Warlords

[Jezuro 452]

About airdropping: when a vehicle is slowly falling to the ground on a parachute, it's extremely easy to destroy even from a long distance. Also, letting players pick a precise drop location allows various exploits (like building barricades etc.).

 

*edit: If your vehicle blows up in an airdrop mishap, you should get your CPs refunded automatically.

Edited November 19, 2018 by Jezuro

[Pvt. Pogo 1]

Hi everyone, I’m probably a bit late to the feedback party but here goes.

 

I’m a member of the German group FJB49 which participated on Friday and first of all I’d like to thank you guys for staying in touch with your community by doing these kinds of events. Also thanks to FlashRanger who offered us the slots on a really short notice. All of our players were happy we could participate in this stress-test and we surely had a lot of fun.

 

As for the balancing of the game mode there surely are some discussable points like whether there should be thermal equipment or not but I feel this wasn’t much of a dealbreaker for our players. Also I liked the parachute vehicle/equipment airdrops because it mostly prevented people to call in heavy equipment too close to the frontlines. The lack of mortars and artillery was very welcomed since that could have easily spoiled the fun there.

 

My main concern with this gamemode is the handling of the immediate-death-zones and the attack selection. I can see how the selection of multiple attack zones can cause trouble, especially in those big games. However, the inability to change your zone of attack gives you a serious disadvantage in this gamemode. Like you could see in the big 40v40 game both parties tried to make their way to the airport quickly to gain the air superiority advantage. This led to a glorious fight for about half an hour but once it was clear OpFor was going to take the airfield, BlueFor was basically done for. I played on the BlueFor side and noticed how we got absolutely obliterated after the fight for the airport was lost. Since the OpFor side had the upper hand resource-wise and equipment(-accessibility)-wise, they could easily hold the airport (which was the zone we were still trying to attack) and throw tons of tanks and actual bombs at the next zones we were desperately trying to defend. This was also the time I noticed a significant playerdrop on the BlueFor side even though the match wasn’t nearly over yet – the players were simply waiting to be finished off from that point on.

What could have gone different? If we had the ability to change the attack zone we could have tried to split up and take some of the greenzones in the western part of the island to gain more ressources and be able to build up a working defence line; maybe even afford some fastmovers to at least weaken the OpFor airforce.

 

Aside from that if your fasttravel is blocked that is kind of a big deal. Sure you can go into the desired zone by car/helicopter but the opposing team can just port there in seconds once they notice your assault force. If they’re killed they’ll just travel right back and call in more AI paratroopers and you’ll quickly be facing and endless force without the ability to fasttravel back once you’re killed.

 

If you don’t like players to change their attack zone every minute maybe give them a disadvantage by doing so. For instance, re-enable immediate-death-zones for the team that changes their attack zone so they’ll have to think twice.

 

Aside from that this really is a very cool gamemode that I can see my group playing on a regular basis.

 

 

Kind Regards

Pogo

[target_practice 163]

One of the most recurring issues with Warlords has always been the lack of any mechanics to facilitate sector re-targeting.

Once a sector is chosen, the team is forced to take it or, if they are prevented from doing so, spend the remainder of the game unable to gain any more ground rendering it almost impossible to win.

 

This means that every time a team decides to target the enemy HQ for instance, they are taking an all-or-nothing gamble as they will be more or less buggered if their attack fails and they haven't unlocked enough sectors beforehand.

 

The gamemode desperately needs some sort of way for teams to change their target, whether voluntarily or as a result of an uncontrollable system such as a timeout or casualty threshold.

