Warlords

[Beagle 684]

2 hours ago, Inna Woods said:

"Just turn down the realism"

Warlords is most often played against players... AI will hardly engage anything beyond 2000m on its own initiative.

Regarding the Titan AA from SPAA, it will rarky hit somethign at maximum range, the best change to score a hit on a Manouvering target is 1000-3000m with head on shots beeing the most effetiv against players since the reation tiem is the shortest Missiles fired on the beam on a plane miss practically all the time.

 

[vikingbjorn 3]

So, the dev blog said they fixed people placing turrets under the map.  It didn't fully:

[Nic1 12]

@Jezuro an additional thing that would be good to randomize is the mission start time. Its seems like mid game when opfor and blufor start to clash is always around 16:00-17:00 and a lot of the PVP tends to happen at night. I'm not a big fan of night time, so this kinda gets old and would be nice to make it a little more random.

[Nic1 12]

@vikingbjorn trying to hide your name in the screen shot? Missed "Maj JB" in the top right :)

[CaptainDawson 93]

16 hours ago, Nic1 said:

@Jezuro an additional thing that would be good to randomize is the mission start time. Its seems like mid game when opfor and blufor start to clash is always around 16:00-17:00 and a lot of the PVP tends to happen at night. I'm not a big fan of night time, so this kinda gets old and would be nice to make it a little more random.

 

I like this idea. It would be great to have the match start at early morning in the dark, to let us play though the morning and get to the PVP before nightfall.

[vikingbjorn 3]

19 hours ago, Nic1 said:

@vikingbjorn trying to hide your name in the screen shot? Missed "Maj JB" in the top right :)

I was until you pointed that out.  Thanks............ Nic.  See you in game and hope those turrets aren't yours.  Everyone appears to blame you for them either way if that is you.

 

It took 3 tanks to cap a sector that had a single turret under the map.  It cannot be destroyed.  And, a single player can defend an entire sector from an entire team because of that.  The turret will recap the sector if no one is there.

 

Turrets should be removed until they fix this issue.

 

 

[Jezuro 452]

If anyone is interested in trying out an early experimental version of Warlords Redux, feel free: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1834482266

Any feedback provided will be most welcome.

[vikingbjorn 3]

Question on waypoints from the client side when playing on public servers:

 

I have only found so far that you can set one waypoint per group or individual.  Is there a way to do multiple consecutive ones, from the client side, on the public servers?

 

Also, is there a way to set loiter waypoints from the client side?  Right now AI pilots are often unpredictable and being able to refine their behavior, i.e. have a blackfish circle an area of interest, or have an AI gunship do a search and destroy pattern on public servers would be useful.

 

In addition, another question:  There appear to be a number of items that can be used from the arsenal that don't exist in the list.  For example, I've seen people placing mine dispensers.  Are there any plans to either fix that or update it such everyone can use them?

 

Thanks!

[CaptainDawson 93]

@Jezuro

 

Early assessment from testing Redux (in case anyone didn't see it on the discord):

 

I played a few matches with MaRii, Rollingace, and a few other players today, we tested stuff and coordinated between Opfor and Blufor to test theories. My main takeaways: There are a lot of good ideas in Redux, but there are also a lot of problems. Here is a bit of my early personal opinions on Warlords Redux:

 

The Good:

The new function for selecting and deleting vehicles and AI is a lot better than the current system.

Different colors for different action menu selections is a nice touch.

Random weather is a nice touch.

Random bases and sectors is awesome.

Not being able to spawn vehicles on player location unless you are in a captured sector.

Not knowing where the enemy base is a cool idea.

Notification that enemy is capturing one of your sectors is great. Selecting a sector far away takes a longer time to get there for vehicles, requiring vehicles to take more time to get there is a good addition. This is a good counter to the current meta of just spawning a Tigris or Cheetah right next to the enemy AI and just immediately mowing them down.

AI is significantly more skilled. 5 minute cooldown on Ammo and Repair truck. I got 50-70 FPS, probably mostly because there were only 4 players, and the view distance was only like 1500m.

