Bay 12 Games Forum
Other Projects => Other Games => Topic started by: Muz on November 08, 2010, 07:37:50 am
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Hey, just digging up this old game. I noticed it didn't have a thread of its own, but I believe its the kind of game you guys will enjoy. It was originally freeware, went commercial, then was officially abandoned (guess people didn't find permadeath strategy/RPG games appealing).
http://www.titansofsteel.de/
Then get the 1.2.2 patch at:
http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=2053107
Titans of Steel is a Mech game, a strategy game with a lot of detail. For all its detail, it's quite easy to pick up, about as user-friendly as the X-Com games and the tutorial campaign makes it easier. Designing mechs in ToS is a lot of fun, and watching them get torn apart. There are three components to the game - HQ, Factory, Battle.
The HQ part lets you choose a squad of pilots to control your mechs. You can build multiple teams and buy/sell pilots to other teams. You'd get to train up their skills as they gain more experience and assign them to mechs.
Factory mode lets you build and design mechs. There's a bunch of things to consider, like life support, heating and power system, speed, size, and the kinds of weapons that goes on it. There's various different balances you can try to achieve, like make ultra ranged sniper mechs, general cannon/missile based damage mechs, or strong close combat ones that damage internal components. Or even combos of all those, with different armor/heat/power balances.
Battle mode lets you launch up campaigns to play, or just do some arena-style battles for money. Damage you take in the game stays in the game (so you might have to save scum). You can repair mechs later, but your pilots can take permanent injuries in battles, even death.
Anyway, it's a very detailed game, and available for free, so some of you guys might want to try it out.
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A nice game. Probably much nicer when playing against humans, the "vs AI" battles soon lose all appeal - mostly for the lack of any meaningful storyline to follow.
Overall, if you're a fan of the tabletop Battletech franchise, this is really the game for you, as most of the mechanics are very similar.
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i find survival to be the story line. After a couple of matches i look around and ...everyone is dead! I should run away a lot more... But yeah, this is a great free game.
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I had this back before it was "Warring Suns". They said WS wasn't going to be freeware, but the original ToS was.
It's funny, I was thinking about this game recently. :-\
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My only problem with this is the higher the level of the pilot and the more the number of battles he participates in, the higher his salary becomes. There is no upper limit so the salary can go as high as possible to the point you cannot afford to have the pilot anymore. Is there anyway to cap this?
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An AC20 to the head, perhaps?
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I had this back before it was "Warring Suns". They said WS wasn't going to be freeware, but the original ToS was.
Lol, typo at writing a thread at like 2 AM or something :P
Yeah, they said that, but I don't think people were buying WS, sadly. It's a great game, but it was just too hardcore. Screenshots have hexes, even though the game is a lot more beautiful without them. Turn based is a bit slow. Balancing money is very difficult (heh, too realistic maybe). And permanently losing superb pilots are another problem.
My only problem with this is the higher the level of the pilot and the more the number of battles he participates in, the higher his salary becomes. There is no upper limit so the salary can go as high as possible to the point you cannot afford to have the pilot anymore. Is there anyway to cap this?
Sell them :P I think there was a general strategy that goes around trading players. The skill level of the pilots actually make a huge difference in how well they fight; a great pilot can cause massive damage with a normal mech.
The AC20 to the head might not be wrong. You'll probably want like one or two experts doing the precision work and a lot of grunts as (literally) cannon fodder and softening the opposition.
i find survival to be the story line. After a couple of matches i look around and ...everyone is dead! I should run away a lot more... But yeah, this is a great free game.
Heh, and yeah, the game is good enough without a storyline. Sort of like Battle for Wesnoth or a typical roguelike.
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My only problem with this is the higher the level of the pilot and the more the number of battles he participates in, the higher his salary becomes. There is no upper limit so the salary can go as high as possible to the point you cannot afford to have the pilot anymore. Is there anyway to cap this?
Hi. I'm the coder and designer of the game. You can increase business skill of the pilots. This will reduce their salary drastically.
Have fun playing TOS.
