Larian Studios Forums Dragon Commander Dragon Commander - Beta Stabbey's Bugs and General feedback thread.

I may have posted some of these things already before and you’ve seen them.

Bugs

• The Transport's Cloak has no cooldown. This is potentially quite broken because you can continually click to fully refresh the cloak, thus being able to have a fully loaded fleet go invisible from home harbour right into enemy harbor without having to time the use of the cloak.
• I started a map with no AI, and had the "Red Star" indicator of where an enemy dragon was on my screen (there was no Dragon, of course). It went away when I entered Dragon form myself, and stayed gone when I returned to RTS mode. Image: http://i.imgur.com/GNjCllF.jpg
• I started a test match with AI set to NONE, and I was able to fly outside the boundaries that normally warn you "return to the combat zone or die" forever, with no warning message or penalty. EDIT: It seems you can fly your dragon around outside the combat area just fine forever, it's only when you stray too far away that you get the warning and death message.

Are these Intentional?

• Chameleon Hide (Dragon skill) has a 5 second cooldown and lasts for like 60 seconds. Is that intentional? It kinda makes the cooldown pointless.
• Do units have the same Recruit and Supply cost? Shamans cost 6 Recruits, but use 8 supply. Hunters cost 9 recruits and use 10 supply. Armors cost 15 recruits and use 10 supply. Devastators cost 18 recruits and use 15 supply. Imp Fighters cost 12 recruits, use 10 supply. Bomber Balloons cost 38 Recruits, use 15 supply. Zeppelins cost 30 Recruits, use 10 supply. If they’re meant to have different Recruit cost and supply, the supply cost should be mentioned in the tooltip when you go to create one.
• When a Zeppelin uses a cloak over a Warlock, the Warlock can still use its own cloak and it gets the coldown timer, although the effects do not stack.
• The cooldown timers for the Warlock and Zeppelin cloaks start from the moment the cloak is activated. Is that really whet you want? The stated cooldown for Cloak is 60 seconds, but practically, it's only 30 seconds, because half the cooldown time is used up while invisible.

Suggestions

• In Dragon mode, the blue bar doesn't appear to do anything. I guess it used to be a mana bar before the Dragon was switched to cooldown-based attacks. Assuming that doesn't change or another use for the blue bar isn’t found, maybe use that blue bar as an additional display of your Jetpack's charge? (Yes, I did see the tooltip that said that the Jetpack's charge is indicated by the colour of the flame.)
• I REALLY like “James 540’s idea idea of holding the LMB for continuous fire in Dragon mode. If I want to stop firing, I can just let go. If I want to fire only a few shots, I can just click a few times, or hold for a second or two.
• When in RTS mode, Escape is used for "Cancel", which is fine, but when there is nothing to cancel, I would like Escape to bring up the menu. It took me a little while when I was first starting to spot the menu button, and even now, it's still my instinct to hit Escape before remembering the button Ive got to move my mouse up to click.
  
  In Dragon mode, Escape is used for "Cancel active skill", again that's fine, but maybe if there is no active skill it could also bring up the menu?
• Entirely optional, but perhaps the Devastator (when selected in siege mode) could display a ring showing its maximum range. This is more of a convenience thing than anything, but it would help players be more efficient with placement, considering how fast-paced the game is. It would be one less thing they need to micro.
• I also agree with watser’s suggestion to remove or hide the “Who vs Who” bar a minute after the match starts, it really doesn’t serve much purpose and takes up a lot of screen real estate.

-Transport cloak should have a cooldown, this is indeed a bug

-The way the cloak cooldown works for Zeppelins and Warlocks is intended, considering the current pace of the game is very fast I think the cooldown timer starting once you cloak is pretty fair as it is.

-Aslong as the two cloaks (Zeppelin & Warlock) do not interfere with eachother, I think activating both at the same time should not really be an issue.
Would you prefer the warlock to be unable to use (and thus "waste") his cloak should he already be cloaked by the Zeppelin?

-Dragon skills have been looked at and have a more logic cooldown/balance now (such as Chameleon Hide)

-Units do not have the same Recruit & Supply cost and this is intended. These costs however are subject to change and will most likely get the info on the tooltips.

-Since Escape already has a functionality we didn't want to interfere with it any more, so for now the menu button is F10. Possibly subject to change.

-Range indicators are a likely possibility!

Thanks for the feedback!

I can understand not wanting to overload a key with too many functions, but the Escape key is the standard "Bring up the menu" button in pretty much every PC game ever. One possibility would be to assign the cancel unit/skill button to one of the other keys that aren't used, like Caps Lock, or F, G, T, so Escape can be used as the "Bring up the Menu" button. I don't consider this terribly important, though.


Suggestion: In Dragon mode, your hands are on the WASD for movement, and the mouse to aim and attack. This makes the 12345 keys easy to reach, but not the 6789 keys. FPS's tend to have next/previous weapon, and Divinity 2 could be paused at any time, this game can't be paused in multiplayer.

This may be a bit radical, but perhaps there could be a "Currently selected skill" in Dragon mode, and an "activate selected skill" key (maybe "E"?). The mouse wheel could be used to move the currently selected skill, so you could use the skills assigned to the 6-9 buttons without taking your hands off of the WASD keys or mouse.


EDIT: Yes, I think it would be nice if the Warlock/Transport didn't use their cloak if they're already cloaked. Most people probably wouldn't notice, but it would reward those who are paying attention to their micro.

Or maybe, we could press two buttons at once like "12345" and maj+"12345" to select the 10 skills available.

I had, as I said earlier, problems finding where all the buttons were... like the F10 vs esc ... I'm afraid it will make people angry like "ha, DC, THIS game where you need 10 minutes to find how to open the menu? "

Same, to detransform from dragon form, I had a terrible time finding the key, as I clicked the icône in RTS mode ... would it be wise to show the R key over the same icone we can click to transorm ?

F10 is traditionaly used as menu key in RTS games since at least Starcraft, so I don't really think it should be changed.

As for selecting skills in dragon mode - I think having the "scroll up-down to select ability" function pinned to mouse wheel would be great. Why? Because the numeric keys could then be used to select pre-assigned unit groups. Assign a foctory to one of those keys and you can control production while flying with your dragon.

Black Willow

I though the idea was "when you fly, you don't create any units" .

I didn't know for the F10 key... When it's not "ESC" touch, there is often a reminder somewhere in the screen ... I keep working one hour and then ... Go back to the beta ^^

I'm pretty sure they're not allowing you to control production from Dragon form on purpose. Larian doesn't want the Dragon to be so useful that you can ignore the rest of the RTS mode, and I think that's fine.

Indeed. We were not even allowing unit control when in dragon mode. The idea is that you need to find that balance of when to be a dragon and when it's not such a good idea.

I just had my first crash or freeze in about 8 hours of playing the beta. I went to the Skirmish option, it sat there saying "Waiting for NET Traversal" for a while. No games showed up. The "Create Lobby" option was greyed out. I clicked on LAN, the "Create Lobby" was still greyed out, so I hit cancel. The screen went to black, I had the control of the mouse cursor, the music was still playing, but after a few minutes it was clear that I was not getting back to the main menu. My HDD activity light was not on, so nothing was accessing the disk. Definitely frozen.

Alt-tab did not work (and I know that does normally work), so I had to Ctrl+Alt+Del. The task manager had the normal cursor, but everywhere else save the taskbar had the Dragon Commander Cursor. I had to kill it with Task Manager.


EDIT: Oh, right, because of the update, Windows wanted to get my authorization before letting it connect. That might be part of the problem, and it's certainly why it wouldn't connect.

Sometimes when you have been in a long game and return to the menu, the game crashes too.

Also I think one of the desynch crashes is related to when a player is trying to use morph dragon, without having the necessary resources.

Sometimes when I use the minimap to fast-travel to a destination on the map, I end up at a completely different location (so far only when I wanted to go to the edge of the map).

On a side note, I think the light barriers indicating the area of the map is a bit too view blocking.

Typo in the manual! In the backstory, there is this line: "Steered by the wise counsel of Maxos, Sigurd steered led with a warlord’s prowess the most feared of the oft-embattled factions of Rivellon."

One of those two red adjectives should be deleted.

It's actually omission of the most important word in that sentence. He steered Led Zeppelin.

Bug
- Cloaked Zeppelins can cast Mustard Gas and still remain cloaked.


Just got my butt kicked pretty handily by Jaesun a couple of times. My opening is apparently not effective against non-AI. I'll have to revise it.

