[campaign] Swarmed too early; Sub_2_6

[CitrusWire]

I'm playing the campaign on Insane difficulty; 4.1.2. So far it has been pleasantly challenging. I found most of the beta campaign so far not a problem (think 30 to 50 minutes left on the clock for most of these missions).

However, Sub_2_6 is another matter. I have no idea what the triggers are, but before your first reinforcement transport arrives (3:00), you get swarmed by cyborgs. They're not dangerous in and of themselves but:

• One batch of nine comes from the bottom right (trigger is seeing the enemy base, which it's impossible not to)
• Another 9 from top left (2 mins).
• They pincer you in such a way as your LZ will be compromised.
• THEN a swarm of 9 heavy tanks comes in from the top left (at around the 2 min mark! so before your first set of reinforcements can arrive).
• AND these are supported by other tanks including a sensor which arrives about 1 min later
• AND you're in range of their base howitzers and ripple rockets which the sensor is spotting for.

That all sounds great except: you have to deal with all of that with just 9-10 combat units and maybe a couple defences + repair bay.

• Then more cyborgs turn up from the top left.

Even if I manage to finangle it such that my first reinforcement transport lands, the heavy tanks with heavy artillery support make mincement of my 17 hover/track heavy cannon pythons with a repair bay right behind them and a defence or two.

TL;DR: The timings on this mission are far too short.

Edit: Trying again; I stand corrected, there are two sensor tanks, so even if you flank with hovers and take one out (taking huge damage in the process), a minute or so later another turns up. :-/

This is all that remains with 90 seconds until the next 2nd reinforcement drop (all but two of their units have green health):

Edit2: Tried again after double the attack start times; same result even with 3 transports of tanks and micromanaging everything at 0.125 speed, AND knowing what to expect. The real killer is the artillery.

[highlander1599]

What was your strategy after you arrived at the LZ? I see no repair facilities and no artillery batteries. You need at least two repair facilities, some artillery defenses, and a CB tower to destroy the enemy artillery.

[CitrusWire]

Thanks for the suggestion.
The repair facility is at the bottom on the screenshot; it's in a bad state (dark) because of the enemy artillery.

In the end I had to drastically change my strategy and do much as you suggested with lots of bombards and a few artilleries and a CB (my first attempt was ripples; nope :-( ). Building all that in time would have been even more of a struggle with the default time. I did win but only because I knew what was coming and had changed the timings as above. Compared to every other mission this one was massively more difficult.

My suggestions:

• Smaller initial non-cyborg attack wave
• No sensors in initial wave
• Longer before the first waves.

[highlander1599]

You can see here my way to handle this level. My combat units are waiting near the LZ for reinforcements. Don't move further north than the edge of this picture in the west and not farther north than the scyscraper you can see in the east. Otherwise you will activate a trigger area with the result that all factories are enabled and all units on the map will attack you. In my second transport I put 9 more Heavy Cannons on hover and one more truck. For the third transport you can either take artillery units (RR or Howitzer) or Vtol Bunker Buster to knock out the three factories of the base in the middle.

[highlander1599]

My suggestions:

* Smaller initial non-cyborg attack wave

* No sensors in initial wave

* Longer before the first waves.

The first two points are currently not possible because all of these units are already on the map and we have (atm) no map editor that could remove units from the map.
We can talk about the third point but if you stay close to your LZ, don't activate the trigger area, and build enough defenses you can easily survive until your first transport arrives. After that you will have a hard time until the third arrives but with more artillery and/or Vtol support the level is doable. We are talking about Insane difficulty and with you talking about that Beta campaign is "so far no problem" I would rather think about making the levels before harder for Insane difficulty instead of making this level easier.

[CitrusWire]

We are talking about Insane difficulty and with you talking about that Beta campaign is "so far no problem" I would rather think about making the levels before harder for Insane difficulty instead of making this level easier.

The beta ones definitely seem a little easier than the Alpha's did. But this particular level is too much.

