Home » MODDING HQ 1.13 » Flugente's Magika Workshop » In-development feature: Individual militia
In-development feature: Individual militia[message #338230] Fri, 12 December 2014 17:14 Go to next message
Flugente

 
Messages:3509
Registered:April 2009
Location: Germany
Raw, not thought-through concept: Individual militia

When playing a campaign in JA2, I noticed that I display utter disregard for militia. They are absolutely replacable, as their primary role is that of a bullet sponge. In fact, I even prefer them to not be good in combat, as to allow my mercs to get more kills instead. I only care for their survival insofar as training their replacements costs money and time.
Furthermore, the individual militia soldiers are created anew whenever we load a sector. One cannot get attached to that, they are purely faceless throwaway soldiers.

This is a bit sad. Considering we're leading a popular rebellion here, the militia are the ones taking up arms (and the ones sacrificing their lives, my mercs sure as hell don't ). Having some individuality there - being able to distinguish militia, or feeling sorry for individual deaths apart from a pure 'resource' view - would be positive for the game, I think.

So I'll outline a brief concept of how to do that here. Note: At the moment, this is purely a concept, no coding has been done in this regard. I am currently lacking time to code much, so this is purely theoretical at the moment. Still, talking doesn't harm - and perhaps nobody apart from me would see any benefit in this anyway - I would like to know that too. While this isn't a 'Feature request' (the only thing I'm requesting is feedback), I think it fits this part of the forum best.

The core points of this feature are written in black.
Optional additions that might be positive, but likely just cosmetics, are outlined in blue.
Unsolved problems or drawbacks are outlined in red.

The basic idea is an expanded enemy and militia profiles feature. What I want is for militia to be as persistent as player mercs. This means that if a militia is in a sector, he'll be there whenever we visit that sector, unless he moves to another sector or is killed. You might know that in JA2, only members of the player team ( = the people we directly control) behave that way. Soldiers, militia, creatures and civilians (even NPCs with a profile!) are only 'created' when loading a sector. There is a very good reasons for this which I won't go into here.
So, what information should an individual militia retain?




  • his/her name
  • rank (green/veteran/elite)
  • very obvious: visuals. This means bodytype (which also controls gender), skin and hair colour
  • traits. This currently depends on items, we obviously need to change that.
  • stats. It would be odd if a master marksman would suddenly lose 40 MRK the next time we meet him, no?
  • health points. This would be really neat: If you won the battle with your militia all but wiped out, those guys won't be back to full strength so soon. Currently cities with full militia are impenetrable fortresses for the AI. If militia keep their health losses, and they have to heal in a lengthy process, this would allow the AI to wear them down over time - thereby defending would be harder, which is good!
  • very important: their items. Which is very odd, as I said in the equippable militia feature that this would not be possible. Have I solved that? Weeeell... kinda Smile
  • some sort of service record. I like world building. I like it even more when the game tells me how I shaped the world. See campaign history. Imagine:
    having a militiawoman that was among the very first batch of militia you trained on Day 1 in Drassen. She was one of only three survivors off the infamous Drassen Counter Attack that night. For her actions, you promoted her to veteran. She was among the platoon you took along to take Cambria. She marked her 5th confirmed kill there. She barely survived the brutal raid in Tixa. When Alma fell, she was already an Elite and a distinguished Squadleader. Her actions throughout the war are commendable.
    Which makes the fact that she is now bleeding out in a field north of Balime regrettable. You could try to save her... Do you feel more inclined to, know that you know all of this?



What we need to do is to create a new structure that contains all this data. When we create a militia in tactical (and autoresolve, but that's splitting hairs), we need to determine which militia are in this sector, obtain this data, and create a soldier with this data. When we leave a sector and thus destroy a soldier, we create data from him, and save this data.

This would be the data (pseudocode):
typedef struct
{
	UINT16	item;			// item id, refers to the ones in Items.xml
	UINT16	status;			// status of item. In case of ammo items, this instead refers to the ammo count. No bullets lost here.
} MILITIA_ITEM;

typedef struct
{
	UINT16	id;				// id of battle militia took part in. Ties to campaign history, thus we know with more detail what happened there.
	UINT16	flagmask;		// we can note up to 16 different properties here - perhaps wether we were a reinforcement, or were wounded and such
} MILITIA_BATTLEREPORT;

typedef struct
{
	UINT32	id;				// number of militia. Tied with one or more separate tables of names, this gives us a name
	UINT32	group;			// strategic group militia is a part of
	
	// visuals
	UINT8	soldierclass;	// green/veteran/elite
	UINT8	bodytype;		// female/male/bigmale1/bigmale2
	UINT8	skin;
	UINT8	hair;
	
	UINT16	stats[10];		// AGI/DEX/STR/LDR/WIS/MRK/MEC/EXP/MED/LVL.
	UINT8	traits[3];		// out traits
	
	std::vector<MILITIA_ITEM>	inv;		// militia inventory in a very condensed form
	
	UINT8	kills;
	std::vector<MILITIA_BATTLEREPORT>	history;	// reports on all battles this militia took part in
} MILITIA;

This is a lot smaller than saving SOLDIERTYPE directly.
Note that for the inventory, we only save the items that we really possess. You will notice that we don't save any attachments or such... idea is simply save all items on a heap. When we recreate them and one of them is an attachment, we assume it was attached to a gun or piece of armour, so we try to attach that. Unlike mercs, militia only need one gun and armour, so this should be easy.
This method of saving objects should not be used for mercs - we lose any additional data on objects! This is all under the assumption that no additional data is required for militia's objects.
Of course, saving inventory is only necessary if we use the 'equip militia' feature in the first place.

In the above structure, all stats are saved as UINT16, even though stats are always in [0; 100], which can be done via UINT8. The reason for this is that we want militia to be able to improve just like mercs - in or out of combat. The idea is to save stats in [0;, 10000] - this way we could save 53,47 MRK, and thus store stat progress, somewhat similar to mercs.
As an individual militia won't even get near the amount of combat experience our mercs get, we could alter the speed with which they earn stats.
We train green militia just like before. Once new ones are created, we tie a new MILITIA to them. Stats are randomized within a certain range for each stat. Thus some of them might be more promising than others.
We no longer allow training of veteran militia, or even elite ones. Any improvements must be earned... however one can continue to train green militia in sector, but this doesn't automatically promote them.
People love deciding on skills and such. For this reason, we can select which traits a militia has - we choose for them. If you have a bunch of rookies and a bunch of shotguns, it would be smart to assign the 'Ranger' trait to some of them, no?
Each militia rank grants additional traits (that's also how it works currently). So a green militia can only have 1 trait, an elite can have 3.
Traits are only selectable if a militia has sufficient stats. So, for example, only those with MRK >= 75 can be given 'Marksman'. This way you can't create hordes of similar militia, and you have to plan whom to give what.
If we were to allow to train militia in specific stats, we could expand this muh more. Imagine this: After training a platoon of fresh rookies in Drassen, we transfer the best marksmen of them to training at the Alma shooting range. A few with good medical skills are transferred to advanced training in Cambria Hospital, the rest is off to garrison duty.
Certain traits are only available on higher ranks - so 'Deputy 1' is only open to veterans, and 'Deputy 2' requires 'Deputy 1' and is only available to elites.
'Doctor' could be a viable trait for militia now. We could allow them to be medics, like in medics & officers. Perhaps militia doctors should need special training, and should cost even more? Special care should be taken as to not let this be exploitable - merc doctors must not be replacable.
When militia has amassed enough experience, the player can promote them. For this and for other data (info on stats, visuals, item overview) we need a small window displaying that data. There we need to be able to promote them, select traits, and add and remove items. We need this in strategic and tactical. We need to be able to call this by selecting a militia in an easy way.
We need a working, easily understandable overview over all militia both in a sector and globally. We need to be able to sort militia according to their data (who are our best marksmen, and where are they now?) and even search (=filter) for them.
If we do not play with 'equip militia', what items do they get? Currently the traits are selected fitting to the items they get, this is no longer possible. We'd thus need new tables that determine what traits grant what items (so that Rangers would get either shotguns or rifles etc.).
If we do play with 'equip militia', they will pick up gear from the sector if they don't have any. Using the above described, yet-to-code interface, we need to be able to add and remove items to them - we can then finetune their inventory to an absurd degree. How finetuned depends on how much time one wants to waste on this, really.
A problem in this case is ammunition. Even if we allow them to restock after battle, it could happen that a gun runs dry. We then either need to warn the player of this, or have them drop the gun and select a new one - but this could then be an override to the player specifically giving them that gun.
A bonus would be that loading/moving militia with 'equip militia' turned on would be much faster, as we don't have to loop over sector inventories all the time.
Have a webpage that lists details of all militia, current and dead, along with their service record. Perhaps with a hall of fame?

