Topic: How to Fix OP D2: Radical Ideas Welcomed (Read 18810 times)

Capt Jeff · « **Reply #20 on:** January 30, 2003, 12:47:00 pm »

What about using EAW missions and Map in the OP server kit?

No mention of the cartel hexes in the map, and none in the scripts.....

FireSoul · « **Reply #21 on:** January 30, 2003, 12:58:22 pm »

Quote:

1. A totally neutral cartel layer is worse than a populated one, because pilots running missions in their own hexes were hurting their DV by winning (still not sure why).

2. Blanketing the cartel layer with one cartel that is friendly to all empires caused problems when enemies fought each other. A win in the hex counted as both a win against the enemy empire and a loss for the friendly cartel, since an ally of theirs lost (the losing empire). This may not be the end-all of the issue, though. Perhaps more creative political tension settings would help.

3. Even if a campaign starts out stable by assigning an allied cartel to each empire coinciding directly with their territory, once one of those cartel hexes is flipped neutral, the home empire finds themselves hurting their own DVs again.

What if players are prevented from playing pirates, and all cartels are enemies to EVERYTHING? (which doesn't seem to be all that far from reality.)

-- Luc

EmeraldEdge · « **Reply #22 on:** January 30, 2003, 12:59:13 pm »

That's an interesting idea Jeff. Wonder how that would effect things.

EmeraldEdge · « **Reply #24 on:** January 30, 2003, 01:27:36 pm »

Right, but as you said, the sources may be the same but they are compiled differently. What if the sources are not the same though. Do we know that they are or is there additional stuff in the OP versions that deal with reading and writing to the pirate layer (I know next to nothing about scripting, obviously). If the sources are different, then what if we used the EAW source material and compiled it for OP? It would require a download by the player, but if it even helped a little, it would be worth it.

FireSoul · « **Reply #25 on:** January 30, 2003, 01:35:49 pm »

What's the advantage?
Besides, the sources for the OP missions are now avaialble.. why not compare?

NuclearWessels · « **Reply #26 on:** January 30, 2003, 01:43:41 pm »

Now that we have the source code for the OP missions we can do a bit more digging on the topic,
so things are good in that regard.

It does seem to me that the missions still only report (in essence) success/fail/no result,
then the game engine actually decides what should happen to the DV based on who owns the hex and who reported the result.

If Tracey/Darkelf/et al can get their SQL/mission reporting ideas working,
and if those can be easily ported to OP, then that might be one solution.

In the meanwhile, here's a thought:
(1) Make all pirate cartels allies of all the empires
(2) Make all the pirate cartels enemies of one another
(3) Divide up the cartel map so that initially there are no neutral hexes
(4) Modify the mission scripts to solve some resultant drafting issues

In theory, this would have the following effects:

(1) empire players wouldn't draft pirate players as enemies,
but might sometimes draft them as allies against other enemies
(hired mercenaries for the mission?)

(2) pirate players would draft other pirates as enemies,
but wouldn't draft empire players as enemies
(again, they might sometimes be drafted as allies)

(3) empire players could raise their own hex DVs for all territory
except that which was cartel-neutral, which should be relatively rare
(just while the hex is being flipped on the cartel map)

In practice the approach above has caused some problems in drafting
(getting weird friends/allies in missions) but I *think* that is due to
mission scripting issues that we can address now that the mission source
code has been released.

Obviously it's not perfect by any stretch of the imagination,
but there are some initial thoughts,
dave

FireSoul · « **Reply #27 on:** January 30, 2003, 02:02:19 pm »

Interesting. The only problem with scripts talking directly to a MySQL server is security.
.. results would indeed be reported back properly.. however how would the D2 serverkit use this information at that point?

-- Luc

TOCXOBearslayer · « **Reply #29 on:** January 30, 2003, 02:28:51 pm »

Also, if a way exists to eliminate the need for the D2 Directory servers, I suggest we find it. Or one day we may be forced to give up the D2.