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Never heard of this but it looks good, I'm a big Battletech fan (can't find anyone to table top battle) and I'm a little bored of the mechwarrior series so this should be a nice progression.
Thanks for sharing!
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Sounds cool. I'll have to try this game out.
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My only problem with this is the higher the level of the pilot and the more the number of battles he participates in, the higher his salary becomes. There is no upper limit so the salary can go as high as possible to the point you cannot afford to have the pilot anymore. Is there anyway to cap this?
Hi. I'm the coder and designer of the game. You can increase business skill of the pilots. This will reduce their salary drastically.
Have fun playing TOS.
Lol, I find it pretty amazing that whenever a good game is discussed here, the creators of the game usually stop by :P
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My only problem with this is the higher the level of the pilot and the more the number of battles he participates in, the higher his salary becomes. There is no upper limit so the salary can go as high as possible to the point you cannot afford to have the pilot anymore. Is there anyway to cap this?
Hi. I'm the coder and designer of the game. You can increase business skill of the pilots. This will reduce their salary drastically.
Have fun playing TOS.
Lol, I find it pretty amazing that whenever a good game is discussed here, the creators of the game usually stop by :P
I find it even more amazing when it's the developer of a many-years-old game that finds out about threads like this one and drops by within barely a couple of days :o
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Everyone loves gaming dorfs. They're cute and beardy.
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My only problem with this is the higher the level of the pilot and the more the number of battles he participates in, the higher his salary becomes. There is no upper limit so the salary can go as high as possible to the point you cannot afford to have the pilot anymore. Is there anyway to cap this?
Hi. I'm the coder and designer of the game. You can increase business skill of the pilots. This will reduce their salary drastically.
Have fun playing TOS.
Lol, I find it pretty amazing that whenever a good game is discussed here, the creators of the game usually stop by :P
I find it even more amazing when it's the developer of a many-years-old game that finds out about threads like this one and drops by within barely a couple of days :o
Guess how does this happen ? Hint : Look at the bottom of www.titansofsteel.de
;D
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And we were responsible for over 60% of his unique visitors.
>.>
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And we were responsible for over 60% of his unique visitors.
>.>
Right. The website has very few hits, therefore it did catch my eye.
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I logged on instead of just lurking to say thanks for the game to Larkin. It is one of those games I play on and off all the time. A little like Dwarf Fortress.
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I actually have my disc laying around somewhere. I used to love this game. Might give it another try.
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My only problem with this is the higher the level of the pilot and the more the number of battles he participates in, the higher his salary becomes. There is no upper limit so the salary can go as high as possible to the point you cannot afford to have the pilot anymore. Is there anyway to cap this?
Hi. I'm the coder and designer of the game. You can increase business skill of the pilots. This will reduce their salary drastically.
Have fun playing TOS.
Oh my, didn't know about that! I am going to install the game again. Back then I got attached to my pilots and was not willing to fire them. And thanks for the great game, by the way!
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I've downloaded the game and started going throug menus, made an in-game pilot for my self, gave him one of the mechs then headed over to the factory...which I promply went back out again telling myself I'll mess with that later >>
Currently playing the tutorial and the games really fun, wish I can get my battletech minis out and give someone a game now XD.
Again thanks for sharing!
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Lol, getting attached to your pilots is even worse than getting attached to your guys in X-Com. The game's much more fun if you're willing to let go and lose a lot.
Heh, anyway, I started this game up again. The version on the web quite different from the version I bought.
Here's a few tricks I learned:
- Close combat titans are king of recon class, when the titans are too fast to shoot. They'll be much more useless later on when someone can blast the legs out of a recon at 4 hexes away, but early on, they're devastating.
- Buy a random guy to use as a leader at first. You can just leave him there as some HR office guy to get better troops. Or hire a second guy as a permanent leader and use that first to boost his starting skills and as a disposable close combat jock.
- If you're willing to neglect the other skills, a leader also makes a good businessman, because both use charisma/intelligence, and you can just keep them off the battlefield.
- Missiles, esp guided really suck on a recon titan. Guided only as much damage as two machine guns and are harmless at close range, unguided has trouble hitting the fast recons before they close in. But from light titan onwards, they become increasingly useful.
