Age of the Council (AotC)

@qaanol, on Jan 3 2007, 06:39 PM, said in Age of the Council (AotC):

The Emalghia Fighter is the most fun ship to pilot in the whole game. Period.

Has anyone ever told you that you're too good at this game?

My ambition for AotC will have to be to make a mission that Qaanol can't complete in a stock shuttle.

This post has been edited by pac : 03 January 2007 - 03:08 PM

@pac, on Jan 3 2007, 12:06 PM, said in Age of the Council (AotC):

My ambition for AotC will have to be to make a mission that Qaanol can't complete in a stock shuttle.

Good luck, Mr. Cartwright. I'd like to see a mission like that myself. But, knowing Qaanol, I'll bet he can find a way to beat it in said shuttle anyway. :laugh:

I already beat you to that. Colosseum has no Shuttles.

EVO thus far has been my favorite of the triology, though I'm dissapointed you're making Azdaras weaker. Those were my favorite ship to fly and my #1 favorite ship of the whole triology.

@joshtigerheart, on Jan 3 2007, 08:42 PM, said in Age of the Council (AotC):

EVO thus far has been my favorite of the triology, though I'm dissapointed you're making Azdaras weaker. Those were my favorite ship to fly and my #1 favorite ship of the whole triology.

They're no weaker - it's just that their enemies are wiser to them and have better weapons to use against them. (And Azdgari have rubbish ECM.) If the player gets an Azdara, he can put decent ECM on it, and it should be as good as ever. (It will have a bonus new feature too …)

Azdgari will behave quite differently in AotC. I have plans for them. … I'm looking forward to seeing them in action.

Edit: In fact, although I'd planned to keep them all the same, all the Strand signature ships will be slightly different (and improved). But the Strands will be really tough to join.

This post has been edited by pac : 03 January 2007 - 04:05 PM

@pac, on Jan 4 2007, 04:10 AM, said in Age of the Council (AotC):

Yep, behaviour is more as expected in hostile/empty systems. One ship in fleet A (the first one targeted) fights - effectively seeming to 'buy time' for the others, which is okay - while the others leg it.

At least, this is the case when MaxOdds is set to an extreme value (10). At something a bit closer to parity (110), some of fleet A appear to behave what I can only call 'indecisively': courses 'wavering' when closing in on an enemy; starting to retreat, but then turning back to fight again.

Some of this might be due to case-specific factors: although the ships in fleet A are significantly weaker overall, their long-ranged armament travels faster and fires faster, so the opening of the combat might somehow 'fool' them into thinking they are winning (but they learn better when they get into close range ).

So, it might be possible to use MaxOdds in some situations, but for now I'll default to 'no retreat!'. (Although individual ships will still try to retreat at 25% shields. They just rarely make it.)
Edit: Also, this behaviour makes it possible to differentiate between pirate types (who might behave exactly as described in the previous post above, not caring about their 'friends' until they themselves get targeted) and proper navies (who are genuinely comrades).

This is just the kind of thing that Jason and Matt spent months trying to make work. The resultant engine is a little on the unsual side, and I'm not confident the resource bible has all the answers here. Popping a mail to Matt may assist in diagnosis -- he can just look at the code and tell you what's what.

@pac, on Jan 4 2007, 05:07 AM, said in Age of the Council (AotC):

But retargeting is definitely trickier. It seems that you now have to do a 'significant' amount of damage to an enemy (even if you have it targeted) to 'distract' it from its current target.

You can blame our beta testers for that. Nova ships were so deadly in the area immediately surroundign your start-point that a stray shot from you would immediately light up all allied vehicles in the area as hostile. Very nasty, very suddenly. I argued that if players were stupid enough to fire without thinking then they deserved everything they got, but I was shouted down.

The end result is that vehicles ignore a lot more incoming fire than they should. This is engine hardcoded, and I'm not sure what can be done about it.

@pipeline, on Jan 3 2007, 02:58 PM, said in Age of the Council (AotC):

You can blame our beta testers for that. Nova ships were so deadly in the area immediately surroundign your start-point that a stray shot from you would immediately light up all allied vehicles in the area as hostile. Very nasty, very suddenly. I argued that if players were stupid enough to fire without thinking then they deserved everything they got, but I was shouted down.

The end result is that vehicles ignore a lot more incoming fire than they should. This is engine hardcoded, and I'm not sure what can be done about it.