The 'UINT32 group' member of the struct is for determining what strategic group the militia is a part of. Currently, militia are not part of any groups. They thus cannot travel the way the player and the army does. The travelling Headrock introduced with mobile militia and I expanded in Militia command is a rather ugly workaround. We need to expand groups - especially if, at some point in the future, we want to have different factions that can move on the map.

You might have noticed that we do not store info on which sector a militia is based in. Idea here is to store a std::vector<MILITIA> for each sector of the map. Then it's trivial to know where someone is, and travelling from A to B merely involves erasing a struct from A and inserting it in B.

The militia redistribution in cities won't be useable any more. We need to come up with an easy way to order masses of individuals to different sectors - easy to use for lots of people, while still allowing to select what each individual does.
When we order a squad of militia to move, we need to be able to select who from a sector moves and who stays behind - selecting all of them is not good enough.

Edit: Ugh. That looks atrocious. Pictures would be helpful

[Updated on: Tue, 01 March 2016 14:47] by Moderator

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Captain

Re: Raw, not thought-through concept: Individual militia[message #338231] Fri, 12 December 2014 19:23 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Shanga is currently offline Shanga

 
Messages:3482
Registered:January 2000
Location: Danubia
An even funnier idea would be for the town's people to bear arms. So instead of spawning militia and letting the civilians cower in fear, you get to see the local fat ass drunkard pick up a weapon and fight for your cause.

And then of course, being part of the town population, he'd be a permanent fixture. Two birds with one stone.

Some zones might need a bit more population though.

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Captain
Re: Raw, not thought-through concept: Individual militia[message #338269] Mon, 15 December 2014 00:37 Go to previous messageGo to next message
smeagol is currently offline smeagol

 
Messages:2705
Registered:June 2008
Location: Bremen, Germany
Hmmmm.....


hmmmmm............


Yeah, the idea sounds intriguing enough to spent some more thought on...


hmmm.....


Not much of a militia user myself, but some people might like it.

Does it involve even more micromangement?
Will it be slowing down the game engine?
Can it be made optional?

When will we get item producing facilities?

If those points are no issues, what are you waiting for? :taskmaster:

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Lieutenant

Re: Raw, not thought-through concept: Individual militia[message #338270] Mon, 15 December 2014 00:57 Go to previous messageGo to next message
pheloncab is currently offline pheloncab

 
Messages:278
Registered:August 2004
Location: So. Cal. or texas
I'm a plodding player, I try to take over the country not just kill the queen. I use militia to secure all the towns and try to get enough mobile to keep the enemy patrols in check as I work on the next target.

I like the idea for the RPG aspect. I think it would open up whole new aspects when paired with the building of structures and some of the other improvements. I am concerned that if it was done as a progression from recruit to veteran to elite with picking traits etc.. the micromanagement when you get 300 militia running around would moving it from a tactical RPG with operational elements into an operational game with some tactical combat I do worry that with the engine as it is, and the sheer potential numbers that it could bog down the game.

Perhaps less extreme version would be that when veterans get promoted to elites they become 'real' heroes with names and such. This also would mean you could have heroes' dying drop loyalty for a week or something to encourage players to care about them more.

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Master Sergeant
Re: Raw, not thought-through concept: Individual militia[message #338286] Mon, 15 December 2014 13:40 Go to previous messageGo to next message
grim is currently offline grim

 
Messages:344
Registered:July 2006
Location: France
I share the same feeling with you Flugente. I played with militia profiles to have recognable apparences and names to fight with, and i had much more empathy with my militia. Problem was they existed only for one scene, one battle. Your concept brings continuity, and i'd love that.

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Master Sergeant
Re: Raw, not thought-through concept: Individual militia[message #338287] Mon, 15 December 2014 16:25 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Shanga is currently offline Shanga

 
Messages:3482
Registered:January 2000
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I think this has the prospect to be revolutionary in terms of gameplay. Honestly. Even on the scale of Flugente's modding, which is pretty epic.

[Updated on: Mon, 15 December 2014 16:26] by Moderator

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Captain
Re: Raw, not thought-through concept: Individual militia[message #338425] Thu, 18 December 2014 23:11 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Flugente

 
Messages:3509
Registered:April 2009
Location: Germany
@Shanga: Well, militia are civilains to whom we gave a crash course in fighting - they are the same people. Theoretically, we could also expand the individual profiles to civilians and the army - thereby individualising the entire country. It would just be pointless. Civs are mostly scenery, and it is very rare to meet a soldier twice.
Well, I have an outstanding code change that massively increases teamsize, it is not finished yet. But once it is, and smeagol has finished bigmaps, I personally am dumping the vanilla maps and will play the game in massive glory Smile

@smeagol: Of course it will be optional! Most problems would come from the item distribution part, so that is optional as well. If one wants to distribute items to each militia, that obviously is a lot of micromanagement (no way around that), otherwise one only has to select militia promotions and trait selection. If one wants, then ordering them to travel too (the UI should be made so that this isn't more complicated than ordering mercs to travel). Healing might be micro, but we could have a default setting that they heal +x HP/hour if wounded.
Provided the UI is good (oh boy...), this doesn't have to be micromanagement intense, unless one chooses so by handling their items.

Item producing facilities are no problem codewise, but not high on my priorities list (but they are on it) Smile

The issue here is time to do this, my friend. That and tons of UI work I am shying away from. An not getting distracted by juicier features.

Also, additional idea: Kerberus can supply us with militia...
  • This could be a source of more experienced militia - you can recruit some who are already promoted, and perhaps have better stats. Kinda like an AIM for militia - name, stats, equipment (?) and a random short bio. Thereby truly becoming the third merc agency that provides the bulk of your forces.
  • They could reasonably also provide other services - in this case, for a modest fee give us an overview over all our forces. Sorting/ranking, that kind of stuff. Problem, though, is that splitting up platoons/sending troops around has still to be done in the map.

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Captain

Re: Raw, not thought-through concept: Individual militia[message #338428] Fri, 19 December 2014 00:43 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Shanga is currently offline Shanga

 
Messages:3482
Registered:January 2000
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Hmm, yes, they are civilians, but they're spawned separately from the actual permanent civilian population, aren't they?

