Topic: Missions have been updated on Reclamation. [nt]

[FireSoul]

It would be enough!
I want the asteroid base missions back for the variety's sake on reclamation!

[jimmi7769]

HEY!!!!

did anyone notice I said I CTD'd on the new Data Recovery mission???

I rarely ever CTD

[NuclearWessels]

Whoooooops!   Sorry - I did miss that jimmi

Looking into it now,
dave
   

[CptCastrin]

Two things NW:

One person reports that drones mistriously vanissing off a ship after doing a Data Recovery, scan and run style.

Two people just reported that when they killed all AI in a DR mission, at that point it closed and gave then 25 - 30pp less. This without "scanning" the listening post.

I'll let you know if anythig else pops up.    

[NuclearWessels]

Hmmm - yeah, definitely getting some spurious crashes if you go straight for the base.

Well, back to the drawing board!

I'll hold the new pack until I get a fix worked out for this one and get a bit more testing in on the asteroid missions, you might want to pull DR in the meanwhile.

dave
 

[jdmckinney]

FS, the sum total of what I did to the shiplist before launching Reclamation was to reclass some of the Special ships as their proper ship size to make them available. Not all of them were made available, but that's why commando ships, scouts, some tugs that were special would be showing up. Also, I checked through to assign ship classes where I felt they were off in the default Taldren list and had been preserved. For instance, a F-CVA I classed as Dreadnought instead of Carrier.

As of now, a lot of those "special" ships should be back to that tag, removing them from the mix -- that's what Castrin said he'd done earlier today. This should remove things like commando tugs.

[FireSoul]

I think the shipyard preserves the ships for sale for too long, now.. The lyan shipyard screen was actually full.
-- Luc

[Mog]

Trust me, Luc, (lol Star Wars moment?) it's much better that way

[CptCastrin]

Quote:
I think the shipyard preserves the ships for sale for too long, now.. The lyan shipyard screen was actually full.
-- Luc  

Well to be honest ... don't worry about it.

It's really an illusion, the yard(s) keep the ships for 9 (econ cycle rate x 3) turns now. If your yard is producing 2 ships then you will see 6 waiting max but in the case of the Lyrans who (I believe) are leading in econ you are probably making like 4 (5?) per econ run. That will eventually creat a full screen but it's nothing different than when the delay match the econ run rate. All it does is give some longer to get a ship they saw but didn't have the preseige to get at that time.

Later on as the other races get more coming in the hold times will be adjusted. Unfortunetly because it's a global setting there will be some yards that have a glut of ships hanging around to get. Better that than few to none.  

[Capt Jeff]

bumps, so people know where to find these.....;)

[IndyShark]

NW, I noticed that when you draft an ally in a data recovery mission, the enemy forces are much weaker. I was trying to help a Klingon earn some pp. He was in an E4D, and I have a DWCLP (I think that's what it's callled!). He drafted me and we would get two weak frigates. I can understand three frigates or even a frigate and a cruiser, but I don't understand why we only got two ships instead of three.

Could you look at that please? Thanks

BTW, I have not had any CTD's on any of your new missions. Good job!

[NuclearWessels]

Sadly, with drafted AI the strengths are based on the size of the drafting ship - so if a BB and FF are flying coop and the FF always does the drafting you'll be facing much weaker drafted opposition than if the BB does the drafting.  

This is a longstanding problem with the way the AI draft was implemented - it's based purely on the strength of one team on a side, not on the strengths of all teams on the side.

The missions that generate some extra (non-drafted) AI for balance limit the effects of this somewhat, but missions that are purely based on the draft will definitely suffer from this problem.

dave
 

[FPF_TraceyG]

Dave, I've noticed that teams are setup in a linear fashion. That is, one after the other. By creating all the ships on the player side first and recording their hull classes, I've been able to use those hull classes to specify what hull class to use for enemy AI.
For example, in the PatrolB missions, if a FF drafts a BCH, the FF takes player slot #1 and the BCH takes player slot #2.
Enemy slot #1 gets an AI ship that is at most one above or one below a FF (min FF). Enemy slot #2 then gets a AI based on player slot #2's hull class, a BCH, so it gets AI limited in hull class to one above and one below a BC, which is Heavy to a Dreadnought. I put a limit on AI ships in slots #2 and #3 to BC however, so in this example, at most you would only get a BC.

It seems to be working well and all the PatrolB variants I wrote, this is the code for AI generation. The only problem is that I havent been able to get the hull class of an AI ship generated in the player slots specifically, so I've just had to use the same range for these slots as for enemy slots. I've probably made that sound way too complicated... lol!! But it works...
In other words, if a FF drafts a BC in any of the PatrolB's, there is no real advantage, as matching AI ships will be generated.

[NuclearWessels]

If you're talking about generating extra AI balancing ships after the drafting is finished, yes that's what the "from scratch" ED missions do as well - I just wasn't energetic enough to go through and add that to all XXXX Taldren based missions as well (folks seem to think my missions already have enough AI in them )

If you're talking about having mDefineTeamShipStrengths( ) actually change the class and BPV range specifications for drafted ships on the fly, i.e.
Code:

   mSetTeamShipStrength( kEnemyTeam1, lowhullsize, highhullsize, lowbpv, highbpv );

then that's very cool to know - it's always backfired out on me when I played with that, but that was in the early development days and might well have been due to other problems.  How do you get it to determine if the team is AI or human before the team is actually drafted and created?

dave

 

[The Postman]

I would like to know when the rings around planets became solid? I just pulled a Jinn with my F-CCR  

[Green]

They've always been solid.

[Cleaven]

...  in EAW.

Not EAW bashing, but some people may forget as they switch between games.  

[FPF_TraceyG]

Dave, I pretty much well followed your notes to the letter when setting up teams. When the player team ships are being created in the mCreateNewShiop method, I record the hull classes of the ships in an array using
hullClass = shipScriptDescription.fClassType;
In the patrol, there are 6 teams, 3 on each side. The 3 player teams are created first, then the enemy teams. Since the player teams are created first, I can use the hull classes of the player team ships to set minimum and maximum hull classes for the enemy ships. This is all done whilst the teams are being set up and no ships are added after the mission begins.
I can only record the hull classes of human ships in this way however, as I'm reading the hull class from the information sent to the script by the dyna.

[Cleaven]

And while playing the convoy raid in co-op, it seems that one in five is bugged, where the drafter loses control of his ship. The draftee is okay.

While trying to co-op, it seems that most of the patrols were traps (single player). Is the only other patrol the one with the freighter? Is it co-op-able? If these are the only two patrols then that's okay. Probably the right thing for a single ship to be doing, while two ships would be sent on a mission such as convoys or couriers.

Also I haven't had an ambush mission yet. Are they still there (patrols)?  

[NuclearWessels]

OK Tracey, just wanted to make sure I understood - you are doing the balancing using mCreateNewShip, not actually getting the game engine to draft balanced forces.  Thx, thought  was missing something!

Cleaven, the patrol mission with the freighter should be coop compatible, actually you should be able to get up to three humans drafted per side (plus the freighter).  I'll look into the convoy raid issue, if it's happening with about the frequency you suggest then I think I know where the problem is.

dave