I put it to you that from a game-design perspective, if you're relying on the player knowing about the concept of triggers (not all will), and how they work in WZ (far fewer will), and you don't tell the player to stay at the starting point and expect a strong counter-attack... well that's poor level design IMHO.
That attack is probably the strongest single assault I've seen in the entire campaign so far (ignoring tech levels), certainly it is when you throw in the fixed artillery support. The fact it exists is fine, the issue is that it happens 2 minutes into the mission. Even 4 minutes into the mission is too soon. Maybe 6, but 7 or 8 would be better.

[highlander1599]

We are talking about Insane difficulty and with you talking about that Beta campaign is "so far no problem" I would rather think about making the levels before harder for Insane difficulty instead of making this level easier.

The beta ones definitely seem a little easier than the Alpha's did. But this particular level is too much.

I put it to you that from a game-design perspective, if you're relying on the player knowing about the concept of triggers (not all will), and how they work in WZ (far fewer will), and you don't tell the player to stay at the starting point and expect a strong counter-attack... well that's poor level design IMHO.
That attack is probably the strongest single assault I've seen in the entire campaign so far (ignoring tech levels), certainly it is when you throw in the fixed artillery support. The fact it exists is fine, the issue is that it happens 2 minutes into the mission. Even 4 minutes into the mission is too soon. Maybe 6, but 7 or 8 would be better.

I understand what you mean. But this is Insane difficulty. This difficulty is made for really experienced players that have played the campaign more than only once. When I think about the other away missions in the Beta campaign before this level (4,6,7) it's not recommended to leave your LZ too early but better to wait for reinforcements and this level is, therefore, no exception. And experienced players will know that.
The concept of trigger areas is something that not all will know or understand but there are enough situations in the campaign where you activate cutscenes through a trigger area and I think that experienced players will get an idea of how this is working.
I admit that 2 minutes are maybe a bit short and am thinking about making it a bit longer and also depending on the difficulty. But 8 minutes would make the level too easy for Insane difficulty and also for all the other levels. Including the time the units need to arrive at your LZ 8 minutes would mean that you have landed 4 transports before you get attacked. This would be a massacre but no longer a competition. Experienced players should be able to defend their LZ with 20 units on the map until the second reinforcement transport arrives.

[CitrusWire]

I understand what you mean. But this is Insane difficulty. This difficulty is made for really experienced players that have played the campaign more than only once.

Which includes me. ;-) Albeit 2011 is the last time I played WZ apparently (I have some saves from then). The overarching issue is that the missions from a difficulty perspective are all on a plateau (good!) and then this comes along and its a cliff.

Experienced players should be able to defend their LZ with 20 units on the map until the second reinforcement transport arrives

The screenshot in my original shows an experienced player failing badly with 20 units on the map. :-) (and that was probably my 15th+ attempt if you factor in save-scumming)

I think that experienced players will get an idea of how this is working.

Maybe, but you're relying on the player figuring out the mechanics of how the dev team designed their game. Specifically what and where the triggers are. That's not really why most people play games. What you want is for players to figure out how to win using particular strategies/tactics, not because they can game-the-game by playing the triggers, at least not to this degree.

In fact, thinking about it, from a high level, WZ is actually poorly designed in this regards: it has the same issue with levels-ending "early" courtesy of triggers: When the player kills the last unit with lots of time left they lose all the resources they could have harvested/spent in that time.

Furthermore, the only way to find out the triggers is to trigger them. Which means for the current level design, the player has to first "play" the game to find the triggers, if they lose, they save-scum back to before they triggered it or start over. That's not fun and is generally considered poor game design because the player has to fail before they can succeed.

---

Look at this another way: I've been playing RTS's since C&C came out and have likely logged thousands of hours across the genre. I'm certainly not at tournament levels but I have a lot of experience and I'm coming to WZ with "new" eyes (I figure a decade away counts ;-) ). And that experience is telling me this level is out of whack with the rest of the campaign and that swarming players this early triggers the "unfun unfair" reflex.
Conversely I suspect you've been playing WZ's campaign a fair amount so you know "that one trick" which makes it easily winnable.

