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Saktoth on Uber forum:
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Saktoth on Uber forum:
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"I'm fully sympathetic to Neutrino here. Zero-K has a very powerful interface, and full lua scripting so you can write an AI to play the game for you if you like. So we have to design the game to be complex, and the decisions non-trivial: IE, they simply can't be automated.
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"I'm fully sympathetic to Neutrino here. Zero-K has a very powerful interface, and full lua scripting so you can write an AI to play the game for you if you like. So we have to design the game to be complex, and the decisions non-trivial: IE, they simply can't be automated.
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Sometimes this railroads our design. Neutrino is right: Energy drain like discussed here basically had to be removed. Turrets draining energy to fire, metal extractors (mexes) draining energy to function, etc are trivially circumvented by a reserve or priority system.
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Sometimes this railroads our design. Neutrino is right: Energy drain like discussed here basically had to be removed. Turrets draining energy to fire, metal extractors (mexes) draining energy to function, etc are trivially circumvented by a reserve or priority system.
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So instead, we have an energy 'grid'. Energy has to be adjacent (or linked in a chain) to metal extractors and turrets to provide power. If you break the chain, the structure can fail.
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So instead, we have an energy 'grid'. Energy has to be adjacent (or linked in a chain) to metal extractors and turrets to provide power. If you break the chain, the structure can fail.
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The total energy linked to a metal extractor determines its max Overdrive amount, which consumes all your excess energy to provide more metal with diminishing returns. This replaces metal makers, keeping metal extractors and thus territory important even when you have huge amounts of energy.
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The total energy linked to a metal extractor determines its max Overdrive amount, which consumes all your excess energy to provide more metal with diminishing returns. This replaces metal makers, keeping metal extractors and thus territory important even when you have huge amounts of energy.
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There are dozens of other design solutions to this but you can see how this actually makes the game more complex when your energy also has a spatial component. It is vitally important to emphasize that Zero-K is not any simpler because of it's automation. It is actually needlessly difficult in many places and I think this hurts our popularity, but all the devs are high level Spring players who have been playing for years, so sometimes we design for ourselves and fail to see this.
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There are dozens of other design solutions to this but you can see how this actually makes the game more complex when your energy also has a spatial component. It is vitally important to emphasize that Zero-K is not any simpler because of it's automation. It is actually needlessly difficult in many places and I think this hurts our popularity, but all the devs are high level Spring players who have been playing for years, so sometimes we design for ourselves and fail to see this.
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A good example is many of our projectiles move so slow that they can be dodged (like Quake, imagine this with 100 units!). So we have an AI (on 'attack move/fight') that jinks to dodge them automatically (less competently than a player). This is so needlessly complex it is sometimes ridiculous."
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A good example is many of our projectiles move so slow that they can be dodged (like Quake, imagine this with 100 units!). So we have an AI (on 'attack move/fight') that jinks to dodge them automatically (less competently than a player). This is so needlessly complex it is sometimes ridiculous."
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| 14 |
I
think
it
is
really
hard
to
not
see
0K
as
a
game
with
more
hardcore
target
audience
after
Saktoth
posted
this.
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14 |
I
think
it
is
really
hard
to
not
see
0K
as
a
game
with
more
hardcore
target
audience
after
Saktoth
posted
this,
and
it
is
strange
that
Saktoth
implied
that
stuffs
like
unit
AI
might
make
the
game
needless
complex
and
harm
its
popularity(
which
I
disagree)
while
actually
want
PA
to
have
these
features.
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Planetary Annihilation Alpha Released