VSR 4.4 Prerelease 2

[Zero Angel]

VSR is shorthand for the 'Vet Strat Recycler Variant'. Basically it is designed to improve your experience over stock battlezone 2 for competitive play by implementing features such as:

• Faster pods
• Improved unit pathing through bases (even poorly designed ones)
• Weak/poor units and weapons (like the Lancer, Splinter, EMP Lockdown, Comet Cruise, WASP, TAG etc) up-balanced to be more useful while still being balanced for competitive play.
• Changes to combat unit physics allow for greater maneuverability while airborne
• Many many other convenient tweaks like modified empty scouts costing 30 scrap, and unmodded fullscouts costing 40 scrap
• Improved FFA mode allows for greater amount of options and even allows players to be a wingman for a commander.
• Numerous new maps for ST and DM
• Now includes the 1.3 Strategy Map Pack which is comprised of over 50 new high-quality ST maps for BZ2.

VSR also allows 2 additional races to be playable in strat: The Hadeans (from Forgotten Enemies) as well as a brand new race called the Ice Cream race (a high-quality race balanced for competitive games and will continue to be balanced and improved as part of the VSR project.)

A milestone for the 4.4 release is that it now properly supports MPI Mode, and Hadeans can now be played as and are even selectable as a CPU race (do note that VSR for MPI modes must be enabled by clicking the 'VSR Plus' button in the map options screen). The CPU team will also employ 'smart' scouts which are normal scouts but with tweaked AI which makes them very deadly in combat, this is compensated for by reducing the scrap cheat that the CPU team gets. It is recommended you start with only a moderate or minimal amount of starting units for the best experience.

Download

The prerelease can be downloaded here:
http://zeroangel.overminddl1.com/hosted ... -setup.exe

It will install a desktop shortcut which you can use to play the prerelease.

For more information about specific changes to this release over Pre1, refer to this topic:
http://bz2maps.us/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4500

[RubiconAlpha]

Thanks ZA. Was fun playing against The Hadeans in MPI. Deadly CPU team Scouts is right.

[Zero Angel]

You should have access to the same scouts. It's just micromanaging the scouts from the field (e.g. sending them for repairs) that can be difficult. I've lowered the scrap boost a lot compared to most other of the 'difficult/insane' AIPs but the scouts really make things difficult and the scrap boost makes a 1:1 scrap loss ratio work against you. Blackdragon and I want to eventually integrate some of the features that are in the VSR:ST DLL + Experimental Variant into the yet-to-be-created MPI DLL. This includes a 'BZ1-style' satellite view, packable recs, player-built portals and health bars on the base building slots, as well as some MPI-only features on the horizon like sneak attacks, 'commander' and 'thug' scouts (that hunt players), 'AI Take Over', and some other things that will make the AI more responsive to and more affected by your actions rather than just throwing out waves of units at a predictable rate.

Ideally I would get an MPI design specialist (like Natty!) to work with me to write AIPs and to help develop and design unit variants to realize these lofty goals. But Blackdragon and I would be prepared to go it alone if necessary.

Also note: That the 'experimental' recycler variant has those things, but they only work on VSR maps because they utilize features not available on the stock 1.3 mission DLLs.

[Red Spot]

Ideally I would get an MPI design specialist (like Natty!) to work with me to write AIPs and to help develop and design unit variants to realize these lofty goals.

I'm quite profound in the area of manipulating AI in order to get them to do things 'more human-like'. If you can come to a point you can accept and believe that, I would be willing to lend a hand in the mpi-effort field.

[General BlackDragon]

Sure, add us on Skype.

[MrTwosheds]

Creative use of the new aip switching function with conditions can be used to make the AI much more responsive to what a player does or does not do, odd conditions can be used to make this less predictable, you can switch back and forth and branch out to different strategy trees.

[Red Spot]

Best way to create AIP's, imo, is to make them build buildings and basic sets of units, allow the dll to do the rest. It immidiatly removes the failing attacks because stage-points 'no longer' work well mid-/late-game.

GBD, reply via PM.