A New Dawn on Earth and the Space Adventure II

[Phylhom]

So I cleaned it all up and did it again as Nighthawk. And both files loaded ok!

Count me in! Keep all random choices as before!

Very good Alvarez!!!!!!

I changed the install instructions with Nighthawk's information.

By the way - had we unchecked that "Formations" box before, would we still need to follow through all this?

I don't know, but I think would be a risk change the install instructions.

So, are we still waiting for more players? How many days?

When I imagined the pbem I idealized a game where the most fun and pleasurable part of the game would not be to reach the victory condition itself, but just, survive, interacting with other peoples. So many civilizations will result in scarcity of resources. This will require a cooperative conduct with other players.

I think 10 players is a good number! On this next week I believe we can start (with the current number of players if no one else join the game).

 

[Imperator Knoedel]

So I reinstalled the mod and was able to run both testsaves. Can we get started then?

I still just want a random leader and civ.

 

[Hercules90]

I'll stay with Ramesses II of Egypt

 

[HorseshoeHermit]

Can we disable the Defender Retreat option?

No Defender Retreat, please?

 

[Phylhom]

No Defender Retreat, please?

I am travelling. On my return (today) I will verify it.

 

[Imperator Knoedel]

What do you all have against defender retreat?

 

[HorseshoeHermit]

This mod has many options, plenty of which I would want to use and try in different games. But this is the one I am asking for.

As to the reason, ... Can we please disable it or will you insist on an explanation?
...
well, ... yeah you will. I can barely get away with even ending my post there.

Defender Retreat imbalances units. It makes one of the unit qualities into something bad, and not just one on the sidelines, one of the essential attributes that defines a bunch of units. And then the riskreward of combat is all different, not too mention many times more complicated and case-based, accounting for offense, defense, and movement. It's not at all fun for me, and immersion-breaking.

And that's not half of my problems with it.

 

[Phylhom]

This mod has many options, plenty of which I would want to use and try in different games. But this is the one I am asking for.

As to the reason, ... Can we please disable it or will you insist on an explanation?
...
well, ... yeah you will. I can barely get away with even ending my post there.

Defender Retreat imbalances units. It makes one of the unit qualities into something bad, and not just one on the sidelines, one of the essential attributes that defines a bunch of units. And then the riskreward of combat is all different, not too mention many times more complicated and case-based, accounting for offense, defense, and movement. It's not at all fun for me, and immersion-breaking.

And that's not half of my problems with it.

How does Defender Retreat works exactly?

 

[Phylhom]

The actualized table:



Please, send me the informations to complete the table above or the changes you want.

 

[HorseshoeHermit]

Those hours are my local time, not UT+0. They're a crapshoot guesstimate anyway.

Defender Retreat
With Defender Retreat, defending units that have a withdraw chance, and are not in a city have a chance, if possible, to retreat backwards towards a safe tile. (A safe tile is one where there are no enemy units around it in any direction).

Another piece of documentation confirms this is only when the unit would die. The attacker does not occupy the tile the defender retreats from. And the chance of the movement is only due to the withdraw value, which is spread around units and promotions like a benefit in this mod as in BTS.

 

[Phylhom]

Those hours are my local time, not UT+0. They're a crapshoot guesstimate anyway.



Another piece of documentation confirms this is only when the unit would die. The attacker does not occupy the tile the defender retreats from. And the chance of the movement is only due to the withdraw value, which is spread around units and promotions like a benefit in this mod as in BTS.

Hi Horseshoe_Hermi!

After some tests, I realized that the way to disable the defender retreats options was in Bug mode options screen, A New Dawn tab and game settings column. but when I disable it and I open the save file in another notebook, the option is activated.

Apparently, in pbem games, the save only works with the standard settings of the bug mode. The altered configurations works in my Notebook "A" (where the save was generated) but in my notebook "B" the options are automatically altered to the standard options.

See the quotes bellow:

So I've played a short test game to see how exactly the BUG menu affects the gameplay. It seems that while the REVDCM tab acts like in LoR, that is everything hardcoded to default options in multiplayer, two other tabs containing settings that affect all players aren't like that. Some of these settings can apparently be changed by every single player during their turn and even affect others, while some can only be changed by the host and are locked for all other players.

This leads me to two possible conclusions:

1. The developers of this mod couldn't care less about Multiplayer and know even less about PBEM.

or

2. The developers did think this through thoroughly and all these seemingly chaotic options make some sense that I just have been unable to discern.