- Have a few disposable jocks specializing in close combat, with some long/med range titans supporting them. Androids and cyborgs are great because they can survive better, D replicants are great too because of that early dexterity boost.
- Energy weapons also kinda suck early, because of weak heat/engine performance and very little armor to protect those. Exception is the flamethrower. But do be wary that the Fireball tends to catch fire (and explosions) too :P
- If you're going to design a close combat titan, don't neglect L, R, and LO torso armor.. apparently, in this new version, disabling the L torso also disables the L arm, which makes them double vulnerable.
- Charging is playing dice with the game. Don't do it if you're winning, do it if you're losing.
Oh, and this game is fricking brutal. You have like a 60% chance of surviving a one-on-one battle with an equally skilled titan (10% extra only because the AI isn't that good). Most of the time you don't. And there's the chance that you'll knock your opponent down, rip off both his legs, and he'll get a lucky shot to your head and kill your jock. The new L torso armor disabling the whole left arm thing makes it even more difficult as you have three times as many weak spots.
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Anyone else having trouble with this in Windows 7?
EDIT: Scratch that, compatibility mode works fine. I really should have at least enough faith in it to try it.
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Come on, the game isn't that hard and the AI that bad.
Here are some tips if you start from scratch :
1. Install the v1.2.2 patch availlable here http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tt.asp?forumid=28 (http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tt.asp?forumid=28)
This will increase the starting dev points of your rookies and will reduce salary. Lots of other fixes/improvements. A must have !
Also install the v1.2.2 database, available in the same thread.
2. The first jock created will be your leader. Just increase his leadership to 50+ before hiring another jock
3. Hire the second jock. He will be the manager of the squad. Just increase his business skill to 50+
4. Hire a third jock. He will be the mechanic. Just increase his damage control skill to 50+
5. Increase recon/light piloting skill of all jocks to 50+. Now look at the starting weapons skills of the three jocks and increase a SINGLE weapon skill to at least 55+ for each of them. Just specialize, don't spread your points at the start. The only other weapon skill needed is close combat. It is good to have since you are fighting fast recons and your skills are weak at gamestart.
6. Now buy 3 recon titans which do match the weapon skills and allocate them accordingly.
7. If one of these titans has jump capabilities try to raise the jump skill of the pilot accordingly.
8. Important 'other' skills for rookies are scanner and a bit of electronic warefare and survival.
Try to raise scanner to 50 if possible.
9. Try to take all jocks to battles. Those at home still cost you money. Balance the first battle to your favor by reducing the weight of you opposition in battle setup. Get a feeling for the battle mechanics. Don't feel ashamed to fight against lower ranked AI later on by a level or two.
10. Read the manual. If you are interested in more details read the guide, also availlable at the forum link under 1.
11. Guided missiles are very good versus fast recon as long as you can keep the distance. Lots of weapons have a minimal range.
12. You will lose a jock here and there but it is possible to raise a squad to high experience levels. You can clone jocks with v1.2.2
13. You can take an AI controlled allied squad to battle, using them as a shield and fighting in support.
Have fun !
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My only problem with this is the higher the level of the pilot and the more the number of battles he participates in, the higher his salary becomes. There is no upper limit so the salary can go as high as possible to the point you cannot afford to have the pilot anymore. Is there anyway to cap this?
Hi. I'm the coder and designer of the game. You can increase business skill of the pilots. This will reduce their salary drastically.
Have fun playing TOS.
Oh my, didn't know about that! I am going to install the game again. Back then I got attached to my pilots and was not willing to fire them. And thanks for the great game, by the way!
Another tip is to install patch v1.2.2. http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tt.asp?forumid=28 (http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tt.asp?forumid=28)
It has lots of adjustmets to make life a tad easier for those poor fighting jocks. Less salary, more income from random battles, the chance to be cloned after death, the choice to get a bank credit if you are nearly broke ...