Bug probably due to latency issue
- I was killed as a Dragon a couple times in my match with Jaesun, my Dragon exploded, but for a few seconds afterwards, my draogn reappeared and I could look around as if I was moving the dragon, then the game realized that I was dead and things went back to normal. I think that's probably due to latency issues.

Potential Exploit: This is a minor one, but when you capture building sites, you gain free recruits that do not deplete the population pool (and you can get them even after the pool is empty). That's fine, I don't mind that, it encourages a lot of movement and activity and fighting over the resource sites.

However, you can capture your teammate's building sites as well. That could also be fine, there are times you may want to let your teammate have a spot in your base, but it will allow teammates to exploit that free recruit bonus, by capturing the site from each other. They could even set up a couple groups to patrol to do it automatically for a steady stream of income, faster than two recruitment centers!

You can also gain free recruits from re-capturing a building site that the enemy had partially taken away (but still had some of your colour on it).


EDIT: Minor UI Bug in latest patch:

Love the snazzy new menu, but I found a UI bug: On the Dragon Controls page, the control at the bottom of the list, "Command attack/move", is below the level that the scrollbar reaches, I only noticed it was there because I saw the tips of the letters and could select it with the mouse.

There's also a similar hidden control at the bottom of the " Combat phase page, below "Select Harbours".

Unofficial 1.0.84.9727 Patch Notes

• New Menu
• There are tooltips for all the units and skills, which have lots of helpful information, good stuff.
• The bar on the Dragon’s HUD that wasn’t used is now the jetpack meter.
• You can now hold the mouse button down for continuous fire of your breath weapon, although it’s slightly slower than clicking it repeatedly.
• The cost for spawning in as a Dragon has been reduced to 30 Recruits, down from 35.
• Newly built Hunters have a 90 second cooldown before they can teleport (regardless of whether Teleport has been researched or not)
• The maps have been renamed from their working names.
• You can now build units in a queue of over 15 at a time. (The building queue scrolls).

Balance Changes

• Troopers damage decreased from 110 to 105.
• Grenadier's health increased to 770 from 750.
• Grenadier's range increased to 825 from 700.
• Shaman's speed increased to 130 from 110.
• Hunter's damage increased to 31 from 30.
• Devastator's damage increased to 225 from 190.
• Bomber Balloon's range increased to 550 from 350.

Bugs

• Using the Options menu “restart” option restarts the map, but also keeps all the upgrades you unlocked already.
• The bottom lines of the Control Settings -> Combat Phase/Dragon Combat options are below the level that the scrollbar will reach, you can only see the tops of the letters.
• The health and health bar of buildings is no longer visible, only that of units and turrets.
• The Insight skill Icon is a “?” on affected units. It's probably not the only one, I'll look for more.
• There’s an area on the screen that looks like you should be able to select things, but you can’t. http://i.imgur.com/o2FRCIw.jpg (1680 * 1050 resolution if that’s important). That bottom hunter won’t be selected if I click on it. That’s not the only area, there are other areas too, notably around the player names area on the left. I don't know where they all are.

Just for the record:
Bugs which are still around:

• Zephyr Dragon is not killed when staying in the outside-the-map kill zone for more than 10 seconds, its health is merely but in half. Possibly related to that Dragon's health regeneration buff.
• Transport's Cloak still has no cooldown time.
• Cloaked Zeppelins can cast Mustard gas without breaking cloak.

My initial starts were pretty terrible, I had to turn the AI down to easy to stand a chance. After a couple of losses today to a human player, I realized that my flaw was not expanding fast enough.

Now that I have that, I gave the "Default AI" a try. I was used to the AI being dim and not really using skills. They are not, with the default setting. The AI cheerfully Crippled, Charmed, and Polymorphed my units every chance they got, and even though I controlled 3/4 of the bases, it certainly wasn't rolling over and dying.

One of them I seized just for the bonus resources. The enemy was more focused on the other side of the map so I only put a couple of token defenses, a ground and mortar turret. I watched the AI creep a Devastator up, supported by a half-dozen Shamans (one of which cast a shield around it), and start shelling the mortar turret - not a bad strategy at all.

That was just my first taste of the Normal AI, and I can't wait to see what else it has in store for me.

* * *

All three of the Dragons seem to have the Aura of Restoration passive skill, but the Zephyr seems to have at least two more: Rejuvenation, and one other that makes a reddish-yellow ball of fire appear over nearby enemy units Aura of Frailty, maybe? Do all the Dragons have three passive skills? I'm not sure what the other two are for the other two Dragon types.

I tried part of the campaign mode: A LAN match against an AI on the "Little Rivellon" Campaign. After a few turns, I eventually got into combat on a Rusty Rocks map.

Bugs / Typos

• For some reason, I was having trouble getting the camera to respond in RTS mode. It didn't move or it moved in short bursts. This was a LAN game I was hosting against an AI, so it shouldn't have been lag.
• I saw a water-walking Trooper: http://i.imgur.com/MFPR3qK.jpg
• Combat Cards from the Emporium use "jeeps" where I think they mean "Hunters". And all the cards have the Raven on them, even if they affect a specific unit.

Feedback:

• How many units are in a squad? Because I hit my Supply cap clearing out a map, I had a bunch of hunters and shaman and Grenadiers left, but after I won, I only had 1 little Trooper squad remaining on the strategy map. I admit that I don't remember how many mercenary units I sent in, but I don't think it was THAT many. I'm sure I had enough Hunters on the map to form a squad, even if the original squad I sent in was destroyed. When I end a campaign map with maxed out supply and only get one single squad of Troopers back, well, it doesn't "feel right." I'll play some more and keep and eye on what mercenaries I use and what I get back after a campaign map.
• Trying to load a transport is confusing. When you drag a unit onto it, the Splitter UI GUI indicates that you're moving units from Country A to Country A, it should be clear it's asking you to load a transport, and it is not.
• Using Transports to move units from one country to another feels like it takes forever. You need two turns to reach a place you need to cross water to reach, and once unloaded, the units inside can't move until another turn. Needing to know three turns in advance where you want to move units (that may not even be built yet) is a bit far to think in advance. I don't have any good feedback or suggestions at this time on how to address this.
• I couldn't find a way to remove a card that I had played on the "Prepare for battle" screen. I was stuck playing it, even though the battle hadn't started and I decided I didn't want to use it.

I think Swen said in the let's play that one campaign unit will be 4 units on the RTS map. And I guess you can't take the units you produced in the RTS mode with you into the campaign mode for balancing reasons.....

I think there is some mechanism/algorithm which measures how many units you lost in battle and therefore it measures the respective units lost in campaign units....

How many units that get carried over from Strategy Map to Battle depends on the unit.
For example, a Trooper on the Strategy Map will be 3 in Battle. However, stronger units will be less or will not be multiplied at all - for balance reasons (otherwise you could potentially initiate battles with a gigantic amount of bombers, for example).

These values are subject to change and therefore it is best to find out for yourself for now .

Misc. Points

• Good list of problems here: http://steamcommunity.com/groups/BetaDragon/discussions/0/864971765293414155/
• Is the idea behind units returned to the strategy map your overall efficiency at not getting the units you produce killed? If that is the case, is it intended that players will not get many units back from engaging in battle? This is really not the game where you save a lot of units. On the other hand, letting battles auto-resolve can often end victorious battles with no casualties on my side.
• When a battle is going to take place, you have two options: An image of a Dragon, and one of the army, then you continue to the army balance/card select screen and it says "who will lead the battle?" But you already selected who will lead a screen earlier and can't change it, so it's rather redundant to have that option there as well. Maybe just have that option on the army balance screen.
• I guess this isn't a bug, but Auto-resolve does a much better job at keeping casualties down than actually trying to fend off the crazy waves the AI sends in the RTS mode (even on Easy!). It seems better to auto-resolve than to actually play them yourself. I'll try playing with this some more.
• Also probably not a bug, but it's interesting when retreating from battles, you can end up doing heavy damage to the enemy. Once I retreated and lost the unit I had on a country, but it remained in my possession because the invader was killed. Another time my invasion was thrwarted because the enemy had decided to move a bazillion units into that one (I guess my boat hanging around next to it was a Clue), I retreated, and while I did lost all but one armour, the enemy suffered major casualties as well despite a huge numbers advantage.
• I wonder what happens if you invade a country by sea, and then retreat. If your boats are lost, can some land units survive? If so, what happens to them if there's no land country safely nearby? I'll test that.
• Long names like "Stabbey (Everyday I'm Zeppelin)" don't fit properly in the name box (although that is kinda my own fault.
• I was able to save my LAN Campaign game... but the load game option isn't enabled yet.
• After getting used to the Skirmish mode Dragon, The Campaign Mode Dragon is pretty easily squashed once entering battle. Okay yes, the Skirmish mode one is very powerful, but maybe the RTS one could use a slight health boost. It would help if I knew what passive powers the different Skirmish Mode Dragons had so I could understand why there is such a difference.
• General Feedback: It's easy to accidentally select units and buildings at the same time, which moves the buildings rally points to wherever I send the units. I'd rather not be able to select both buildings and units at once.