My point was about seeing the fatass barkeeper transform himself into a militia instead of a squad of perfect shaped boys in blue appearing from heavens. You'd also get a lot more incentive to help them, cause losing the bartender could make you very thirsty.

But I guess I'm overcomplicating your idea, nvm me. Smile

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Captain
Re: Raw, not thought-through concept: Individual militia[message #338435] Fri, 19 December 2014 01:36 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Flugente

 
Messages:3509
Registered:April 2009
Location: Germany
Well, bartenders etc. are profile-based anyway (another kind of profile)... people you can talk with are special NPCs that cannot be used as militia. And fat people can't fight anyway Very Happy No really. No animations Wink The only civilians that can fight are those using the Elliot-style bodytype... those can punch and use handguns. Civilian zombies, for example, have no animations for punching, they just stand there and do magical damage - but this would be unacceptable with firearms methinks.

I see your point though. If we'd use the same system for civilians, your idea would be possible. But as it would be illogical to have any UI that lists all civilians in your sector, and you wouldn't be able to set any decisions for them... you would have a hard time knowing this would happen in the first place. Militia fulfill a specific role you train them for, it is thus logical that you should be interested in them. The civilains are just... there. There is no point in showing interest in them (apart from role-play). Resolving that would be interesting, but another feature I guess (introduce mini-quests that require talking to loads of people? Looking for the one that looks like Waldo?).

Oh, and before I forget it, smeagol also asked about whether this would slow down the game. Not really. In combat itself this would have no effect. In fact, entering a sector or moving militia would be faster, as the item handling/equipping is faster. What is more is that we have to handle militia actions outside of combat - healing/training. But that should be absolutely negligible. I have no worries there.

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Captain

Re: Raw, not thought-through concept: Individual militia[message #338436] Fri, 19 December 2014 02:50 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Shanga is currently offline Shanga

 
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Dang, I forgot about certain bodytypes not having fighting animations. Good point. And too bad, would've been fun to have a chubby militia. Smile

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Captain
Re: Raw, not thought-through concept: Individual militia[message #338457] Fri, 19 December 2014 22:59 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Hanakin is currently offline Hanakin

 
Messages:33
Registered:June 2008
Location: Czech Rep.
Personally, my playthroughs would benefit from this feature a lot. I prefer to play with small merc teams and with high difficulty settings, so I tend to really rely on militia. I often have to fight side by side with them, so I tend to roleplay it a bit. I'm usually trying to save the wounded, providing cover fire, healing them (usually depleting my medical supplies rapidly Smile) and sometimes even giving them orders (though with my team being small, APs are usually a luxury I can't really spend on those ridiculously AP-expensive militia orders). After all, every militia I save will live to fight another day.

As such, I really welcome the idea you've put forth, Flug. It would be great if the militia persevered, got better and/or wounded and all the other stuff.

However, as you have already pointed out, if this is going to be usable, some sort of interface would be needed to take care of militia's equipment and so on.

But man, now I don't want to play JA until this feature eventually comes out T-T

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Private 1st Class
Re: Raw, not thought-through concept: Individual militia[message #338460] Sat, 20 December 2014 00:21 Go to previous messageGo to next message
pheloncab is currently offline pheloncab

 
Messages:278
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Would tox's STI tool help make the animations to let a 'fat boy' fight? if so, maybe once the tool hits its next beta someone could see if that could be fixed. besides it might be fun to see Bubba and turtle looking more like their description and less like Bull..

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Master Sergeant
Re: Raw, not thought-through concept: Individual militia[message #338462] Sat, 20 December 2014 01:15 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Flugente

 
Messages:3509
Registered:April 2009
Location: Germany
pheloncab
Would tox's STI tool help make the animations to let a 'fat boy' fight? if so, maybe once the tool hits its next beta someone could see if that could be fixed. besides it might be fun to see Bubba and turtle looking more like their description and less like Bull..
Well, one does need an editor, and it will make the job much easier... still, doing even a single animation requires, say, 8 pictures. Take that times 8 for every direction, and know that it would take at least 12 animations to make a bodytype 'combat-worthy'. That is a lot of pictures. Which is also the reason we rarely ever get new animations - even if people start, they soon realize the scope of this and quit.

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Captain

Re: Raw, not thought-through concept: Individual militia[message #338507] Mon, 22 December 2014 17:10 Go to previous messageGo to next message
smeagol is currently offline smeagol

 
Messages:2705
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Flugente
Well, one does need an editor, and it will make the job much easier... still, doing even a single animation requires, say, 8 pictures. Take that times 8 for every direction, and know that it would take at least 12 animations to make a bodytype 'combat-worthy'. That is a lot of pictures. Which is also the reason we rarely ever get new animations - even if people start, they soon realize the scope of this and quit.


I totally agree!

People want easy solutions. Everything that takes a bit of effort is soon discarded...

That's why I even gave up to count on people offering their help. They get an assignment, see that it's work and vanish, never to be seen again... people like finished products. Getting involved to get the product finished is a completely different story.

And yes, animations take a lot of time and effort. And it is boring and repetitive work. Nevertheless it needs to be done if people want new and awesome features (fat dude firing guns, more melee animations [like axe, a real sword, trench mace, etc...], ladder climbing... the riot shield... and there's probably a lot more people will come up with). Nothing of these will ever happen if the consumerism mentality some people display will remain.

You want a better product? Help to improve it!

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Lieutenant

Re: Raw, not thought-through concept: Individual militia[message #338524] Tue, 23 December 2014 14:39 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Shanga is currently offline Shanga

 
Messages:3482
Registered:January 2000
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Fact is nobody does these by hand smeagol. Sirtech did them in 3dmax and exported them frame by frame. I guess someone good enough in Blender can do the same, you just need to get the perfect isometric camera setup and a decent looking model and boom! You get a series of animations from all angles in like 2 mins.

The trick is finding a good 3d modeler who knows his tools. Back in the day (when I was dabbing in 3dmax) when I tried adding new anims we didn't have enough code knowledge and a proper method to insert them into STI files (STIedit broke animations).

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Captain
Re: Raw, not thought-through concept: Individual militia[message #338731 is a reply to message #338524] Sun, 04 January 2015 19:24 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Flugente

 
Messages:3509
Registered:April 2009
Location: Germany
As of now, I declare this project to be in development. I've thus moved it here, into my lair.

As having moving pictures ready always makes it much easier to discuss something, I've prepared a video of the current state of the feature:
&feature=youtu.be[/youtube]
Keep in mind that this is a very early alpha. I've simply used the 'Campaign history' website as there was space there.

What we see in this video is the beginning of the militia management UI.
We have a list of all militia (still needs a way to sort them, and to filter by sector).
There we see each militia's face and name (and thus their class, gender and whether they are deceased).
I plan to also include a health bar here, so that we can quickly see how dire the situation is.
We also see their main gun - I'm still unsure whether I should write the gun's name or display the graphic.
Clicking on a militia entry opens up their detail tabs.

In the first tab - 'Service Record' - we see their stats and notable events for them - when they were hired, promoted, and killed. We also get a short description for each battle they took part in, and what they did there. Clicking on these reports will later open the respective campaign history battle report, in case you forgot what 'Operation Porn-Consuming Baby Jesus' was all about.