[highlander1599]

When the player kills the last unit with lots of time left they lose all the resources they could have harvested/spent in that time.

This is no longer the case. Latest since version 3.3.0 (I'm not sure if this was already implemented into 3.2.3) you get the "missing" power as a bonus with the result that you have at the beginning of the next level the same power as if you have played the level till the end. And for lower difficulties, you get an extra power bonus on top if you end the level earlier.

Furthermore, the only way to find out the triggers is to trigger them.

That's right. And experienced players that have played the game more than once should know them. In the case of Beta 8 we made the level easier with the trigger areas because with the old script all factories and attack groups were activated after the middle base was detected. Which was pretty early if the player build a CB tower because he knows that he need it to fight the enemy artillery.

Which means for the current level design, the player has to first "play" the game to find the triggers, if they lose, they save-scum back to before they triggered it or start over. That's not fun and is generally considered poor game design because the player has to fail before they can succeed.

Yeah, there are a lot of situations in Warzone where you first has to fail before you can succeed. Alpha 10, Beta end, and Gamma 5 as the most remarkable examples. But also in other levels you move forward in a "trial and error" way. Especially if you play the campaign for the first time. I remember, when I played the campaign for the first time and came to Alpha 06 I restarted from the end of Alpha 02 to get prepared for the beginning of Alpha 06.

What you want is for players to figure out how to win using particular strategies/tactics, not because they can game-the-game by playing the triggers, at least not to this degree.

Yeah, and it's not only about the trigger areas in Warzone. They are part of the strategy/tactic you have to chose. Only the exactly knowing of the trigger areas is not enough to beat a level. It's helpful to know them though.

Look at this another way: I've been playing RTS's since C&C came out and have likely logged thousands of hours across the genre. I'm certainly not at tournament levels but I have a lot of experience and I'm coming to WZ with "new" eyes (I figure a decade away counts ;-) ). And that experience is telling me this level is out of whack with the rest of the campaign and that swarming players this early triggers the "unfun unfair" reflex.

Please don't misunderstand me, I'm thankful for your feedback and take it absolutely serious. Your feedback is not the only feedback I got and still get and every feedback is, was, and will be part of my thoughts about a level. But no every suggestion can be implemented. Nevertheless I started a discussion with Kjeff about your suggestion to increase the time before you get attacked in Beta 08.
You said that 2011 was the last time you played Warzone. With version 4.1.0 a huge balance revamp is made. And you can await a lot more surprises with Insane difficulty. I expect a new feedback from latest with Beta end. If you haven't joined it yet I want to invite you to the official Discord server for Warzone 2100. There you can download the detailed changelog about the balance changes that were implemted with the versions from 4.1.0 on. https://discord.com/invite/ZvRVQ8g

Conversely I suspect you've been playing WZ's campaign a fair amount so you know "that one trick" which makes it easily winnable.

It's even worse, I'm one of the two main developer of the balance changes. ;) Together with Kjeff01. But there is no "one trick" which makes a level easily winnable. That's something we never wanted. The goal was making all weapons viable choices at one point and Insane difficulty a real tough competition. Maybe it's too much at some levels but the whole campaign with this changes is beaten by several players. We'll see what KJeff thinks about my suggested changes basing on your suggestions.

[KJeff01]

When the player kills the last unit with lots of time left they lose all the resources they could have harvested/spent in that time.

This is no longer the case. Latest since version 3.3.0 (I'm not sure if this was already implemented into 3.2.3) you get the "missing" power as a bonus with the result that you have at the beginning of the next level the same power as if you have played the level till the end. And for lower difficulties, you get an extra power bonus on top if you end the level earlier.

It was around when I inherited NoQ's initial js script conversion progress. So since 3.2.0.

[CitrusWire]

Please don't misunderstand me, I'm thankful for your feedback and take it absolutely serious. Your feedback is not the only feedback I got and still get and every feedback is, was, and will be part of my thoughts about a level. But no every suggestion can be implemented. Nevertheless I started a discussion with Kjeff about your suggestion to increase the time before you get attacked in Beta 08.

