Is Today the Day???

[Balthagor]

no, we're not delaying it on purpose

As for the changes in the AI there have been some but it's always difficult to track how significant they are, we play the game weekly so I see a constant progression. It's like watching a child grow, you don't get a sense for the change because you see it a bit at a time.

The AI is more aggressive now, though it is still a work in progress and it is often limited by a lack of required troops nearby. If you read the latest Dev game AAR I've given some description of the current AI status.

[bergsjaeger]

I wonder though. Not really. As for the AI. Does the amount of units it has still determine how many units it sends to the front. Because if that's the case I have to run a test after I get the new patch. Give them hundreds of units if i have to or use a cheat to give them alot of units. Want to see how scary them become. The Ai might end up beating me. Came close to beating me one time.

[Baloogan]

Could we please have some cheat codes which give the AI massive advantages? Like cheat superai gives 1000 random units to each ai team?

[The_Blind_One]

no, we're not delaying it on purpose

As for the changes in the AI there have been some but it's always difficult to track how significant they are, we play the game weekly so I see a constant progression. It's like watching a child grow, you don't get a sense for the change because you see it a bit at a time.

The AI is more aggressive now, though it is still a work in progress and it is often limited by a lack of required troops nearby. If you read the latest Dev game AAR I've given some description of the current AI status.

I only have one little request for this new patch and I think alot/all people will agree with me, it doesn't take more then 5 seconds to add.

''Increase recruitment of personnel/soldiers (especially with conscription (like 3x)'' that can be easily done by increasing the integer value for recruitment

and maybe for a future update or whatever, u could make it heavily dependent on DAR, the higher the DAR the more eager people are willing to defend their countries.

It frustrates the heck out of me to wait 3 years for only a couple thousand soldiers on a population of millions.

[Baloogan]

no, we're not delaying it on purpose

As for the changes in the AI there have been some but it's always difficult to track how significant they are, we play the game weekly so I see a constant progression. It's like watching a child grow, you don't get a sense for the change because you see it a bit at a time.

The AI is more aggressive now, though it is still a work in progress and it is often limited by a lack of required troops nearby. If you read the latest Dev game AAR I've given some description of the current AI status.

I only have one little request for this new patch and I think alot/all people will agree with me, it doesn't take more then 5 seconds to add.

''Increase recruitment of personnel/soldiers (especially with conscription (like 3x)'' that can be easily done by increasing the integer value for recruitment

and maybe for a future update or whatever, u could make it heavily dependent on DAR, the higher the DAR the more eager people are willing to defend their countries.

It frustrates the heck out of me to wait 3 years for only a couple thousand soldiers on a population of millions.

I agree. Please battlegoat, even if you think this breaks the recruitment system just increase it by about 100x even. I think that if the USA wanted to it could conscript about a million soldiers in about a year.

Keep the normal levels of recruitment though for when you arn't constripting, but when you check that conscription box you should basically fill up your military as quickly as possible to the wanted number of soldiers. I want to be able to have as close to 100% of my population in military reserves.

[Baloogan]

And when you click that conscription box it MEANS you want to get your army up to the indicated size as FAST as possible.

[Balthagor]

Unfortunatly you're far to late for such suggestions. We've been testing for and fixing regression errors (bugs created while fixing other bugs) for a week now and are almost done. (the stack/destack problme is gone now). Our next Dev test game should be Monday and if it all checks out we should be uploading the file soon after. If we added anything new you're looking at possibly as much as a 2 week delay to start testing all over again. Then it becomes longer if the changes introduce new regression errors.

Those will have to be considered for update 6...

[Eric Larsen]

Chris,
I agree it's too late in the update ballgame to add new stuff. I hope your Monday Dev game goes well so we'll be able to enjoy the fixes done so far plus the new goodies already added in.
Thanks,

Eric Larsen

[The_Blind_One]

Unfortunatly you're far to late for such suggestions. We've been testing for and fixing regression errors (bugs created while fixing other bugs) for a week now and are almost done. (the stack/destack problme is gone now). Our next Dev test game should be Monday and if it all checks out we should be uploading the file soon after. If we added anything new you're looking at possibly as much as a 2 week delay to start testing all over again. Then it becomes longer if the changes introduce new regression errors.

Those will have to be considered for update 6...

Coming from a programmer here. thats nonsense and that's a fact. All u need to change is one ''integer'' value in the code, that doesn't **** up the code, it just changes one number on the speed of recruitment. Don't give me bullshit about balancing and code errors as all u need to change is an integer value. That's as easy as starting up the code, finding that integer, and changing it from whatever u have now into double or triple what u had before. It's an easy fix, I didn't ask for a new feature, I didn't ask for a new formula to be coded. I only ask of u to change one integer value, george will know I'm right. Just make it easier to recruit for the next update, and IF u want to invest time into making it better. Sure go ahead. U don't NEED to do that. But I just beg of u to change one small simple integer value and double it or triple it, or like baloogan said, 100x it. You can't fool me into believing ur code for recruitment consists of more than 10 variables and is hugely complex. Just change one BASE variable and up it and ur done. Theres almost no need to balance it, as even a 4 year old could do it, if he had acces to ur code.

