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Post by Drath on Mar 1, 2016 2:58:07 GMT -8
Nemjen I also play on default zoom 99% of the time, but my point was basically: if having difficulty reading certain figures, zooming in will make things easier to read. The max zoom thingie was mostly me exaggerating and trying to make a point. I never really zoom that much during regular play. But I can see that this thread can lead to further UI improvement on the default zoom so I'm not going to sabotage it any further As you can probably tell, Drath isn't the most discerning or demanding UI tester and is already pretty happy with the current UI xD In fact, his criteria for satisfactory UI only includes: 1)he can read it 2)he can click it 3)it does the "right" thing when clicked 4)it isn't fugly I think I have found Samu's plot twist, we were never the Captain of the Sunrider but its arch rival 'REDIRNUS'. The Sunrider is the unit you must clash with for the final boss to free Cera once and for all from the clutches of Captain Otyak. Antimatter mirror universe anyone? P/S - ...and now Marx is going to kill me for taking liberties with physics
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Post by Drath on Feb 29, 2016 22:02:31 GMT -8
Battlefield segment at max zoomAt max zoom, all figures are clearly shown for me, flak interception % with its big yellow icon, to hit chance in white box, individual flak value next to small yellow icon, cumulative shield value next to small blue icon, current armor value next to small grey icon. Targeting reticule and debuff symbols are shown clearly and do not cover the other icons/figures. So the question becomes, should you max zoom? IMHO you should if you want to see everything on the battlemap. Otherwise you can always left click on an enemy unit to see its stats from the right lower panel. Besides Samu-kun must have spent like hours and hours trying to render those ships and probably broke his poor graphics card and RAM in the process. So I think the least we could do is zoom to appreciate him rendering everything in resolutions 20 times higher than they'll ever be displayed.
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Post by Drath on Feb 29, 2016 5:14:15 GMT -8
I guess I'm good as technically Friday and Saturday are weekends for me. Assuming I don't get urgent lab samples, I should have those couple of days to myself. Nemjen It's sad that society still sometimes assigns a certain stigma over a person's individual tastes and likes. I'm the only one who games in my department so I can kinda relate a little to that, in terms of how people perceive you, even if I know it's not the same case.
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Post by Drath on Feb 29, 2016 4:57:10 GMT -8
Histidine Nemjen Yea those are much better solutions. And yea there should be a check for player_ships.remove(blackjack). Would be nice to have an added cutscene but I doubt we are getting it being so close to release. Maybe just a message that she was so eager to get back into the fight that she asked to be rezzed immediately.
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Post by Drath on Feb 29, 2016 4:46:52 GMT -8
You have a lot of faith in us to suggest you do the maths ourselves, if I calculate the value all the time at 0% will that make it come true? The formula is given in the wiki: (base flak - flak reduction) * flak effectiveness= percentage of shooting it down In actual practice, I almost never bother with missiles if the flak is higher than 30% (there are usually better attack options and missiles could be reserved for later) so I hardly calculate actually. In other words, usually 2 or more overlapping flak fields for me means FlakOff required (unless these are mooks), or no missiles.
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Post by Drath on Feb 29, 2016 4:19:07 GMT -8
Had a look at library.rpy and it appears everything is predefined for said spoiler enemy. So yea stats for EN, armor, etc are fixed and it has melee, laser, pulse, assault options that it would otherwise regularly have. It also has kinetics. Samu-kun probably added it thinking that some players would have gotten the store item. It also has 2 missiles but no attack option for missiles. Fair enough as I think it's reasonable to say that those missiles would have been used earlier on in the fight.
In my game, it never really got into proper range to use kinetics against a ryder. Might be the melee AI acting up, though I have to say in v7.2 MoA, melee AI was nicely coded and could be pretty vicious when appropriate.
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Post by Drath on Feb 28, 2016 20:50:36 GMT -8
Yea this sounds very likely to be the case and should be fixed. Maybe add a line after the battle to make missiles available again. I'll have a look later.
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Post by Drath on Feb 28, 2016 20:46:30 GMT -8
Use mouse wheel to zoom in or zoom out. Does this allow it to be shown then? Haven't had much issue with it so far. Failing that you can still manually calculate/estimate effective missile flak from looking at flak values of surrounding units.
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Post by Drath on Feb 28, 2016 20:41:02 GMT -8
Ah ok, I guess this is to be expected as: said spoiler enemy is set to turn against you in turn 4. So I guess she has to be alive at that point.