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I don't suppose you'd release the game as open source. I was just thinking about this game recently and I was wondering how you implemented the game mechanics. I assume you put the actions through some sort of priority queue, but I don't know how you calculated line of sight, movement (such as the probability of falling), damage models, ect. It'd be nice to be able to poke through the code and see how you did that. Also, I had great fun designing titans, thanks for the fun times :)
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Ah, I assumed that the version for download would be the latest version. Looks like all the new tweaks make it a lot easier and realistic. I heard that there was a cloning jocks option in the new release, but didn't notice that it wasn't the freeware one.
I probably butchered like 2 squads by now. At least I got further in the first few days than I got in a month when I first got this game. Time to start another, maybe even make it a LP this time :P
The game is still brutal, IMO. Lol, in most games, the starter campaign builds up difficulty slowly, starting off with a simple fight. ToS hit me hard on that first campaign map.. I've been playing it since I was around 12, and I lost two titans and jocks on that first map from a chained explosion, dooming my team into bankruptcy right from the first game. Good fun, though XD
Lost at map 5 of the campaign, where my close combat titans were knocked down by cold light beams and AC12 cannons, and my GM specialist died one-to-one with a Mirage GM light titan. I didn't even know GMs could rip off heads. I still think they're no good for recon vs recon fighting, but might be useful pitting a recon GM titan against a much heavier close range one for some hit and run damage.
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I think it would be great for you to make an LP of this , as it means I can see how it's done instead of flailing arond all the time XD
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What's an LP ?
For starters there is the Deep Core campaign, you can't loose that. I agree that the game can be brutal at times and you will loose jocks but more experienced players can survive up to rank 10. The AI is artificially crippled at lower levels but will live up to its full potential from rank 4 on.
Those really interested should take a look at the guide document which gives some insight on the finer details of the game.
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An LP stands for Let's Play. A Let's Play of a game is were someone plays the game with them talking about the game as it unfolds, like a walkthrough but just playing.
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What are you working on now LarkinVB? Is Vicious Byte still active?
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What are you working on now LarkinVB? Is Vicious Byte still active?
Vicious Byte dispersed. We all did the game in our spare time when Matrixgames asked to release it. That was a lot of work. Nowadays I just do some modding (AI for Dawn of War or some Disciples 3 mods) and help my friend, who coded the factory, in his private game project - Zombie N4cers.
I don't think I will release the TOS source code as it is ugly, uncommented - just a mess.
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Haha, all completed project code is a complete mess. If you want to finish projects then there will be hacks :P It actually took me a while to learn this as I always wanted everything to be perfect and consequently would never progress very far.
Please don't be embarrassed by your code! It would be helpful to me at the very least.
I searched for Zombie N4cers, but google didn't come up with anything.
Happy coding and thanks again for the fun game.
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Even without a source code, something like the design document would be really cool. Or at least the formulas. It's very rare to see a game of as much detail as ToS, a lot of people would be happy to learn something from it.
Anyway, posting a LP here, updating it in a few days once I get back from Canberra:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=70645.0
Oh, and I realized that for some simple, destructive fun and getting the hand of game mechanics, duels are awesome. I just make a duel team with no long term planning, a single specialist pilot of each type. There's usually enough salvage and payment from battles that I can just sell off titans and buy new ones to test out which titans are the most fun.
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Sounds like this game scratches two of my boxes - managing a team that can die and gain experience, and equipping them to fight things.
Oh and mechs... lovely lovely mechs...
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The manual is fairly comprehensive. It certainly explains the modifiers that I've had questions about. I can also see how this would generate incredibly messy code if you tried to apply the correct modifiers all at once for a specific action. If you're still with us LarkinVB, how did you go about handling all of the checks in the code?
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I can also see how this would generate incredibly messy code if you tried to apply the correct modifiers all at once for a specific action. If you're still with us LarkinVB, how did you go about handling all of the checks in the code?
I apply the correct mofiiers for a specific action. This is not that messy.
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The corner cases looked to me like they could be troublesome, but when I look at the docs there's typically only one or two special cases that need to be handled with everything else using the same rule. So as long as the special cases (like tesla bolts having a 12% chance to cause internal damage) are kept to a minimum then it keeps things fairly simple (simple in ToS terms at least :D )
What was the most challenging part (code wise) in writing ToS?
