Developer Script Test RC3 - Planning within

Because MGs have no speed, they're hitscan. The problem is, you can't just take the value of speed fro the file and use it as a straight up modifier, because it takes into account travel speed of whatever projectile it is, as well as whatever it is. That is to say, drive towards an incoming rail shell with absorbant, you "should" take less damage, if it's working as intended.

Either way, it should be totally fucking removed.


Also, in relation to BioML, it's bugged. It deals absolutely 0 impact damage, no matter what it gets set to, it's purely bio effect. I'm going to try and fix that USING the bio effect, by making it much shorter lived but more powerful against vehicles, so that it actually works as a weapon. Or some other solution to compensate for the lack of impact damage anyway, until we get a real fix.

 

lmao I was searching for something completely different but came across this and then decided to doodle on it.



In retrospect I suppose jephir should be the prince since as far as im aware, he is doing most of the work to save/wake up, the empires code.

 

Reactive | HP 85 -> 90 | Heat Absorbed 0.025 -> 0.040 | Bio Weapon mod 1.0 -> 1.25 |
Composite | Heat Absorbed 0.025 -> 0.000 | Regeneration 0.00 -> 0.02 | Angle Modifier 0.0 -> 0.5 | HP 80 -> 70 |
Regen | HP 50 -> 45 | Heat Absorbed 0.030 -> 0.025 |
Absorbant | Heat Absorbed 0.010 -> -0.025 | HP 55 -> 60 |
Commander Armour | Heat Absorbed 0.050 -> 0.025 |
Reflective | HP 60 -> 65 |
APC Max Speeds: | 3phase 60 -> 55 | Fission 55 -> 50 |
LT/AFV Max speeds: | 3phase 60 -> 55 | Fission 55 -> 50 |
BioML | Infantry Time 60 -> 15 | Infantry Interval 2 - > 1 | Vehicle Damage 10 -> 15 | Vehicle Time 60 -> 15 | Vehicle Interval 2 -> 1 |
Rail Gun | Damage 50 -> 40 | Heat 6 -> 7 |
UML | Damage 75 -> 60 | Heat 6 -> 7 |

Those are the changes FROM either RC2, or if nothing was changed there, stock. My plan, before releasing these, is to start differentiating the engines a lot more. I can think of some interesting ideas involving horsepower penalties for weight, and quicker acceleration on others. The problem is that with a full set of engines for every vehicle, this could take a while.

Overall, as an explanation of these scripts:

Reactive has more HP, but takes more heat, and about 25% extra damage from Bio. Obviously, most of you are used to Reactive taking less from Bio, but it's the only place I could really add a Bio vulnerability.
Composite is now the multi-armour Reznov suggested. It lost a bit of HP to compensate, but it takes no heat from being shot at (Absorbant property), it has a slow regen (about half of what regen was before I buffed it to what it is now), and it has a reflective modifier of what Reflective had a few versions ago.
Regen lost 10% HP, but I brought it to the stock level of heat absorption.
Reflective gained just under 10% HP.
Absorbant gained 10% HP. But above all, I'm trying something really new with this, and I'm totally unsure of it'll actually work. If it works as I think it will, Absorbant will actually LOSE heat when it takes damage. This should be a pretty interesting property if the negative value actually works.
Commander armour got brought into line with the normal value of heat absorption. I'm doing this mainly to see if I can combat the PlasmaMG bug where it instaoverheats the CV, but we'll see.

I toned down 3phase/Fission slightly, but it might need to end up going back to stock values yet, I'm not sure. It'll probably stay like this until we get a patch, or until we do further testing, so I can see how working scout speed affects them, and if I can find a solution to that without gimping the normal speed.

Rail gun and UML both got hit for damage and heat. With the new armours, they're just too powerful. For me personally, rails have always been too heavy on heat, or too light on it, because people always set the heat to 6 or 8. Seems logical to just try 7 in my opinion. Finally, BioML got some major changes to try and fix the fact that it deals no impact damage. I've shortened the length of the effect considerably, lowered the damage (over time) to half of what it was on infantry, and with tanks, whilst the total damage from each missile is less, the actual DPS is about 3 times higher.


So those are the changes SO FAR. I haven't put them on a server yet because I want to do some more engine changes if they'll work serverside only. But also, I think there's probably more that can be done with weapons, if people are helpful enough to give me information on the weapons. If not, I can't think of much else.

 

Liking pretty much all the changes so far

Is the weight on composite still 10? Are you thinking of changing the weight?

 

As I stated earlier, I can't change that serverside. The client would still see the weight as 10, build his tank, but the server would cancel it with an error, with no explanation as to why, because his tank is actually overweight. Anything the client visually sees, I can't change serverside, only for the next patch. There's quite a few other changes that I've done that can't be tested until next patch.

 

next patch or the patch coming out? If the code support is already in the SVN one we can shut down the standard servers for the week and have everyone play the SVN version... since im guessing almost everyone signed up for it.

