need to make the vehicles 2 times bigger than they should be (now some buildings look very small).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Extreme zoom levels and very fine angles (hard to get the mouse to even point at it) are often a problem in 3d games. The scale should only really apply to ballistics and maybe groundspeed - the vehicles look to be in appropriate scale in comparison to each other and the buildings. (the ATGM on the tower matches the vehicles, for instance)

As your monitor displays an 80 degree view (or, whatever it was, don't recall at the moment) it causes a huge distortion and a 'objects are closer than they appear' effect - can give the appearence as being 2x "unzoomed".

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Also, to add to that, you'd be making what is now 6000m half that - distance rendering artifacts and longer viewranges aren't going to be very fun, either. ;)

I worked on a (infantry) realism mod for a very old game for a time, and we ran into many of the same problems - unfortunately, I don't think this is one place where 'making it real' will be very feasable.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I can't help but wonder how big infantry will appear considering how large the vehicles are. At the moment the paladins back doors look like they could fit at least two fire teams (although the spec on the website says only one).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Originally posted by yurch:

Extreme zoom levels and very fine angles (hard to get the mouse to even point at it) are often a problem in 3d games. The scale should only really apply to ballistics and maybe groundspeed - the vehicles look to be in appropriate scale in comparison to each other and the buildings. (the ATGM on the tower matches the vehicles, for instance)

the AA towers look fine, but the barracks or what are those small unindentifiable buildings look tiny. yes the vehicles look to be in appropriate scale compared to each other, because everyone thinks of them as if they had normal sizes.

i also wonder how big will infantry be. if they will be in 2x scale, then the effects of the 2x scale are:

1) things look closer than they are (or on the other hand are easier to spot with lower magnification)

2) gunnery is easier (bigger targets)

if the scale would be normal and not 2x, effects would be:

1) things would seem to be closer to their real distance. smaller, harder to spot vehicles are easily solved by more realistic zoom levels.

2) harder gunnery. not such a big problem, because the projectiles are already much faster than in real life (e.g. AP is 3km/s (if i'm correct) vs 1.8km/s in real life)

i think that mouse sensitivity should change depending on the zoom level, that should remove the "very fine angles" problem.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Originally posted by RIPper_SVK:

the AA towers look fine, but the barracks or what are those small unindentifiable buildings look tiny.

Then that is a problem with those particular buildings not matching the scale of everything else. They look bizzare sitting out in the middle of what appears to be a large basketball court anyway.

i also wonder how big will infantry be.
They most likely will be in scale with the tanks. The original issue I had with scaling was that the crew compartments were so small, which I think now is more an oversight than a scaling issue.

1) things look closer than they are (or on the other hand are easier to spot with lower magnification)

2) gunnery is easier (bigger targets)

It may be more appropriate to consider that distances are in half scale (if objects are twice as large, the distance units governing them are half the size). In theory, things should be easier to spot, but you're fighting against the distortion of the monitor. Since the monitor FOV distortion causes an unzoom effect, targets will look smaller than they should in real life were you to use standard distances. Just as unrealistic. I was part of an infantry modification where it was insisted that 'real' ballistics and proportunal scale be used with no manner of compensation or even zoom(outside rifle optics) was allowed. The result was that maps with distances over 150m were considered 'extreme range' and most players could not even fight properly on them with a scope. As the author of the ballistics code for that mod, I feel it is being underused... you certainly can't notice any drop or even flight-time on the maps players want to use.

if the scale would be normal and not 2x, effects would be:

1) things would seem to be closer to their real distance. smaller, harder to spot vehicles are easily solved by more realistic zoom levels.

Zoom is done in games by purely restricting FOV. All you'd really be doing is cutting the amount of viewable area at a time.

Consider this:

When you say 2x or 4x zoom, what are you basing that multiplicand off of?

2) harder gunnery. not such a big problem, because the projectiles are already much faster than in real life (e.g. AP is 3km/s (if i'm correct) vs 1.8km/s in real life)
This could be due to the "half distance scale", you need doubled projectile velocity to compensate, depending on how the scaling was done. For instance, if you were half the size and speed of the vehicles to match the scale distance you want, you would do the same to the projectiles.

The scaling needs to have a discrepancy somewhere (otherwise we wouldn't be having this conversation - just change the distances displayed and be done with it -| edit: not quite correct, there will still be the relative distance scaling needed to make a 80 degree FOV "look" like a 45-55 degree one; This will make the game closest looking to "real life" but only for the target and shooter, which is the tradeoff) and I belive the main consequence of it is that we now have very slow tanks. If an Abrams has a top speed of 72km/hr or so, and a thor has a top speed of 25 before you consider the scale issue (it should be double this if you consider the doubled projectile velocity and vehicle size, no?) this proportunately puts the thor at not even a fifth of the Abrams velocity, a pathetic 12.5km/hr. There are WW2 heavy tanks that probably do better then that.