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What was the most challenging part (code wise) in writing ToS?
Very challenging was the network code to keep the game in sync and only display what the active jock should see/read/hear.
Also very challeging was to code the AI as it has to take into account so many variables and it was written on the fly without a design concept.
Challeging was to add missions/campaigns afterwards and to interact with the editor which was written by someone else located in south arabia.
Team management was difficult as we had members in germany, south arabia, USA and portugal with different amounts of spare time. Remember we were not doing this as a job ! Most stuff was coded by me and a friend located in the same city, otherwise it would have been very hard to complete the project.
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I'd just like to drop in and say thanks. I've only played around with this game a little so far, but I see that you guys have done some impressive work.
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Wow, sounds interesting. (Downloading...)
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Last question I swear. How did you implement the line of sight? I was thinking about it today and my first thought was that you could use Dijkstra's Shortest Path algorithm using the hex LoS modifiers (relative tile height, titan height, trees, smoke, distance from titan) as edge costs. I think the only thing you'd have to modify is how the graph representing the hexagonal grid connections is constructed. The edges would have to be directional with each directed edge directed away from the titan so you couldn't do silly things like look around a mountain (actually a bit more restrictive than this).
I suppose the LoS graph would have to be as large as the maximum number number of tiles a titan could possibly see. When I was playing on a random 22x22 map a titan in the center of the map could see end to end I think. This would make the graph pretty big. To compute it for every titan every time any of the LoS graph hexes are modified seems somewhat expensive: O(n), 484 nodes. I guess you can maintain the LoS graph by just propagating out changes to the graph (moving your titan would be a bit challenging). I don't know, maybe I'm way off here. What did you do?
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Dijkstra's Shortest Path ? Never heard of. :P
I tackled the LOS problem early on (1998) but remember that I used a very easy formula from a hex based boardgame.
Calculate source height, destination height and scan the path from source to destination for blocking hexes (maxheight).
return FALSE in code below is no LOS for that hex. i is iterating from source to destination, dist is the distance.
if ( maxheight >= sheight && maxheight >= dheight )
{
free(lhex);
return FALSE;
}
else if ( maxheight < sheight && maxheight > dheight &&
i >= dist - i )
{
a = sheight - maxheight;
b = maxheight - dheight;
if ( a <= b )
{
free(lhex);
return FALSE;
}
}
else if ( maxheight > sheight && maxheight < dheight &&
i <= dist - i )
{
a = dheight - maxheight;
b = maxheight - sheight;
if ( a <= b )
{
free(lhex);
return FALSE;
}
}
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Apparently my designs suck... or my jocks suck. One or the other... or both Might have to do with fitting too many things on my recons. Not enough weapons.
Getting whomped by rookie bots in 1v1 and 2v2.
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A sure fire way to win in the early recon matches is to go duelist spending all of your points on light/recon, close combat, electronic warfare and scanner. You might also want to put some points into leadership, business, and damage control (a seperate jock for each one) to cover team expenses.
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And don't forget Close Combat. Seriously, Power Axes cause 10 damage(and unless you really suck, generally have really high to-hit), Chainsaws do 15(haven't checked the Vibro Claws yet). Unless you really scimp on everything else, like armor or something, the biggest thing a recon Titan can mount is a Small Meson Gun, which do only 4, at much less accuracy and more space(for ammo). Now, add CC weapons to something that's faster than any other mech out there, and smaller(does Titan size matter on hit-roll calculations?), and you've got yourself a tiny little threat.
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Apparently my designs suck... or my jocks suck. One or the other... or both Might have to do with fitting too many things on my recons. Not enough weapons.
Getting whomped by rookie bots in 1v1 and 2v2.
You should sort of play with the built-in designs before making your own. I find that most of the built in designs are a heck lot better (or at least similar) to what I want to make. Not that making your own titans isn't fun :P
BTW, I'm not totally fond of pure close combat. The AI runs around a LOT, and the new version gives a penalty to a lot of attacks on prone titans. You can actually take down a close combat titan with a short range titan, just by staying out of range and moving too fast to hit. That and titans like the Duellist can't recycle their chainsaws while running, giving them a significant disadvantage there.