FireSoul · « **Reply #30 on:** January 30, 2003, 02:34:19 pm »

We don't have the sources to the D2 serverkit code. Most of what you ask above can't be done with lots of reverse engineering. (and then reinventing the wheel.)

jdmckinney · « **Reply #31 on:** January 30, 2003, 02:49:19 pm »

Clarification:

You don't have to have a pirate AI or player in a mission to affect the cartel layer, or for cartel political tensions to mess up the DV results of empire vs. empire missions.

Again, these should be retested, but my experiences:

If all cartels are friendly to all empires, one of the situations I described above happens. Essentially, no matter which empire wins the battle, the serverkit gets confused about how to apply the win/loss to the DV. The possibilities are strange. There may be no DV change for the empires, or their results can hurt the cartel DV underneath. What tends to happen is either nothing changes, or the changes also hurt the health of the cartel DV. Once that cartel ownership flips to neutral, the players begin to hurt their own hex.

In RT3, we had an allied cartel grabbing hexes underneath their enemies and allies to affect the empire DVs. If they took the cartel layer of an enemy hex, or flipped a hex neutral, the home empire couldn't boost their DV, and could possibly hurt it. If they took a hex that was also owned by their allied empires, then the defense missions there WOULD raise DV. The trouble with freeflying pirates grabbing hexes is the players can't monitor cartel layer DV, and can't fight off the invading pirates. They also can't tell how their cartel players' missions are affecting things until a hex flips.

In SG(can't remember the number), players could fly both empire and allied cartel, but not only was it hard to keep track of things, but generally people didn't want to play as a cartel. Even if you can get the 2-layer assault/defense coordinated and have all players conscious of both, you still need players to put in roughly equal time as cartel pilots as they are putting in as empire pilots. Oh, and of course there are bugs even when you seem to get this all straight.

It's such a twisted mess, it's hard to get solid data on what happens when certain conditions occur. Our best bet at this point is to find a way for the servers to ignore the cartel layer when determining empire DV changes. If we could do that, we'd be a giant step ahead of where we are now.

At this point, I really don't know what else to try besides putting up variations of .gf settings ad nauseum and testing the results.

FireSoul · « **Reply #32 on:** January 30, 2003, 03:17:55 pm »

.. we have no choice BUT to test if we want to gather information.
I agree.

NuclearWessels · « **Reply #33 on:** January 30, 2003, 05:59:08 pm »

Ah, damn, sorry Nomad!

I knew you'd done a bunch of testing with the pirate alliances,
but the rusty old memory had the details wrong.

Yeah, I'm not sure what else to try then...
I'll have another hunt through the API for anything that may help,
or trigger ideas at least, but I wouldn't recommend any breath-holding.

dave

Cleaven · « **Reply #34 on:** January 30, 2003, 10:42:30 pm »

Ideal situation I think would be to have a switch for a single layer map that plays like EAW (no pirate empires or ships), or dual layer where the correct DV's are shown for the cartel hexes. In fact the correcting of the displayed cartel DV's should be something simple and if it is a client side fix then it should be in the "soon" to be released OP patch. If it's server side then it can be done with other things I suppose.

This will make the system at least playable in a fashion that is probably no worse than EAW is now.

Mission scripts then can be worked on in a manner to address patrol bug like issues. I may have this wrong but neutral co-op needs to be addressed in the server kit and how it interprets mission results (since EAW has the same problem).

SQL functionality for OP???? Is this even an option?

Fluf · « **Reply #35 on:** January 31, 2003, 02:28:47 am »

Agreed Nomad, Slave Girls 2 was probably the best implementation I have seen so far concerning the pirate cartels interaction. But as you stated, even though all the players could have two accounts, one for their race and one for their allied pirate cartels, it was very hard to fly both. Not being able to determine the pirate map DV was especially frustrating.

