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.