VSR mod

[Red Devil]

i applaud ZA for even attempting to improve things to try to make himself and other people happy - it's not easy at all and it takes a lot of time and effort.

having said that, i tried VSR about 1..2 months ago and tried driving an isdf scout around for a bit and really didn't like the hovercraft physics, but i think that, with some more time and experimentation, they will improve.

as for the number of builds, that's always a good thing. it means that it is being worked on and progress is being made. sometimes it's giant leaps and other times it's a few steps forward and a few back.

if there's one thing i've learned in my years here and elsewhere, it's that people have different personalities, skills, and attitudes and, hence, approach and deal with problems differently.

also, the more you learn, the more you realize how little you know and that a little patience goes a long ways.

i think i'll split this off because it's diverged from the topic.

[Zero Angel]

Thank you for the split. I felt a little guilty hijacking that topic but felt that I had to defend myself and my project against what I deem to be incorrect and unfair assertions.

Right now it's impossible to improve the hovercraft physics further at least for morelike12physics without introducing worse bugs (i've tried every combination of physics settings in the book). The 'bounce' has always been the biggest thing i've had to fight against, where craft that land would hit the terrain and be bounced up into the air with a drastic loss of controllability. In order to minimize the bounce as much as possible, a few compromises had to be made because bounce was such a severe problem with morelike12physics. I did completely overcome bounce once and in fact perfected the handling but then it introduced a bug where craft could 'muscle' its way inside of building geometries so had to revert back to the current settings. Changelog says morelike12physics is unsupported and i'm just glad that it is as it is right now. Not perfect but good enough.

[Zero Angel]

The deign of the AI, for note, is to shoot a bit, then spin around some times, then shoot a bit more. Really dumb AI.

Show me people actual bothering to use these tweaked units, and I will change my mind. In every recording I see online of a "vet strat" no one bothers. If something is changed, and it still isn't used, the change was not only not effective, but it did nothing. All those videos involve the same basic strategies, going all the way back to before VSR existed.

That's because I haven't nerfed the dominant strategies, simply attempted to make alternate strategies viable and not suicidal. I am not forcing change, I am presenting it as an option. There are a few strategies that have not been viable before but are now viable, such as rushing pulse-las tanks supported by las scouts to try and quickly crush scions or using prox mines and pummels defensively for combat vs blink or using a combination of lancers and sentries as an mid-game alternative to the blink tech rush (which is still the dominant strategy for 80% of the scion commanders out there because its a proven strategy). You have adaptable players like Domakus and Sly using morphed fang/emp warrs to lock down enemy weapons so they cant blink while his allies finish them off which has never been a viable strategy since these weapons alone have typically been sub-par and together, equally sub-par especially when arc/gauss has always been more reliable. Tactics like this have never been viable before, and I have made bad decisions before in an attempt to change the metagame (buffing scion earlygame and nerfing lategame in attempts to make scions more accessible and not so powerful in lategame was one of the biggest balance mistakes I ever made (previously, now mainly reverted) because the fun of playing ISDF is using superior weapons to try and crush the scions before they reach blink and the fun of scions is fighting tooth and nail with inferior tech to survive to reach blink). It was an attempt to balance things for the better but those attempts to change what makes core BZ2 gameplay so great were things that only worked on paper and never in reality once experienced. Not because of traditional stubbornness, but because there is a type of genius to the way that the races were designed and the reason why *we* who *play* bz2 love it. It is the soul of the game, so to say -- and it was never the intention of VSR to remove that soul of the game but rather to feel around to try and reclaim a few things that were lost and add possibilities that never existed before. Experienced so, it is not a regression, but a progression. Combining all aspects of the past (1.2's better aspects), present (1.3's better aspects) and future (things that have never existed before) to create something that everyone can enjoy. It is not meant to be a stab at GSH's efforts, since its his changes that made it even possible, just something that is directed to those of us who live outside of this (matesfamily/bzu) community and so do not normally have a voice or dominion.

On the matter of AI. I have repeatedly tried to improve AI such as AI tanks being stuck in SCATTER, borked scav pathing, Lancers with long range weaponry trying to get up close, etc. For the most part, BZ2 AI is beyond my ability to repair by ODF tweaks alone. I have spent dozens of hours attempting to do so but meeting only with frustration.

[MrTwosheds]

but because there is a type of genius to the way that the races were designed

I think we can safely say that this probably almost entirely accidental, considering how Bz2 was rushed out to market unpolished.

[Zero Angel]

It was, but a lot of the conceptual stuff is determined earlier in the project which is typically not as rushed. Scions were probably designed to be how they were before the ODFs were even made. The balance generally works (and if it didnt in 1.0, then it would have in 1.1 or 1.2)

[Red Devil]

tried tweaking these?

MIN_BOUNCE_VEL = 0.5
OBJECT_ELASTICITY = 0.425 // 0.125
GROUND_ELASTICITY = 0.08125 // 0.03125

CollideTerrainSound = "silence.wav" // "collide01.wav" // Sound on collision w/ terrain
CollideBldgSound = "collide02.wav" // Sound on collision w/ building or immovable object
CollideOtherSound = "collide01.wav" // Sound on hitting other objects

as for AI, tried g66 lately? speaking of which, i need to post the update for that.