[Jezuro 452]

Implementing a voting reset is technically no issue (apart form some details like what to do with the AI garrison that was spawned there), but it could alter the gameplay in unexpected ways and frankly, I'm not convinced it's all that useful. Let me elaborate: in the situation you mentioned, if you de-targeted the airfield (which incidentally is not that much of a boon considering that runways and heliports are available on other sectors along the way) and instead made your way to some other sectors, the enemy would cut through your unguarded sectors and head straight to your base. By the time you'd gather enough currency, you'd have lost all the other sectors and have no maneuvering space anyway. The tactics in this situation is harassing the enemy fast travel spawn position (which is static if they're always travelling from the same sector) and their air drops. The enemy needs to move through your defences and they are forced to spend lots of resources to do so, giving you the opportunity to push back. I'm convinced that if people wouldn't start disconnecting you would have a very good fighting chance. Ideally, of course, you shouldn't find yourself in this situation by rushing through a straight line of sectors, it's always better to build a framework to be able to attack from more directions.

 

Not to mention that this scenario really isn't the benchmark Warlords experience in the first place as the rest of official scenarios are much smaller scale, or that it could be quite exploitable.

Or that it could turn into a sort of tic-tac-toe game of avoiding enemy players and trying to rush through AI-controlled sectors as quickly as possible to zerg the enemy base.

 

I have not yet made up my mind about this feature, so don't take this as a definitive no. But my worry is that implementing this might cause more issues than it solves.

Edited November 19, 2018 by Jezuro

[target_practice 163]

I can't really agree with your argument, which leans on the assertion that a team in such a situation still has enough tactical options available, when I honestly don't think it does.

You say that the central airport was not of significant enough value due to the presence of alternative heliports. While this was certainly true for Opfor, this was not the case for Blufor who had no other heliports.

While it can be easily said that this was simply a consequence of Blufor rushing straight for the airport without taking any other helipads beforehand, the lack of sector re-targeting means they were prevented from being able to correct that oversight.

This is especially unfair when you consider that Opfor had an airstrip with a helipad right next to their HQ, and thus had not obligation to make such detours.

 

You also say that sector re-targeting would be detrimental as it would result in the enemy pushing straight to the HQ, and in some circumstances this would certainly be true; but this would be a risk consciously taken, one that it is arguably more appealing than being worn down by an enemy with a materiel advantage.

 

Which leads me to my last point: Blufor didn't have much room to harass Opfor, as given the latter's significant advantage in strength owing to a larger CP income, may have resulted them easily pushing straight through without enough forces to hold back their frontal assault.
People started leaving Blufor as they made the reasonable assumption that the loss of momentum would result in a vicious cycle of losing sectors resulting in diminishing strength leading to even more loss of territory. The only situation in which I can see Blufor making a recovery is if Opfor were careless enough to lose vehicles and soldiers at rate which outstripped their income; instead the casualty ratio was likely in favor of Opfor for most of the match.

 

If warlords incorporated a re-targeting mechanic, it would have given more options for Blufor to break out of the perceived spiral, such as part of the team defending their existing territory while another group goes around capturing smaller sectors to rebuild their income.

To prevent it being abused by either team in such a situation, they could be prevented from having an opportunity to re-target until a certain time after the current sector was targeted.

 

I do understand that such feature runs against your vision for the gamemode, but I personally feel that without it it is too prone to frustrating situations such as this.

[Pvt. Pogo 1]

Just now, Jezuro said:

Implementing a voting reset is technically no issue (apart form some details like what to do with the AI garrison that was spawned there), but it could alter the gameplay in unexpected ways and frankly, I'm not convinced it's all that useful. Let me elaborate: in the situation you mentioned, if you de-targeted the airfield (which incidentally is not that much of a boon considering that runways and heliports are available on other sectors along the way) and instead made your way to some other sectors, the enemy would cut through your unguarded sectors and head straight to your base. By the time you'd gather enough currency, you'd have lost all the other sectors and have no maneuvering space anyway. The tactics in this situation is harassing the enemy fast travel spawn position (which is static if they're always travelling from the same sector) and their air drops. The enemy needs to move through your defences and they are forced to spend lots of resources to do so, giving you the opportunity to push back. I'm convinced that if people wouldn't start disconnecting you would have a very good fighting chance. Ideally, of course, you shouldn't find yourself in this situation by rushing through a straight line of sectors, it's always better to build a framework to be able to attack from more directions.