 

Glitches:

When you reset the sector, the boundaries are reset to what they were before. But if you happen to be outside that newly set boundary after the time of the reset, you don't die from being outside the zone, and you can literally go wherever you want inside the restricted zone! I drove to Opfor base, selected its sector, and then capped it in 30 seconds before they could even have time to react.

 

Bases seemed to have no AI defense. Seeing as the enemy can sneak up on your base without you knowing until the last second, it would seem they need at least some form of AI defense. I could not for the life of me get the repair truck to work on the Rhino. It worked fine on the Slammer. Getting the reload and repair mechanics to work was very spotty even when following the on screen instructions to the letter.

 

Balance:

The first game we played, our first sector was AAC guarded by 3 tanks and APCs. We had no access to AT, so as you can imagine, capping that sector was kind of impossible without cheating. Trying to sneak past MBTs to steal an AI's Titan and shoot him without him noticing is really hard. If your game starts near Telos, and the noobs all vote for Telos, the game is effectively over at that point. No access to Arsenal OR Anti-Tank weapons, there is no way they will cap it in a reasonable amount of time. True you might grab one or two Titans from the AI, but if a noob misses his shots or wastes them, what else do you have to kill those tanks?? The sectors directly surrounding your base should not have any kind of AI tanks or vehicles.

 

Regardless of where you teleport from, you always spawn on the same side of the contested sector. (At least every time I tried it.) While it is not always on the exact same spot, always spawning on the same side of the sector means spawn campers are going to do the exact same thing they're doing now. 

 

The Bad:

AI is significantly more skilled, a good thing IMO, but it is to the point that some players will have a really hard time killing and give up if they can't have easy access to the Arsenal.

 

Making the game more difficult while also removing the Arsenal may be a bit too much for most players.

 

Aircraft and helis are effectively almost useless due to the restricted zone. A heli or plane will often have to do a 180 directly over the contested sector to avoid being autokilled by the restricted zone, meaning CAS support is basically impossible. While restricting the zone to a limited area is a good idea in theory, cooping up all the players into a tiny area definitely goes over the top and ruins some of the best things about Warlords IMO.

 

The AR-2 Darter. Unless we are planning on just banning it altogether, in Redux it would be extremely overpowered because it can go anywhere on the map, whereas any player or tank or aircraft is bound to a tiny area of operations. Not only that, he can use thermals to find the Opfor base really early in the match.

 

The Rhino. In the current Warlords Redux, the Rhino will be FAR FAR more powerful than it is now. Why? Because in Redux it is effectively the ONLY usable beyond line of sight weapon with the absence of CAS. Not only can it fire outside of his team's border area, but it is basically immune to attack if he is under cover outside the enemy's area of operations! The same goes for any vehicle firing from the safety of his own team's area. The restricted area is just too much IMO.

 

The More Bad:

For those who have not tried Redux yet, wide swaths of the map are restricted zones for the majority of the match. For parts of the match, there is only a tiny area of land you can access without being killed in a restricted zone. At any given time, the restricted zone could be different for Blufor than it is for Opfor. Think about it. Blufor will have areas they can use their vehicles that Opfor can't access, (like current unselected sectors) except that in redux the enemy's area of operations is an impossible to guess shape, covering wide swaths of the ENIRE MAP. There are a lot of potential exploits that could start manifesting as a result of this. Especially due to the fact that one team doesnt know where the enemy's restricted zone is or what shape it is. Imagine a dogfight between 2 planes, they each have different giant MAZE of areas and dead ends they can and cant access, how on earth can these planes even fly a straight line without hitting a restricted zone barrier? What about a sniper, he could be near a contested sector for the opposing teams and be sniping their contested sector spawn, but if he is inside the restricted area for the opposing team, they can't come to him to kill him! If he hides behind a building he is basically INVINCIBLE, not even a plane can fly behind the building to kill him because of the giant restricted area.