The devs has set it so that said spoiler enemy is ignored by enemy AI, so that contributes to her survivability considerably. However turn 1 in this mission faces the player off against 3 PACT Destroyers with AoE damage, so there's still always a possibility that said spoiler enemy will get gibbed from splash damage.
Maybe fix it so that her hps can't be reduced below 1. Or maybe make it a fixed condition that said spoiler enemy has to survive 3 turns or it's Bad End screen for you.
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Post by Drath on Feb 28, 2016 20:30:37 GMT -8
Yea just wanted to say I've experienced the same thing myself. First turn with said spoiler enemy had it using lasers which is fine. It did a good deal of damage too. So I packed up Liberty with Bianca and the Alliance Carrier and managed to get Liberty's shields to 100.
Second turn it seemed confused and wandered around, triggering a counter and then trying to melee Liberty from afar which of course failed. Tried to put more obstacles in its way on third turn and this time it didn't even melee, just wandered around trying to find a path to Liberty.
Replayed this a few times and if you have sufficient shielding on Liberty it seems it will run around triggering counters and meleeing inappropriately say from 3 hexes away, repeatedly. Of course during my play and also in Magpie's case, there was still an adjacent hex from which Liberty could be properly meleed. I imagine if all adjacent hexes around Liberty were taken and it had 100% shields then Blackjack would be left with assault, which would be acceptable. That was what I was expecting, but it isn't what happened.
That being said, this mission is all kinds of crazy (as in intended craziness by design): - Said spoiler enemy turning against you - Being farmable 7 times for a huge amount of Intel and CP (seems like this one is intended as Samu-kun fixed the figure (was previously infinite?)) - Said spoiler enemy keeps respawning at the same spot at the right edge of the map after being killed So I'm not really 100% sure if the crazy meleeing is unintended. I'm fairly sure it's a bug but with said spoiler enemy going completely bonkers, I suppose I could excuse some silly behavior like meleeing from afar.
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Post by Drath on Feb 27, 2016 21:23:58 GMT -8
Yea would be nice to make full use of all assets. The way I understand it, during non-war times, the Union Battleship originally functioned as an asteroid mining ship, using tractor beams (Gravity Gun) to pull asteroids nearer, lasers to cut up asteroids, crush the fragments with those huge saws/cogs and suck them in for ore processing.
P/S - And yes none of the current regular ships have a melee attack, only ryders, but hey why let ryders have all the fun. I fancy a Union Battleship applying its melee crunch on another ship would be very damaging, but make it have like really low accuracy, so it's not going to hit more maneuverable units.
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Post by Drath on Feb 27, 2016 21:12:18 GMT -8
Lol my "someone's trying to break the game-o-meter" is currently fluctuating wildly after reading this post. Gogo stress testing xD
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Post by Drath on Feb 27, 2016 21:07:11 GMT -8
'Tears of Ava' anyone? Like I told you before before, I'm always ready to heed the call! We'll have an Ava route!... It just will be too hard for anyone to complete (of course, only captain and above will be allowed to reach a good ending, absurd flak degradation like in 4.0, Ryders will again move and act on the same turn they appear from carriers, specially made reinforcements waves, more escort missions; you know, so that Drath finds it hard enough on Admiral) Well good to know you're still keen ^^. As for difficulty, well you've played my puzzlemod so you should know I'm not in the habit of making trivial challenges. Pain builds character! That said, I'll probably tone it down a notch for future mods, as it would be nice to have an audience of more than 1 Alas poor Chigara You used to be so popular... Still, the important thing is that Ava and Sola are rightfully ahead of the inexplicably popular Ms. Fanservice with exactly two points of appeal. /me ducks and runsUhm yes mostly just 2 points of appeal, but they're pretty big points, no? Besides she got shot this time round... poor thing... I mean c'mon... have a heart... now she's never ever going to have a chance of winning a poll, or getting her backstory completed
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Post by Drath on Feb 27, 2016 12:34:24 GMT -8
Results are closer than I thought. Back on the old forums, people's preference used to be quite obvious. I seriously doubt Samu-kun is going to give us actual routes for any of the current top 3. But well if it doesn't happen, as Vaen put it: there's always the modding scene. 'Tears of Ava' anyone?