Thanks, I do appreciate your engaging on this. I did guess you were part of the rebalance, and did know about it in 4.1.0 (I took a look at the recent patch notes before starting), one reason I decided to give the campaign a whirl. I'll pass on the discord and beta version, but thanks anyway.

[CitrusWire]

I'm afraid 2_7 is a similar story but for air attacks.
First few attempts I get ravaged by air units in the first 90 seconds.

So I go back to base (good thing I have strong saving skills or I'd be busted), and load up with 4*whirlwind AAs plus some land units. 20 seconds after landing two are already dead. 40 seconds after landing all the AA are dead.
:-/
Oh, and not one of their aircraft down.

---

So back to base again. 6 builders now; I build a line of 5 AA's and while they do manage to shoot down the aircraft, it's not after they've destroyed 4 of the 6 builders, plus two of the turrets within the first 60 seconds. But no more air attacks so I guess I got them all.

And thus when the 6 tank-killer equipped hovers turn up 30 seconds later... :-/ (although save-scum back to just before they came and... now they haven't turned up... another random seeming trigger)... oh there they are... 2:30 this time, just in time to compromise the LZ... and here are some cyborgs to join them....

I have to admit, this has stopped being fun and now I'm just getting bad-frustrated. :-( Sure I can likely win by memorising a bunch of triggers, a specific build sequence, some judicial microing at 0.125 speed, and a lot of save-scumming, but that's not what makes WZ a game I came back to, nor is it how I won most of the previous missions.

[KJeff01]

Normal or Hard difficulty is probably more your style, if you are looking for fun, especially if you've been gone for a decade or need slowdown. I can tell you'll probably struggle to survive the rest of Beta or almost the entirety of Gamma. If you go down to Hard you won't have to deal with doing 80% damage and receiving 120% compared to Normal. Hard just changes enemy damages to 110% plus the scripted events are a little more fair.

Insane difficulty was not designed for everybody and was made to push the limits of the most experienced WZ players (hence the warning message when selecting it). Playing Insane means you are forced to explore different and new tactics and repeated failure is practically a guarantee.

[CitrusWire]

Possibly, and thanks for the suggestion.

I'd suggest that doesn't change my two core points:

• The difficulty just became a cliff compared to the previous ~20 missions.
• There are better ways to make a game difficult.

Playing Insane means you are forced to explore different and new tactics and repeated failure is practically a guarantee.
Which is definitely the desired outcome.

I must politely disagree that this is what insane actually does. It requires you to fail until you've learnt the triggers, and it requires you to memorise a specific sequence of events. This is certainly one way to amp up difficulty, but it's more in keeping with a puzzle game rather than an RTS.
Getting my tanks wiped out by Tank Killer wielding VTOLS = Good (well, not really, but you know what I mean ;-) ). I have to adapt and can't just use the "lots of tanks" strategy.
Having it happen inside of the first 20 seconds = Bad.

Anyway, I don't want to delabour the point. I'll probably lower it to hard and let you know if there are more issues.

[CitrusWire]

So I played (Sub_2_7) on Hard and... mostly the same except they take more damage and I take less. The end result is largely the same it just takes a little longer. The timings seem identical.

So what the heck, I'll try Easy... Sure my units kill the enemy just by looking at them funny now, but the VTOL tank-killers still start annihilating my anti-air and trucks at ~20-30s and then cycle around 20-30s after that! This is meant to be Easy?

Looking at the code I see that there's nothing in this part of the level timings that changes by difficulty.