 

Recommendations:

5 minute cooldown on Ammo and Repair truck is in theory a great idea. It is annoying that only the player who used it can see the remaining cooldown time. We should need to unlock a repair or ammo truck before it can be used. MaRii used my Repair truck before I could, and now I couldn't use it for 5 minutes even though I bought it lol. The AI skill is way up but there still seems to be way more AI then necessary. As discussed on the forums, some of us think a better option would be to DECREASE the amount of AI, while also increasing their skill. Put some of them inside the buildings so players don't just use one HMG truck to mow down everything in 2 minutes. Limiting the players to a such a small area within the restricted border is too much. Such drastic measures are probably not necessary to fix the imbalance and camping. IMO, all that needs to be done is add the things listed under "Good" parts of Redux to the current Warlords, and we would have a much better game. Add to that giving Opfor and Blufor equal access to airfields, (Blufor needs something besides the easily camped AAC) give Blackwasp at least somewhat equal armament to Shikra (8x ASRAAM), limit gear to faction, etc. Again, randomization of bases and sectors alone is enough to fix a lot of the repetitive tactics we're seeing on the official servers now. Besides the bad things, I think Redux has a lot of potential and I was happy to see some of the improvements in it! This is only my opinion, I'm open to hear what others have to say about it.

[Jezuro 452]

Thanks a lot for the feedback, it's really appreciated.

 

8 hours ago, CaptainDawson said:

But if you happen to be outside that newly set boundary after the time of the reset, you don't die from being outside the zone, and you can literally go wherever you want inside the restricted zone! I

 

This is now fixed in 0.52. You should still have about 30 seconds to either get out of there or re-select the sector.

 

8 hours ago, CaptainDawson said:

The sectors directly surrounding your base should not have any kind of AI tanks or vehicles.

 

They no longer do in 0.52.

 

8 hours ago, CaptainDawson said:

Making the game more difficult while also removing the Arsenal may be a bit too much for most players.

 

For 0.52, the skillset has been lowered. More changes to come.

 

8 hours ago, CaptainDawson said:

The AR-2 Darter. Unless we are planning on just banning it altogether, in Redux it would be extremely overpowered because it can go anywhere on the map

 

All UAVs should be properly handled by zone restriction. Have you encountered a situation where they could move freely?

 

8 hours ago, CaptainDawson said:

We should need to unlock a repair or ammo truck before it can be used. MaRii used my Repair truck before I could, and now I couldn't use it for 5 minutes even though I bought it lol.

 

Vehicle maintenance cooldowns are not tied to the support vehicle but to the vehicle being repaired. This means that you can repair 5 vehicles from a single truck at once. The repair / rearm action is also tied to the vehicle that should receive the maintenance, so you should be looking at it when using the action.

 

8 hours ago, CaptainDawson said:

For parts of the match, there is only a tiny area of land you can access without being killed in a restricted zone.

 

I will think about some improvements to the restriction zone system. My motivation was to prevent players from striking deep into enemy territory freely.

[Markkos26 2]

On 8/14/2019 at 3:59 PM, Jezuro said:

If anyone is interested in trying out an early experimental version of Warlords Redux, feel free: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1834482266

Any feedback provided will be most welcome.

Definitely more interesting than the original warlords. But still the impossibility to save the state of the game and that does not allow you to regularly finish a game.

 

It would be awesome to add base building and base moving features.

 

[CaptainDawson 93]

6 hours ago, Jezuro said:

All UAVs should be properly handled by zone restriction. Have you encountered a situation where they could move freely?

 

I will give it a try and get back to you.

 

6 hours ago, Jezuro said:

Vehicle maintenance cooldowns are not tied to the support vehicle but to the vehicle being repaired. This means that you can repair 5 vehicles from a single truck at once. The repair / rearm action is also tied to the vehicle that should receive the maintenance, so you should be looking at it when using the action.

 

That's a good idea! I was not able to ever repair the Rhino though regardless of who called in the repair truck, so I assume there is some other problem... I will test again today though.