 

Not to mention that this scenario really isn't the benchmark Warlords experience in the first place as the rest of official scenarios are much smaller scale, or that it could be quite exploitable.

Or that it could turn into a sort of tic-tac-toe game of avoiding enemy players and trying to rush through AI-controlled sectors as quickly as possible to zerg the enemy base.

 

I have not yet made up my mind about this feature, so don't take this as a definitive no. But my worry is that implementing this might cause more issues than it solves.

 

Thanks for your reply and thoughts on this!

I can absolutely see your point and even what kind of experience you'd like to give the players in these sorts of situations. And while sometimes your recommended strategy there works out, more often than expected it doesn't. In that particular case the OpFor was in a position that was too strong to be really countered by simply harassing them through fasttravel. Mostly because of really nicely dug in infantry troops close to our fasttravel-spawn with the support of some skilled gunships going about, which were simply out of reach of our MANPADs (or didn't give us sufficient time to find them and apply our weaponry). 

As for my idea of taking green sectors instead, you're absolutely right that we would've lost in less than 30 minutes if we wouldn't have split up the team so that one part would've tried to slow down the OpFor's advance while the other half took additional sectors. Also that would've forced the OpFor team to decide if they would like to take some green sectors too, instead of attacking right away to have some sort of safety net if things go south.

I also agree that we shouldn't have gone straight for the confrontation at the airport but I guess players were quite keen on some PvP action there.

All things considered if you want to have players work for their victory and would like them to be persistent about it, this could be achieved if you placed a cooldown on the re-selection of the attack-zone, so they'll still have to make smart decisions.

But this is just me throwing in ideas there.


Kind Regards

Pogo

[Jezuro 452]

I understand your points of view as well. But please, try different scenarios as well. Have a match on Stratis or Malden, or some of the more grounded Altis versions. Play around a little bit more and see how those missions play out

[target_practice 163]

Well the problem I see is that the issues I mentioned, while less pronounced on smaller missions, are still present.

[Jezuro 452]

Alright, would a mission parameter to re-vote for a sector be a reasonable compromise for you? I imagine it being disabled by default, costing about 2000CP and some cooldown as well.

[target_practice 163]

Yes, I think that would be ideal.

[Pvt. Pogo 1]

Just now, Jezuro said:

Alright, would a mission parameter to re-vote for a sector be a reasonable compromise for you? I imagine it being disabled by default, costing about 2000CP and some cooldown as well.

 

I guess that'll surely work. Thanks for the consideration!

[target_practice 163]

Two much smaller and unrelated issues I've noticed since people started playing this more in MP.

 

Firstly, all the official servers for the gamemode are set to recruit difficulty, which is far too low and makes the AI too bad a shot to be particularly helpful or challenging.

Secondly, it seems that when a player leaves the game the AI scripts don't restart for their unit, so it's out of play until another player comes along and controls it.

[Jezuro 452]

Some work I've done today. The voting reset was a bit trickier than I initially imagined but I think I made it work in the end. Basically, all spawned assets remain in the play, only the zone restriction kicks in immediately, so you better hurry out of the sector before it kills you. Cooldown is set to 5 minutes after initial sector voting.

 

[DarkDemise 12]

This is almost everything I wanted out of the gamemode back when I played in in 2015!

Amazing job on the gamemode, had an incredibly fun 4 and a half hour singleplayer session and even won the game! I have a complaint about the AI squads and how the sector voting system works late game.

The blufor (my team) had at least 10 tanks sitting AFK in base with a bunch of AI squads paroling due to a recent enemy attack that we managed to hold off. However after the attack they continued patrolling indefinitely and would not leave the base for any reason. This caused me to be the only squad capturing objectives for the rest of the mission, I never saw a single friendly squad after that.