Suggestion: Difficulty timings inside a switch statement:

switch(difficulty) {
   case EASY:

	queue("baseThreeVtolAttack", camSecondsToMilliseconds(150));
	queue("baseFourVtolAttack", camMinutesToMilliseconds(4));
	queue("enableFactoriesAndHovers", camChangeOnDiff(camMinutesToMilliseconds(4)));

    break;
   case MEDIUM:

	queue("baseThreeVtolAttack", camSecondsToMilliseconds(120));
	queue("baseFourVtolAttack", camMinutesToMilliseconds(3));
	queue("enableFactoriesAndHovers", camChangeOnDiff(camMinutesToMilliseconds(4)));

    break;
   case HARD:

	queue("baseThreeVtolAttack", camSecondsToMilliseconds(90));
	queue("baseFourVtolAttack", camMinutesToMilliseconds(3));
	queue("enableFactoriesAndHovers", camChangeOnDiff(camMinutesToMilliseconds(4)));

    break;
   case INSANE:

	queue("baseThreeVtolAttack", camSecondsToMilliseconds(60));
	queue("baseFourVtolAttack", camMinutesToMilliseconds(2));
	queue("enableFactoriesAndHovers", camChangeOnDiff(camMinutesToMilliseconds(3)));

    break;
 }

[KJeff01]

The respective attack queues just need a camChangeOnDiff() encapsulating them though I'll leave that to alfred007 to figure out.

[CitrusWire]

Further suggestion, once I'd tweaked the start time so I wasn't immediately swarmed the mission was fairly easy (still on "insane"). Completed it with ~30 mins on the clock.

I think a better form of difficulty would be to increase the build rate of the enemy per level. This way rather than rely on early scripted attacks, the constant pressure that's on the player is higher. Because currently once you're past those scripted attacks, every mission is fairly easy.

[KJeff01]

Every factory changes its production pace based on difficulty so there isn't much else to do here with that. Normal and Easy exemplify this the best.

[CitrusWire]

Might be worth increasing it a little on Insane then. Although Sub 2_8 did put up a pleasant challenge in that regard, all the earlier ones not so much.

[highlander1599]

I'm sorry that I was quiet for a long time., I was on vacation with my girlfriend. Because of your feedback, I adjusted the timers in Beta 08 and 09 and made them depending on the difficulty. Not exactly the way you suggested because with the camChangeOnDiff function we already implemented a way to make timers and queues depending on difficulty. Attached is a zip file with a mod with my changes so you can test them if interested.

Beta timer change.zip

[CitrusWire]

On a similar vein to these, there's a rather fundamental problem with Cam_2End and Cam_3A. Namely if you don't know what 3A contains, the player may make the entirely sensible assumption that it is like the evacuation to 2A was and there were buildings and construction vehicles around. So they don't send any of those things along, instead sending a mixture of other units because they have no idea what to expect but it's not likely to be construction.

But along comes 3A and you get swarmed with technologically much-superior, and very-numerically-superior units whilst having no base, and in my case no way to repair them. (And I was only doing 3A on "Hard"!). Now the player has to replay the entirety of 2End just to send construction vehicles first! :-( If the player wasn't engaging in good save-discipline they're stuffed.

I also note looking in the 2End code that there's an allowWin variable which requires the player to transport at least one construction vehicle, but I don't recall seeing this requirement anywhere in the mission dialog.

[KJeff01]

Then you're not going to believe what devious newcomer trap happens on Gamma 5. In fact, almost all of Gamma could be harsh on the first playthrough. 🤔

You don't have to send a truck first but I would highly recommend it. The ~4 initial scout Nexus cyborgs are the only threat for awhile unless you travel a little north of the LZ and the sheer range of the Scourge Missile units might take pot shots at you as they patrol the nearby lake. But hardly enough to kill your units lest you let them sit there and take repeated hits for no reason. You may be under the assumption things are going way too fast but this Gamma 1 behavior is normal. The factory timer activation is pretty generous here even on Insane.

We have 10 minute autosaves so all somebody would have to do is reload and redo the last few minutes of Beta-end if they didn't notice the truck requirement. Then they can bring it on the subsequent transporter load in Gamma 1. Beta-end displays win-condition reminders to send at least one truck so I would like to think this shouldn't be much of a surprise.

The above made me think of something nice. I really need to add a way to increase the display time duration on the console() API instruction. Would be useful for the win condition reminders and the tutorial, at least.