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Verdagon Veteran Member
Joined: 05 Oct 2003 Posts: 1047 Location: San Luis Obispo, CA
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Posted: Mon May 24, 2004 5:59 pm Post subject: |
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I love this level! Really good piece of work!
Quote: | Did you ever try it from the top of the top of the hill, so that the patrol was downhill from you? |
Downhill and uphill don't matter in this game. It's all one layer. _________________ [WI Moderator]
http://verdagon.net/ |
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PhillipEarl Mega-Poster
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Joined: 12 Jan 2004 Posts: 329 Location: Charlotte, NC
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Posted: Mon May 24, 2004 9:32 pm Post subject: |
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Verdagon wrote: | I love this level! Really good piece of work!
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THANKS! Coming from the illustrious author of The Return of Fox, that's high praise, indeed! You've made my day!!
Verdagon wrote: |
Downhill and uphill don't matter in this game. It's all one layer. |
Oh, yeah. It does in this mission.... I wrote it into the triggers! Try this:
Place a squad of rocket troopers at the top of the pass at the bottom of the large hill just north of the base and wait for a patrol to come along. For a limited time, the patrol coming up the pass will have roughly HALF the firing rate of your troopers! Then, just for fun, move them to the bottom of the pass and wait for a patrol to come around the hill from the base and attack. It won't be pretty. |
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ajcross Very Active User
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Joined: 23 Dec 2003 Posts: 113 Location: Kansas City
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Posted: Mon May 24, 2004 11:38 pm Post subject: |
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Ugh! Beautifully crafted response shredded by the server timing me out.
PhillipEarl wrote: | Try this:
Place a squad of rocket troopers at the top of the pass at the bottom of the large hill just north of the base and wait for a patrol to come along. For a limited time, the patrol coming up the pass will have roughly HALF the firing rate of your troopers! Then, just for fun, move them to the bottom of the pass and wait for a patrol to come around the hill from the base and attack. It won't be pretty. |
Uh, not pretty for who?
That is where I set up with 6 troopers
Here comes a Guard - Dead while moving.
Hmm, a second Guard - Reload and Repeat.
Liberator is 3/4 gone in first volley, takes a trooper to 2/3 health, then toasted tank.
Broadsword moves in, takes a trooper 1/3 down. Dead in fourth trooper volley.
I still need to see if I can take the Liberator in one volley or make him move by retreating his target.
Of course, now I have to try and take the base to take on the columns. _________________ Andy Cross |
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PhillipEarl Mega-Poster
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Joined: 12 Jan 2004 Posts: 329 Location: Charlotte, NC
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Posted: Tue May 25, 2004 5:11 am Post subject: |
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ajcross wrote: | Ugh! Beautifully crafted response shredded by the server timing me out.
PhillipEarl wrote: | Try this:
Place a squad of rocket troopers at the top of the pass at the bottom of the large hill just north of the base and wait for a patrol to come along. For a limited time, the patrol coming up the pass will have roughly HALF the firing rate of your troopers! Then, just for fun, move them to the bottom of the pass and wait for a patrol to come around the hill from the base and attack. It won't be pretty. |
Uh, not pretty for who?
That is where I set up with 6 troopers
Here comes a Guard - Dead while moving.
Hmm, a second Guard - Reload and Repeat.
Liberator is 3/4 gone in first volley, takes a trooper to 2/3 health, then toasted tank.
Broadsword moves in, takes a trooper 1/3 down. Dead in fourth trooper volley.
I still need to see if I can take the Liberator in one volley or make him move by retreating his target.
Of course, now I have to try and take the base to take on the columns. |
Well I didn't mean AMBUSH them! I just meant to send them down the pass like so many picnickers on a Sunday just to illustrate the difference in firing rates.
By the way, remind me to be extra cautious with corners if I ever play you in multiplayer (if I ever get a capable device!) ![Twisted Evil](images/smiles/icon_twisted.gif) |
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ajcross Very Active User
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Joined: 23 Dec 2003 Posts: 113 Location: Kansas City
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Posted: Tue May 25, 2004 9:42 am Post subject: |
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PhillipEarl wrote: | Awesome! Did you stick around long enough to build your own base and take the reinforcements out? ![Wink](images/smiles/icon_wink.gif) |
I'll have to try that. Hmm, get 'Made' and take out the guards/tanks. Hit the power, HRC, VTS and Surv Ctr. Let the bullpup's mine to fill up the Warehouses. Take the HQ, a Processor w/Bullpup and a Warehouse.
PhillipEarl wrote: | Niiice! Did you ever try it from the top of the top of the hill, so that the patrol was downhill from you? |
I have not seen this work. All the troops head down the pass.
PhillipEarl wrote: | So what'd ya think? Too easy? Too hard? Any recommendations? |
Taking out the Bullpups was easy. My ambush made taking out patrols easy. Taking out the power was easy after enemy mobile units were taken out. It was dicey getting into the base proper and taking out the HRC and VTS because of attrition.