This of course assumes that measurement is even in km/hr. I don't know the units but 25 m/s wouldn't make any sense.

i think that mouse sensitivity should change depending on the zoom level, that should remove the "very fine angles" problem.
Unfortunately it's not that simple. If you notice now, the terrain in this game distorts over distance, I already often see the bottom of tanks that are sitting on hills that my client doesn't quite render. There are all kinds of other ranged visual distortions, many I imagine differ by card.

Another issue is how fine the angle calculations or netcode is. For example, the Unreal engine games only have 65536 possible rotations, which I think comes out to 8 unit apart 'jumps' at 6000u that you can aim no finer than. (Rotational measures wouldn't scale with distance) I can't speak for this game, but there often is a limitation somewhere.

[ May 03, 2006, 06:12 PM: Message edited by: yurch ]

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Recently I saw yurch give capture tower orders to some bots durring deployment. They stayed in the live ship 'till the game started and immediately dropped near the objective. We won solidly with the towers help. When I tried to do the same thing later, the bots would land cutters in deployment area. How do I get them to stay up and drop where appropriate, as Yurch did?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

That wasn't me, it was someone else on our team.

You can, however, tell bots to extract using the rightclick menu or alt-x. I don't know if they'll stay that way through deployment, though, but I suspect it's a start. Perhaps couple it with a 'drop here' order?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

How about allowing commands to be queued to the bots ? Or be able to set bot behaivior/reaction such as when they meet up with the enemy, target priority, travel speed, loose formation, and so forth ?

By the way, why are some vehicles not controlable by the AI?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Has anyone had any luck with actually getting the AI to move sensically? Not counting gate pathfinding, I mean combat-wise.

Tell them to move somewhere, they move in, shoot at things in the process, and die. Tell them to attack, they move in, shoot at things in the process, and die. Tell them to drop something, and along the line a problem invariably occurs (AA turret - no message!!!) and the bot drops over and over in that posiition until all that equipment is gone, or at least 3 or so dropships until you react. Thier selection is wierd, and often they'll pull something like cutters out for an attack on autonomous if a capture order was given earlier in the round.

There seems to be very little way to get them to respond on thier own to enemies in a desireable manner.

Telling them to hull down is useful as a move order if you want them to station somewhere and you're too busy to search around for the optimal angle. I've tried formation, but they always end up getting stuck into something, even if they're just trying to catch up from far away.

But move orders are move orders, and you have to reassign a bot each bot a new one after it's over.

The best thing I've found (as in , allowing the bots to make some sort of "judgement call") is the advance order, which appears to work like hull down, but for any enemy they see - they immediately stop the moment it comes into view and start shooting. Great for ions, but probably not for other things - they'll just spam all thier ammo out from waaaay further than they should be firing.

Problem is, they won't move after that, and they have no idea of effective range. You have to give them the advance order, again and again, if you want them to pick up movement again after they all flip out from seeing a paladin crest a hill 5k away.

I would think, optimally, the bot attack order (with advance being renamed move-to-contact) should operate something like this. They shouldn't move any closer to a target if they are effective-range capable (will probably mean another definition variable), and they should be holding fire and moving if they are outside effective range, and resume general movement when not in sight of anything. Right now bots will fire off thier ammo relentlessly given the chance (20mm from 2.5k away?!) and really should only be given ions, which they still fire at sub-optimal rates and accuracy. They also suicide with ions in the apollo from time to time.

My problem with them is, well, you have to babysit them individually with hull-down type orders, safe dropzones, and single movement orders at a time if you want to have them do anything. If you do any of it wrong, like simply not reacting to a hermes you don't know about, you're better off leaving them alone and on autonomous.

But I've just really started using them, and usualy when I'm in game, I've got stuff to do. Has anyone found better methods?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

i often babysit them, but i don't spend to much time babysitting them. in the defence, i just pay attention whether they drop what i want (i.e. if they didn't run out of some vehicle type and didn't start dropping wheelchairs in the outermost corner of the map). if i tell a bot to drop a bit further away from the objective, i give him a defend order near the droppoint so he doesn't come back to the objective.

in the attack, i also usually just take care of their drops. i use them to keep pressure on the defenders, and while they aren't very good fighters, the pressure is usually enough for me personally to do some damage.

sometimes i have to give them move orders, when in defence they wander away from their droppoint, or in the attack if they don't want to move to some advantageous position (especially when the attackers defend the objective from retaking by the defenders)

[ May 05, 2006, 12:10 AM: Message edited by: RIPper_SVK ]

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Which vehicle cant be controlled by AI?
From the Inventory.xml file, the following vehicles do not have the AICanDrive field set to true:

Hurricane, Paladin MC-L, Thor MC-H, Apollo MC-M, Tempest IC, and Viper DS.

If you drop the bot with them, they just sit there.

Link to comment
Share on other sites


×
×
  • Create New...