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Post by Drath on Feb 27, 2016 12:27:06 GMT -8
Nemjen Lol no worries. Was wondering about that earlier too xD Everyone makes errors every now and then. I also just corrected a typo I made, back in the mitigation thread. Hence the need for a second pair of eyes in QA and testing
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Post by Drath on Feb 27, 2016 7:55:23 GMT -8
At first I thought the problem in the code was in upgrade.rpy. Checked and found nothing wrong. Next I checked functions.rpy which processes upgrades via: 1)process_upgrade 2)reverse_upgrade Found both called max_stats() towards the end and max_stats() has a line: ship.rockets = ship.max_rockets. So yea that's the line that refills the rockets. I cut it out, retested and the rockets are no longer refilled on upgrading stuff in Research. However I'm hesitating to put it out as a proper fix as I'm not sure if max_stats() is also referenced by other functions which actually do need rockets to be refilled. Maybe have process_upgrade (2 max_stats calls) and reverse_upgrade (1 max_stats call) refer to a new function that doesn't refill rockets and leave the original max_stats() intact. P/S - And yes this one would have been a serious lapse if it had hit public release. The new players would probably unknowingly and happily accept the free rockets lol. That's why we need playtesters of different playstyles (ie rocket users like Marx) and experienced testers like yourself around. Glad you made it personal. Magpie 1, Bugs 0
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Post by Drath on Feb 27, 2016 7:22:45 GMT -8
While I have noted it in this particular way the trigger seems to be purchasing an upgrade as is shown if you purchase one and then proceed to move onto the next scenario without referring to the store, after placement the Sunrider will have 2/2 or 3/3 torpedoes. Tested and confirmed! You're a genius, Magpie! A genius! And that folks is the difference between someone who tests software for organizations and the rest of us, the common rabble. /Drath delivers a respectful salute!! xD
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Post by Drath on Feb 27, 2016 5:59:26 GMT -8
PACT missile frigate: sunrider.gamepedia.com/PACT_Missile_FrigateIt has 6 missiles so it's possible to exhaust them all. Would not really be good play but the achievement is funny so why not xD 5 different buffs: Full Forward/All Guard, All Power to Engines, Sentinel/Stealth, Damage Up, Aim Up. Will need to check the achievements I already have to see if there are still problematic ones that don't trigger. Sadly I didn't keep track of them very well during my play.
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Post by Drath on Feb 25, 2016 10:31:05 GMT -8
Tried again with Expanded Torpedo Storage on. Seems ok to me. Spent 2 and had 1 left when I went back to store. Spent 1 and had 2 left when I went back to store. Not too sure what's causing it. I'll leave it to you and Vaen. Sorry.
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Post by Drath on Feb 25, 2016 7:06:22 GMT -8
I wonder though, at the point of release is it worth posting on Steam (and other distribution outlets) about this forum both for on going technical feedback but also so fans of the series also have a place to checkout? I favor first consulting the wiki for technical knowhow and game mechanics. Which is why I am pushing strongly for an updated wiki on gameplay once the game is released, especially when we lack a detailed breakdown of in-game damage mitigation (armor/shield/flak). Damage and accuracy formulas are given here: sunrider.gamepedia.com/Combatespecially sunrider.gamepedia.com/Direct_CombatThat's all you really need to read and understand to be competent. I don't even know the hate mechanics in detail and usually just rely on feel to manipulate aggro. Any more info than that would be going to guide or walkthrough territory. I am generally in the "show them how the mechanics are and let them figure things out for themselves" camp. I'll jump in if people are still having trouble but in general I assume that part of the fun is figuring a good upgrade plan and good battle tactics for themselves. In other words, to answer your question, by all means direct them to this forum for technical feedback but recommend the wiki first, recommend the wiki second and recommend the wiki third, as I find a lot of feedback and queries are already addressed there.
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Post by Drath on Feb 25, 2016 6:46:07 GMT -8
Tried to reproduce this but couldn't. I only had 2 rockets though. If I used 1 in battle I would have 1 left and if I used both then I would need to buy 2. Did you experience this only after getting the expanded torpedo storage? On mission 5: On SW (66% normal dmg) I think it would be rather tough to down everything in turn 1, without relying on MIRVs or Summon Alliance Battleship. I had a window of opportunity to finish the fight in turn 2 though as reinforcements on that turn are pretty light. I elected to delay to farm turn 3 reinforcements. These days, fast mission completion really isn't worth what it was in old days where your CP depended on it. With the CP cap, these days I don't bother going for fast completion as on a few missions I have trouble spending all my CP. Essentially the CP cap makes defensive play equally viable.
