Topic: Neutral Coop (Read 8117 times)

DarkElf · « **on:** February 03, 2003, 03:35:55 pm »

Perhaps is we use insert the Evil Dave Base Assult and Patrol Missions it would be more enjoyable.

What do you think guys?

Insert 2 Evil Dave missions for Coop?
Yes.
No.

3dot14 · « **Reply #1 on:** February 03, 2003, 04:57:04 pm »

so it IS a scripting problem after all!

If it fixes the problem, sure.

But just wondering. are there are down sides? (there usually are...)

DarkElf · « **Reply #2 on:** February 03, 2003, 06:53:56 pm »

Actually that remains to be seen, Im about to set up some testing...I am not sure.

Cleaven · « **Reply #3 on:** February 04, 2003, 12:58:25 am »

I thought is was tried in the lead up to AOTK (all those Orion hexes) and still had problems with DV's. Somebody explained it way back when and I was lead to believe that it was due to a limtation in how results were reported and therefore a fault of the API itself. Somebody may have a different opinion though.

C-Los · « **Reply #4 on:** February 04, 2003, 06:58:25 am »

Capt Jeff and I did co-op base asaults in neutral hex, def did go down but only with Base Missions all others had no effect!!

Capt Jeff · « **Reply #5 on:** February 04, 2003, 07:08:14 am »

I think another attempt should be tried with Orion hexes.

Settings need to be double checked in the server gf files to make sure that Orions are set to be enemies with everyone, AND that they do not become friendly with anyone after X amount of missions....

NuclearWessels · « **Reply #6 on:** February 04, 2003, 08:12:46 am »

Quote:

Capt Jeff and I did co-op base asaults in neutral hex, def did go down but only with Base Missions all others had no effect!!

Is this true? I had been under the impression that all the missions suffered from the neutral-space coop problem. But, if the base assaults handled it ok then I can go in and see how I was reporting results differently there than in the other missions --- we might actually be able to solve this.

dave

EmeraldEdge · « **Reply #7 on:** February 04, 2003, 08:21:23 am »

Let's keep our fingers crossed, eh?

FatherTed · « **Reply #8 on:** February 04, 2003, 09:17:22 am »

Yeah, coops on base assaults do affect dv it would appear.

BTW: Dark Elf, could you check the shipyard settings? Deadmansix was telling me that a lot of the Hydran line ships that should be out by now aren't turning up in the yards, and it appears that nobody is getting bases.

TOCXOBearslayer · « **Reply #9 on:** February 04, 2003, 11:40:43 am »

Interesting, when I was on last night, at one point there was only 2 base stations (BSF's IIRC) in the Hydran shipyards.... after a few turns, I came back to see what was up and there was a faily normal, though lacking modernization, ship list.

Cleaven · « **Reply #11 on:** February 04, 2003, 03:51:23 pm »

Of course the other thing about neutrals is that you can get a DV shift by running away and leaving the mission ASAP. You only need to fight if you want the PP.

C-Los · « **Reply #13 on:** February 07, 2003, 09:32:55 am »

Dave, FYI if it matters I co-oped with Capt. Jeff on several......

Also did it with 3 of us myself, Bearslayer and another Fed.....and Def went down with each base mission.

NuclearWessels · « **Reply #14 on:** February 07, 2003, 01:01:38 pm »

Ahhhhhhhh ... things get more and more interesting.

After digging through the reporting code some more, I believe that in some of the scripts (especially the patrol-style scripts) certain teams will not report certain mission results. This isn't important when there's only one player in the mission, but would (I think) cause our co-op problems.

If this is correct, then I'm pretty sure there's actually an easy fix. <crosses fingers>

Darkelf - if I get some revised versions ready tomorrow is there any chance we can throw them on a test server?

dave

DarkElf · « **Reply #15 on:** February 07, 2003, 01:12:07 pm »

If you get them ready, contact either me or Tracey. We can have a mission testing server we can use.

NuclearWessels · « **Reply #16 on:** February 07, 2003, 08:52:42 pm »

OK, I've modded the results reporting - they seem fine in single player, so let's see if they can do the job in neutral co-op.