My second issue is I don't think the AI knows how to get to the military island on Malden, I seemed to be the only squad using boats to get there but again this might be related to my first issue so this might not be a real issue.

And lastly during the late game the BluFor and OpFor ended up targeting each other's bases which led to a huge stalemate, my friendly squads refused to leave the base out of fear of being attack I guess. The opfor still attacked but VERY rarely did I see them at all. Lastly there was no way to try and capture the still neutral territory until the game ended.. which seems like a pretty big issue.

I propose that the enemy base be open to attack when you capture a neighboring sector but don't lock the sector vote to the enemy base as it causes a massive stalemate when there's still neutral territory to capture.

EDIT:
I forgot to mention: CSAT forces spawned INSIDE the indestructible white church model on Malden. Any time I left the zone it would immediately flip back to OpFor control due to this and I tried a plethora of explosives and nothing would kill them. Sector scan + I could hear them shouting inside the church.

Is there any way we could get a dismiss AI option if they're inside a friendly zone? So many times my AI unit would get stuck in a porch and I had to fast travel there and kill him to free a slot and buy a new one.

[target_practice 163]

Just now, DarkDemise said:

My second issue is I don't think the AI knows how to get to the military island on Malden, I seemed to be the only squad using boats to get there but again this might be related to my first issue so this might not be a real issue.

At present the AI will only ever requisition infantry and land vehicles, so the only way for them to cross a body of water is for contested sector fast travel to be enabled, or if an AI squad happens to use an amphibious APC.

[DarkDemise 12]

Just now, target_practice said:

At present the AI will only ever requisition infantry and land vehicles, so the only way for them to cross a body of water is for contested sector fast travel to be enabled, or if an AI squad happens to use an amphibious APC.

But you can't fast travel to the island? Hopefully they're not slowly trying to cross like I think they might be. ;)

[target_practice 163]

If full fast travel in enabled, then you will be given an option to fast travel the island when it is targeted by your team, a capability that the AI will make use of.

They'll only try to swim across the gap if they have no fast travel available, or if they are all using vehicles.

[DarkDemise 12]

Just now, target_practice said:

If full fast travel in enabled, then you will be given an option to fast travel the island when it is targeted by your team, a capability that the AI will make use of.

They'll only try to swim across the gap if they have no fast travel available, or if they are all using vehicles.

I'm running default settings, whenever I try to fast travel to contested sector on the military island it says "fast travel to this sector is unavailable".

[target_practice 163]

I know this will sound silly, but you have made sure that your team has a direct line of linked sectors from their HQ to the military island? You can't use contested fast travel if you don't.

[DarkDemise 12]

Just now, target_practice said:

I know this will sound silly, but you have made sure that your team has a direct line of linked sectors from their HQ to the military island? You can't use contested fast travel if you don't.

Yup connected and fast travel to all other sectors works perfectly, I just assumed you couldn't fast travel over water.

[target_practice 163]

Well that was never the case in the unofficial version, but it may have changed since then?

[target_practice 163]

I just had a look at the mission in editor and I see that fast travel is disabled explicitly for the military island, which explains that issue.

[DarkDemise 12]

Just now, target_practice said:

I just had a look at the mission in editor and I see that fast travel is disabled explicitly for the military island, which explains that issue.

I figured as much, I just hope the AI can figure out how to get there effectively because I play mainly singleplayer. Otherwise it's basically a free zone for my team. ;)

[target_practice 163]

Well it would always be possible to make your own fork of the mission where fast travel is enabled there, among any other changes you might decide to make.

[DarkDemise 12]

Just now, target_practice said:

Well it would always be possible to make your own fork of the mission where fast travel is enabled there, among any other changes you might decide to make.

 

It's all good I was planning on disabling fast travel entirely on my next playthrough, I found an old post of mine from 2015 and I'm going to see how it plays out with the most "hardcore" settings I can think of. The only problem I can think of is it's going to take a LONG time and I don't see any option to save the mission.