I sent these in via the automated system already, but just in case:

Bugs:

• Maybe the AI placed a Transport mercenary card on a landlocked country, because for some reason, one showed up on a landlocked country, and happily sailed around over the ground.
  
  Is it possible to know if the country will be landlocked before the map starts, and prevent the use of a naval card on a country which has no buildable seaport, so you don’t waste a slot with one?.
• I got into a sea battle by placing a transport on a section of ocean with an enemy transport. I only had 1 transport, but after doing well, at the end, I had 2 transports listed as surviving. Casualties were 1 enemy transports and 65535 of my transports. But when I returned to the strategy map, I had lost the transport from the square, despite winning the battle.
• Already reported, but it is quite annoying to have the Strategy map camera constantly panning because you were holding the cursor down but were interrupted buy a "New Cards Acquired" pop-up before you got full camera control back. I had to end my turn without doing anything because of it.
• If a Shaman is healing a Transport, and is loaded onto it, the healing line effect remains, one end attached to where the Shaman was before being loaded, and the other staying connected to the Transport as it moves around the map.

Aha. I think I've noticed a pattern: Where there's a single Transport involved in the battle, it seems to be that at the end (if you win) the results screen always shows you getting a second transport, and losing 65355 (or whatever) other transports, and thus you lose the Transport you had on the strategy map.

Also, I placed a "Hunters can't move form this country for one turn" card, but I hadn't noticed I was last in the round-robin. The enemy moved one of his Hunters, but then it was moved back. I'm not sure if the card doesn't have any effect unless it's played earlier in the round-robin order, or if it did work and his unit was forced back, or if he undid his move and that's why the Hunter was moved back.

The 65535 bug can happen to other units. I've had it happen to an allied AI's troopers.

Make sure to read the following slowly. It's convoluted :s :

Did the enemy move one of its hunters to attack a territory that was also sending out attacks to the territory the hunter was on? If the target region's controller the hunters were moving to was sending an attack from that region to the region the hunters were attacking from and was earlier in the rotation, then the hunter's move was cancelled because of that.

It's a behaviour that I've noticed occurs.

The campaign AI on the strategy map is frankly, braindead - even on the "Default AI" setting. They just shuffle units between their own countries to no apparent purpose – especially the NE AI. If they have any long-term goal, it is not apparent, other than possibly making sure to have an even distribution of units in all their countries. Units which have two movement points are literally moved from country A to B, then right back to A. Occasionally, by random chance, they move some units into an enemy country, but rarely does it look like it's doing anything smart.

EDIT: I've been playing one match since early this afternoon, so if there was a patch since, things might have changed.


I defeated an AI capital in Campaign mode. The AI still made moves and such for one entire turn, and only then did I get control over the entire country.

Request/Suggestion: Speaking of which, I think it might be interesting if instead of “capture the capital and gain all the territory and units”, there was a bit of random luck involved whether a country would join your side, become neutral, or (maybe for AI only) continue to fight for its original faction. (Although the odds of this last possibility should be low, and maybe some additional penalty applied?)

Request: On the Strategy Map, mousing over a country, there are various statistics, like Race and popularity, I'd like to see the Gold and Population information duplicated on those, because the pieces can cover those up on the actual map.

It's really annoying losing all your Transports - especially fully loaded ones because of the 65535 bug.



I don't think so, but in any case, I've just confirmed that cards which prevent movement of enemy pieces flat-out don't work if the enemy's round-robin turn is before yours. I placed a card to keep an enemy from moving their Devastators, but they did, because their round-robin turn was before mine. That makes the "Prevent an enemy from moving" cards have a 50% chance of being utterly worthless. What's the point of trying to be clever and placing those cards if they can be outright ignored?

That definitely smells like a bug.

I did some unit balancing tests and general fooling around versus watser and Packrat.

Aerial mines are visible to enemy players and units, even in RTS mode with with Revelation not researched researched and none of my units near the mine.

Hunters anti-air upgrade seems excessively powerful. Even a lone hunter does a reasonable amount of damage against the more-powerful Skirmish mode Dragon, 4 are enough to be a serious threat. They outrage Imp Fighters and Balloon Bombers. Hunters are cheap and fast. Their only real weakness is that heavily armoured units tear them to pieces. – And I’ve only performed these tests using the pumped up Skirmish mode Dragon, never mind the campaign mode one which is noticeably weaker.


Is it intentional that the Trooper and Transport are able to activate their “For the Empire” kamikaze ability while cloaked? Transports uncloak a split second before they hit – just enough time to see them explode, the Troopers didn’t even uncloak at all, my armours just exploded. If I hadn’t been paying attention (and in fact, if I didn’t even ask the other player to try) I wouldn’t have any idea what happened. Now, it could indeed be intentional that you can cloak your units and send them to suicide on the enemy for a surprise, and there are ways to detect a cloak, but I'm not so sure this is working as intended or is balanced.


Even weirder is what happened after the invisible troopers blew up my armours. I was able to see these: http://i.imgur.com/edMmHnO.jpg marching back. They appear to be dead and were gliding along the ground. I'm not sure if these were survivors of the kamikaze attack, but watser didn't see the same thing I did. He was able to move them around. When I send more troopers to investigate them, they exploded about the same point as the armours had been killed at, even though they hadn't walked into the glowing corpse-Troopers. It was strange.


Bug: When testing by myself in a skirmish with AI set to None, I set my Imp Fighter to attack one of my own Hunters. The shots passed right through the Hunter without even an explosion.

EDIT: Oh yes, and in the Campaign, the Academy's description says that it provides Subversion cards every 0 turns, but that's just a typo because building one did give me subversion cards every turn.

The cloaking+kamikaze could be intentional. Correct me if I'm wrong, but some units with reveal capabilities are passive rather than active.

That's entirely possible, but in case it isn't, I'm mentioning it anyway.

Perhaps it might not be intentional that you can activate the kamikazi ability while already cloaked, since I thought you couldn't activate abilities while cloaked without breaking cloak.

Another thing to note is.... You can still use Spoils of War during cloaking.

Gonna use this thread to post a few suggestions as well since so many are up now

1. Allow someone in Dragon Form to shoot down missles with fireballs, or at the very least lower there tracking range, or make it easier to avoid them

2. Instead of income, make population the thing that lets you build more units, like 1k pop = 1 unit

1. Letting the Dragon shoot down the missiles isn't the answer, there are too many and they're too tiny.

The answer is to make the dragon much less fragile. The "Scales of Steel" upgrade that gives 30% damage reduction? That shouldn't be an upgrade, that should be the base DR the Dragon gets before any upgrades. Even with that 30%, the Dragon still is pretty vulnerable, but now it doesn't instantly die when 5 Grenadiers sneeze in its direction.


2. Interesting, although certainly a big change at this stage.

Hmmm... right now it certainly is odd and unintuitive that factories can only produce X units where X is the amount of gold income a country has. Changing the system to that would mean that War Factories would be more useful to place strategically, and not just in countries with a 2 or 4 for gold income, and the actual limit for unit production would be your gold income.

I think that limiting the unit production in that way is probably deliberate to make it harder to produce masses of units where you want. You can produce tons in your home country, but it's moving them around that's the headache. Interesting idea, worth thinking about.


More feedback:

Campaign-mode Dragon
To me at least, the base Dragon, with no upgrades to survivability, is weak to the point of uselessness. A handful of Grenadiers will kill it in 5 seconds or less.

Short Sharp Shock
This skill feels pretty weak. All the attackers in the game are ranged, and the range of this attack is small enough that you have to drive right into the middle of a group of smaller units, which is suicidal, if they include Grenadiers. For what amounts to a suicide charge, it should be more damaging.


- The latest build’s RTS AI seems much more stubborn about deciding when it has lost.

- Suggestion: A confirmation for when you want to sell a building. I accidentally sold a thing because I mistook it for an emporium and was trying to buy a card.

- Suggestion: Perhaps some way to sell cards you don’t need or want – like

- Imp Mercenary cards should NOT affect the balance of a map in the card-placer’s favour if a) he has not researched any air units (and thus cannot upgrade them to drop bombs) AND b) the other player has no air units for the Imp Fighters to shoot down. If there are no air units and the other player/AI has no ability to build air units, what are those air-only-attack imps going to do?