They're now in the full mission pack: http://www3.telus.net/NuclearWessels/sfc/downloads/EAWMissions.zip
the key scripts that changed are Met_NW10Patrol, Met_NW6Patrol, Met_NW17Patrol, Met_NW14Enigma, Met_NW19Scan, Met_NW11ConvoyRaid, Met_NW13Monster, and Met_NW12ConvoyEscort

If you want to, just whack in the 6/10/17 Patrol variants and that should be enough to see if it did any good.
If those work out then you can pick anything you like out of the rest

<crosses fingers and makes pizza offering to the D2 gods>

man I hope this works!
dave

Corbomite · « **Reply #17 on:** February 07, 2003, 09:32:42 pm »

Me too! Thanks Dave!

NuclearWessels · « **Reply #18 on:** February 10, 2003, 03:51:56 pm »

AARRRRRGGGHHH
<sound of gnashing teeth>

Well, so far attempts to mod the stock Taldren patrols to handle neutral coop properly have been, ummmm, less than outrageously successful. The next level of attempted fix would amount to a rewrite of a substantial chunk of someone else's code, and I'm not feeling up to that at the moment (eyes bottle of Crown Royal and stack of Cadbury Eggs and wonders if that would do the trick).

I know we've been through this before, but the three options I see are
(1) keep neutral space to a minimum, or
(2) just live with the neutral space coop bug, or
(3) go with mostly custom missions in neutral (which also means enemy) space
EDIT: speaking in general here, not about the current server specifically

Yuck!
dave

Mog · « **Reply #19 on:** February 10, 2003, 04:00:59 pm »

Option 4 - merge 2 or more races in the shiplist and use an unused one for neutral space. Lyrans would be favourite (imo) to merge with another race.

NuclearWessels · « **Reply #20 on:** February 10, 2003, 05:08:00 pm »

Yep, I'd buy that Moggy. I'd hate to lose the ability to fly the ships, but if they were merged with another race that'd be A-OK by me. Plus it would be cool to see vast tracts of Lyran space early in the campaign

dave

Cleaven · « **Reply #21 on:** February 10, 2003, 11:58:57 pm »

I too think it's time to just combine the Lyran and Klingon list and use the Lyran space for neutral, AS LONG AS you don't have "Lyran" ships showing up to defend the "neutral" space, or some other side effect. Maybe put the pirate ships in the Lyran list as well. This sounds like an effective quick and dirty fix that will do the job until the OP patches are done.
Testing ASAP please?

NuclearWessels · « **Reply #22 on:** February 11, 2003, 08:08:45 am »

Actually I'm an idiot.

Given that the base assault script works fine for coop in neutral, all we really need to do is make a version of base assault without the base. That's easily done, and it's easy to get it to appear in other hexes. Doh!

If we want to maintain some mission variety then we could do is create a couple of variants based on the assaults script and give them identifiable names. Then in neutral space folks can run any mission if they're flying solo, but they can pick the appropriate missions if they want to fly coop.

dave

Skawpya · « **Reply #23 on:** February 11, 2003, 08:50:07 am »

Hmmm I take it that there is no neutral ship list? if not is it possible to make the pirates fill in for the neutral?

NuclearWessels · « **Reply #24 on:** February 11, 2003, 11:50:42 am »

Yes and no ...

There are neutral ships but there isn't really a neutral race.
Neutral space is treated by the game engine as unowned by anyone,
rather than as territory owned by the neutrals.

As such, when it generates opponents for missions in neutral territory
it picks your nearest enemy (by closest base IIRC) rather than generating
neutral ships to fight.

Meanwhile, the missions tend to view neutral space as falling into either
the "friendly" or "hostile" categories based on server settings, and never
truly regard the space as neutral. As far as I know, no one has yet managed
to come up with a set of missions that get offered ONLY in neutral space.
Either they also get offered in allied territory or they also get offered
in enemy territory.

dave

Cleaven · « **Reply #25 on:** February 11, 2003, 03:42:02 pm »

Just a question about the base missions. When people say that the co-op works, could it not be that the mission result is only being interpretted as a loss, not a win, and the DV is going down due to a loss. I suppose that this is not logical but you might need to check it first.

NuclearWessels · « **Reply #26 on:** February 11, 2003, 04:29:22 pm »

Since it's the same script as is used for enemy base assaults (where it works correctly)
I think we're pretty safe in thinking it's actually returning the results correctly.

Not 100% sure of course, but reasonably. Call it 98

dave

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C-Los

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Corbomite

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Topic: Neutral Coop (Read 8117 times)