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

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.