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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?

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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


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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.

Quote
On the RPGCodex, Forktong said that in single-player, the gold costs for certain decisions, like healthcare was a flat fee. Now, I'm not sure if the fee scales the greater your income, so if it already does, never mind this.

I also do not know how many other flat fees could end up being stacked on top of the healthcare one or how much of a total drain that would be on your economy. With those disclaimers of complete ignorance aside wink here we go:


The Healthcare flat fee seemed to be 2 gold. That might be a lot per turn when your total income is under 20 gold, but when it's like 40+, you're no longer really going to notice 2 gold more or less. It's not even a single squad of Troopers.

If you get the healthcare question randomly about 30 turns into the game, that 2 gold fee isn't going to be much. My problem isn't that Healthcare hurts on turn 3, but that it DOESN'T hurt on turn 30.

To me, that kinda seems to not really be much of a trade-off or a hard decision. Unless you really are going for a faction that doesn't like it, there's no real downside to paying that 2 gold, there's no long-term consequence. If there's no meaningful long-term or ongoing consequence, it seems a bit of a missed opportunity.

Therefore, healthcare should probably cost more. But just tying it to income doesn't sit right with me. Healthcare costs are tied to amount of people, not amount of money. If you play a "Revenue increase" card or plant a gold mine, then your healthcare costs would go up without your population going up. So my idea is to tie healthcare costs to the total population under your control. Healthcare costs a flat 1 gold, plus 1 gold per every 5000 or so population under your control (adjust as needed). It would still hurt more at the start, and the cost would increase as you start controlling more people and land - but the increased revenue from the new territories would be more than sufficient to cover it.

There, now universal Healthcare is not just a free approval bonus with a token gold cost, but an actual, noticeable drain on the war economy, no matter if the healthcare question comes up on turn 3 or turn 30.


Last edited by Stabbey; 24/07/13 12:53 PM. Reason: more tweaks
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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).

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Originally Posted by Stabbey


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.


THIS! laugh Please?

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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.

Last edited by Stabbey; 26/07/13 01:32 AM. Reason: additional note
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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.

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

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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.




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Originally Posted by Stabbey

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. wink

Last edited by El Zoido; 26/07/13 02:59 PM.
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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.

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Originally Posted by Stabbey
- 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.


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)

Originally Posted by Stabbey
- 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.


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

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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.

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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.

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Originally Posted by Elwyn
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.


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.


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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.

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