The second tab - 'Skill Tree' - is where you can decide on your militia's career. On the left, there are three buttons. You can promote a militia here - the lowest section of the table is for the 'green militia' rank, the middle one for 'regular militia', the upper one for 'elite militia'. By clicking on the leftside buttons, you can promote militia. This unlocks the respective tier. If a tire is unlocked, you can select traits in there. For each tier rank you get 1 trait point (undistributed points are in the lower left).
The traits themselves are distributed among the 3 tiers. Expert traits require their basic version first, and you can only have 2 major traits. Hovering over a button shows you what the respective trait is, what its effects are and which Requirements you fulfill, an which one you fail. Each trait requires a rank (green/regular/elite) and has some stat requirements, which are directly taken from the IMP creation process). The rank requirements are my own design - I tried to make powerful traits harder to get (and it wouldn't make much sense to have basic rookies starting with 'Marksman', no?).
Traits whose condition you cannot fulfill right now (stat fail etc.) are red. Traits which you could choose are grey. Stats you have chosen are brown. The buttons in the lower right allow you to save these changes or discard them. You can see that upon promotion the militia's face instantly changes, so this seems to work :-)

What I now need from you, yes, you, most honored reader: Feedback. And, equally important: A few images. You might have noticed that all trait buttons in the skill tree look the same, which makes selecting traits tedious. This is because icons take a lot of time for me (and people will complain about how the icons look anyway). So what I need is YOU designing new icons, that instantly show what trait this is all about. The '+' is basically a symbol for the 'Doctor' trait, but we have more than that, no? I plan to have the following traits available for militia:


  • Auto Weapons
  • Heavy Weapons
  • Sniper
  • Ranger
  • Gunslinger
  • Martial arts
  • Squadleader
  • Doctor
  • Ambidextrous
  • Melee
  • Throwing
  • Night Ops
  • Stealthy
  • Athletics
  • Bodybuilding
  • Demolitions
  • Scouting
  • Teaching (not now, but I have a few ideas once this feature is out, so do a symbol for this just in case)


I need symbols for these, size of about 20x20 pixels. And I need these as images. Googling 'Auto Weapons symbol' and then posting a link to that is not considered helpful at all.

The background is also meh. It would be cool to have some sufficiently inspiring picture, with the sections of it that are unlocked in bright grey and the locked parts in darker grey. Do that too, will ya?

Small update:
http://i57.tinypic.com/28vuoeb.png
A health bar shows a militia's condition, we display the traits we have for easier overview (that's why I need those symbols), and guns are now shown by image instead of name.

[Updated on: Mon, 05 January 2015 03:21]




I know now that it could never work between us, as much as we wanted to, it could never be! Not because you're a rabbit, but because you're black.

If you want, you can donate to me. This will not affect how and what I code, and I will not code specific features in return. I will be thankful though.

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Captain

Re: Raw, not thought-through concept: Individual militia[message #338751 is a reply to message #338731] Mon, 05 January 2015 15:47 Go to previous messageGo to next message
CVB is currently offline CVB

 
Messages:129
Registered:September 2014
Location: Berlin
I will try my hand at a set of icons. Which format do you need? (.png? .sti?)
Will the background stay tan/light brown?

Maybe useful links for random hispanic names and operation names



Peace is a purely theoretical state of affairs whose existence we deduce because there have been intervals between wars.
J. Pournelle

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Sergeant
Re: Raw, not thought-through concept: Individual militia[message #338752 is a reply to message #338751] Mon, 05 January 2015 16:03 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Flugente

 
Messages:3509
Registered:April 2009
Location: Germany
Very good. .png works best, as I have to merge them into my own .sti anyway. The background will likely stay this way. There'll be multiple versions of each icon - not selected, selected, cannot be selected - so I'll do the recolouring, I just need the drawings.

Thanks, I've already found the hispanic name generator and will likely use it later on once I need a gigantic database of names. For Operation names I now have 100 prefixes and 100 suffixes, which leads to a lot of combinations - I now only add what seems reasonably absurd.



I know now that it could never work between us, as much as we wanted to, it could never be! Not because you're a rabbit, but because you're black.

If you want, you can donate to me. This will not affect how and what I code, and I will not code specific features in return. I will be thankful though.

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Re: Raw, not thought-through concept: Individual militia[message #338966 is a reply to message #338752] Tue, 13 January 2015 16:43 Go to previous messageGo to next message
CVB is currently offline CVB

 
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Re: In-development feature: Individual militia[message #338968 is a reply to message #338230] Tue, 13 January 2015 22:04 Go to previous messageGo to next message
TBCoW

 
Messages:6
Registered:December 2012
I'll give some feedback to your ideas/plans.

Quote:
As an individual militia won't even get near the amount of combat experience our mercs get, we could alter the speed with which they earn stats.

I think that altering learning rate of militia is a bad idea. Instead make them practice or teach others while they idle.
Quote:
We train green militia just like before. Once new ones are created, we tie a new MILITIA to them. Stats are randomized within a certain range for each stat. Thus some of them might be more promising than others.

Agreed.
Quote:
People love deciding on skills and such. For this reason, we can select which traits a militia has - we choose for them. If you have a bunch of rookies and a bunch of shotguns, it would be smart to assign the 'Ranger' trait to some of them, no?
Each militia rank grants additional traits (that's also how it works currently). So a green militia can only have 1 trait, an elite can have 3.

I don't really like this idea. Instead i think of 2 alternative ways for traits.
1. Assign them randomly while individual militia is created.
2. Instead of you leveling them up, make them learn a major trait upon getting preset stats (like let's say 70 in both MRK and DEX gives marksman 80 in both gives sniper). This way you decrease micromanagement by letting militia getting specialist training or get a 2 trait combo by more genera training.
Traits are only select able if a militia has sufficient stats. So, for example, only those with MRK >= 75 can be given 'Marksman'. This way you can't create hordes of similar militia, and you have to plan whom to give what.
Quote:
Certain traits are only available on higher ranks - so 'Deputy 1' is only open to veterans, and 'Deputy 2' requires 'Deputy 1' and is only available to elites.

I think that either stat requirement or random traits solve this completely.
Quote:
'Doctor' could be a viable trait for militia now. We could allow them to be medics, New_feature: AI medics & officers. Perhaps militia doctors should need special training, and should cost even more? Special care should be taken as to not let this be exploitable - merc doctors must not be replacable.

The nerf to NPC medics is pretty easy. Make wounds not heal automatically after a battle - your militia should spend their kits on wounded soldiers. Because of their low initial medical skills they will burn through resources fast. It's your role to make sure that you get highly trained doctors if you want to keep cities.
Quote:
If we do not play with 'equip militia', what items do they get? Currently the traits are selected fitting to the items they get, this is no longer possible. We'd thus need new tables that determine what traits grant what items (so that Rangers would get either shotguns or rifles etc.).

You are right, traits are not the way to go. The best way would be to make classes and class related weapons (CQC, long range, snipers, demolition etc.). While inventing classes and setting skill requirements for them should not be hard,weapon assignment is another story. Weapons need more balancing and finding the way to make sure an assault unit doesn't end up with sniper rifle. Someone has done it few years ago (only for OCTH). We need to include both aiming systems.
Quote:
If we do play with 'equip militia', they will pick up gear from the sector if they don't have any. Using the above described, yet-to-code interface, we need to be able to add and remove items to them - we can then finetune their inventory to an absurd degree. How finetuned depends on how much time one wants to waste on this, really.

