MINICOM testing: now open for everyone.

[cza]

Agree with this philosophy:
"I'm all for meaningful micro, setting waypoints and assigning targets, but units should not be stupid by default."

But I also share balance concerns. Might some "stupid" features be there for balancing purposes? I think fighters are already overpowered as it is.

Something that worries me more in terms of balance are subs that can fire to blank spots on the map. I know in theory subs ought to be able to launch anywhere, but in practice, I think giving them this capacity would really change the game. Whether one triangulates like Mrmot or just takes good guesses like the better players, I think open-targeting subs will make silos and other installations an endangered species with much less ability or risk. Scouting may also become much less important, altering naval calculus, and I think we can agree that the logic of scouting adds something very good to the game.

[bert_the_turtle]

Tobias: I did not mean to slap you, I merely wanted to explain my intention for the change.

The reason you sometimes can't make fighters retarget immediately is that they have a hidden timer for that, too; they have to wait between autotarget selections. That timer is still in place. Purely autotargeting fighters now are no more powerful than carefully micromanaged fighters were before. Where they get more powerful is that manual targeting now works better, and I'm pretty sure its problems in the original code were not intentional.

In addition, some players utilize the retargeting lag to strategically select a specific desired subsequent target. Autotargeting fighters will make this "second attack" targeting far more difficult (fighters will, for example, autoattack [and presumabably change direction toward] some (close) unit (possibly) already under attack by other fighters rather than moving on to a different unit or "deeper" space for scouting - where the original kill was). Again, this will effect game play imo.

None of that happens. User orders will be respected like before. If there is a nav waypoint, the fighter will go there. If the user picks a target, that will be fired upon.

Yes, I am aware of potential balancing changes. As a compensation already in place, fighters can't fire right after taking off already. If it turns out they're too powerful, their attack odds or fire rate can be reduced. But to determine that, actual games need to be played.

Perhaps I also do not understand the full power of mods. What mods exist that players can use to change unit mechanics?

All changes are optional and can be modded out easily, there are two default mods included reverting some resp. all of the controversial changes. The default settings will be 'all changes enabled' at least during the testing period, however, because if something is not tested, it is broken.

cza: Yeah, I personally don't like the sub change either, but see the previous sentence as to why it is there right now and everything I said before about it why I don't like it.

[Zorotama]

Bert, what you think about this? I ever found absurd that a random damage on a silo is considered as a nuke shot on it. I mean, is possible to give less power to an accidental shot? AntiAir fire can cause, in their defensive action, a damage to a silo itself that is calculate as a enemy nuke..loosing half of his potential. Maybe you should consider to make a difference between a well targeted nuke on a silo and a random damage on it caused by anti air fire (maybe losing 2 nukes instead of 5).

[bert_the_turtle]

That's possible. The way it works internally is thus:
Nukes create an explosion of strenght 100, destroyed objects one of strength 30. Objects are hit by explosions if they're closer than strength/50 degrees longitude/latitude, so destroyed objects are already weaker in the aiming department. All explosion hits of strength > 10 count as nuke strikes, currently equally; unit life is reduced by 10 etc. It's no big deal to pass the explosion strength and distance to the damage code like it is already done for cities. The downside I personally see with such a change is that it makes it harder to determine how much life is left in a silo.

1.60.1.5 will be up soon; the included mods will finally work there.

[Forever Young]

that is a wonderful idea with the new mods. so we can decide how we want to play.
i am still testing the newest version. it seems all fine so far.
i really hope that i am not the lonely one who is sill testing it.

thank you bert, for all the new requirements!

[-- Tobias --]

Why must a bomber locked on nuke mode change to naval mode if a fully visible
naval target is selected?

Certainly I try to avoid this all the time, and I guess it might have to do with "following" the target (which I do not desire), but gosh darn jolly geez , those instances of mis-clicks are very frustrating.