I for one like that the dragon is a glass cannon and not a juggernaught of destruction.

Dragon wasn't upgraded and was shot down quickly too. I don't know if the dragon could be far more resistant. I don't want the Dragon to be a Juggernaught.

-In the campaign mode, I don't think it's a good idea to be able to research upgrades ...

I mean, you shall fight with your own forces ... for exemple, you use a ton of jeeps and research in game their shooting in the sky to avoid trouble...

- In the campaign mode again, don't allow the construction of gold mine on 10 gold/turn places... It's meaningless... And give you a too overwhelming advantage.

- The IA of our units is too agressive... You don't want your artillery to chase when you just moved it, or your jeep to go one by one being killed... This could be changed with a "three aspects button" saying :"Suicidal (chase the enemy to Helllllll),Agressive (chase in a small radius and COME BACK after ,Defensive (after moving, it's equivalent as hold your ground, but you can't say move there AND hold your ground).

That 30% Damage Reduction from Scales of Steel is not enough to make the Dragon an invulnerable juggernaut of destruction, it still takes a lot of damage and dies. That damage reduction is merely enough to make the Dragon not die in under 5 seconds in battles with Grenadiers and Hunters.

Maybe I am not being fair though. I could be wrong, and I'm willing to test it in an RTS map in campaign mode with a volunteer: a Dragon with and without Scales of Steel. (Although I'm probably too busy to do so today).


It is true though, that with the latest patch's increase to the population, dying as a Dragon is really, really cheap. I tend to have so many recruits that I can't spend them all fast enough, an the map still has many more, so there's nothing preventing me from respawning in as a Dragon repeatedly even if I die - I know I can easily afford it. Maybe a 10-15 second cooldown after dying before you can respawn?





- I have a couple points about Researching upgrades:

• Researching upgrades is kinda essential to the point of having the campaign mode. It's what makes the games interesting, the battles between armies with different upgrades.
• But you do have a point: being able to research everything ON THE RTS MAP does make it easy to match your opponent upgrade for upgrade (as long as you aren't immediately crushed).
• The AI always researches Bird in the Hand third, right after Chemical Warfare and Enhanced Explosives, but give me a few seconds with a Battle Forge or War Factory and I have that too. The higher population means I can afford to research everything and still pump out hordes of units.
• In some ways, it sort-of defeats the point of campaign mode research. On the other hand, outright prohibiting research on the RTS map is probably not a good idea because it means you CAN'T counter some things. I don't have any good answers, so the status quo is probably preferable to a radical change here.

- I have no objection to prohibiting placement of a gold mine on a 10 gold country, but by the time you capture a 10 gold place, you probably always have a huge income - more than enough to spend. A 10 gold country is best exploited by placing a War Factory, allowing you to produce 10 units at once on it.

- I agree, I keep having to use Hold Position on my lines to keep them from spreading out and charging the enemy a couple at a time. I go to the trouble of setting up a killing zone and my own units keep charging into it. The trick with your suggestion for aggressive AI that kills something nearby and comes back is that there tends to be long streams of enemies.

- Yes, "in game" in my mind meant 'in RTS mode'. I agree, you may encounter something hard to counter, but is it impossible to counter ? I don't think so. For exemple, aerial forces may be destroyed by bazooka, same for Juggernauts.

Beginning with 2 juggernauts and some Imps Buster in it may be a high advantage though, I admit, but research of comps is "not as useful as it may be"... You have to adapt to a clothing enemy ? This means clothing is worth something (and, if you can research unclock at sight, it may become useless pretty eartly.

I mean, you know which technologies have been developped by your opponent.

- for the gold mine giving you 20 gold/turn ... I see your point, but I'm not sure it's relevant : you could produce 2.5 Juggernauts / turn in your capital, + the units you need, plenty enough don't you think ?

Improvement Needed: The Campaign mode AI doesn't do research well. It immediately goes for two Grenadier upgrades, followed by "Bird in the Hand" for Hunters, but it doesn't research higher tier stuff: No air units on the map, no naval units save Transports, most notably, it never researched Anti-air turrets or any air units, despite my use of the Dragon and air units.

Improvement Needed: We really need to have an idea of what the map will look like before we place cards. I might not bother playing a Juggernaut or Transport card if I'm on a map with NO WATER or the one with those two large lakes occupying half the map, but by the time I see the map there's no way to take it back. We really shouldn't be allowed to place naval cards on the Mountain Lake map which has no shipyards.


Bug: I was unable to get my Grenadiers, warlocks and Devastators to fire on my own Transports, the game just made a "bzzt" sound. Hunters and Armours, when specifically ordered to attack my own transports (as in, I clicked the attack button and then the transport, I didn't just right-click) interpreted that as an order to board the Transport. If the only way to free up supply is to destroy my own units, well, I need to be able to destroy my own units! This was in a Skirmish with AI set to none.

Big Bug!: When a transport dies with units onboard, your supply amount only decreases by the supply amount of the Transport (10), it doesn't count the units onboard! That means that those dead units onboard the transport are still occupying supply!




The game has two distinct strategy game parts, so it's important to be clear which you mean.

Aside: I had thought that Juggernauts can be hard to counter - that's why I rushed to them in my last Campaign mode - but Grenadiers work pretty well against them in practice - even on the Imp Busters. You need at least two bombs to be launched at once, the first one is just the distraction to absorb all the attacks, letting the second one slip through.

You don't always know what technologies have been developed by your opponent, just what you can see on the strategy map and from mousing over units in RTS mode.

Yes, you could always build in your capital, but that could be a long way from where you need the units, and the other spot could be closer. That's the difference between losing a country or two.

Passing on this comment on the beta from the Something Awful forums Steam thread:

Had another long testing session with Watser, after two attempts timed out immediately on startup. It was so long we hit the stalemate timer twice before deciding to let it expire.

• Bug: Bomber Balloon's Enhanced Explosives upgrade DECREASES the default explosion radius pretty drastically. We each tried bombing a group of Shamans - my balloons (red) which are not upgraded had a huge radius, watser's balloons (blue) which WERE upgraded had a much smaller radius.
• Activating the Ironclad's "On Guard" ability does not decloak the unit when it is cloaked by a zeppelin. On the other hand, it's a defensive ability, so it probably doesn't matter.
• The "For the Empire!" abilities don't decloak units when activated, but perhaps that's intended.
• Shamans can't cast Immunity on cloaked units. Possibly intended?
• Shaman's Cripple says it has a 100 m radius, it can affect 4 shamans in close proximity. Grenadiers Enhanced Explosives says it has a 65 m radius. It can affect a single Shaman right next to another Shaman (but not a shaman behind it). The 100m radius of Cripple is effective, the 65 m radius of Enhanced Explosives is utterly worthless, units have to be crammed right up together, and even then the splash is really weak compared to the main damage.

Working correctly

• When cloaked, pretty much every single active ability units had decloaked the units when they were cloaked.
• Units engaged in combat will cease fire automatically when cloaked by a Zeppelin.

Suggestions

• Researching Improved Engines in the campaign for the Devastator and Troopers should increase their Campaign movement points by 1.
• Shaman's Charm ability should negate a Charm cast on an allied unit by an enemy Shaman. It requires quick thinking and good micro to do before the Charmed unit is shredded by your own units, and having to do that means your focus is directed inward, instead of at the enemy, so it still rewards the one who cast the first Charm, especially since they can cast many more if their Shamans are in a group.
• Short Sharp Shock needs a buff. It does 160 damage meaning that it takes 4 casting at once to barely kill Troopers. Anything else requires 5 or more.
• Grenadiers can kill themselves with their own splash damage. We really need a formation button or something that we can use to tell units to spread out.

May as well slap this here to:

Beyond bugs there is a lot of room for improvement in the multiplayer and I would like to think that we're not just playing a demo and that the dev team actually cares what it's fans have to say about it.

As it stands the multiplayer modes are rather bland and lifeless compared to almost any of there competitors, sup com manages to have the same zergy gameplay and feel far more strategic and engaging, what's the difference there?

The multiplayer campaign feels like a pointless skin for a series of skirmishs, map built units have little to no bearing on the outcome of battles played on the maps and the lack of even the most basic diplomacy or interaction with your empire really detracts from the experience. A lot of the joy in total war games is the organic storys that evolve about your generals, allys and culture as you play. All of that is sadly lacking here.

There isn't enough strategic depth to be a good place for competitive play and not enough immersion to have a lot of fun on your own. The multiplayer feels tacked on which is a huge shame, and something I really hate seeing multiplayer for the sake of a tick box on a games features.

