Spring RTS Engine

I tryed this a few times.
Very cool.
IMO the whole attitude towards this mod needs to change.
IMO there is no need to complicate team making...
It shouldn't make players share id...Anyone in the same team should,in game,share all units...
Would be cool if you could rdy up as usual as well,Just so it is streamlined and people unaware or those that cant bother to read the text line at start wont ruin games(there are such people).

There is no need to separate controls of some units ...
Instead Everything should remain shared and you should let people get used to that...
There is no "my starting base" everyone is controlling everything and people just need ot get used to this mod of play.

Here is a suggestion..."Fields of power"
When your playing a shared game and there are many bases you sometimes get lost as to what is being built where...
What im suggesting is make a widget to spread slightly colored fields visible on the minimap as well around important buildings like different colors for t1 land labs t1 air labs t2 land labs and t2 air labs.
This way looking at the minimap will immediately tell you what your team is doing so people wont start building t2 at the same time in different places cause the moment one started building a t2 lab everyone knows about it and sees it on the minimap.

Another thing that can be usefull are automated messages.
A message for someone starting a t2 or a fusion or a nuke etc...just so all the team knows whats going on.

Spawn_Retard wrote:I think the allied cursors should be different ingame than everyone on your team being blue, or even have names underneath them.

I think the team should get a team colour that the enemy will see, but your cursor colour should be different to your allies. (dont know if this can be done)

Something like the team platter color widget for selected units, but adapter to multiple players with labeling for groups that are selected. I'm thinking a little name like the commander name widget in the rough center of a selected group of units, or just have the widget display a Color -> Names atlas in a small window you can shove in a corner. I'm also thinking map drawing and points will need to be colored on a per user basis. The points will probably need to be prefixed by user name as well.

Excellent, excellent idea. Bravo Yoko and TFC for making this, absolutely awesome.

That said, it's time to get down to business and implement some more modoptions to prevent gaytrolling.

Gota wrote:I tryed this a few times.
Very cool.
IMO the whole attitude towards this mod needs to change.
IMO there is no need to complicate team making...
It shouldn't make players share id...Anyone in the same team should,in game,share all units...

Unfortunately this isn't possible in the engine unless you are sharing the same id. I also don't see the advantage anyway - coop was designed to be optional and opt-in; a player can always play the normal style (but still on the same team) by just having a separate id. There has been a trend in the games I've played to have giant 8-man coops of the entire team, and I'm surprised they've worked as well as they have. I was happy enough to coop just with trusted friends or serious clans.

Another thing that can be usefull are automated messages.
A message for someone starting a t2 or a fusion or a nuke etc...just so all the team knows whats going on.

These would be helpful for coordinating in a general sense as well (especially anti-nuke)

However before we mess around with more complex ideas that limit coop (eg zones of control, preventing commanders from being moved by other players), I'd like to try the more simple ideas that just increase information about the players. Put the player name next to the cursor so he knows everyone can watch what he's doing. Have a surrender vote widget so a player knows his team wants to keep playing. Have an afk button so my team knows I've gone to get a soda and they can't count on my microing the lower hill anymore. Those sort of things.

REVENGE wrote:Excellent, excellent idea. Bravo Yoko and TFC for making this, absolutely awesome.

That said, it's time to get down to business and implement some more modoptions to prevent gaytrolling.

One thing I'm fairly confident of is that bad behavior increases greatly disproportional to the number of players. 2v2 has almost none. 4v4 still has a good deal of cohesion. Once you get to 7v7 though people feel like they're in a large enough team to blend in the crowd and start behaving worse.

So, my suggestions: try smaller games, or perhaps smaller coops (4 separate 2-man coops would still function very well in an 8 man team, especially if each had a forward/back player combo). Play with friends. Hell, you could even play an almost normal BA game where you're only cooping with one person, and it's still a very rewarding experience.

I added a bit different sort of communism to CA - under this scheme output from metal extractors and overdrive energy is all shared and then distributed equally among players.

This means each player still has own units but mex count does not matter at all.

Licho: that's the way DOW2 works, and it works very well (except that the second resource is shared, too.)

Licho wrote:I added a bit different sort of communism to CA - under this scheme output from metal extractors and overdrive energy is all shared and then distributed equally among players.

Socialism!

Licho wrote:I added a bit different sort of communism to CA - under this scheme output from metal extractors and overdrive energy is all shared and then distributed equally among players.

This means each player still has own units but mex count does not matter at all.

Welp, time to assemble teams only of people I trust.

Well in this implementation second resource is shared a bit too.
Basically all mexes are pooled and all energy from player storage > 80% is taken.
Energy is used to overdrive common mexes and resulting metal from mexes shared equaly.

So reclaim is still individual. And you can still energy stall even if whole team is running on surplus.

I have some experience in this area - I wrote the coop mod for Supreme Commander.