[Ace Rimmer]

As long as the nuke target ring passes through the center of the unit, it should kill it. This isn't an exact method because the graphics for each unit can be misleading as to their true 'center', but it's more than enough to avoid that issue.

[-- Tobias --]

Now THIS really does bother me: You launch a gaggle of bombers along some flight vector (into space), and for some reason they lock onto a target outside of their naval firing range, AND, they stay locked on that target despite any number of other targets within their firing range. The result is often no firing at all by the bombers while they are picked apart by the closer enemy units. The only way I have found to correct this is to retarget the bombers onto one of the in-range targets, but when you have many bombers in the air at once this is difficult, not to mention the fact that doing so draws the bombers directly toward the in-range target.

Here's an example of near-20 bombers all locked onto such a out-of-range target right after the Defcon 3 phase:
http://sfcon.demoszenen.de/dcrec/2012-03/2v2Random-2012-03-09_11.21.zip

The extremely interesting aspect of this recording/bug is that the target they all locked on to was never in their naval attack range to cause such a lock in the first place!

If other players have a better work-around to this, please let me know. Alternatively, if any player knows how to generate this bug (for defensive purposes), let me know this also!

[k-dawg]

not sure about how to re-do the bug, but sometimes when my CV is in anti-sub mode, and a sub pops up then back down, to scurry away, my "attack" orders will follow the sub. the whole match sometimes. quite funnyy to see where it goes. then drop a good ol nuke on a cluster of them - same goes for BB's attacking something out of range. :\

[Laika]

not sure about how to re-do the bug, but sometimes when my CV is in anti-sub mode, and a sub pops up then back down, to scurry away, my "attack" orders will follow the sub. the whole match sometimes. quite funnyy to see where it goes. then drop a good ol nuke on a cluster of them - same goes for BB's attacking something out of range. :\

Faced it several times, sometimes ship picks up the target and traces it even though she never saw it.

[bert_the_turtle]

The ships-tracking-invisible-subs bug is old and long fixed, and the fix is optional.

The bombers keeping out of range targets thing looks easily fixable. I suppose it can always happen if you launch a bomber and no suitable target is immediately in range; they tend to not pick new targets as long as they have a current one, the (wrong) assumption there being that they'll destroy that target, then move on.

The thing where bombers drop out of nuke mode could be tricky. I suppose it's an UI thing, you just don't want the target to snap to an enemy sea or air unit in nuke mode at all.

[Forever Young]

yesterday happened a draw in the normal version! is that the "Score overflow bug" which is fixed in the minicom version? the game said victory to blackout although i had 0,1 more survivors and my name entered the first position in the score chart. and we had exactly same kills.
http://www.uploadagent.de/files/1331724541/screenshot%202012-03-14%2005.bmp

[bert_the_turtle]

No overflow there, but the same thing that avoids the overflow also avoids draws most of the time. It's simply random in plain Defcon who wins if the scores are equal (or maybe it depends on what happened earlier, I can't remember, either way it's not determined by the stats at the end).

[Forever Young]

i made a few points or kills at the end but not in the last game seconds.
there were still a few game minutes left(circa 3 mins).
and i always thought the higher ranked name will win. curious and incorrect these random things.
so that says both can happen? a 50 to 50 percent chance?
the game decided to put me in the first place and also give the victory away. or it is a compensation to give then the first rank to me and the victory to my enemy?:lol:

however, do not waste more time for that or for me!
thx bert!


edit: @ ace rimmer. how did you decided draws in ladders?
i can not remember! i suspect, you only counted the score points and gave every player/team one point.

[Ace Rimmer]

edit: @ ace rimmer. how did you decided draws in ladders?
i can not remember! i suspect, you only counted the score points and gave every player/team one point.

Yes, I ignored the stats (kills, etc) and went with points. Does baseball count hits when there's a tie? Does football (soccer) count kicks? Does basketball count layups or dunks? Does any sport count anything but points?

bert, quick question; will minicom be compatible with the bot enabled version? Can it be?