Those darn Nova beta testers. For Nova's tenth anniversary you should release EV:N: Hard Version, with all the hard stuff from the beta still intact

@pipeline, on Jan 3 2007, 10:58 PM, said in Age of the Council (AotC):

You can blame our beta testers for that. Nova ships were so deadly in the area immediately surroundign your start-point that a stray shot from you would immediately light up all allied vehicles in the area as hostile. Very nasty, very suddenly. I argued that if players were stupid enough to fire without thinking then they deserved everything they got, but I was shouted down.

The end result is that vehicles ignore a lot more incoming fire than they should. This is engine hardcoded, and I'm not sure what can be done about it.

The thing is, I wouldn't mind at all if this only applied to the player (apart from that beam problem, maybe ). The problem is that ships are often ignoring fire from other AI ships (particularly fighters). At the moment, I'm working round this: fighters seem to like attacking each other, so the end result is that 'fighter cover' is very important at the moment - which is not a bad thing - and fighters are often the only thing left of the losing side at the end - which is not a bad thing either.

(I shall contact Matt though, once I have compiled a bit more data.)

Anyway, AI vs AI testing is going well so far - despite the minor problems mentioned, the two main protagonists' fleets are very nearly at the right balance against each other. Then I move on to balancing them against their more minor enemies, and work my way down towards, eventually, pirates vs traders.

@qaanol, on Jan 4 2007, 07:39 AM, said in Age of the Council (AotC):

With MaxAmmo of x, and n copies of that weapon, you can get xn ammos. With outfit max of x, and n copies of an Increase Max modtype, you can have x(n+1) outfits. Also, while you can't sell a weapon that affects MaxAmmo until you get rid of enough ammos so you're below x*(n-1), I've never tested being able to sell an Increase Max modtype when you have more than x*n outfits.

Ooh, I can explain more here. Firstly, IncreaseMax is also xn, not x(n+1). Ie, the first IncreaseMax outfit you buy has not effect on how many of the main outfit you can buy. This leads to the odd behaviour of being able to buy x copies of the main outfit while having 0 IncreaseMax outfits, then purchasing one IncreaseMax outfit but not being able to sell it back until you sell all of the main outfit. This is easily fixed though, by putting a requirement of at least one of the IncreaseMax outfits in order to buy any of the main outfit.

Okay, I am completely stuck for a weapon name - so I turn to the boards for help. The weapon is an improved version of the Dispersal Rocket launcher (used by the Council). Originally, it was going to be slightly homing (with the 'only if straight ahead' flag), but then I discovered that the AI still hates firing more than one guided weapon at a time, so that was out. Now they're just better free flight rockets (better particularly against armour).

So, any suggestions for the _____ Rocket? First prize is a pers ship armed with tons of the things.

Freedom Rocket!

An improved Dispersal Rocket, you say?

Hmm...let's see here...

Ah! I got it.

Call it the Fury Rocket.

Shake-up Rocket. Um, because that's the Council's plan

Devastator Rockets!!!!

@ue_research---development, on Jan 3 2007, 06:29 PM, said in Age of the Council (AotC):

Devastator Rockets!!!!

That actually was one of the names I considered putting up, but thought "Nah, too predictable."

It is still a good name, I'll admit, though, UERD.

@ Guy's Post: :laugh:

@warlord-mike, on Jan 4 2007, 02:09 AM, said in Age of the Council (AotC):

Call it the Fury Rocket.

Unfortunately, Fury is already taken by an Alliance fighter class. Freedom Rocket recalls Freedom Fries, so the Devastator is leading at the moment

Detonation Rocket?

This post has been edited by grunk : 03 January 2007 - 10:34 PM

Hmm.

Cluster rocket?

Unity rocket? (united strands)

A.D. rocket (area denial)

D.O.A rocket(denial of area / dead on arrival rocket)

Wait, better against armor?

A.A rocket (anti-armor) etc

Burst Rockets...

Piercing/Armour Piercing/AP/A.P. rockets? Developed to go up against the more heavily armored ships of the UE Alliance.

This post has been edited by Mista_B : 03 January 2007 - 11:21 PM

Alright, so Fury's taken, huh?

Well then, let's see...

How 'bout this one:

Executioner Rocket

Diffusion Rocket
Annihilation Rocket
Compound Dispersal Rocket
Advanced Dispersal Rocket

ADR I can expect for EVN.

Sheet Rocket.