There's no need to balance as ur current recruitment policy isn't balanced anyway, it's all a matter of OPINION.

So if u don't want to change the integer, just TELL US u don't want to. Don't tell me u can't. Cause I know u can.

[Baloogan]

silly rant

When you program anything bigger than a hello world program bugs start randomly cropping up due to any minor seeming change

Like for example in my save game editor: a very very simple program I fixed the algorythim for searching for the first save game entry and to my great suprize it broke everything from my bizzarely inefficent ncurses clone to my registry code. Turns out to my great dissapointment that my first algorythim (I think) was over writing the memory taken up by a pointer to a linked list of pointers to vectors of std::strings which was my way of displaying data. And my new one wasn't doing that any more. I fixed a bug which was ... patching another bug by coincidence.


Any changes, no matter how small, can cause massive massive screw ups down the line in a thing as complicated as a computer game.

Edit: which is why the bg team needs to always test any minor changes they make. And they do much better than most other developers I might add.

[Balthagor]

...Coming from a programmer here. thats nonsense ... Don't give me bullshit about balancing and code errors...

First off, for the thousanth time, I'm not a programmer. I spend enough time out here on the forum that I'm confident I don't go around spouting BS. Now on to the point...

... Just make it easier to recruit for the next update...

Why should it be easier? We've had some discussions on the forum about this but I asked George and he is still fully supporting the current recruitment rates and I would tend to agree. You usually only run into reserve problems if you push out tons and tons of infantry in regions such as the US which, if you heard about the stories of the US sending Vietnam vets into Iraq because of lack of troops, sounds entirly realistic to me.

And while you may be correct about chaning an integer value having no chance of a regression error (I'll take you're word for it - not a programmer) it would still require balance testing. Changing that value could make it impossible to ever run out of reservists in some areas. It could dramatically change the balance of any one of 45 different scenarios. Certainly not something we're going to send out without any testing. It is after all our reputation on the line here.

...There's no need to balance as ur current recruitment policy isn't balanced anyway, it's all a matter of OPINION.

You're correct that it is an opinion, but that it would have a balance effect on all existing scenarios is a fact.

[margab]

Unfortunatly you're far to late for such suggestions. We've been testing for and fixing regression errors (bugs created while fixing other bugs) for a week now and are almost done. (the stack/destack problme is gone now). Our next Dev test game should be Monday and if it all checks out we should be uploading the file soon after. If we added anything new you're looking at possibly as much as a 2 week delay to start testing all over again. Then it becomes longer if the changes introduce new regression errors.

Those will have to be considered for update 6...

Coming from a programmer here. thats nonsense and that's a fact. All u need to change is one ''integer'' value in the code, that doesn't **** up the code, it just changes one number on the speed of recruitment. Don't give me bullshit about balancing and code errors as all u need to change is an integer value. That's as easy as starting up the code, finding that integer, and changing it from whatever u have now into double or triple what u had before. It's an easy fix, I didn't ask for a new feature, I didn't ask for a new formula to be coded. I only ask of u to change one integer value, george will know I'm right. Just make it easier to recruit for the next update, and IF u want to invest time into making it better. Sure go ahead. U don't NEED to do that. But I just beg of u to change one small simple integer value and double it or triple it, or like baloogan said, 100x it. You can't fool me into believing ur code for recruitment consists of more than 10 variables and is hugely complex. Just change one BASE variable and up it and ur done. Theres almost no need to balance it, as even a 4 year old could do it, if he had acces to ur code.

There's no need to balance as ur current recruitment policy isn't balanced anyway, it's all a matter of OPINION.

So if u don't want to change the integer, just TELL US u don't want to. Don't tell me u can't. Cause I know u can.

You have no idea about the development cycle of a piece of software. Even a minor change can mess up a lot of things, and it would require additional testing. If you have no idea about programming or testing(it's not as simple as changing integer values), please stop blaming and cursing and let the devs do their job.

[bergsjaeger]

well that's good news. Hopes a better hit in Europe. As for US recruitment down. I read somewhere were it was nearly 20% below the year before. If u do the math say 10k one year that be around 2k less the year after. So yes recruitment is down and that is y their sending over Vietnam vets. Course the vets maybe going by choice.

[Balthagor]

I've moved all the discussion about recruitment to a new thread

Funny story about "dangers of touching any of the code"...

George fixed some previous changes to try and get supply trucks and bridging units to move more with large forces when the AI is "on the move". He completed the work today and asked us to test those latest changes. As soon as we loaded up the game, the Command units of all the AI regions charged to the front lines

George was quoted as saying "Oops."

But he fixed that in no time flat, man was that a funny bug!

[onerobot]

George was quoted as saying "Oops."

Sounds familiar.

Reminds me of a game I used to play where devs made "one little change" at the last minute where they increased the exponential cost of tech by something like 0.1 and ended up multiplying the cost of the entire tech tree by over 500. Fortunately they also managed to equally break the economy, and having infinite funds kind of took the bite out of the tech issue. Of course, they then decided to never patch the game ever again.

It was hell, I tells ya.