Infantry choice: possible to have more than 4 tier-0 options?

[Veyrdite]

I hear a lot of players find many of the infantry useless.

I also find that once you lose your Barracks/HON in mid or late game your choice of 4 infantry is extremely lacking, effectively disabling/neutering the primary feature and fun of IA.

Suggestion to fix both of these problems:

Would this be technically feasible?  Prices would be kept (non-free), and nothing super strong would be listed.

[Kaskins]

Hi veyrdite, yes this was an issue initially when Barracks or Hand of Nod has been destroy. To mitigate the issue i created a Forgotten units which atm didn't quite fulfill is role. The issue is that Free Infantry works in vanilla renegade style and only the first 4 infantry at the PT icon are available to fill.

One must understand the limitations before you can apply the changes of how you want it.

As for real infantry development I would start in 2020 to try to solve this issue by creating more than relying on barracks to provide more than 4 classes and infantry variation. In my draft there were Mercenaries, Contractor, Forgotten Units, Resistance unit and so on.

 

EDITED : Mercenaries, Contractors, Forgotten Units and Resistance will be capture tech structure in the field.

[Cat]

What about having more infantry on the same slot as the free infantry, the one where you must press the golden arrow on the icon to cycle different units/skins on the same slot?

[Kaskins]

Hi Cat, unfortunately that is not possible. I can show you here in Level Editor what I see.

The main PT Icon is when you press E button at PT it shows up, and there are 8 slots 4 were being taken for Refill, Infantry Production, Vehicle Production and Beacon.

The other 4 is up to you to change such as Infantry. It cannot change to alternate skin/units/preset unfortunately.

[Veyrdite]

> The issue is that Free Infantry works in vanilla renegade style and only the first 4 infantry at the PT icon are available to fill. 

For what it's worth Renegade implements all in-game dialogs as win32 forms:

Other dialogs include "you were kicked from the game", things that look like they belong in LE and even the main menu screen.  There are over a hundred of them.

Here is a quickly-hacked proof of concept working on a LAN match in-game:

• The chat boxes that normally sit at the bottom have not been deleted, that crashes the game.  Instead I've moved them outside the dialog where they cause no harm.
• Nothing expects the new boxes/buttons with new IDs to exist, so clicking on them does nothing other than close the PT dialog (as per usual when you purchase something)
• I presume that the game listens for WM_COMMAND or WM_NOTIFY messages, so modifying that code to notice the new button IDs getting clicked would give the new buttons function.

You would also need to duplicate code to support reskinning these buttons, and similarly modify LE/Mammoth to have a few more options for PT customisation. Other than that: I'm not familiar with the code in question or unique renegade challenges, I'm not an expert.  Linux person here, user32.dll and comdlg32.dll are not my strongpoints :D

Sidenote: all of these dialogs reside both in game.exe and bandtest.dll (with the same IDs).  It seems the bandtest.dll ones take priority, so they're the ones you have to modify.  Not sure of the history of this, I presume bandtest.dll is designed as a patch.

 

> To mitigate the issue i created a Forgotten units which atm didn't quite fulfill is role

Yeah, I've seen them used very seldom.  They suffer a number of problems:

• Only available in one building/location, which isn't useful when the enemy has your base filled with tanks (common no-bar/hon-left situation).
• Only available to those that know how the forgotten system works (a secret)
• Only available if the forgotten hub is captured (difficult to do under common no-bar/hon left situations)

In practice I think I've seen more offensive uses of them (where the enemy buys one inside your buildings), although that might have been on mpf.

Edited April 12, 2019 by Veyrdite

[Kaskins]

Ok cool Veyrdite, that is something I didn't know, is best to get an official implementation by going through these. I would wish personally to see Equipment tab to work as no.8/beacon tab to have an equipment so I can put more stuff in. I partially worked on 2020 infantry build a bit but not much usually about weapon customization.

As for now is best to talk Dblaney how if this going to implement and work. I won't mind making 4 more infantry slightly useful that require cash than the regular 4 units we have currently.

[F00ker]

43 minutes ago, Veyrdite said:

In practice I think I've seen more offensive uses of them (where the enemy buys one inside your buildings), 

Yes i saw that too on Vile Facility damned annoying

[TemporaryName]

personally I dont like this idea, its similiar to Renegade-X where you can buy officer, chem warrior and rocket soldier at increased price after hon/bar died.
 

Quote

I also find that once you lose your Barracks/HON in mid or late game your choice of 4 infantry is extremely lacking, effectively disabling/neutering the primary feature and fun of IA. 

it should be like that, it must be painful for team if they lose primary building

[Veyrdite]

Pain doesn't need to not be fun.

If these characters are normally "useless", then they might at least be "fun useless" with a few tiny advantages for people to discover in painful situations.

(I'm not suggesting we buff the troops to fix their weakness problems)

[Threve]

59 minutes ago, Veyrdite said:

If these characters are normally "useless", then they might at least be "fun useless" with a few tiny advantages for people to discover in painful situations.

To be fair

Riflemen have (Two Types of) grenades and the almighty fist.