The other problem is the pirate ships just suck. What we would need here if the map layer interaction cant be fixed by ArticFire is to make at least 2 or 3 of the pirate cartels actually playable, thus drawing some players to those cartels. If it was a 2 sided campaign, then only use 2 of the cartels. But give them the ships so they could compete reasonably against the main races ships. There are some pirate ships that do very well and with a couple of tweaks, could be made competitive.

I still think OP is our best shot at getting the game we all want. I hope ArticFire can solve the map interaction problem. If he cant, then maybe there is some way to go back to a single layer map and still leave the pirate cartels in as separate race slots that we could use for modding! Can you say Tholians and Andro!

jdmckinney · « **Reply #36 on:** January 31, 2003, 06:43:18 am »

Here's the thing about players using 2 accounts: it obviously doesn't work well with pirates, for a variety of reasons. So, an alternative SFCX came up with once, but never pushed past the testing stage, is to give the cartel "races" access to limited (mostly "vanilla") warships from its allied empire. That can be done using a stock shiplist simply by changing the server-side list (i.e., no download required). We were thinking the cartels would then be sort of a mercenary force hired and supplied by their allied empire to help in the war. However, the problem of being unable to monitor the cartel layer DVs is still there, and people would still have to split time over 2 accounts OR have their team players balanced between cartel and empire pilots.

But, when it comes right down to it, this is all just smoke and mirrors that approximates an EAW D2. If you're not using the cartels as pirates with their own unique ships, or as modded new or additional races, it's easier to just use EAW.

So, rather than make do with these elaborate workarounds, I'd like to find a way to just get OP D2 to work right in the first place. Hopefully custom missions or creative settings can help, but I still think the problem may be too deep and requires a code change. We'll see.

Mog · « **Reply #37 on:** January 31, 2003, 07:51:08 am »

Meow to my friends in this thread first off

To Drall: what seems many moons ago now, while planning for the Tides of War grand campaign, we came up with the idea of using merged race shiplists to counter the neutral coop issue. It was also a way to allow us to bring the Andromedans in (my particular pet project at the time). Believe me, we (SFCx) have discussed these issues to death many times.

To everyone: I don't believe that custom missions alone will fix the problems mentioned in this thread. Custom missions with SQL should be able to achieve what is wanted. Then, the advances discovered recently in EAW can be applied to OP (yeah I make it sound soooo easy lol). So, the question arises again, is there a SQL server kit for OP, or have we been left short (in yet another area) by the developers?

Looking on the negative side, that if Artic fails in his mission to fix OP D2, what alternatives do we have? Do we soldier on, using multiple accounts as empire and pirates, merging races to free up a race slot for neutral space and whatever the other myriad work-arounds we came up with over the last year or so? Or do we decide that OP D2 will never be really playable as it stands and look at running OP campaigns differently?

Take Ghis' General War campaigns that he ran in SFC1 and EAW. Maybe OP would be the better engine for that type of campaign? Granted, it is not an easy type of campaign to run - much coordination between players is needed to fight the battles. But, it has all the ingredients that have been missing from D2. OOB, specified ship production, useful scouts, hell just about anything from F&E could slot right in. The main bugbear, as I said before, is coordinating the battles, which would need to be done either by direct IP or via GSA.

jdmckinney · « **Reply #38 on:** January 31, 2003, 12:50:08 pm »

Meow back at you, Moggy.

If people are serious about wanting to make a better OP D2, one thing we will need are dedicated testers who can bash the D2 map with all manner of missions and outcomes under various settings. If anyone wants to help out, give a yell, and we'll see about putting up a server for the testing.

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Topic: How to Fix OP D2: Radical Ideas Welcomed (Read 18810 times) var addthis_config = {"data_track_clickback":true};

Capt Jeff

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EmeraldEdge

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NuclearWessels

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TOCXOBearslayer

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FireSoul

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Topic: How to Fix OP D2: Radical Ideas Welcomed (Read 18810 times)