Recons are capable of mounting full tesla bolts and AC20 cannons, but aren't that great with it because of heat and power issues :P Most of the short range weapons are quite nice, hit the opponent while it's turning around to run in a different direction.
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Eh, I've recently switched to double axe recons. They get the job done... in skirmish.
Did 1st campaign map and that was a bit more troublesome with the exploding engines... Nearly lost my manager and mechanic to one...
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Finished out the tutorial and I like the game. Very interesting.
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Close combat is rather brutal.
Also, I hit an enemy mech in the head with a gauss cannon and ripped the head clean off, killing the pilot and disabling the mech in one shot. I am proud.
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DEATH FROM ABOVE!!!!
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DEATH FROM ABOVE!!!!
Thats a point, I wonder if it would be possible to mod in air mechs like they have in Battletech...
That would make my day for sure.
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DEATH FROM ABOVE!!!!
Thats a point, I wonder if it would be possible to mod in air mechs like they have in Battletech...
That would make my day for sure.
I thought DFA was using jumpjets to land on an enemy mech.
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Yes but it reminded me of the Land-Air Mechs (LAM) in Battletech and this game is very similar to the Battletech board game so I typed the thought down.
Sorry for the confusion.
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I liked the LAMs
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I remember exploiting the fact that experience is only gained from success to develop a Titan with multiple small weapons, then using said titan to quickly level up. Small lasers are best, minimizing armor. The pilot will either level up quickly, or die. Fun either way!
Thanks for the awesome game!
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What exactly does sensor linking do? I know it allows pilots to share visibility.
Does it allow the targeting of mechs with indirect weapons from beyond line of site? Does it share scan results?
Ignore that, I found it in the manual as I should have done in the first place.
Finished the first mission of Deep Core and I have a squad of semi-competent jocks. Huzzah!
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This game is awesome :D
A quick question that somebody might know the answer to: Is there any point in raising the medical skill of an android? According to the manual they don't use life support for healing, but they still benefit from shock absorption... But what regulates shock absorption?
I haven't buried my head in the factory yet (still a bit intimidating!), so maybe the answer lies there.
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Probably not, unless Medical is used for their self-healing(which it probably doesn't). Shock absorbtion is when the head takes a hit, even if it doesn't "hit" or damage the cockpit, there's a chance(mitigated by LS) of the impact causing damage to the jock, similar to, say, getting hurt in a car accident(you may be entitled to compensation. Call Malpractice and Malpractice Law Group today!!). I think the Black-Ray gun has a higher chance of this, but I'm not sure.
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After extensively screwing with the Recon level of the Factory.... this stuff is way similar to LordBucket's BGC mecha game. Except the BGC mecha heat part is more... detailed and stuff.
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Yeah, I miss LordBucket's BGC, but it didn't have much developed past the first game week.
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How do I make called shots? I have 88% toHit, a yellow scan, and a battle computer.
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If I remember right, there's a button on the... left or right side of the weapon list that looks like a little targetting reticule. I think you click that. But it's been ages since I played.
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I remember exploiting the fact that experience is only gained from success to develop a Titan with multiple small weapons, then using said titan to quickly level up. Small lasers are best, minimizing armor. The pilot will either level up quickly, or die. Fun either way!
I thought experience was gained from failure. Must've been another game. Heh, combat xp is cheap anyway, for most medium rate recycling weapons. It's the Other XP that's a bottleneck for most of my games, which is why I continually scan.
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My bottleneck are piloting xps most of the time. You can gain lots of others once your titan can scan decently and has other sources of gathering other xps. Scanning is a vital for another reason as it will raise your to hit chance.
Androids can heal an additional HP when passing the medical check since patch v1.2.2. Passing mediacal checks also gives other xps.
Called hits are explained in the manual on page 29.
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My bottleneck are piloting xps most of the time. You can gain lots of others once your titan can scan decently and has other sources of gathering other xps. Scanning is a vital for another reason as it will raise your to hit chance.