So what is the difference? Before Dragon Commander I had tried about 10 minutes combined of 2 different RTS games.



How is that handled in multi-player? Are there decisions to make? Can you wander around talking to generals and advisers?

The difference is depth, pacing and balance. Each unit type is far more unique. each tech level and the units that correspond with them have far more of an impact on the game.

as for total war...have you not played any? the multiplayer campaign is the same as playing by yourself...each general has traits and skills earned through his performance in battle and peace. Diplomacy while not as comprehensive as I'd like offers far more variety to the game play and lends itself very well to organic story telling with old allys and rivalrys having an immense impact on diplomatic proceedings.

Your generals and agents grow as you play as do there children, it turns the strategic map mode into a far more interesting game then it would otherwise be. That's not even mentioning the experience troops gain as the game plays changing the way you play out of battle almost as much as in.

I get the feeling you're thinking I'm talking about the single player campaign...which doesn't make much sense, I don't have access to that beta. Only the multiplayer one and it's that campaign mode I'm talking about.

I know some clever soul may come along and say something to the effect of "Why not play that then?"

To which I'd respond why not add elements of it to this game and enrich it instead? wouldn't that be a better option for devs and fans alike?

For the actual mechanics of multi-player, does everyone get the same cutscenes, or everyone gets a different cutscene that is the same length, etc? Is there not enough text that different reading speeds matter?

In the single player campaign of Dragon Commander, described in various posts / interviews and shown in videos, diplomacy is based on propositions or requests that are made by your princess or advisers. You can make an immediate decision, or you can go talk to everyone to see how they feel about the issue, then make a decision based on the issue or on who you want to gain favour from.
In multi-player, this could mean one player sits around doing nothing for 10 minutes while the other is talking to everyone.

No, I have not played Total War. I tried Warcraft for a minute 15 years ago when my brother bought it, and L.E.D. Wars 5 years ago, but in a few tries couldn't last longer than a couple minutes.

Just got a chance to try patch .101. It's much better, I like the Maxos tutorials (sorry David), the pace is much better. I like the adjustment to the Elf faction starting place, and the Campaign map AI seems a bit better. The RTS map AI is having trouble adjusting to the new rules, though.


Bugs:

• I could not close the chat window once I accidentally pressed enter, it stayed up even after changing from Strategy map to RTS mode.
• Sabotage cards don’t work. I started a campaign and played a Sabotage card to stop an enemy from moving troopers. Despite the fact that my turn was first and the card was clearly played before his round-robin turn, the enemy AI could move his troopers just fine.
• The list to sort out what cards you have doesn't seem to be working properly. I tried to have it only show, say, Mercenaries, and it seemed to think I had none, even though I had several under "All".

Requests:

• Add a “Bombard Target” ability to the Bomber Balloon, to match that of the Devastator, Juggernaut and Mortar Turret, please. I'd also like to see a circle displaying the maximum firing range of the Juggernaut, Mortar Turret and Devastator when they're selected, just for sake of convenience.
• In Skirmish mode, please add the research time and what the ability does to the RTS research tooltips please.
• Really minor nitpick, but on the Aerofactory research page, switch the position of Iron Plating and Fly my Flaming Pretties, so the upgrades for the units are grouped together.
• Another minor thing, but maybe Zeppelins should display a passive ability on their skills bar when selected. It could be called something like “Eye in the Sky” and say that increases the range of units in X radius by 33%.
• Add some way to get rid of cards you don’t want, either by selling them or trading them in some ratio in exchange for a random card as a form of card gambling.
• The Dragon’s Aegis skill should affect allied units in a short radius. It protects for 10 seconds - less time than the Shaman’s Immunity, and remains single-target only.
• Single-player Campaign Suggestion: This may already be in, but in single-player only, using a “Genocide” card on a territory should lower your standing with whichever race is the majority there, and maybe a couple other races as well, because well, genocide isn’t going to make you popular. The “Increase population” card can have the opposite effect.
• Really, do something about Falcon's Rocks, please. It needs a redesign, the lakes needs to connect with each other (add bridges for land units) and the bases need shipyard sites much closer, those two in the center are really inconvenient.

Bug: The AI can still research during RTS battles during the campaign. Is that intended? No, scratch that, I don't care if it's intended, it's certainly not fair. I got my butt kicked in part because the AI was cheerfully able to max out all its units. The bastard was warping Hunters in from its spawn to aid in the attack on my base, and I couldn't do anything because it had also upgraded them with Bird in the Hand.


Bug or Annoyance: Grenadiers can cause friendly fire damage to themselves and other troops with their own rockets (the normal ones, not Enhanced Explosives). If I had ordered them to shoot friendly units that would be okay except that They're shooting at enemy units and my own are getting hurt. No one has the attention span to micro those tiny little units that well. Please turn off friendly fire for Grenadiers.

I don't mind friendly fire damage on some of the units which have big attacks (Devastator, Juggernaut, Bomber Balloon), but not all units all the time.

EDIT: Oh, and some feedback: the healing fireball spell Purifying Flames - I made the mistake of purchasing it first, and it is completely underpowered. For some reason, it costs 20 points to Research - more than Mass Restoration and Pillar of Healing, both of which are much more powerful!

Pillar of Healing lasts much longer, hits an area, and heals the same per second as Purifying Flames heals per hit.

It should not be more expensive to research a single-target, manually aimed, low-healing spell you need to spam with precision.

Purifying Flames is not enough to keep units alive under heavy fire.

Ok, I didn't realize there was a big catchall bug thread, sooooooo... I'm just going to repost this bug of mine here:

http://www.larian.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=468581#Post468581


Please get this fix asap, everytime I go into skirmish mode on that map I get this bug. Really derails the experience especially since there is no reload or retreat menu in skirmish mode, and losing out all those units can be a pretty big game changer.

Playing against Insane AI? Insane AI cheats to be so powerful. Remove its cheating and it's mostly a Hard AI.

I think it was a default or Hard AI. I'm pretty not Insane, I'll re-try this to verify, though.

Reminds me of something...
Yesterday I had put three Devastators into siege mode and noticed that they constantly took damage.
It seems that one of them didn't manage to fire his projectile over the other two but rather had it explode right in the middle of the group.
Maybe an issue with collision detection?

I've confirmed that the AI is still doing research in the Campaign RTS maps on the Default AI setting. If you get on the back foot during a match, they can just research everything and you can't counter it. The AI getting extra resources and stuff I don't really mind for Hard and Insane difficulty settings, but the research bugs me.


Has anyone managed to complete a campaign since the 101 patch without the game crashing during an RTS round?

Bug: Oh yes, and the Chat screen stays up forever if you activate it, which is really annoying. It follows you through switching game modes, too.

Requests:

• Players start in a random capital location on the Campaign map. I’m getting a bit tired of always starting in the Elf capital in my plays against the AI.
• The manual says a higher level of Entrenchment means that a defending country will start out with buildings and turrets already up. Are there plans to implement that in the multiplayer campaign in the beta?
• Minor bug: The game does not save my "Show Tutorial" settings. Every time I start up the game, I have to change that manually.
• The beta really needs to improve the campaign AI. All varieties do the same research every time, and they don't coordinate their forces well (although I think it's gotten slightly better since the last patch). They invade heavily reinforced countries with only a couple units, instead of a larger force, and they don't set up front lines.
• I like that you can view your cards in a tile view, but you can only get that view in certain places, not on the prepare for battle screen. You should be able to see the Tile view of your cards when you go to place them. I had the tile view for placing a card on a friendly country, but while I could mouse over it to get a better view, I couldn’t actually select it to place from the tile view.
• There absolutely needs to be a way to preview what map you will be personally controlling before you place your cards. The terrain is completely critical to my decision making. I don't want to spend a naval unit card on certain maps (maps really need to be changed to allow for better use of naval units). If the map is selected at random, have the random selection take place when a player elects to take control of the battle themselves, before the cards are placed.

I had the chat windows stay up once yesterday, but couldn't reproduce that after I restarted (did manage to hotkey build a war factory with the chat window up). I just started the game again and the chat windows stayed up, with WASD moving the screen and being input into the text box. After hitting Ctrl-Enter, typing some text and hitting Enter again, though, the chat window closed (couldn't reproduce the problem to see if hitting Ctrt-Enter actually helped or that was unrelated).

"Divinity: Dragon Commander Beta - 66 Hours played"

Some vague thoughts after a long hot, tiring day, so keep in mind I'm tired. hot and cranky:

I really hope the next build is more stable. The current build has got high odds of crashing during an RTS match. There's no hope of completing a campaign. I'm sending in the files after every problem, but I think I'm done playing until the next patch


I might have played a bit too much. I think I'm getting a bit sick of playing from the same starting campaign position against the same AI which does the same research on the campaign map (and any research it darn well pleases on the RTS map, patch be damned), and I'm really getting sick of seeing Falcon's Rocks come up in rotation so often.