Did you have "Pitbull" set instead of "Defender" on the Rocket Troopers? It was very annoying that they would start attacking towers and buildings instead of guards and tanks that were firing at them.
I had some troops in the forest in the middle of the middle ridge. When some patrols saw me and started attacking, the bullpup also went to the forest and then sat there. You may need to tweak your "Move to Area" command to not include Bullpups.
For Hard $difficulty, you could put some guards as a second line of defense behind the second set of towers. When the troopers get close to the towers, a trigger could pull all troops in the base to this second line. Then they wait for the troopers to come through the narrow gate. This might make base entry to difficult. But it is more realistic than having the guards and tanks sit at the HRC and VTS where they are more easily taken out.
For patrols, I have several ideas.
1. You could use triggers to move enemy units instead of Unit Actions. Their Unit Actions would be "Attack for 2" and "Wait for 0". This seems to be a more aggressive attack pattern than Pitbull. Pitbull follows a unit even when that unit flees behind superior defenses.
2. Divide a mining area into 6 areas. Then when an area has a Bullpup and Troopers, a Patrol would be sent to that area. This may need a state persistent variable to make this happen.
3. A guard could be sent to one of these areas. When troopers enter an area with a guard, a patrol is sent out.
4. A switch or some 'state' persistent variable could be used with area movement to move patrols more dynamically from area to area. Say clockwise, then switching to counter clockwise after some event say when a bullpup dies.
5. The crossroads or the first set of towers could be a default resting spot for patrols before they are sent out.
6. Once a bullpup enters one of the 6 areas in a mining zone, a Patrol could walk the mining areas. With a 'MiningZoneA' persistent variable, setting of 1 would walk areas 1 and 2, setting of 2 walks areas 1, 2, 3, setting of 3 walks areas 2, 3, and 4. This would be more human like but trigger expensive.
BTW, my Tungsten C wifi is gone because of the MAC address resetting to all 0's. _________________ Andy Cross |
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ajcross Very Active User
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Joined: 23 Dec 2003 Posts: 113 Location: Kansas City
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Posted: Tue May 25, 2004 9:09 pm Post subject: |
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PhillipEarl wrote: | Awesome! Did you stick around long enough to build your own base and take the reinforcements out? ![Wink](images/smiles/icon_wink.gif) |
Ah, ... Finally. Poor ACME. My tactical response troops didn't even get to them before the towers ... Well, it wasn't pretty as you might say. 90% of the map was controlled. I kind of built more towers than enemy units. Of course, I resorted to 1/8 time to get into the base without killing the last bullpup. It kept coming in as I was attacking the base guards and getting hit on as I stated before.
And about The Family: Exactly what kind of family is this? Are there any favors involved? I felt that the ...father was indebted to me. _________________ Andy Cross |
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PhillipEarl Mega-Poster
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Joined: 12 Jan 2004 Posts: 329 Location: Charlotte, NC
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Posted: Wed May 26, 2004 5:58 am Post subject: |
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ajcross wrote: | And about The Family: Exactly what kind of family is this? Are there any favors involved? I felt that the ...father was indebted to me. |
I was worried someone might make the mafia connection, here, and almost didn't use that term. I wanted to show that the Free Radicals were a close-knit - and yes, in many cases genetically related - group of independent miners. They refer to themselves as "Family" and "brothers" and "sisters" because circumstances have forced them into isolation with each other.
Okay, so I took a few creative liberties. If you like the mafia route, I can see how that would make for a good story, too.
BTW - thanks for your suggestions! You can probably expect to see a few of them implemented, if not on this mission, then on future missions! |
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BluePalms Developing Poster
Joined: 13 Sep 2003 Posts: 12
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Posted: Sat May 29, 2004 6:37 am Post subject: |
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Great Level. I managed to take over the base and destoy all of the reinforcements that were coming from the bottom of the map due to the advantage of the higher ground. You might want to consider having the reinforcements approach from the top of the map so you would have to run or be destroyed. |
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PhillipEarl Mega-Poster
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Joined: 12 Jan 2004 Posts: 329 Location: Charlotte, NC
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Posted: Thu Jun 03, 2004 10:49 am Post subject: |
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Okay, not a major update, but I did follow some of the suggestions mentioned above.
ajcross will be happy to note that the base now has a second line of defense for the "hard " setting. Hopefully it works as it's intended.
I also changed a couple patrol routes to make the patrols a bit harder to ambush as they come down the hill and around the corner from the base. ajcross beware!
I also followed BluePalms' advice and tweaked the route of Acme's reinforcements! You might want to head out into the galaxite fields to claim the high ground, this time on one of the columns!