If above point is done, this should be easy. Check what classes are available and then seek a combination of assigned weapons that has the lowest number. This may lead to strange situations like a sniper having AR, because nobody around is skilled enough to get it but generally should work.
Quote:
A problem in this case is ammunition. Even if we allow them to restock after battle, it could happen that a gun runs dry. We then either need to warn the player of this, or have them drop the gun and select a new one - but this could then be an override to the player specifically giving them that gun.

I see 2 ways to solve it:
1. If you liberated Drassen/travelled to San Mona militia can resupply automatically. They should suffer a penalty for long distance to these places.
2. The way harder way which I doubt you will consider. Militia can 'request' weapons and ammo from other sectors (weapons if they see that a weapon of the class they are assigned to is way better than what they hold [see above with weapon balance]) and mobile militia can carry requested stuff (this includes health/repair kits too) either directly to the requesting unit or chain order to have another mobile militia carry that.
Quote:
The militia redistribution in cities won't be useable any more. We need to come up with an easy way to order masses of individuals to different sectors - easy to use for lots of people, while still allowing to select what each individual does.

And yet again i see 2 ways to do that:
1. Make redistribution split by equal class/total skill
2. Assign each sector some kind of battlefield type (urban/base/semi-open/open) which gives priority to some kind of classes (snipers are more likely to appear in open than base sector scenarios)
Quote:
When we order a squad of militia to move, we need to be able to select who from a sector moves and who stays behind - selecting all of them is not good enough.

Just use the point 1 of the above.

About idle behaviour:
Each merc and militia unit with some leadership should be able to train new/current militia.
Militia training done by a unit should give a bonus of third of their skill as percentage bonus so a 100 MRK militia can train new militia that has random MRK and 33% bonus to it or train existing militia in MRK 33% faster. While obviously this could lead to some abuse, you have to remember that first that unit has to reach 100 MRK (and you can't do that only in practice because of set limit) and has to survive battles to be of any use.
Training for militia could be classified as special/general/balanced:
-special as in individual stat (let's say you need some units as snipers and they are lacking MRK)
-general would be specialization for a role:
*unarmed(physical) - 35STR/35DEX/20AGI for max melee damage and generally useful stats
*sniper - 60MRK/40DEX for getting highest CTH
*cqc - 20MRK/20STR/20DEX/30AGI/10EXP for general combat stats
*medic - 80MED/20DEX for almost pure medical training
*utility - 25MED/25LDR/25MEC/325EXP for general healing/repairing
*demolitions - 40DEX/60EXP for explosives/grenade throwing
*mechanic - 20DEX/10EXP/70MEC for repairing stuff
-balanced to train skills lower than average by 10 points
Militia color could be determined by their average class skill points (<60 green / 61-85 blue / 86+ elite).
Militia may practice/teach others/repair/heal.
For teaching others there should be a check if teacher teaches students faster than they all (teacher included) would be practicing.
Healing would be priority for units with medical skills if the troops in sector are low HP. Otherwise medics can do normally assigned task.
Maintenance crew should try to repair every item in sector using current repairing logic. If a repaired combat item is way worse than others existing in city it should be sold or sent to city for full repair (if that item is better in stats for some specific class than other weapons).
When new, better weapons are available, militia should try to get them. This means that militia takes your money for purchasing weapons, kits, attachments (in that case militia training cost/daily fee should be lowered) or militia gets a secret account where percentage of daily fee gets transferred and they use these funds to get stuff.

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Re: In-development feature: Individual militia[message #338970 is a reply to message #338968] Wed, 14 January 2015 01:38 Go to previous messageGo to next message
cpt.Shen is currently offline cpt.Shen

 
Messages:8
Registered:January 2015
I don't really like tha idea of having doctors within militia. It wouldn't make sense since there are only 2 real doctors in Arulco (both in Cambria Hospital) and that's why combating the diseases and healthcare in general are a problem in that crazy country. "Paramedic" should be max. Profesional doctors are trained in schools/academics and not "in the field".

It would be wonderful to have an option to train a specific, specialized group of militia, whose equipment and numbers would then be dependent on their role in the field. For example:
1. Gunmen (gunslingers and autoweapons) - you can train as many as you wish - equipment: pretty obvious
2. Heavy (heavy weapons and bombardiers) - 1 per squad or 2:32 (max militia) - equipment: grenades, granade launcher, bazookas and mortars
3. Medics (paramedic)- 1 per squad or 3-4:32 (max militia) - eq.: armor, knife and medpacks
4. Snipers? - 1 per squad or 2:32 (max militia) - NO armor (you have to protect your precious snipers!), sniper rifles, binoculars (or not), some kind of camo

Ideally, heavy and snipers should cost more, but that could be problematic for moding I guess.

[Updated on: Wed, 14 January 2015 01:40]

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Re: In-development feature: Individual militia[message #339020 is a reply to message #338968] Tue, 20 January 2015 01:20 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Flugente

 
Messages:3509
Registered:April 2009
Location: Germany
Grrrrr. You know what? I HATE this new forum. I've only now spotted these new posts, and they are almost a week old. I sure hope the forum gets returned to a useful form soon, because in its current form it is... suboptimal to use.

Anyway, to the last posts. Thanks for sharing that, I'll answer with a few thoughts of my own.

TBCoW wrote on Tue, 13 January 2015 20:04
I'll give some feedback to your ideas/plans.

Quote:
As an individual militia won't even get near the amount of combat experience our mercs get, we could alter the speed with which they earn stats.

I think that altering learning rate of militia is a bad idea. Instead make them practice or teach others while they idle.

My newest (and not yet posted here) plan for training militia is as follows:
There are 4 ways in which a militia can gain experience and/or stats:
  • When created (by being trained by our mercs), they start with basic, randomised stats. We can rename this process 'recruitment' or 'basic training', it works like the current militia training.
  • In combat, they can gain stats and experience just like our mercs. I still think a faster rate would be reasonable here - they don't get near the combat experience our mercs get.
  • In some sectors, they will train just by being there. Examples would be the Alma shooting range for MRK or the Cambria hospital for MED. No need to assign anything - any militia there will train those stats somewhat, so we do not require any assignments or orders.
  • After 'basic training', our mercs can still train militia, but a bit different this time. This process is now renamed 'advanced training'. It does not cost money anymore, but also does not create new people. For each trainable stat a trainer merc has, we calculate a pool of learning points. These are then distributed among trainable militia present.
    A militia can only be trained in a stat if the trainer has better stats. Similar, a militia will only gain experience if trained by someone with more experience.
    The amount of points a trainer generates in a stat depends on his own stats, his leadership (leadership somewhat represents how good they are at teaching others), their personality, teaching trait etc.. As a result, the trainers need to be good at what they are teaching, but also need to be at least somewhat good and leading.
    I don't see the need to have a separate training assignment for each stat - just have one assignment for all of them. The stat makeup of the trainer determines where this training will work best.
As a result, it is no longer viable to park some crappy mercs in the hinterland an have them train veteran platoons all on their own. It always seemed a bit wrong to me that Biff, Flo and Ira could train hordes of battle-hardened troops.
With this new system, low-level trainers would still perform the basic training of militia. Advanced training has to come from mercs who have an idea of what they are doing. In the ideal case, you would combine this - if you want your militia to be better shooters, the best place to let them be trained in the Alma shooting range by the likes of Len or Scope. If you want medics, let them learn their skills from Spider and Cliff in Cambria - they might not learn EXP there, but their MED should go up.