My apologies to the designer of Falcon's Rocks, but I audibly groan every time I see the map show up. That's not a good sign. But don't worry, put-upon map designer, I will help fix your map!


Falcon's Rocks

I'm sure I've said this before and I'm sure that I'll say it again in the future: this is not a good map.

This map is probably the biggest reason why I hesitate to use my Ironclad/Transport/Juggernaut Mercenary cards, because if I end up using them on this map, I feel like I just completely wasted them.

It plays out the same way: Send troops to the corners, creep up the edges and lay siege to the base. Everyone's troops have to move in straight lines. The large bodies of water make the map static.

Water should make the map more dynamic. It should add something. It should add new possibilities, new approaches. Look at the water on every other map save Emerald Mountain. Water gives you different approaches of attack and/or move units. The water on Falcon's Rocks constricts the map into straight lines. You can leave your base in two directions - to the far corner or the middle. Once in the middle, you can go to the far end, or continue to the near corner. That's it.

There is no reason to try and hold the middle of the map. Even the AI knows not to bother with the middle. No Resource Sites and all the other Construction Sites are at the edges. - all that's in the middle are the pretty useless shipyards. Well... maybe not useless, you can build Aerofactories on them at least. What can you build with a Shipyard?


Transports
Transports can move your troops, with the aid of stealth if needed, remove mines, and kamikaze into enemy ships.

Falcon's Rocks does not let you move your troops in any special way by water. I tried to load some troops from my base onto a Transport. The troops couldn't board, so they followed the cliff down quite a way, basically to the center strip of land. So if I were to use a Transport, I could move my troops in a straight line from the bottom of the strip of land up to the top of it, exactly the same way my troops would move without a Transport. If you control a shipyard, you have no mines or other ships to worry about. If you don't, then what can your transport do? Maybe move some troops past the center to the other side.


Ironclads
Ironclads have two roles: destroying enemy air and enemy naval units. They might provide an okay defense of home against air attack, maybe. But they have no anti-naval role at all because if you control one shipyard, you control both. Can they plant or detect mines? No need, because if you control one shipyard, you control both.


Juggernauts
Juggernauts are water-based siege weapons. What can they reach? Mostly the strip of land in the middle. Can they siege a enemy base? Maybe, I think I spent a few minutes trying and eventually with a bunch of upgrades I was able to hit an enemy Recruitment center, but the cliffs make sieging difficult, and of course, if you have the middle, you don't really need to use it.


Approximately 40% of the map is taken up by these huge lakes that construct the space into straight lines, and you can't really even use the lakes to your advantage!

If you start out with water units (or worse, spent some mercenary cards to get water units), you can't really use them for anything. This map is probably one of the biggest reasons why I am reluctant to play any potentially valuable Naval unit cards in Campaign mode.



How to fix Falcon's Rocks?
I've got a few ideas. Are they good? I don't know.


1) Give each base their own Shipyard site. This will let you move troops around with more flexibility than "go north" or "go east", opening up the map for more dynamic play and flanking possibilities, both offensively and defensively. This will require reworking the terrain so that the cliffs are less huge at the bases, though.

2) Connect the lakes together. Possibly even make them circular. The map opens up even more, and water actually becomes the centerpiece feature of the map, instead of the centerpiece obstacle. There can be dynamic battles between ships. Ironclads will be of use and able to plant mines. Possibly add bridges to maintain the central corridor connection.

3) Make the center worth fighting for. With Shipyards at the bases, Harbours are no longer needed there. Replace them with something irresistible: Resource Construction sites. Put 2 or more of those in the middle and suddenly instead of it being something easily avoided, the middle becomes the focus of the action. Control of the water is no longer irrelevant, but now just as vital as control over the bases in the corners.

Wow, this turned out long. Sorry about that. So uh, please make Falcon's Rocks better so when it comes up in rotation I'll think "Oh, this map is always interesting", instead of "Oh. This map again."

Just a reminder, tired, hot and cranky.

I'm not quite sure what in the new patch is causing problems with the Campaign map on RTS mode for me. Skirmish mode works fine, and just now I had a few good matches in a 2v2 campaign. I'll have to keep trying to help Larian find a common factor with what's wrong.


I haven’t been able to play many RTS matches because of crashing, but even from my little playtime, the campaign AI seems much better. Part of that is the instant research, it’s getting different units that it didn’t used to before, but the AI seems better at forming groups for attack or defense, using cards appropriately . I also haven’t noticed it cheating and doing other research during the RTS missions.

With the change to let Shamans and Warlocks travel over water, it changes the composition of the sea forces: they’re now much more menacing, without really changing the existing sea units at all. Imagine Shamans, cloaked by Warlocks closing in on an enemy fleet, the nemerging and then charming the Ironclads, making them sink their own Juggernauts.

Suddenly Ironclads are not the only counter to Ironclads – Warlocks can’t be targeted by the torpedoes of the Ironclads. Unfortunately, neither can they shoot back (bug!). But they have two other skills that should be able to deal with Ironclads pretty well.


Minor Thing: Shamans and Warlocks can’t be picked up or dropped off at sea. This might be a consequence of the Transport AI that can’t be coded around, though. This may be working as intended, but it’s so small that it may not be worth worrying about.

Bug: I launched a sea invasion of a country. It started out well, but I failed to maintain production, and was overwhelmed, so I was forced to retreat (my biggest weakness in Starcraft 2 multiplayer. All that money in the bank is completely worthless until converted to troops). Interestingly enough, there were several survivors, including two transports. Unfortunately, none of my “surviving” units were loaded onto the transports, so only the two empty transports were able to survive and retreat. I can understand if no transports survived, or if not all the units could fit on the transports, but if ships survive and units survive, there’s got to be some way to get units onto ships. Other than that, I like the retreating mechanic.

Have played a few minutes, unfortunately RTS in campaign mode crashes for me, so not much to say about the current iteration.

Has loading saved campaign games been removed? There doesn't seem to be any possibility to do so now, so together with the crahsing campaign is pretty much restricted to autoresolve for me at the moment.

Well, guess I'll wait for another patch...

Got a chance to play against Watser in a few 2v2 battles. I was able to load an RTS map from the Campaign, but that game (and all the rest) ended with "Waiting for players" and desynchronization detected premature endings. After

Nevertheless, I think we made some useful balance findings. After the first attempt, we switched to Skirmish mode. Both matches were on Dragon Pass.

In the first RTS match, which I think was campaign, I started out at the central base with nothing, because I had no units on that territory. I made the mistake of spending my first income on Troopers and saving it for a RC. That was a mistake as an enemy Dragon swooped in and crushed my troopers and blew up the RC under construction. I did spawn as a Dragon to try and defend, but the second enemy Dragon killed me in a tiny few seconds. That pretty much took me out of the game there. No economy, only a couple troops, no way to really recover. The game ended because of a desyncronization after a little while.


Later on there was a Skirmish, and the other players concentrated on fighting each other with their Dragon, testing to see that it really was far too powerful that early in the match. I, starting at the right base this time, wasn't attacked, but it still took forever to build much. I didn't dare leave my base until I could spend money to get an AA turret, and I only bought Grenadiers because I'd learned my lesson: early money spent on vanilla Troopers is just a liability when the enemy has a Dragon. I tossed in a couple Shamans. I still didn't dare leave my base because my income with only one RC was bad, so I had to spend more to get A shipyard, Transport and 5 Grenadiers to leave on the RC island (I didn't dare leave it unattended to be Dragon-sniped.)

I was finally preparing a second force of Grenadiers and Shamans to try can capture a third RC whem the game ended again because of another Decync. I never did get enough income where I felt it was a good idea to get a War Factory, or any upgrades. Because of the menace of the Dragon, the pace suddenly became glacial as I didn't dare leave my base, but lacked the income to do much.