Also I think it's ok to have a few relatively light battles. I doubt most players playing on Captain will be able to finish mission 5 in 1 turn, though. We've been playing since early betas so I'm not exaggerating when I say your skill is well in excess of that needed to complete Captain. In other words, if Histie or yourself says Captain isn't hard, that should totally be the case... I wouldn't expect any less from the caretakers of our wiki. Finally, by the time you reach mission 5, some players may not have Ryuvian Falcons, some may not have MIRV and some may not even have had extra Intel (about 11k) from mission 3 if they didn't save the diplomats previously. There needs to be some slack at least on Captain difficulty to cater to a less optimal fleet setup.
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Post by Drath on Feb 25, 2016 3:29:20 GMT -8
Steam page up. T-minus 8 days, 16 hours and counting Let's not have discussion get flooded by haters. A bit quiet still though on general Internet hype. I think for the final week before release, it's probably time to get things going and spread the word around to VN/general gaming/turn based strategy sites. All suggestions welcome
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Post by Drath on Feb 24, 2016 6:46:34 GMT -8
There's been a major change though? I mean, limiting the CP is the only major thing I can think. For the rest, is basically the same as 7.2, no? Stacking buffs can be pretty OP when done well, but this is kinda an advanced technique (in captain I've only used it once, and it was more of "how far can I get" than of need, and while in Admiral is probably a lot more needed I don't think anyone trying Admiral really needs that kind of help), and the new units have some neat tricks to it, but the base is the same. Splash damage is also very straightforward too. Well for starters you could probably copy the changelog for each beta so far, from beta 8 till beta 11. Patch notes is woefully outdated though. Anyway here are some off the top of my head: Resources: Old credits system now split into Intel and Funds with: Intel = enemy destruction reward Funds = enemy destruction reward - repairs Intel and Funds are 80% of above figures if played on SW. Repairs: Repair costs now based on total damage sustained during battle in Lib Day. Was previously calculated from hps at end of battle in MoA. CP: CP now capped by default at 4000, assuming no bonuses from store purchases CP gain occurs instantly after every kill in battle, follows the format of the old formula closely but is halved in value Orders: FF and AG reduced in duration from 5 to 3 SRW increased by 250 each time it is used again in the same turn Resurrection increased in cost from 2000 to 2500 Vanguard Cannon increased in cost from 2500 to 4000 A few new orders available, which are dependent on store purchases Summon Alliance Battleship 2000 CP All Power to Engines 800 CP Buffs: Previously not stackable in MoA. Now stackable in Lib Day Units: We have some new ships and so need new pages for: Hostile: PACT Destroyer PACT Fast Cruiser Ryuvian Falcon and I believe there are a few more shown in beta 12
Friendly: Alliance Carrier Alliance Infantry
Sunrider aligned: Cera Gunboat Ryuvian Falcon Union Battleship Unit weapons/abilities: Old pages need some updates too (mostly done though ie Sunrider missiles, Pirate Grunt missiles, hp increases). Still needed: 1)Paladin Drawfire (entry added but armor increase needs correction) 2)Phoenix Stealth (needs update that it reduces hate for Phoenix) 3)Phoenix Cloak (accessible with store item, under spoilers) 4)Liberty ShldFly (accessible with store item, under spoilers) Upgrades page could use an update too. Split this into actual ryder upgrades and store items. (new ones would include MIRV torpedoes, additional torpedo, etc) For actual ryder upgrades would be nice to see: 1)actual formulas 2)graphs And yes there have been changes here as well, from MoA to Lib Day (ie Phoenix's EN upg costs) I will try to come up with something.
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Post by Drath on Feb 23, 2016 21:56:56 GMT -8
Welp, ya'll heard the boss. In exchange, I'll do my best to get proper graphical display of damage mitigation into the game post launch. most likely this'll take the route of mod->beta channel->release Yep it's too close to release to make major changes so I can see where Sam's coming from. It's good if this is given a post release patch though In the meantime, I think a wiki update on mechanics and major changes in Lib Day and encouraging people to start playing from First Arrival will help ease new players into gameplay.
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Post by Drath on Feb 23, 2016 21:52:39 GMT -8
Noted the Stealth part here some time back but put it under fixed because it was better than the MoA version and I didn't think having Stealth halved or full was that big an issue. Good to know though that it also involves other buffs and that it will be fixed and that there are other people trying to make the game tougher
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Post by Drath on Feb 23, 2016 1:22:24 GMT -8
Strongly seconded. It might be ok for vets to do without additional damage feedback but it is very helpful for newcomers (and those not familiar with damage mechanics) in terms of figuring out why their current attack was not so effective and which different attack could be used so that damage output could be improved.