Normal Engis can build turrets, bangaloors and barbed wire along with a sticky bomb

Shotgun troopers also have an AT-4

Sharpshooter snipers.. exist. I never use them as I shoot someone and  it doesn't do anything, ever.

[Kaskins]

Oh yeah, thanks for reminding me, I got to really revamp sharpshooter.

[Veyrdite]

4 hours ago, Threve said:

To be fair

Riflemen have (Two Types of) grenades and the almighty fist.

Normal Engis can build turrets, bangaloors and barbed wire along with a sticky bomb

Shotgun troopers also have an AT-4

Sharpshooter snipers.. exist. I never use them as I shoot someone and  it doesn't do anything, ever.

No, I'm talking about the tier 1 purchasables (low-end bar/hon troops), not the tier 0 freebies.  See the first two sentences in my original post.

[notDMB]

This is exactly what I'd like to see. 

My issue with being limited to these four mostly bad units is that the game just doesn't end if you lose War Factory and Barracks. If it did, I wouldn't care, losing one building hurts but it's not the end. Losing both is awful, at that point you really have no chance of winning, even if there's a Helipad if you're GDI. Nod has slightly better air units for killing buildings. Even still air units either have crippling drawbacks (ORCA Bomber) or don't out damage even a handful of basic engineers repairing the MCT. 

[thedisclaimitory]

kaskins just got me hyped for another IA mega update; never thought I would be hyped for an IA update but now I'am 

[Veyrdite]

Some further thoughts: compatibility.

These changes could be implemented so as to not prevent classic (non IA) maps from working.  The extra slots could stay blank.

A more interesting topic is reverse compatibility: allowing normal Ren players to join the IA servers.  Downloading mixes and/or pkgs can't (AFAIK) replace or change dlls.  These players wouldn't be able to access these extra troops.

Not sure if there's an elegant solution to this problem (using scripts to replace the winform?).  Again, I'm not familiar with the codebase.

[Threve]

1 hour ago, aaaaaaaa said:

 

@Veyrdite

I don't see mutants as popular unit now. They are not OP as before. I'd like to say they needs a little "buff".

They are easy available and cheap units.

And still nobody uses them... Do you know why?

 

You just answered your own question though. They’re not as OP as before to the point you said they need a “buff”...?

So, of course no one is going to use them. Why would I ever choose (for an offensive infantry) a Mutant Murader (Shit Plasma Gun, low armor, slow speed, $1,100?) over a PIC Sydney (Better more long range weapon, $1,000, upgradable, Berreta 93R, Auto Healing, instant firing projectile, faster unit, more armor with upgrades and possibly without.)

 

if you’re talking about using the Mutant Hub when HON or BAR is destroyed... some people do and some don’t. The situation usually calls you to

1. Save your credits for Vehicles because they will win you the game or give you the most chance.

2. Your credits are usually low at this point because again you’re being effectively attacked/seiged 

3. If you lost a building GDI likely has the Mutant Hub along with map control and a free engi isn’t going to last long out there trying to recapture the Hub.

4. There really arn’t any Mutant infantry i’d want to sacrifice my money for. Most weapons are Tiberium weapons which actually heal Nod Petrova/Raveshaw/Viceroids. Furthermore to really get your moneys worth you’d have to camp in a tiberium field because the armor class and health are all not up to par. It’s the only way to heal your investment.

5. Maybe i’d spend money on the Mutant Demolisher (1 Satchel Charge, 2 Timed, 2 C4) but even still I can just get a free engie if I want to suicide rush and the enemy team will be compitent enough to lay Proxie C4’s so it’s irrelevant to again... waste my money on them. If my HON is taken out then the game became that much harder for me and I need as much money for vehicles as I can due to loosing them more easily. (I can’t buy a Tank Ace or Techie)

 

You keep trying to constantly flail this campaign on every each thread that when people don’t do what you want they arn’t using teamwork or are Noobs when the irony is in the fact that you’re the noob yourself. 

[Threve]

53 minutes ago, Threve said:

*Explains in 5 detailed points why Mutants aren’t being used in games currently by players because you’re saying everyone is just a noob.

7 minutes ago, aaaaaaaa said:

Those thigs are adjustable and fixable. You can add hub on any map in any place. This is wasy easier than modifying game executable which will get big group of players into trouble of compatibility.

Wut.

[Raptor29aa]

I have a unique take on the matter... But first.

If you lose the Hon/Bar you have 3 options.

1.if you kill an opponent  you can become or pickup his gun

2. Find a crate

3. Find a forgotten hub

I wonder as to why the discussion jumps to option 3?

Anyways Instead of the same argument buff or nerf mutants, why not give them different and strange roles? I often ignore them because I feel they are just cheap copies of already offered units. (Besides most maps I see the forgotten hub ignored) I think the forgotten option should be equal and unique to the regular bar/hon options.

(I have a lot of ideas but I don’t want to hijack this thread)

Edit: I didn’t realize this was an old and dead threat I will create a new post with my ideas (for some reason I thought I was still in April)

Edited May 11, 2019 by Raptor29aa