• The biggest problem is that with the slower pace, the Dragon Spawn timer is too fast. If you decide to actually make units, it's too easy for an enemy Dragon to fly in and crush your base and a second resource center that you are constructing. At that point, you're screwed - No troops, weak income, you can't afford to spawn your Dragon - or if you can, it means you can't build any units or structures, and you're STILL behind in resources. The other guy can afford to send 1-2 troopers to slowly capture a RCS, and save the rest to spawn a Dragon to crush you. The Dragon Spawn Timer needs to be longer. The players need to have a bit of a chance against an enemy Dragon. That's not quite so important in Campaign, where you have more flexibility and can start with units on the map already, but it is something to consider.
• Starting with 10 resources means you need to wait an really long time before you can do ANYTHING AT ALL. It takes 15 to build a Battle Forge. It takes a long time to get the first batch of recruits, and that takes you to 14, so you need to wait even longer until it hits 18. The problem is that there is absolutely nothing to do but sit on your hands and wait for the numbers to move. This one is easy to fix, though. Increase your starting Recruits in Skirmish mode from 10 to 11. Suddenly, you can start to build on your first tick of income.

I had a campaign mode that lasted many turns, thanks to the RTS mode not crashing (maybe because of 2v2?), so I was able to play and watch the AI at work. It is much, much better. Good job, Larian. It uses cards, it gets different upgrades in different orders. I actually saw one wait until the 9th turn or so to get the Grenadier upgrade that it used to get on turn 1 or 2.

It also forms armies much better, and while it still occasionally sends suicidal forays pf single units into heavily populated territories, it now forms groups and responds to enemy movements better. I had taken Starlington, had built a war factory and was planning to use it as a staging ground for and invasion of Hawksbury, but the enemy added additional units, and this is important: without taking any existing units away. That raised the Entrenchment there to an uncomfortable 80%, so I didn't feel comfortable invading.

Then I got a break. There was a major battle in Herbosos, in which the enemy suffered massive casualties, but my ally did as well. I sent my invasion fleet to there instead to reinforce the position, and to use as a stage to invade either Stormbridge or Frostberg (I chose Stormbridge because both had equal forces and it was closer to an enemy capital.

The AI actually was smart and reinforced both countries with troops as I invaded, and the other enemy AI invaded a poorly defended country near by Capital with a weak Transport + Grenadier force.

I won that big RTS battle pretty well, but had to quit the game during the second one because it was suffering from extreme lag, and consuming 1.3 GB of my 4 GB of RAM all on its own. I suspect that this was in large part because the AI was creating a bajillion tiny-supply units. There were streams of mostly Troopers pouring constantly from the red base in a 2v2. I suppose I might theoretically have held the assault off, I had Devastators, Shamans, and money, but the lag completely sapped my will to play. Well, that's not true, it only mostly sapped my will to play. The fact that the map was the terrible, terrible, Falcon's Rocks sapped the rest of it.


So with that nitpick aside, I really, really like the improvement to the Campaign AI. This is going to be fun to play against (once it doesn't crash so much and I can save progress because wow campaigns take longer than I have patience to play all at once), so great job, Larian!

Another set of thoughts on 110 and 118.

I like the new changes to the maps. The corners on Emerald mountains were neglected completely In favour of the central Resource CS’s, so adding another hotspot is good.

The second construction sites on Dragons’ pass help speed up the flow of units through the choke point, and the removal of the turrets makes it more reliant on player action to make sure the choke is held.

Frost Islands is much better with the second Shipyard CS on the islands for faster production, and a second RC for faster income. The extra turrets are good to help hold the islands as well.

All you need to do now map-wise, is fix Falcon’s Rocks (which half the QA team also hates, according to rumour). Unfortunately because Swen said there are no bridges, it means that my ideal solutions cannot be done. I'm not sure what to do about that map. Here's all I can think of for tweaking Falcon's Rocks:

• No matter what else you do on this map, you really should put a shipyard construction site at all 4 bases, and let ground units be able to board transports from there. This will let you move units around the map a bit better, and it gives an opening to attack the enemy if you can seize a corner base on their side of the map. Plus, if building a ship is no longer reliant on controlling the center of the map, it will let you attempt to control the center via the water, instead of controlling the water via the center.
• Remove the shipyards in the center, replace them with 2-3 Resource Control points. With the shipyards moved to the bases, they are no longer needed in the center, and what better thing to make the center more important to fight over than Resource control points. With shipyards at the corners, ships can be built to seize control of the center and fight back and forth.
• The other non-bridge ideas I have for Falcon's Rocks are radical redesigns that even I think are more likely to make the map worse, so I won't bother with those.

- The population in the campaign seems too large. I thought that the idea for a multiplayer campaign was to have more, shorter RTS battles. At the start of the beta, maps had only about a quarter of the population they do now. The population pool at these levels tends to drag RTS matches out a long time, because resources don’t run out. This gets really annoying in some cases against the AI where you get forced back to your base, defending against a horde of weaker units. When I look up and see the counter for population still at 4 or 5 thousand, I tend to just surrender the battle (especially when the map is Falcon's Rocks).


- When it comes time to do the Single-player campaign where you have to spend money to hire generals, it would be nice on the screen where you decide to hire them to see your current gold + income per turn. In the Larian one-turn-Let’s-Play, that useful information vanished from the HUD just when it was becoming important again.


- I really like the addition of unit buff/debuff cards – those keep the matches pretty interesting because you may never be facing the same fight twice. One time I was basically forced to play without Shamans, because the AI played a -75% Shaman Speed card, cutting their speed from 100 to 25, and basically taking them out of the game.


I haven't tested all ground units attacking naval units, but I did find a couple bugs in 118.

- Hunters, when specifically ordered to destroy their own transport, board it. (Armours properly open fire)
- Bomber Balloons when attacking friendly units the bombs just circle endlessly and go crazy.

Played some campaign matches against the AI on 128.

• Bug: The announcements of what upgrades you’re facing are nice, but they happen a bit too often, and actually don’t always reflect the units you’re facing on the field. I got announcements that Troopers could self destruct, capture buildings, Transports could cloak and self-destruct, Grenadiers could use chemical warfare… but I was getting those announcements even though none of the enemy had actually researched that.
• Bug: You’re apparently getting “structure completed” announcements for turrets and buildings that the enemy have built as well, which is more confusing than helpful.
• Shaman’s retreating behaviour is a step in the right direction, the problem is that they tend to run so far away that they get out of range to consider healing the front-line units, which get chewed up because the healers run away. It's not as if the shamans themselves were being hit by enemy fire most of the time, they were just running away even if enemies were attacking other allied units nearby.

AI behavior is to shoot shamans first if they are in range, I've noticed. So are you certain that even shamans that were not being shot at retreated?

I'm not CERTAIN certain, but in any case, the shamans retreating behind the front lines is good, the Shamans making like Brave Sir Robin and running so far away that it's hard to get them to go back and start healing the guys at the front again is less so.

Bug: Land Mines do not work anymore. Several times I witnessed Troopers and other ground units walk right over a minefield without triggering them. Not in-between the mines, right on top. Nothing happened. I have not tested to see if Sea or air mines do the same because well, who even bothers to research sea or air mines?

Good work Stabbey! Maybe you should to go Larian and become Lead QA(Octaaf don`t be offended to me I just proposing) -I`m not joking

A few suggestions:

- When the Dragon timer hits zero the first time (not after the 6 second despawn cooldown), play an audio cue (maybe play a Dragon roar) as a reminder. I agree with the long time it takes to spawn the Dragon, but it takes so long that I focus on the RTS gameplay and forget about the timer.

- With a group of Grenadiers selected, hitting the Chemical Warfare button should only make one of them fire. (I am pretty sure that the effects don’t stack). If the player wants, they can hit the button again to make more shoot it off.

- On the Campaign Unit Buy screen the ratio is currently Gold spent / Total Gold. I’d like that flipped (or at least added) so it shows you “Gold remaining after order”, because that’s the more useful stat, and you have to do less math in your head. I’m saying that as someone who likes math. It's fewer steps to see "8 gold left" than it is to go "I've spent 12 gold out of my 20 so that's 8 gold left, which means..."


- Reposted (with minor edits) from Swen's blog, because why not.

Did a unit balance/matchup testing session with Watser.

Bug: (patch 152) If you have a Devastator under the effects of the Zeppelin's "Fog of War", and then put it into siege mode, the little supports that come down are not cloaked.

Possible Bug: Air mines are still completely visible to enemy players. Is this intentional?

Possible Bug: The Juggernaut seems to have a very long "aggro" range. It kept wanting to wander away from where it had been sitting peacefully, despite being well out of the range any other unit goes hostile. Will need more tests to see if this happens regularly.


Display Bug: The cooldowns and durations for cloaks are listed as the same for all units with those abilities, both in skirmish and campaign, but the actual duration of the ability does not match the cooldown.