Thanks to all for the great feedback, and I hope the changes are to everyone's liking! As always, let me know if I should tweak it some more. Heaven knows I enjoy tweaking things!
BTW Liberator - I haven't forgotten about your post a while back regarding the level slowing way down on your device. I've noted the same problem on a Palm M130. I'm working on it.... |
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PhillipEarl Mega-Poster
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Joined: 12 Jan 2004 Posts: 329 Location: Charlotte, NC
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Posted: Mon Jun 07, 2004 9:38 pm Post subject: |
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Liberator wrote: | It's a nice mission which I still haven't completed yet.
I don't know why the units move so slowly on my device, even I set the speed to 100%. It's a really hard mission in deed, hard to move ![Very Happy](images/smiles/icon_biggrin.gif) |
FINALLY! I fixed it! Liberator, this mission should run fine on your device, now! For anyone who has a device that runs a Palm OS lower than 5.0, you should re-download the mission and try it again. It should run smoothly on ALL devices, now. (I hope.... At least it did on an M130!) |
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UGMC Mega-Poster
Joined: 03 Jun 2004 Posts: 348 Location: my own little world
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Posted: Sun Jun 20, 2004 8:25 am Post subject: |
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I just played this level last night. Cool! I love the patrols and everything! But, there were a few things. Often the patrols simply ignored my units and let themselves get ambushed. Most often it was far away from any tree patches. Sometimes the enemy units would come up to my rocket troopers and act as though they were going to attack, but did nothing at all and died. Most often the computer didn't recognize me as an enemy, and I won without a single loss.
By the way, what kind of triggers did you use for this level? Must have had a lot! And how did you get the computer to stop shooting at me? |
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PhillipEarl Mega-Poster
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Joined: 12 Jan 2004 Posts: 329 Location: Charlotte, NC
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Posted: Mon Jun 21, 2004 5:22 am Post subject: |
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Okay, as far as the ambush triggers go, I did it with a simple area-dependent "Allies" trigger. When a patrol passes nearby an ambush site with your troopers hiding in it, the triggers tell side1 to ally with side3 for a few seconds. Usually, that's more than enough time to finish off a patrol. After the time period is up, side1 allies with no one and can return fire. This is meant to simulate the "surprise" effect an ambush has (ie - they're so shocked by the ambush that confusion reigns for the first few seconds of the firefight).
When you passed the Acme forces in the open, did you have an ambush in progress somewhere else? Even if your troopers didn't open fire, and Acme units were in the right spot, it could temporarily turn on the allies switch. Otherwise, when a unit is given orders, they'll focus on those orders first before firing on an enemy, meaning that if I've given my units the order to move to a certain place, they'll move right past an enemy to get there without firing a shot. This is part of the mechanics of the game, and I think it's more noticeable in this level due to the ambush triggers. The Acme units should have still fired on you, though, but I've noticed that even in the core missions of the game, units can be within what I would consider sight range and not fire on each other (?). |
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UGMC Mega-Poster
Joined: 03 Jun 2004 Posts: 348 Location: my own little world
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Posted: Tue Jun 22, 2004 7:53 am Post subject: |
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So, if you just keep one guy in one ambush spot you've got the whole enemy side to destroy with luxury? |
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PhillipEarl Mega-Poster
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Joined: 12 Jan 2004 Posts: 329 Location: Charlotte, NC
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Posted: Tue Jun 22, 2004 8:02 am Post subject: |
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No. Acme catches on after they've been ambushed from a certain spot, and once you've entered their base, ambushing anyone is pretty much out of the question. Also, keep in mind that they do recover from the initial surprise after a few seconds. It would take some massive coordination on your part to exploit that. I guess it's possible if you play at 1/8 speed, but it would completely suck all of the challenge out of this level...
BTW - I found a bug that I've since corrected. You might want to download the new (hopefully FINAL) version! |
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PhillipEarl Mega-Poster
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Joined: 12 Jan 2004 Posts: 329 Location: Charlotte, NC
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Posted: Wed Jun 23, 2004 10:27 am Post subject: |
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UGMC wrote: | I just played this level last night. Cool! I love the patrols and everything! But, there were a few things. Often the patrols simply ignored my units and let themselves get ambushed. Most often it was far away from any tree patches. Sometimes the enemy units would come up to my rocket troopers and act as though they were going to attack, but did nothing at all and died. Most often the computer didn't recognize me as an enemy, and I won without a single loss.
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UGMC, I owe you one. After reading your post, I went back and replayed the level myself and saw the behavior you were talking about. That was a bug. Big, blatantly obvious one, too. Some of the triggers I altered before to make the level run smoothly on smaller devices were compensating for that particular trigger's defect. When I changed those first triggers, the latter's defect became apparent. I fixed it, and uploaded a new version. Thanks, again!
(Note to self: always, always, ALWAYS check for a preserve trigger action! ) |
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