There's no need to test for the combat effects feature as that option is preset for MP in the REVDCM tab so we wouldn't be able to change it even if we wanted to unless we create a new minimod just for this game.

As one of the developers of the BUG mod, I can say with certainty that the mod was designed for SP games. Some minor consideration was given to MP games to the extent that the suggestion was not to use BUG for MP ... or if you have to ... set the options to the same (honour system!).

In the end, BUG (BtS Unaltered Gameplay) was aiming at unaltered game play so having different options set for MP wouldn't change the game play ... just the level of information flowing to the player(s).

I didn't like that, too! I really would like to play with the options "resource depletion" and "terrain damage", and I really wouldn't like to play with the option "Battlefield Promotions" (all those options are in game settings column too).

But I can't see another way to do that!

 

[Phylhom]

Those hours are my local time, not UT+0. They're a crapshoot guesstimate anyway.

I was thinking that the informed time to play was the respective local times of each player! I was wrong?

 

[Imperator Knoedel]

Well theoretically you could just edit the file responsible for determining which settings are on by default and send the new file to everyone in this PBEM. Didn't you do that already now that I think about it?

 

[HorseshoeHermit]

I was thinking that the informed time to play was the respective local times of each player! I was wrong?

You're trying to send the save around the globe so that it reaches each player in time for them to update, right? So other times that hosts do that, they orient themselves to the global clock, not local time.
By 'crapshoot guesstimate' I meant that I guesstimated those values because I don't have certainty.

Haha, did you know Chrome isn't even highlighting "guesstimate"? Language marches on...


-----
The conclusion from those tests is that BUG is not auto-enforced for multiplayer. The critical test now would be whether your notebook B, if set to nonstandard settings, loads a save from notebook A either with the settings from notebook B or in standard configuration.

If it loads in standard configuration then the game "softly enforces" standard settings but we'll have to use honor system to not change gameplay locally. If it loads notebook B's settings we'll have to use honor system... to.... agree on gameplay... locally.

 

[Phylhom]

You're trying to send the save around the globe so that it reaches each player in time for them to update, right? So other times that hosts do that, they orient themselves to the global clock, not local time.

Please, check if the table is correct.

 

[Nighthawk419]

Yes mine is correct

 

[Phylhom]

Yes mine is correct

Thank you, Nighthawk!

Actualized table:

 

[HorseshoeHermit]

It's correct for me. Except I'm not Gigamesh (although that does sound more awesomer).

 

[Phylhom]

The conclusion from those tests is that BUG is not auto-enforced for multiplayer. The critical test now would be whether your notebook B, if set to nonstandard settings, loads a save from notebook A either with the settings from notebook B or in standard configuration.

If it loads in standard configuration then the game "softly enforces" standard settings but we'll have to use honor system to not change gameplay locally. If it loads notebook B's settings we'll have to use honor system... to.... agree on gameplay... locally.

Can anyone perform those tests? I'm not sure to do so after the ruff_hi's information:

As one of the developers of the BUG mod, I can say with certainty that the mod was designed for SP games. Some minor consideration was given to MP games to the extent that the suggestion was not to use BUG for MP ... or if you have to ... set the options to the same (honour system!).

In the end, BUG (BtS Unaltered Gameplay) was aiming at unaltered game play so having different options set for MP wouldn't change the game play ... just the level of information flowing to the player(s).

It's correct for me. Except I'm not Gigamesh (although that does sound more awesomer).

Thank you, Horseshoe!

"Gigamesh" corrected!

Can you explain what is honor system (sorry for the newbie's doubt!)?

 

[HorseshoeHermit]

I only have one computer, I can't test by myself (not without doing a whole rigamarole with emulation, anyway - and does Steam even allow that?). I thought you meant that you had done tests with your notebook, not quoting someone else.

Honor system.
...
means we have rules that rely on our decision to obey all of them, in trust, even though we may often or always be unable to verify they are being followed. The term comes up when discussing a competitive game, because sadly, a game that can't automate its rules or at least expose all settings can never be legitimately run in tournament (for a prize), and not having tournaments is a big opportunity cost in fame for the game title.

We're playing a friendly round, though, so honor works fine, because the rule is at least well-defined. Every participant in our pbem will know exactly (that is, after we agree what it will be!) what the settings are and whether or not he or she is cheating, which there would be no reason to do.

Were you saying you wanted to disable battlefield promotions? I don't mind that, are there other opinions?
I think that the other options you mentioned, terrain damage and resource depletion, are on by default, so there's nothing to change.