Militia learning all by themselves... perhaps, but then at an absolutely minimal rate. Training oneself is abysmal weak for mercs, an shouldn't be better for militia. I don't like militia training other militia, as that would make mercs somewhat obsolete.

TBCoW

Quote:
We train green militia just like before. Once new ones are created, we tie a new MILITIA to them. Stats are randomized within a certain range for each stat. Thus some of them might be more promising than others.

Agreed.
Quote:
People love deciding on skills and such. For this reason, we can select which traits a militia has - we choose for them. If you have a bunch of rookies and a bunch of shotguns, it would be smart to assign the 'Ranger' trait to some of them, no?
Each militia rank grants additional traits (that's also how it works currently). So a green militia can only have 1 trait, an elite can have 3.

I don't really like this idea. Instead i think of 2 alternative ways for traits.
1. Assign them randomly while individual militia is created.
2. Instead of you leveling them up, make them learn a major trait upon getting preset stats (like let's say 70 in both MRK and DEX gives marksman 80 in both gives sniper). This way you decrease micromanagement by letting militia getting specialist training or get a 2 trait combo by more genera training.
Traits are only select able if a militia has sufficient stats. So, for example, only those with MRK >= 75 can be given 'Marksman'. This way you can't create hordes of similar militia, and you have to plan whom to give what.
1. If traits are random every battle, then the whole point of this feature (having militia that keep their stats, items and visuals) is longer there. If traits are assigned randomly once, then there's no point in training them - each militia trait set would be a dice throw, and most would be crap.
2. There are way too many traits and too few trait slots for that. It would lead a player to actually not wanting his militia to be good at some stats, as they would 'fill' slots with useless traits (useless to him).
Note that traits do already have stat requirements.

TBCoW

Quote:
Certain traits are only available on higher ranks - so 'Deputy 1' is only open to veterans, and 'Deputy 2' requires 'Deputy 1' and is only available to elites.

I think that either stat requirement or random traits solve this completely.
Quote:
'Doctor' could be a viable trait for militia now. We could allow them to be medics, New_feature: AI medics & officers. Perhaps militia doctors should need special training, and should cost even more? Special care should be taken as to not let this be exploitable - merc doctors must not be replacable.

The nerf to NPC medics is pretty easy. Make wounds not heal automatically after a battle - your militia should spend their kits on wounded soldiers. Because of their low initial medical skills they will burn through resources fast. It's your role to make sure that you get highly trained doctors if you want to keep cities.
Thinking about it... I think a compromise would be okay:
  • Militia medics perform their duties like enemy medics. They also bandage player mercs, but do NOT perform surgery on them, as that would then be an exploit that would allow you to sidestep the need for doctor mercenaries.
  • They cannot heal player mercs.
  • Militia wounds heal as fast as player wounds (which is very slow), but militia doctors can speed that up greatly. They can also combat disease.
Basically militia doctors can do what our doctors can (although they'll be worse at their job), but they will not remove the need for the player to hire doctors. With the initial stats I plan, militia doctors are also relatively hard to acquire (with all the training needed an such). And with the wound staying, it would be very wise to have them in any militia system - ideally the player will always struggle to obtain as many medics as possible.

TBCoW

Quote:
If we do not play with 'equip militia', what items do they get? Currently the traits are selected fitting to the items they get, this is no longer possible. We'd thus need new tables that determine what traits grant what items (so that Rangers would get either shotguns or rifles etc.).

You are right, traits are not the way to go. The best way would be to make classes and class related weapons (CQC, long range, snipers, demolition etc.). While inventing classes and setting skill requirements for them should not be hard,weapon assignment is another story. Weapons need more balancing and finding the way to make sure an assault unit doesn't end up with sniper rifle. Someone has done it few years ago (only for OCTH). We need to include both aiming systems.
Well, I mostly need to fill up tables on what trait gets access to what weapons on what progress level, and then some code to distribute that correctly. Which is very simple, really (why nobody has ever bothered to do that I don't know. I also don't know why people come up with all kinds of complicated methods to circumvent the 50-items-per-progress-level-limit instead of jsut increasing the 50, but I digress... ;)
No need to do any extra stuff for NCTH. The same solution applies there. If that selection then isn't to the liking of the NCTH-crowd, they are free to change it.

Also, unrelated... the current weapon progress tables are whack. It looks like a H&K fanboy came in there. Ugh.

TBCoW

Quote:
If we do play with 'equip militia', they will pick up gear from the sector if they don't have any. Using the above described, yet-to-code interface, we need to be able to add and remove items to them - we can then finetune their inventory to an absurd degree. How finetuned depends on how much time one wants to waste on this, really.

If above point is done, this should be easy. Check what classes are available and then seek a combination of assigned weapons that has the lowest number. This may lead to strange situations like a sniper having AR, because nobody around is skilled enough to get it but generally should work.
Nope. Equip militia has to work with any item, not just those in the equipment tables.

TBCoW

Quote:
A problem in this case is ammunition. Even if we allow them to restock after battle, it could happen that a gun runs dry. We then either need to warn the player of this, or have them drop the gun and select a new one - but this could then be an override to the player specifically giving them that gun.

I see 2 ways to solve it:
1. If you liberated Drassen/travelled to San Mona militia can resupply automatically. They should suffer a penalty for long distance to these places.
2. The way harder way which I doubt you will consider. Militia can 'request' weapons and ammo from other sectors (weapons if they see that a weapon of the class they are assigned to is way better than what they hold [see above with weapon balance]) and mobile militia can carry requested stuff (this includes health/repair kits too) either directly to the requesting unit or chain order to have another mobile militia carry that.
1. That would mean magically travels. Nope.
2. Yes, I really won't consider that happy. Impractical, both to code and to use.

TBCoW

Quote:
The militia redistribution in cities won't be useable any more. We need to come up with an easy way to order masses of individuals to different sectors - easy to use for lots of people, while still allowing to select what each individual does.

And yet again i see 2 ways to do that:
1. Make redistribution split by equal class/total skill
2. Assign each sector some kind of battlefield type (urban/base/semi-open/open) which gives priority to some kind of classes (snipers are more likely to appear in open than base sector scenarios)
Quote:
When we order a squad of militia to move, we need to be able to select who from a sector moves and who stays behind - selecting all of them is not good enough.

Just use the point 1 of the above.
1. That still does not allow me to send my militia to where I want them.
2. Adds a complicated overhead for selecting terrain types and still does not allow me to send whom I want where.