 

Small thing to add, maybe the Rhino should be a bit cheaper if it can't ripple fire anymore? Now that we need to drive significant distances across the map it would be nice to have the Rhino more accessible, especially since Opfor's APCs, AA, and tanks almost all have a significant advantage in driving speed!

 

6 hours ago, Jezuro said:

I will think about some improvements to the restriction zone system. My motivation was to prevent players from striking deep into enemy territory freely.

 

Honestly I think a good idea would be to simply leave it the way it is in the current Warlords, but make the sector restricted areas larger and re position the sectors so that players cannot camp airfields and bases as easily. One of the most fun aspects of Warlords is being able to go behind enemy lines and recon, we just need a way to do this without players being able to exploit it. Keeping the awesome randomized sectors you've added while keeping the ability to go behind the lines could be workable if we can figure out how to stop spawn camping. One great way to stop camping: make it so they cannot call tanks OR supply boxes more than 2 km away from their front line! Idea: Use the restriction zone system from Redux to control where you can SPAWN units, not where your player can go. Deny the Bergen backpack, deny filling a vehicles inventory with extra AT missiles, and they can only carry up to 4 AT rounds on their person which is much more reasonable. Take away their supply line, and you will not have people sitting on an island sending a stream of missiles into AAC. Shouldn't have to be dealing with stuff like T-100s and Tigris on an inaccessible island near AAC! We want to still be able to do recon and amphibious landings behind enemy lines, but we need to be limited in our resources while in enemy territory. That would stop most camping IMO, and also bring new importance to the awesome transport and sling loading mechanics.

[Jezuro 452]

You are not able to call in anything else than infantry or ammoboxes on your position anyway, everything else can only be called in on an owned sector.

 

Doing recon behind enemy lines is all well, but nothing stops you from parking a gunship over the horizon and rain down hell or do constant flybys with planes. Current zone restriction at least makes you capture an area to unlock airspace first.

[CaptainDawson 93]

Ok, how about this, don't know if anyone has mentioned this yet: Instead of basing the restricted zone off of the individual sectors, perhaps you could make the the limit a set distance radius from the most forward points facing the opposing team, while leaving the rest of the map open. For example, Blufor's limit of operations could be everything on their side of the map, but they are restricted from going farther than like 3 km from their most forward capture points. The limit would only be on the side towards the enemy, giving them a clue which way they should go. Something like this perhaps.

 

[InfamousAversion 2]

1 hour ago, CaptainDawson said:

Honestly I think an even better idea would be to simply leave it the way it is in the current Warlords, but make the sector restricted areas larger and re position the sectors so that players cannot camp as easily. One of the most fun aspects of Warlords is being able to go behind enemy lines and recon, we just need a way to do this without players being able to exploit it.

Personally I think this is my only complaint with the Redux as is. The restricted zone just channels players into one area, but that also means you can't have fun and drop off a squad to capture the objective from behind, or scout, ect. Going anywhere was the best part of Warlords in my opinion because it makes the game feel BIG, and does what almost no other game mode does with this much popularity; it makes using the entire island of Altis fun and not feel empty. This restricted zone breaks that idea and personally takes most of the enjoyment out of the game mode for me, if I want to transport a squad via Helicopter I have to go in a certain way everytime, which is extremely predictable and I will most likely get shot down. I don't think the problem is the wide open areas its the ability to camp an air field with a missile and the ability to capture sectors in the enemy lines that are not being targeted by the power that is capturing them.
 

 

1 hour ago, CaptainDawson said:

One great way to stop camping: make it so they cannot call tanks OR supply boxes more than 2 km away from their front line! Deny the Bergen backpack, deny filling a vehicles inventory with extra AT missiles, and they can only carry up to 4 AT rounds on their person which is much more reasonable.

 

I think this is the best way to solve this, although I disagree with the AT missiles in a vehicle, that seems like a very hard thing to limit (I think) and if they want to spend an hour loading up a prowler with missiles so be it; after it gets blow up a few times I doubt anyone has the will to do it again

 

 

1 hour ago, CaptainDawson said:

Take away their supply line, and you will not have people sitting on an island sending a stream of missiles into AAC.