Androids can heal an additional HP when passing the medical check since patch v1.2.2. Passing mediacal checks also gives other xps.
Called hits are explained in the manual on page 29.
So the medical skill is useful to androids. Do they gain any benefit at all from better life support systems?
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Yeah, I knew the requirements for a called shot, but just couldn't find the button. Found it now, thanks for answers.
Piloting exps is a matter of spamming jump up/down, crouch/stand, and dodge while your team is messing around with the last enemy mech.
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Piloting exps is a matter of spamming jump up/down, crouch/stand, and dodge while your team is messing around with the last enemy mech.
I don't exploit the system to gather xps. Not my style of play.
So the medical skill is useful to androids. Do they gain any benefit at all from better life support systems?
Yes but only in rare situations like ejects or to prevent radiation. They do not benefit from better healing.
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Thanks for the answers Larkin!
I'm starting to get wild ideas of starting an arena league. Would anyone be interested? Has anyone tried the multiplayer yet?
Some ideas:
- Involved squads restricted to only playing league matchs. (no playing easy matchs to recover from losses, etc!)
- Squads created new specifically for league. A number of "friendly" matchs could be played before the league starts between competitors in order to mix things up a bit.
- Make a website or use google docs or something similar to track wins of squads, and performances of individual jocks! Is there any software out there for tracking general sport statistics/building league websites? A quick google search says YES. Unless there is a more elegant way, screenshots of match results could be used to colate the data.
- Write a bunch of fluff! :D
- Matchs played fortnightly (or weekly? or?), according to the generated schedule. Players would organise times to play... Forfeits etc. for games that don't happen. Time zones could cause trouble here...
- What would be awesome would be having several different divisions that play at different tonnages. Since we'd all be starting as rookies though, (or we could possibly use 'beginner' squads, which start out green?) that wouldn't happen unless this miraculously was popular and survived for several seasons. Playing for promotion and avoiding relegation would add excitement.
- If need be, we could make up numbers with bot teams managed by players. Could ruin it though?
- Random maps? Or custom, dedicated arena maps? Could add to the fluff, but also get boring unless there is some variation.
Pipe dreams? Or could this actually happen? I'm still completely green when it comes to playing the game, so what would you vets think would be good, competitive, playing rules? (ie. what tonnage should be played at, no. of titans, or anything else. Anything that could be exploited that we need to have rules on, like xp gathering just mentioned?)
I'm thinking of ways to moderate it, but it would mainly be on good-will/trust to ensure that no one cheats to get ahead. A lot of swapping team data around would be happening as well as matches are played. Perhaps the squad data would be hosted on the website.
I guess numbers would either make or break this, and I haven't played a multiplayer match before at all, haha, so this is all very premature. Just got a little excited. :P I'm making a bunch of test teams to test how it might play out right now.
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I haven't played this in years(since before it went commercial, I think), and never done multiplayer, but if you'll manage to actually grok all the organisational things out, then I'm game.
Due to my rustiness, I can't really offer you any advice on setting things up, sorry. Also, I'm GMT+1, which might, or might not be a problem. Also also, I'm more or less free on weekends only.
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I'd have to find the details again, but there's a way to name your team that sets them as a 'tournament' team, which gives you a set amount of money/skill for stuff like that.
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Yeah, but Tournament teams don't gain exp or anything, I think.
I saw that in the manual, can't recall the exact details.
I'd be up for a tournament, preferably with non-tournament teams.
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Wow, just got hit by the brutality of the game. Got 3 jocks up to green status two of them in nice recon close-combat mechs and one in a light energy gun-bucket. Third mission of Deep Core two decided to turn their jumpjets off over lava and the take a nap, combusting the engines and killing them and destroying their mechs. The last one got close to finishing but was forced to eject from a lucky shot that almost took out her engine.
Oh well, time to start again!
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My first game, I had 2 of my 3 pilots get killed by lucky headshots from a bastard with a Gauss Cannon.
His friends easily took apart my last mech. It made me sad.
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Special tournament squads are explained on page 12 of the manual. They gain no experience.