TBCoW

About idle behaviour:
Each merc and militia unit with some leadership should be able to train new/current militia.
Militia training done by a unit should give a bonus of third of their skill as percentage bonus so a 100 MRK militia can train new militia that has random MRK and 33% bonus to it or train existing militia in MRK 33% faster. While obviously this could lead to some abuse, you have to remember that first that unit has to reach 100 MRK (and you can't do that only in practice because of set limit) and has to survive battles to be of any use.
Training for militia could be classified as special/general/balanced:
-special as in individual stat (let's say you need some units as snipers and they are lacking MRK)
-general would be specialization for a role:
*unarmed(physical) - 35STR/35DEX/20AGI for max melee damage and generally useful stats
*sniper - 60MRK/40DEX for getting highest CTH
*cqc - 20MRK/20STR/20DEX/30AGI/10EXP for general combat stats
*medic - 80MED/20DEX for almost pure medical training
*utility - 25MED/25LDR/25MEC/325EXP for general healing/repairing
*demolitions - 40DEX/60EXP for explosives/grenade throwing
*mechanic - 20DEX/10EXP/70MEC for repairing stuff
-balanced to train skills lower than average by 10 points
Militia color could be determined by their average class skill points (<60 green / 61-85 blue / 86+ elite).
Militia may practice/teach others/repair/heal.
For teaching others there should be a check if teacher teaches students faster than they all (teacher included) would be practicing.
Healing would be priority for units with medical skills if the troops in sector are low HP. Otherwise medics can do normally assigned task.
Maintenance crew should try to repair every item in sector using current repairing logic. If a repaired combat item is way worse than others existing in city it should be sold or sent to city for full repair (if that item is better in stats for some specific class than other weapons).
When new, better weapons are available, militia should try to get them. This means that militia takes your money for purchasing weapons, kits, attachments (in that case militia training cost/daily fee should be lowered) or militia gets a secret account where percentage of daily fee gets transferred and they use these funds to get stuff.
Well, as said, militia training other militia is a no-go for me. Multiple training assignments make everything to complicated. I've come to accept that most people are scared if a feature goes into too much detail, so one assignment should be enough.
Militia rank is determined by whether one has promoted them. As this is a decision that seems reasonable for a commander of all forces (which the player is) to take, this is his decision to make.
I won't allow militia to repair gear, as that is an obvious exploit.
Militia should not buy weapons by themselves. They use whatever crap I allow them to get their hands on. They are not a regular army, they are quickly mobilised civilians.

cpt.Shen

I don't really like tha idea of having doctors within militia. It wouldn't make sense since there are only 2 real doctors in Arulco (both in Cambria Hospital) and that's why combating the diseases and healthcare in general are a problem in that crazy country. "Paramedic" should be max. Profesional doctors are trained in schools/academics and not "in the field".

It would be wonderful to have an option to train a specific, specialized group of militia, whose equipment and numbers would then be dependent on their role in the field. For example:
1. Gunmen (gunslingers and autoweapons) - you can train as many as you wish - equipment: pretty obvious
2. Heavy (heavy weapons and bombardiers) - 1 per squad or 2:32 (max militia) - equipment: grenades, granade launcher, bazookas and mortars
3. Medics (paramedic)- 1 per squad or 3-4:32 (max militia) - eq.: armor, knife and medpacks
4. Snipers? - 1 per squad or 2:32 (max militia) - NO armor (you have to protect your precious snipers!), sniper rifles, binoculars (or not), some kind of camo

Ideally, heavy and snipers should cost more, but that could be problematic for moding I guess.
They won't be fullblown doctors, they are more or less paramedics. It is important that they do not replace doctors for the player.

What you suggest is a class-system - press 1 to 4, and a finished militiamen jumpy out of it. This aims to be more than that. In my view, classes in games are a way of paternalism - because designers don't want to give the player freedom (or don't trust their game balance), the restrict us. I see no need to do that here.



I know now that it could never work between us, as much as we wanted to, it could never be! Not because you're a rabbit, but because you're black.

If you want, you can donate to me. This will not affect how and what I code, and I will not code specific features in return. I will be thankful though.

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Re: In-development feature: Individual militia[message #339023 is a reply to message #339020] Tue, 20 January 2015 01:32 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Flugente

 
Messages:3509
Registered:April 2009
Location: Germany
Oh also, thanks to CVB, we now have trait symbols:

http://i60.tinypic.com/24qlndj.png
I am very satisfied with this. Still need to shorten the arrows, but you get the idea.



I know now that it could never work between us, as much as we wanted to, it could never be! Not because you're a rabbit, but because you're black.

If you want, you can donate to me. This will not affect how and what I code, and I will not code specific features in return. I will be thankful though.

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Captain

Re: In-development feature: Individual militia[message #339034 is a reply to message #339020] Tue, 20 January 2015 14:09 Go to previous messageGo to next message
cpt.Shen is currently offline cpt.Shen

 
Messages:8
Registered:January 2015
Flugente wrote on Tue, 20 January 2015 00:20




  • When created (by being trained by our mercs), they start with basic, randomised stats. We can rename this process 'recruitment' or 'basic training', it works like the current militia training.
  • In combat, they can gain stats and experience just like our mercs. I still think a faster rate would be reasonable here - they don't get near the combat experience our mercs get.
  • In some sectors, they will train just by being there. Examples would be the Alma shooting range for MRK or the Cambria hospital for MED. No need to assign anything - any militia there will train those stats somewhat, so we do not require any assignments or orders.
  • After 'basic training', our mercs can still train militia, but a bit different this time. This process is now renamed 'advanced training'. It does not cost money anymore, but also does not create new people. For each trainable stat a trainer merc has, we calculate a pool of learning points. These are then distributed among trainable militia present.
    A militia can only be trained in a stat if the trainer has better stats. Similar, a militia will only gain experience if trained by someone with more experience.
    The amount of points a trainer generates in a stat depends on his own stats, his leadership (leadership somewhat represents how good they are at teaching others), their personality, teaching trait etc.. As a result, the trainers need to be good at what they are teaching, but also need to be at least somewhat good and leading.
    I don't see the need to have a separate training assignment for each stat - just have one assignment for all of them. The stat makeup of the trainer determines where this training will work best.



As a result, it is no longer viable to park some crappy mercs in the hinterland an have them train veteran platoons all on their own. It always seemed a bit wrong to me that Biff, Flo and Ira could train hordes of battle-hardened troops.
With this new system, low-level trainers would still perform the basic training of militia. Advanced training has to come from mercs who have an idea of what they are doing. In the ideal case, you would combine this - if you want your militia to be better shooters, the best place to let them be trained in the Alma shooting range by the likes of Len or Scope. If you want medics, let them learn their skills from Spider and Cliff in Cambria - they might not learn EXP there, but their MED should go up.


Ok, most of these sound resonable but I don't understand the need to teach militia new specific skills only in specific towns. Reasonable and logical (hospital and shooting range) as it sounds, it's not practical. I would have to make my way to alma and conquer it so my troops can get more points in accuracy but still suck at medicine, so I must take this same group with me and conquer cambria so they get more points in medicine and/or become doctors/paramedics. This also makes Alma a priority for everyone because.... accuracy > any other stat, when it comes to militia.

Why not just create the same menu (stats) our mercs have (when assigned to "Train->Practice->...") to Advanced Training anywhere on the map?
If we want pure medics in militia -> we choose Spider and Niddle for militia's advanced training
If we want snipers -> scope and lynx
If we want simple shooters with, say... 40 stat in medicine -> Ice and Spider
If want heavy armed militia -> grizzly + ...

[Updated on: Tue, 20 January 2015 15:41]

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Re: In-development feature: Individual militia[message #339041 is a reply to message #339034] Tue, 20 January 2015 21:25 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Flugente

 
Messages:3509
Registered:April 2009
Location: Germany
The bonus in certain sectors simply applies where its reasonable. If the player is torn between which town to liberate first, all the better... in current gameplay, there is no sound reason to go for Alma over Cambria unless you are into mass interrogation.

To me, one 'advanced training' assignment seems enough (especially considering the clusterfuck that assignment and facility UI has become). The stats of the trainers pretty much define where the training goes, so to speak. Might change later on, currently I don't see it.



I know now that it could never work between us, as much as we wanted to, it could never be! Not because you're a rabbit, but because you're black.

If you want, you can donate to me. This will not affect how and what I code, and I will not code specific features in return. I will be thankful though.