[Zero Angel]

I use a negative GROUND_ELASTICITY to dampen the amount of bouncing that occurs with morelike12physics. Pushing it too high into the negatives or can eliminate bouncing but it also causes ships to be able to push through buildings. LIFT_DAMP and LIFT_SPRING settings also needed to be adjusted to make morelike12physics work and to reduce the rate and magnitude at which craft accumulated downwards force over time (which contributed towards the bounce problem).

These are some of the settings

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[CraftClass]
/////// PHYSICS SETTINGS ////////////
MIN_BOUNCE_VEL = 0.1 // 1.8 // 0.7 // *0.5
MAX_BOUNCE_VEL = 0.8
OBJECT_ELASTICITY = 0.025 // *0.0125
GROUND_ELASTICITY = -0.2
DAMAGE_SCALE = 0.01 // Scale in turning velocity into damage, on craft:ground or craft:building collisions

collideTerrainSound = "silence.wav" // Sound on collision w/ terrain

And these ones

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LIFT_SPRING = 16 // *25
LIFT_DAMP = 2 // *6.25

I'll take a look at G66 AI and see if there is anything I can learn from it.

[Red Devil]

i think i would abandon morelike12physics and work within 1.3

[Roscoe]

but because there is a type of genius to the way that the races were designed

I think we can safely say that this probably almost entirely accidental, considering how Bz2 was rushed out to market unpolished.

I think a LOT of what made BZII so awesome was accidental... which probably has a lot to do with why nothing else has come close to being as fun.

[Nielk1]

When these other options are still worse than the bog standard, you can't expect them to be used. Gotta love how you act like I am attacking your project when I simply point out that no one goes outside the bog standard play. Regression is not a bad word, though you seem hell bent on acting like it is, but you still fail to show me any evidence that VSR facilitates alternate modes of play. The simple fact is that VSR gives vets, and only vets, what they want, and as we know the vets like things one specific way and no other. Even if you make an alternate path more viable, it is still woefully inadequate vs the standard models. If you claim this was a goal, you have yet to realize this. The first step to improvement it is accepting that you have not yet succeeded.

RD, don't give him a false ceiling. Sure, he has done a lot, but as he has not reached all his stated goals I think its negative for the progress of the project to pretend he has. That's what he gets for setting hard goals, welcome to the aims of most modders.

[Zero Angel]

The fact that a majority of vets havent adopted alternate strategies doesnt mean that they arent equivalent to proven ones. It speaks only to the fact that vets are more willing to use proven strategies because they have less of a chance of messing it up. There are a few commanders who have used unproven strategies (e.g. pl/las tank rush, sentries and lancers) and have won against equal-tier commanders and relatively equal teams. These strategies would never have worked before and they work now. That means that I am most of the way towards my stated goals (I never did say that I was all the way there).

Regression is not a bad word

Really? Seeing as we are talking about a software product, it seems to me like it is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_regression

[Ded10c]

The fact that a majority of vets havent adopted alternate strategies doesnt mean that they arent equivalent to proven ones. It speaks only to the fact that vets are more willing to use proven strategies because they have less of a chance of messing it up. There are a few commanders who have used unproven strategies (e.g. pl/las tank rush, sentries and lancers) and have won against equal-tier commanders and relatively equal teams. These strategies would never have worked before and they work now. That means that I am most of the way towards my stated goals (I never did say that I was all the way there).

Regression is not a bad word

Really? Seeing as we are talking about a software product, it seems to me like it is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_regression

Is reversion the word you're looking for?

[Red Spot]

The simple fact is that VSR gives vets, and only vets, what they want, and as we know the vets like things one specific way and no other.

Just to have it said. There have been many people that have commented that VSR has gone to far and has become what ZA said it never would, a mod.
And pretty much for that reason there are a handfull of 'vets' (ugly word if used on yourself!) that simply dont play it (anymore).

Kudos to ZA though, its a cool package, I just happen to allign with what I mentioned above.

[Red Spot]

The fact that a majority of vets havent adopted alternate strategies doesnt mean that they arent equivalent to proven ones. It speaks only to the fact that vets are more willing to use proven strategies because they have less of a chance of messing it up. There are a few commanders who have used unproven strategies (e.g. pl/las tank rush, sentries and lancers) and have won against equal-tier commanders and relatively equal teams. These strategies would never have worked before and they work now. That means that I am most of the way towards my stated goals (I never did say that I was all the way there).

Regression is not a bad word

Really? Seeing as we are talking about a software product, it seems to me like it is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_regression

Is reversion the word you're looking for?

Rev. is basicly just an other way of saying 'version'.

Regression means going back to an older state, if you feel the older state is worse, its regression for the worse. And vice versa. It does not by definition mean its getting worse.
That it often is used in such context is an other story.

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noun 1. the act of going back to a previous place or state; return or reversion. 2. retrogradation; retrogression. 3. Biology . reversion to an earlier or less ...

[Ded10c]

Is reversion the word you're looking for?

Rev. is basicly just an other way of saying 'version'.

Regression means going back to an older state, if you feel the older state is worse, its regression for the worse. And vice versa. It does not by definition mean its getting worse.
That it often is used in such context is an other story.

The word you're thinking of is revision, not reversion. Reversion and mean regression mean the same things, but regression typically holds a negative connotation (as the definition you posted notes).