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Post by Drath on Feb 23, 2016 1:06:52 GMT -8
Noticed Carrier/Assault Carrier spawned ryders now give more Intel and CP compared to beta 10. In fact it looks suspiciously more like the old MoA version lol. Data and mechanics (AFAIK): beta 12.4a: 1st spawn - Bomber: 37CP (essentially 60 Intel) 2nd spawn - Bomber: 28CP (45 Intel) 3rd spawn - Bomber: 18CP (30 Intel) 4th spawn - 2 mooks: 6+6CP (10+10 Intel)
beta 10 1st spawn - Bomber: 9CP (?Intel, must be very little... 15?) 2nd spawn - Bomber: 0CP (0 Intel)
Intel value is essentially the same value as credits and can be obtained from the wiki. CP conversion is given by (credits * 5)/(turns + diff + 2) On SW, diff = 4, turns set to 2 when spawn first appears. Subsequent spawns have credit value reduced by 20% for each turn that passes for said carrier. so the 5th spawn will give 0CP and 0 Intel. Ok so my question is whether there is a need to go back to MoA values. In the past, players had a deterrent on farming carrier spawns as the longer you took, the less CP overall you would get at the end. In exchange for a few extra credits, this presented a suitable tradeoff. Now in Lib Day we get CP as we go along, so said deterrent is no longer present, and since regular Carriers don't do any damage and only spawn stuff, you can park Phoenix nearby and let her chew on spawns for about 150+ extra Intel per Carrier. If you get a scenario with lots of Carriers, say 4 Carriers, it would be in your interest to muck around as long possible to get 600+ extra Intel (fairly significant) with absolutely no risk to CP and no risk to repairs. Not a huge issue of course in terms of overall Intel gain as you'll rack up around 38.4k after 5 battles But I don't like encouraging exploitative tactics. It's the principle not the money P/S - In case it wasn't clear, I prefer the beta 10 version of spawn Intel/CP handling but as mentioned above it isn't that big of an issue (and yes I do appreciate the devs being nice, probably too nice)
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Post by Drath on Feb 22, 2016 3:49:36 GMT -8
should be mostly cosmetic as the instant current armor is recalculated (and it is often) this should get adjusted back based on base_armor and hp level. still... I should probably change the library description. I think Sam meant for it to be 30 though. Ooh that's right. The moment I pulled one forward and got it countered, every Nightmare had their armor switched back to 20. The one countered had 19 of course. Didn't realize this, saw 30 when they first appeared and immediately came here. Sorry for the trouble. Well uhm in that case, there really isn't any need to adjust the melee so that armor only counts once against it. I don't really fancy being the tester that made things easier. Bad rep
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Post by Drath on Feb 21, 2016 23:35:14 GMT -8
Thanks for the speedy reply! On armor counting double against melee: The only significant case where this is noticeable is the Nightmare. Other ryders have too little armor that the +/- 5% damage variation will make it hard to detect the difference, which is why counting once or double matters little. However now with Nightmare pumped to 30 armor, I think it's time to revisit the issue. From a player's point of view, your 2 big sources of damage on Nightmares are Phoenix melee and an Awakened Seraphim's kinetics (notwithstanding Vanguard Cannon and MIRV torpedoes, which use up resources), with lasers being clean up. With 30 armor, you are hitting Phoenix melee significantly and will make Seraphim double kinetics more important. As mentioned above that is NOT to say it's bad. But any significant changes should be mentioned in patch notes as Nightmare armor has always been 20 since MoA times and is well documented in the wiki. Incomplete documentation makes it difficult for the player to adjust his plans/playstyle. On lower difficulties this is probably a non-issue, but IMHO it does make a difference at higher difficulties.
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Post by Drath on Feb 21, 2016 22:57:44 GMT -8
In beta10, Nightmares had 20 armor. Now in beta12, Nightmares have 30 armor.
Checked the stats in library.rpy and there are no changes in stats whatsoever between beta10 till beta12. However the Nightmare is coded as self.base_armor = 20 and self.armor =30, whereas other units either have both values being the same or a line that equalizes them (self.armor = self.base_armor).
So it seems like the issue here is beta12 uses self.armor (instead of self.base_armor in beta10).
Please clarify which is the intended version. Nightmares with 30 armor take 120 damage reduction from Phoenix melee (x2 for each blade and x2 again as if I'm not mistaken armor counts twice against melee (similar to kinetics)), so that's a pretty significant drop. Coupled with Phoenix EN getting a nerf in beta 11, they are no longer as potent a tool against Nightmares as before. Not saying that's necessarily bad though as I don't mind some tweaks to make things tougher... we did get Arcadius no flak after all.
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