One thing I learnt is that is that you need to avoid things that make players start thinking about units as "theirs". It causes problems when another player orders those units. The biggest thing that causes this is spreading out the comms. Although this balances metal spots against a non-shared opponent it makes players start thinking of their start position as "their base". The coop aspect becomes much more noticable when you start the comms in the same spot. This way you have a shared main and you can see what your allies are doing without constant scrolling. It really reminds you that you're playing coop, not a 'resource sharing' mode. Players will naturally spread out to capture mexes or build outposts but the initial feeling that "this is our base" remains.

I'd make the unit control indicator a priority, it is useful to know when an ally is assigning orders to the same units.

Other than that I repeat the advice of others - don't over-engineer this. Players will either cooperate - or not. If players are bad teammates then don't play with them again. Sometimes a few bad teammates help you appreciate the good ones more.

Oh yeah, AI coders take note. Coop is the BEST way to really test your AI, since you can see it order queues as they are issued.

SpliFF wrote:I have some experience in this area - I wrote the coop mod for Supreme Commander.

One thing I learnt is that is that you need to avoid things that make players start thinking about units as "theirs". It causes problems when another player orders those units. The biggest thing that causes this is spreading out the comms. Although this balances metal spots against a non-shared opponent it makes players start thinking of their start position as "their base". The coop aspect becomes much more noticable when you start the comms in the same spot. This way you have a shared main and you can see what your allies are doing without constant scrolling. It really reminds you that you're playing coop, not a 'resource sharing' mode. Players will naturally spread out to capture mexes or build outposts but the initial feeling that "this is our base" remains.

Hmm, I agree with this - eliminate any sense of "my units, my commander" and players will think even more like a team. I've seen players ragequit in the first minute because someone was interfering with "their" comm. I wonder if it would be better if a single player could select all the start points for the team, rather than having each player pick "theirs".

Other options include fixed start positions, or just playing a bit differently - for instance when I put my starting commander on all-game tidal generator duty (and announce as such), the other players don't feel so bad when I start microing their factory units.

Other than that I repeat the advice of others - don't over-engineer this. Players will either cooperate - or not. If players are bad teammates then don't play with them again. Sometimes a few bad teammates help you appreciate the good ones more.

Yeah, let's not forget that bad players can always go back to being out of the coop (but still on the team).

Licho wrote:I added a bit different sort of communism to CA - under this scheme output from metal extractors and overdrive energy is all shared and then distributed equally among players.

This means each player still has own units but mex count does not matter at all.

IMO it would be better (atleast to have the option) so that people with excess energy can "borrow" the potential of allys under-utilised mex, then the original person will get 100% of metal returned (or give 10% metal to person who lent the mex)

So basically all mex will be efficiently utilised, but if you build more energy, *you* get more metal.
Would be a bitch to code probably

i dont like the communist mode in CA. Mainly due to the fact that i usually always have the strongest E production in my team. I end up losing metal because its getting pooled to my allies :/

Its very gimpy with random teams and i dont like it. Normal mode ftw

Otherside wrote:i dont like the communist mode in CA. Mainly due to the fact that i usually always have the strongest E production in my team. I end up losing metal because its getting pooled to my allies :/

Its very gimpy with random teams and i dont like it. Normal mode ftw

This is the exact same problem with BA otherside.

You need to learn to command your team, tell them their faults, stop production that isnt needed.

Alternatively you could join a serious clan who plays it, or get teamspeak for easy communication .

This is a horrible Idea. people like myself will ctrl A -ctrl d.
or maybe ill just send units in stupid directions. Although this sounds like a fun feature its borderline useless once popular. It would be best if you could have this functionality, but only with your clanmates.

Sefidel wrote:This is a horrible Idea. people like myself will ctrl A -ctrl d.
or maybe ill just send units in stupid directions. Although this sounds like a fun feature its borderline useless once popular. It would be best if you could have this functionality, but only with your clanmates.

There's nothing stopping you from only cooping with your clanmates in BA Coop. There's nothing that requires you to put the whole team on one big coop.

Sefidel wrote:This is a horrible Idea. people like myself will ctrl A -ctrl d.
or maybe ill just send units in stupid directions. Although this sounds like a fun feature its borderline useless once popular. It would be best if you could have this functionality, but only with your clanmates.

this is why i ban people like you from games that i set up for BA Coop.

It takes one game to find, and weed out who trouble makers are.

After a while, reputations on coop would spread, and good luck finding a game that isn't hosted by you.


Any normal game, and sure combombing is pretty fun, but coop is different.

Sefidel wrote:This is a horrible Idea. people like myself will ctrl A -ctrl d.
or maybe ill just send units in stupid directions. Although this sounds like a fun feature its borderline useless once popular. It would be best if you could have this functionality, but only with your clanmates.

It isn't that much harder to ruin a normal teamgame.

And to reiterate, try playing co-op in "cells" with groups of people who work together well. Also, Teamspeak proves to be a huge communications advantage.

Co-op is now integrated into BA 6.92 woop woop!