Unit matchup results

- Troopers easily beat equal support of Warlocks
- Uncontrolled, Troopers can actually beat equal Support of Armours. Controlled with focus fire, Armours beat Troopers.
- 2 Hunters beat 1 Devastator (without siege), but 4 Hunters are crushed handily by 2 Devastators side-by-side. (No micro was used, and the Devastators did get a shot or two off in siege mode first.
- Hunters beat Imp Fighters in equal supply.
- Warlocks are possibly stronger naval units than Ironclads. Equal recruit costs of Transports are crushed completely under the firepower of Warlocks.
- I did not think to test Warlocks versus Juggernauts.
- Ironclads overwhelmingly beat equal support of Bomber Balloons.

Requests

- If you kill the enemy Dragon, it would be nice to know if you scored a kill - especially for Dragon-Dragon combat. Conversely, it would be helpful to see a little message saying what killed you as a Dragon. Something like "Octaff's Dragon was ventilated by Lorean's Imp Fighter."

- The problem with the water on Falcon’s Rocks is that the water is best used to control the strip of land at the center of the map… but you can only build new naval units if you *already* have control of the map’s center. Thus, you don’t really need to. Tweak the terrain to allow harbours in the four corner bases, and put Recruitment centers in the center and it should make water and naval units more useful.

Would be nice: When you have a unit in motion to somewhere, but have deselected it, it would be nice if you could re-select it and see a line pointing to where it’s going, like Starcraft 2.

Totally unnecessary feature that no one would notice if it was not there: It’d be neat, although not important enough to work on before release, if you could unload Shamans and Warlocks from Transports when over water (on the RTS map only of course).

THIS! Please?

Request: In the chat, let us hold down the backspace and arrow keys instead of needing to press them each time.

*****

I had another short testing session, this time with Tovarah. The rest of this post is related to that.

I tried Warlocks versus Juggernauts (Equal supply - 10 versus 3). It was hilariously one-sided. Approaching without cloak, the Warlocks were crushed easily, barely taking off 1/3 of the health of one Juggernaut. Still though, Juggernauts seem to be the only sea-based unit that can stop a Warlock from dominating the seas, and that's only if the Warlocks don't cloak or the enemy has detection.

I confirmed that Transports "For the Empire" can blow up floating units like the Shamans. That was to be expected.


We did more tests of Hunters versus Devastators (equal supply).

Watser and I tested 4 Hunters versus 2 Devastators in siege mode (no Hunter micro), and the Devastators won handily thanks to their splash. I realized that we hadn't tried that matchup with the Devastators NOT seiged, so I did that with Tovarah. The Hunters won, but just barely. They were badly injured. That extra shot they took from the siege mode made a huge difference.

The next test was 4 Hunters and 2 Devastators (in siege mode), but this time, I kept the Hunters circling the Devastators (they can fire on the move). The Hunters embarrassed the hapless Devastators, barely taking any damage at all.

The lesson? Microing your hunters instead of letting them sit still is probably a really, really good idea.


Then we tested out equal supply of Armours (3) and Troopers (10), because that was interesting before. Once again, unmanaged Armours, picking their own targets, were beaten handily by the Troopers - about 3 or so remained. Careful micro of the Armours, focusing on one trooper, then targeting the next trooper as soon as the previous as the previous one is dead had one of the armours survive with about half-health.

The lessons here are: Managing your troops and focusing beats an unfocused group.

It appears one can still research upgrades during the RTS battle when playing a campaign. (For units you currently have researched at least) By selecting a production building and pressing the hotkey (J). I assume this isn't intentional. This probably has been reported but... er... haven't seen it.

Good find. I haven't seen that reported, either.

I can confirm the bug where in campaign you can open the research menu by pressing J with a building selected.

Minor graphic issues in the“Little Rivellon” campaign
-The numbers in the Gold sacks aren’t in quite the right spot, they seem to be higher than before.
-The population numbers also seem to be a bit higher than they were before.
-The Scythestead text seems to be off-position a little.
I guess making these textures is a huge pain. Oh geez, you have to do them as a separate layer from the rest of the map, don’t you, so if it’s not aligned perfectly, it looks wrong all over. I can see why you said that the Campaign Map editor was one of the most unfriendly tools you developed.


AI Bug: The Zeppelin won’t take terrain into account when shooting its mustard gas missile. There was a mountain between it and the target I assigned, and it shot the missile which hit the mountain and actually damaged the zeppelin itself instead.

The Auto-resolve animations can lead to some hilarious victories. This isn't necessarily something that should be changed, it just looks odd.
In a 2v2 autoresolve animation, my green teammate lost all his forces, and the other side still had a good mix of units left. Luckily, my 4 Shaman mercenaries killed all the remaining enemy. (No, I didn't even have Charm researched).

In another, I had a 92% chance to win in a battle between 1 enemy Trooper vs. 2 Troopers, 2 Grenadiers, 2 Shamans, 1 Warlock, 2 hunters and 2 Armours. I did indeed win the battle... but that lone trooper took out 2 Hunters and 2 Armours. Let me tell you - in a real RTS match, those 3 Troopers you get are not going to beat 4 Hunters and 4 Armours. No, not even with an Enhanced Engine upgrade. I know, I know, a dice roll. I'm just saying.

If it would be played out in an RTS match, while unlikely it wouldn't be impossible for the AI to have already produced a big enough bunch of new units by the time you approach at his base with your guys, resulting in potentially high losses amongst your troops. Doesn't sound so unusual from my experiences with DC.

Hooray, I think I'm getting better at managing my Dragon, units and keeping my macro up, even upping the AI to Hard.


Things to work on (some or a lot of these should be repeats (sorry it's late and I'm tired)):

- I still have to manually uncheck the Show Tutorials button every time I start up the game. Will it at least stay unchecked in the release version?

- The Bomber Balloons air mines have been broken for as long as I can remember: They are visible, when they should be cloaked. They're not very useful like that. I can't even properly TEST how useful they are in an actual combat situation.

- Does the AI know something I don't know about what Population is good for? Because the AI plays population increase/decrease cards on territories, but as far as I can tell, those cards are only useful when invading or getting invaded and you want to limit the amount of resources, make sure you have enough resources. Playing those cards on random territories doesn't do anything, I think.

- The listed duration for the Cloak effects matches the cooldown, but that's wrong, the cloak wears off before the cooldown.

- I think the cooldown timer for Grenadier's Chemical Warfare is a bit bugged. The timer doesn't sometimes show up after activating the skill. Other times I think it does.

- I like the new sorting system when placing cards in battle, bur I think the menu is a little glitchy. I selected mercenary cards from the drop-down menu, placed a mercenary card, and then the deck went back to all, but the list was still showing Mercenary. I had to hit all and then mercenary from the list to get back the the mercenary-only list.

- On the unit buying screen, it's better to have it as "Gold Remaining: X" instead of "Gold Spent: X / Total Gold: Y", because Gold Remaining is the most important stat and it makes the math of "what units can I afford" easier.

- On the unit buying screen, you can try to enter numbers of units to buy in, but it goes back to zero. You need to use the +/- buttons.

- I'd like an audio cue to remind the player when the Dragon is ready to spawn. I keep getting engrossed in the RTS part and actually forgetting about the Dragon. This I guess is just my own problem, and I might be getting better at it.

Really? I kind of like the current system as it gives you more information and lets you keep track of how much you will get when you undo. Maybe include all 3 stats as a good compromise as you can never have to much feedback of what you are doing (Usually)



Could not agree more! This happens to me as well.

I will just post here a small bug, which I have just seen:

In the training grounds mode, the research panel for upgrades should be enabled. It is now accessible by pressing the "j" hotkey but there is no button visible on the screen when selecting a building. Since the training grounds are made for new players to test different units and their upgrades, the button to access the research panel should be there.

The transition from main menu music to battle music (at least for the training grounds) is a bit abrupt, a fade in/out/crossfade might be nice.

Yeah, that should be fixed. I hope that there's eventually a unit tester map to make it easier to test matchups and skills and Dragon skills under completely controlled conditions.


I'll also repeat this bug:

I use a 5 button mouse (Logitech G500), and since I can now change the camera pan, I decided to move it to my "Extra Mouse Button 2". Unfortunately, that seems to double as the "Spawn Dragon" button. I have not changed the default Spawn Dragon button from "R". When I hit Extra Mouse Button 2 and the Dragon is on a timer, the camera correctly pans, but if I can spawn, I also spawn as a Dragon.

I just lost an RTS battle I could have won because a bug with unit selection. For some reason, my reticule turned into the "Dragon mode" reticule, even though I was in RTS mode, not Dragon mode (the Dragon was still on spawn cooldown timer), and I because my cursor was stuck in Dragon mode, I was unable to drag-select my units to give them orders, such as "stop moving and stay where you are, that's a lot of units about to intercept you".

That's a nasty bug.