You can also start a squad at green rank which will progress normally. This was added with patch v1.2.0 and is hidden in the readme.txt
54. Added new entry for tcc.cfg. It has to go into a new section
[TOS_WS_HQ]
start_rank = 2
This will create new squads as green rank with 700.000 $ money.
There is a cheat to start squads at any rank but I won't reveal this. :P
If someone sets up a league, there is some interest and the network code is still working, I will participate.
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Wow, just got hit by the brutality of the game. Got 3 jocks up to green status two of them in nice recon close-combat mechs and one in a light energy gun-bucket. Third mission of Deep Core two decided to turn their jumpjets off over lava and the take a nap, combusting the engines and killing them and destroying their mechs. The last one got close to finishing but was forced to eject from a lucky shot that almost took out her engine.
Oh well, time to start again!
Monitoring your jump fuel is vital. ;D It will take you 30% of your jump forward time to jump up, 20% to jump down and 130% to jump backward.
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If someone sets up a league, there is some interest and the network code is still working, I will participate.
Haha! Now, guys, we must do it! You don't always get an opportunity to try and beat a game's creator on his own turf.
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I may be interested too, but we would have to figure out how to track everything.
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Great! This might actually work.
I'm still trying to find a decent way to track the league. I don't mind putting in a lot of slog myself to make it work, but I want to make sure it's elegant enough for everyone playing.
I play in a Blood Bowl league, and they do it pretty well, so I'm borrowing some ideas from them.
-I would like to make a dedicated webpage that displays the fixtures and standings. I'm no PHP buff, so at the moment I would just do it manually and with a bunch of spreadsheets. But if I can find a free league manager with html export, that would simplify things.
-I would send a PM to the people who are scheduled for a match, and they would organise a time through PMs to play.
-We would need a place to show up to and start games for actual playing. (like an IRC channel)
-And then a place to post match results to. (a forum thread)
I'll flesh out more detailed draft of the league structure here, and then start a thread in 'play with your buddies' if people think it could work. I'm guessing there is a dwarf fortress IRC channel, the wiki lists a whole bunch. Where would be the most convenient place?
I'm mainly worried about getting multiplayer games to work, the network setup quick guide in the matrixgames forum recommends using hamachi, which I think I might have to use since only my LAN IP shows up when creating a game. Haven't fiddled with the router yet though.
Wow, just got hit by the brutality of the game. Got 3 jocks up to green status two of them in nice recon close-combat mechs and one in a light energy gun-bucket. Third mission of Deep Core two decided to turn their jumpjets off over lava and the take a nap, combusting the engines and killing them and destroying their mechs. The last one got close to finishing but was forced to eject from a lucky shot that almost took out her engine.
Oh well, time to start again!
Aieee. I did basically the same thing, but it wasn't as painful because it was with fresh rookies in acid. Once it had fallen over, it wasn't getting back up again.
Edit:
Yeah, let's not use tournament teams, since part of the fun of a league is putting the development+management parts of the game to good use! I'm leaning towards using green teams with a team tonnage limit of 210t. This lets you field 3 light titans, or up to 5 recons, which is plenty of variety for completely new teams. It also gives you access to the bank, which might be vital to stop teams from an early retirement!
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I'm having some trouble in the factory designing a mech. Every time I attempt to place a heat regulator on any part of the mech that has slots avaliable it just beeps at me as if I can't put it there. I've tried placing the engine first then HR, HR in the same place as the engine and even placing the HR first. I've got no idea why and the manual isn't helping at all.
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Heat regulators are installed automatically to their appropriate segments. If it says 3 slots on HR's description, it means that it'll take up one slot in each leg, and one in torso(or was it lower torso? or back torso? somewhere in there). 5 slots means that it'll use additional slots in each one of the arms(or side torso parts, I really don't remember, but you get the idea).
Make sure you've got those slots available.
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Thanks I've figured that out now, I was getting worked up over nothing XD
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Thanks I've figured that out now, I was getting worked up over nothing XD
The info is hidden in the factory. When you have selected to install heat regulators you can press F1 and select 'more'. There is a lot of F1 help in the factory.
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ok thanks all for help in this.
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I'll play too, just PM me when you're ready to start.