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Commander Preview

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GBrankLiquid_Mind
10 years ago
Currently you can customise your commander but without in game testing you cannot easily see the result unless very experienced.

Perhaps if there was a way to add a preview screen for commanders you are building on your home screen, It would give the stats similar to 'space' click on your commander while ingame - this will allow you to compare ranges etc while creating the commanders.

The goal would be to easily compare range vs dmg etc with boosters at each level of your com up to level 5.
+6 / -0

GBrankTheEloIsALie
10 years ago
I don't think it's exceptionally tough to add all the % boni for a certain stat and then apply that to the base value yourself...
+0 / -0


CArankAdminShadowfury333
10 years ago
@MauranKilom: why make it difficult, especially if the person doesn't know whether the bonuses are multiplicative or additive? Remember, making sure new players know what is going on is important for them to learn how to play.
+1 / -0

GBrankLiquid_Mind
10 years ago
(edited 10 years ago)
It's more for comparisons -

e.g. To compare a bombard commander with 3 targetting systems and 1 amplify damage to a support commander with 4 targetting systems...which would have the longer range with different weapons etc

+0 / -0

GBrankTheEloIsALie
10 years ago
(edited 10 years ago)
quote:
why make it difficult

Because it's difficult to make.

Coms still kind of feel like an enfant terrible, with players being discouraged from focusing their gameplay on the com or even investing lots of resources into it. I know that it keeps players playing long enough to get the basics (at least it did for me), but further concentration on the subject would mean investing dev time (with further obstacles like maintaining consistency between the stats in engine and on the website etc.) into a feature that, in my eyes, doesn't contribute a lot to the game. Fleshing out the manual on com modules might be a step to make the stats better understood...
+1 / -0

CArankPxtl
10 years ago
Point. Comms are among the worst units for having logic smeared across a hundred places, and collecting that together into a form that could be consumed by both the Spring engine and the Website would be challenging. And there has to be a single set of all the logic, because if the logic lived in two different places (web and game) then we all know it would fall out of sync with the first balance tweak ("Help, the website is lying about the range of my shotgun!")
+0 / -0

GBrankLiquid_Mind
10 years ago
It already exists in the game already when you hold space and click on a commander you can effectively see its range dps etc then each time you level up this changes...all I'm asking for is for that screen to be shown by hovering over a commander at set levels...i.e. not a direct comparison tool but able to see stats for a commmander at each level
+1 / -0

GBrankTheEloIsALie
10 years ago
(edited 10 years ago)
That's exactly the point. Those stats you see are part of the spring engine. The website is (for the purpose of this) completely unrelated, it doesn't even know about the spring engine. It only knows about the database and files behind itself, some of which is also used by Springie (the automated host that hosts games for you) to tell the spring engine how to build the commander.

In order for the website to consistently display those stats, it would either have to check the ingame information (by running spring, just as you have to at this point, which is not feasible/possible for the website to do) or have the engine code duplicated, which would mean that maintaining consistency between these is going to be painful.

Random coloring ftw.
+1 / -0


CArankAdminShadowfury333
10 years ago
But, the website knows about the stats used to build the commander. I'd have to look closer at the code to be sure, but I would imagine quite a lot of the final stats could be extrapolated from the database (which is still unique) within the website without worrying about the engine's quirks.
+0 / -0

AUrankAdminSaktoth
10 years ago
All this data can be pulled out of the files and displayed on the website, and we can have stats shown at every morph level, and the dropdown menus can be replaced with cool slots with a list of the modules on the side and you drag the modules into the slots and...

At the very least we should have a complete display of all the module stats, so you don't have to dig into the SVN (This stuff can be pulled pretty easily the same way we pull unit stats for the unit guide).

So yeah. Sure. Do it. Good idea. If you or someone else does we will definitely include it, it would be an unambiguous improvement.

Zero-K is open source, anyone is free to contribute if they want to see this happen.
+0 / -0

GBrankLiquid_Mind
10 years ago
Thanks for replies people, MauranKilom I'm not a coder so did not realise they were seperate things.

As Shadowfury333 says the website already knows the stats used to build the commanders, guessing as it knows the unlocks - are they related or do the unlocks currently need updating with commander changes?

It might be more trouble than it's worth but just thought of it as an idea, it would give people more understanding of the modules and what they may want to choose.
+0 / -0

AUrankAdminSaktoth
10 years ago
@MauranKilom isn't a coder either if he thinks the stats cannot be pulled from the game and then maffs applied the same way we do with the Unit Guide.

It's not a matter of more trouble than it's worth, it's a matter of most developers aren't prioritizing this right now. It's worthwhile asking here but we mostly need just man hours to fix up usability and transparency stuff like this.
+0 / -0

GBrankTheEloIsALie
10 years ago
(edited 10 years ago)
quote:
@MauranKilom isn't a coder very familiar with ZK backend either if he thinks the stats cannot be pulled from the game and then maffs applied the same way we do with the Unit Guide.

If you could deduce all the stats correctly without the engine, then please explain this.

Sure, range might not be too troubled by that kind of issue (but i don't know for sure). But as can be deduced from your linked post, the engine itself has an influence on the actual resulting stats of whatever you have in your stats files. Which is why i pointed out that there is manual work (or consulting of the actual engine) involved in retaining consistency.

Does ZK have actual unit tests (both meanings)?
+0 / -0

AUrankAdminSaktoth
10 years ago
You'll get something about as accurate as the unit guide, which is prettymuch good enough. The Empirical DPS widget can also be run, I suppose, if we want to get fancy.
+0 / -0

PLrankAdminSprung
10 years ago
quote:
If you could deduce all the stats correctly without the engine, then please explain this.

Most stats can be pulled from defs and used verbatim. Reloadtime inconsitency is caused by the values in defs being floats with the engine using discrete frames, so the problem only surfaces for units with very low reloadtime that isn't a multiple of 1/30 (like the aforementioned Bandit, who has 0.107 instead of 0.1 for some weird reason).
+0 / -0