If you just take away the ability to call launchers on your location this should solve a lot, that way if anyone wants to get anywhere (let's us the island near AAC as an example) they are going to have to drive a vehicle. Lets say they try to get to the island using a boat, well boats are semi-slow, show up on radar and can only move on the water. If the player reaches the island and shoots down a few helicopters in my opinion that was fair, the player reached the island without being spotted using fair vehicles. But it would be unfair if this player could call in more missiles than he carried. Alright, now say the player reached the island using a helicopter, and shot down a few vehicles. Again this is fair, helicopters are not silent and are fairly easy to see and thus if the player manages to get a few missiles off I feel it is justified because the airfield did not have correct defense. 

But, then again maybe I'm just wrong; I never did have any heavy troubles with this whole camping thing. 

 

[Jezuro 452]

I think that the area you can navigate around freely expands rather quickly as you capture sectors. You get cramped in a tight spot only if you cut through in a single direction. Rather like IRL it pays off to capture some nearby area to get some space to maneuver.

Then, what you end up with is quite an open battlefield with an uncaptured sector here and there with just a minimal restricted zone around them.

 

Anyway, I was thinking about calculating the restricted zone based on sectors you can select for capture rather than sectors you already own. We'll see how it works out.

[CaptainDawson 93]

27 minutes ago, InfamousAversion said:

Personally I think this is my only complaint with the Redux as is. The restricted zone just channels players into one area, but that also means you can't have fun and drop off a squad to capture the objective from behind, or scout, ect. Going anywhere was the best part of Warlords in my opinion because it makes the game feel BIG, and does what almost no other game mode does with this much popularity; it makes using the entire island of Altis fun and not feel empty. This restricted zone breaks that idea and personally takes most of the enjoyment out of the game mode for me, if I want to transport a squad via Helicopter I have to go in a certain way everytime, which is extremely predictable and I will most likely get shot down. I don't think the problem is the wide open areas its the ability to camp an air field with a missile and the ability to capture sectors in the enemy lines that are not being targeted by the power that is capturing them.

 

This. I completely agree.

 

27 minutes ago, InfamousAversion said:

If you just take away the ability to call launchers on your location this should solve a lot, that way if anyone wants to get anywhere (let's us the island near AAC as an example) they are going to have to drive a vehicle. Lets say they try to get to the island using a boat, well boats are semi-slow, show up on radar and can only move on the water. If the player reaches the island and shoots down a few helicopters in my opinion that was fair, the player reached the island without being spotted using fair vehicles. But it would be unfair if this player could call in more missiles than he carried. Alright, now say the player reached the island using a helicopter, and shot down a few vehicles. Again this is fair, helicopters are not silent and are fairly easy to see and thus if the player manages to get a few missiles off I feel it is justified because the airfield did not have correct defense. 

 

That seems reasonable, and with the randomized sectors we likely wont have to worry about airfield camping the way we do now.

[IronDendrite 2]

I hope I'm not repeating or requesting something that is already available, this is a long thread to read through. I just want to know if it would be possible to add an option in the parameters which enables artillery and UAV's that would be off by default. I know that these assets can be exploited and are difficult to counter. I'm mainly asking for this as an option for single player or coop against the AI, as it is not really balanced for PVP, but its so much fun to play around with. Just saying that myself and a few of my friends, and perhaps others as well, would love to be able to use this stuff against the AI. 

[crs24 33]

 

Just a thought without any experience in the new mission yet, but having played other missions with a scripted rearming, a 5 minute cooldown between being able to rearm or repair again sounds like it might be too long In my opinion for keeping casual players from being repeatedly frustrated especially in pvp. Stopping nonstop unlimited bullet/missile spam or invincible vehicles is the primary goal I’m assuming with a cooldown, and a 1-2 minute cooldown would probably do that without making it frustrating in some circumstances.