 

The patch coming out. I can change scripts until the minute before we send to Valve, but at our current progress rate, it's still going to be a while until we can release, our coders are really struggling for time at the moment.

As for shutting down servers, don't be dumb. 90% of the playerbase isn't signed up, and even then, most don't use SVN when they are, they use the steam test version. When the time does eventually come where we're ready to send the depots off, we'll do a couple of weeks of nightly playtesting, iron out any last issues, then send it off.

 

Its not dumb. Its a serious commitment to getting proper values in the scripts which are ALWAYS considered bad after every patch. Granted there are improvements in each patch but, still overall its broken.

Can you, on a daily basis, get a near full server, 3-4 hours, to do a full scale play analysis and refine the scripts using only svn?

I know there are still going to be plenty who don't have the SVN... so warn them a week or two in advance on all the front pages of the game when the login to the server. Make sure the servers announce messages inside the game while you are playing. ("Remember the servers will be down for a week on x-xx through x-xx for script testing. So go to the forums and download SVN for uninterrupted playing.") This all of course depends on the cooperation of server admins and we will need to watch out for a certain undesired groups server which may pop up.

Again I can't stress enough the need for a full blown serious commitment to getting good values. If your serious about the scripts, we should do this or we can as usual play an small amount on the changed scripts with a few people nod your head then declare them good. Then as usual after 2 days of the patch everyone will say its shit.

 

Viroman, believe it or not Empires gets new players sometimes. This would turn a few away probably.
Probably better off just to nag people in the server the day before and post the info for the SVN to Viper/EPIC MOTD...

"speed up to hot an incoming rail shell with absorbant, you "should" take less damage"
I'm not physics expert but that sounds wrong. Shouldn't it be, in terms of realism...and also gameplay...
"an incoming rail shell with absorbant, you "should" take less EXTRA damage than if you you sped up to hit rails with another armour"

My treadjacking 2 cents.

 

No, because absorbant doesn't add extra damage when you get hit by something moving fast, it removes damage from the main value. If a rail hits for 50 damage (it'll hit for 40 now but I'm using previous values), and the rail is travelling at the usual 3600 inches per second, and the absorbant modifier is 0.01, then that means 50 - 36 = 14 damage. Yes, it's THAT much. But, if you're driving towards the rail at 60mph, which works out at just over 1000 inches per second, then you consider the impact speed difference to be 4600, so rails do like 4 damage.

And upon doing those calculations, I find myself thinking, what the fuck, that can't be right. I may have pushed the speed to damage mod a bit too far. Or it's not working out correctly, because I've never just taken 4 damage when I've been hit by a rail whilst travelling into it at 60mph. Fuck.

Idk, I'll see how the current value works out ingame.

 

You dare to implement actual physics in mai empirez. how dares u?! king sauce engien shall hav ur hed.

btw abs doesnt have much hp so 10 dmg is not that ridicilous.

 

Much simpler rendition of my previous post: More speed (more energy) = less damage does not normally = physics

I understand how the game currently works and was just critiquing it in terms of realism and gameplay(it's counter-intuitive) but its a small issue and the effect is the effect and we should probably leave it at that.

The alternative, while maybe more realistic, is perhaps more confusing to gamers anyway.
The alternative is that all armours take more damage from faster impacts (the inverse of the current absorbant effect) as per my understanding of physics, but absorbant* takes less "more damage", less damage due to weapon speed.

*and now, compo!

Now I'm going to fire-in-retreat from my BE heavy every time NF gets abso, in fact, I'll aim for the ground next to the tank...

 

The main intention is to take speed totally out of the equation because it affects balance too much. It's just not worth the hassle to include it. The only reason it's left in with Absorbant is because we haven't really got any other unique property to give it, which is why I'm trying out this heat absorbed thing, so I can maybe get us away from the final speed to damage armour.

 

uhh trickster, i just noticed but did u ever think of plasma MG or CN?

plasma mg would overheat an absorbant tank BUT how will the guy with plasma mg kill the tank without using a CN or ML? I mean as soon as something hits dat abs. tank it will just automatically cooldown and drive right away.

Not to think how useless plasma CN would turn out.

 

Fuck plasma. But really, doesn't that make absorbant a good counter to that? I mean, it will steal deal the heat as far as I know, because plasma doesn't have that much damage, and it's only the damage that causes the armour to cool the tank. So it might be like -1 heat for the damage, but +10 for the actual plasma heat, equalising out at +9 or someshit.

 

Raise your hand if you remember when railguns could heal tanks.

 

Please tell me that never happened. Please.

 

I have an idea, revert scripts to 2.12

 

if I remember correctly(which I don't seem to be doing very well right now), the new engine OB came out after 2.12 and it completely screwed pre-OB values. They tried to get the values to line up but they just failed. Ever since then everything has been shifting around.