 

If for example I repair my car and break a tire on a rock 15 seconds later because arma physics, and then feel the urge to quit because I’m stuck for 5 minutes if I’m poor and I don’t have a repair specialist handy. Or I take off in a helicopter after rearming, a jet fires all it’s radar guided missiles at me shortly thereafter before he goes to rearm and I’m stuck waiting to rearm my flares until after he is airborne again and kills me. Or I’m in a tank that I just rearmed, a couple at missiles come at me and I pop all smoke, and I now need to hide for 5 minutes or wait for someone to kill the at before I can move. Never mind if the servers lagging and 5 minutes turns into more or the service vehicle disappears while I’m waiting because someone else bought it but they just left the server. Basically it should have a balance between endless ammo and keeping it fun while taking into account how fast things can blow up in pvp.

 

Also while taking into account I haven’t played it yet, on other things I agree with Dawson’s points from all the descriptions I’ve seen so far. Besides that if the Arsenal is gone like Dawson mentioned I have to say I’m not sure why having it was a problem requiring complete removal and not say a price or usage restriction like say it’s only available at the main base or something if it needs heavier limiting. Getting every little thing not just the important things by buying multiple mostly redundant crates would be a pain in the ass.

 

Also from personal experience putting the servers max view distance too low allows some tricks to kill the enemy without them being able to fight back.

[InfamousAversion 2]

I would really like the ability to use the med kit, its just plain annoying I can't use it, half the time I can never even use my medic because he takes awhile to reach me and gets shot. However I feel what is more important is the toolkit but not to repair vehicles but to disarm mines. I don't know if there is a friendly EOD AI but there sure are mines. I get that maybe using the toolkit to repair vehicles would be OP, EOD and healing would sure be nice. 

I just looked and helicopters come with both toolkits and medkits, and so do a good amount of ground vehicles. It would be nice to be able to use them otherwise they are just wasted space 

[Jezuro 452]

Arsenal is disabled for now because it uses a script command that is blacklisted for clients. 

[Nic1 12]

I think the not having the arsenal will be a problem if each team only has access to their factions gear because there is definitely an imbalance across factions with some gear. One example is in AT. Blufor has nothing like the vorona. The maaws/PCML has a lot less explosives in a single shot and is not TOW. MPRL is really only good for long range and requires a lock on. I know many players use the Vorona exclusively as the premier AT weapon including me. Almost everyone I see in game that is acting in an AT role is using the Vorona. Not having this on Blufor will be a huge disadvantage. Another example is the opfor special purpose helmet. There is no Blufor equivalent that has full screen night vision/thermal. Opfor will not have access to the Carrier Special/GL rigs which have the most armor. I know a lot of people will not be happy about not being able to use their favorite guns/loadouts.

[bombe 11]

Hi,

Me and my friend wants to make a mission with saved CP.

But we hurt some problems.
We used player setVariable ["BIS_WL_funds", 10000, TRUE]; .

But that give money to all players.... We used trigger to save-load in mission.
Have you got some help to give us please ?

Edit : We found the problem

[Beagle 684]

I would not change the main way warlords is played in such severe ways. some restriction in "behind the lines" freedom yes, cooldown time for repair and rearm, yes, but removing the arsenal, big no. Crates, Infantry and vehicles only in owned zones is restriction enough. Restricting a lot of the stuff now that made the mission worth playing can't be the right way to make it any better. Albeit, i think the original rendering range of 2500 was a lot better, t was just annyoing fpr fixed wings aircraft pilots who now profit the most of it due to long lock on and lasing distancs. I for myself always considered 3000 a good alround view distance for both terrain and objects.

[crs24 33]

View distance also impacts the air defense ranges if they aren’t radar guided missiles so it doesn’t solely benefit air, and like Ive said before I used to kill the cheetah/tigris with attack helicopters very easily when it was 2500 before it was upped to 4000. 3000 would be the absolute minimum to maintain some balance in air vs air defense in my opinion.