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Captain

Re: In-development feature: Individual militia[message #339138 is a reply to message #339020] Tue, 27 January 2015 00:50 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Hawkeye is currently offline Hawkeye

 
Messages:2412
Registered:October 2005
Location: Australia
Flugente wrote on Tue, 20 January 2015 10:20
Grrrrr. You know what? I HATE this new forum. I've only now spotted these new posts, and they are almost a week old. I sure hope the forum gets returned to a useful form soon, because in its current form it is... suboptimal to use.


It's not ideal, but have you tried using the 'Unread messages' under the top bar of functions? Seems one of the easier ways to at least check on new posts, even if they aren't filtered.

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Re: In-development feature: Individual militia[message #339333 is a reply to message #339138] Mon, 09 February 2015 00:18 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Flugente

 
Messages:3509
Registered:April 2009
Location: Germany
Extremely relevant feature is relevant.

And will be a challenge to fit to this *shudder*



I know now that it could never work between us, as much as we wanted to, it could never be! Not because you're a rabbit, but because you're black.

If you want, you can donate to me. This will not affect how and what I code, and I will not code specific features in return. I will be thankful though.

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Captain

Re: In-development feature: Individual militia[message #340548 is a reply to message #339333] Tue, 14 April 2015 08:47 Go to previous messageGo to next message
mmm is currently offline mmm

 
Messages:63
Registered:May 2013
I was not really a fan of equipable militia and would have been against the idea of the persistent militia status, that's untill I learnt about the new militia command developed by sevenfm.

That means there's real possibility to apply specific capability possessed by the militia in a intelligent way, instead of leaving the AI to send my militia to death. Equipable militia and persistent stat would still be too much of micromanaging IMO, especially for my massive militia force. But I could see that at times, the features can be synergetic with a overhauled militia command, since you know that the militia will have consistent equipments from battle to battle, and you have means to ensure their survival of more than one battle. Still they lose some of their distinction as the cannon fodder. After all when you spend so much energy trying to manage the militia, you'd like them to be survivable and effective, that means assuming more control in tactical combat. The better idea could be to just hire to more mercs...

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Corporal
Re: In-development feature: Individual militia[message #340888 is a reply to message #338230] Tue, 05 May 2015 15:08 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Lord Leperman is currently offline Lord Leperman

 
Messages:31
Registered:February 2006
This, this is the absolute one thing I'm waiting for. I had a blast managing an army thanks to the equipable militia feature, and I'm looking forward to this one in particular. I always wanted to have my mercs lead a platoon of militia to storm an enemy stronghold, and this feature will be that dream come true.

Since the last post by Flugente was a few months back, I'm wondering if this project is still on going or not...

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Private 1st Class
Re: In-development feature: Individual militia[message #340893 is a reply to message #340888] Wed, 06 May 2015 00:49 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Flugente

 
Messages:3509
Registered:April 2009
Location: Germany
Well... I still plan to code this, but I'm really tied up in real-life work for the next months, so in the meantime, I'll only do small new features, and this is rather big. There's also some issues with this - militia movement and especially item distribution - that not only need a complete new UI, but basically a complete (re-)design. So, uh... this might take a while not sure

Good to know, though, that other people are still interested cheeky



I know now that it could never work between us, as much as we wanted to, it could never be! Not because you're a rabbit, but because you're black.

If you want, you can donate to me. This will not affect how and what I code, and I will not code specific features in return. I will be thankful though.

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Captain

Re: In-development feature: Individual militia[message #343861 is a reply to message #340893] Tue, 26 January 2016 14:17 Go to previous messageGo to next message
CVB is currently offline CVB

 
Messages:129
Registered:September 2014
Location: Berlin
Would you need a new icon, now that Hunter and Survivalist are split?

Proposals: a campfire, a tent, a compass. Or slightly more humorous, canned food with a spoon

[Updated on: Tue, 26 January 2016 14:44]




Peace is a purely theoretical state of affairs whose existence we deduce because there have been intervals between wars.
J. Pournelle

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Sergeant
Re: In-development feature: Individual militia[message #344265 is a reply to message #340893] Sat, 27 February 2016 22:54 Go to previous messageGo to next message
mercsdontcry is currently offline mercsdontcry

 
Messages:17
Registered:October 2013
Flugente wrote on Tue, 05 May 2015 23:49
Well... I still plan to code this, but I'm really tied up in real-life work for the next months, so in the meantime, I'll only do small new features, and this is rather big. There's also some issues with this - militia movement and especially item distribution - that not only need a complete new UI, but basically a complete (re-)design. So, uh... this might take a while not sure

Good to know, though, that other people are still interested cheeky


Just to let you know, people are still interested in this absolutely great feature big grin thumbs up

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Private
Re: In-development feature: Individual militia[message #344408 is a reply to message #338230] Sun, 06 March 2016 21:02 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Tiger87 is currently offline Tiger87

 
Messages:29
Registered:October 2014
This thread is one possible answer on the Question why Flugente is a motherfucking Codinggod. If Flugente were a woman I would want to make her 10 children. Great idea thumbs up

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Private 1st Class
Re: In-development feature: Individual militia[message #344409 is a reply to message #344408] Sun, 06 March 2016 21:16 Go to previous messageGo to next message
DepressivesBrot is currently offline DepressivesBrot

 
Messages:3658
Registered:July 2009
This has got to be the weirdest shit I read all week.


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Captain

Re: In-development feature: Individual militia[message #345716 is a reply to message #344409] Sun, 29 May 2016 04:02 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Julix is currently offline Julix

 
Messages:105
Registered:June 2010
Location: Canada

Just FYI still crazy interested in this.

I like personality etc. - and like someone said above hiring more mercs might be the better solution - but I hate hate having to click a million times per round. I like controlling a handful of mercenaries, but would love to have a second handful on my side that is reasonably effective, but that I don't have to control. *dream* - the skill trees by the way are so amazing that I would love to have that for my normal mercenaries! Wish I could train Dr. Q to be all he ever was (Martial Artist, Doctor, Night specialist, ... was there others? I'd love to give him athleticism and sneaking... HA! - but I don't just want to change the entry for him to have all that from the start, training him from paramedic to doctor for example would be a step. The above might be the lvl 9 endgame configuration... - Also the cheap mercs often have fewer skill traits thingies. In the old skills I found that less noticable. There I could take lousy mercs and use them until they were better than the best... Well going off topic here.

Just wanted to say thanks again for all the great work you already did, Flugente. I was procrastinating for hours, not playing the game but just reading the threads of your work and your process and others idea contributions etc.

Really cool work on the travelling militia as well!

And Depri, thanks for maintaining the updates for all this time! So handy!

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Sergeant
Re: In-development feature: Individual militia[message #362824 is a reply to message #338230] Thu, 08 April 2021 23:21 Go to previous messageGo to next message
No-Nothing is currently offline No-Nothing

 
Messages:81
Registered:March 2013
Hello!
I tried out later AIMNAS at last... with all those new features. I like individual militia. No more weird things like a mainly female militia squad suddenly becoming all males, and in next sector again transforming into some random crowd. That was really khmmm... angry Running through militia dossiers feels quite persuasive. Great job!
And, inspired, I wish it would be expanded a bit further. First it would be nice to add one visual component, along with skin color, 1 of x faces, as bonus to skin color precisely. Here's a pair of examples of the darkest skin: Lol bear
https://ibb.co/mJhCg3M
Next let's make showy shout-out with their faces during battles. Something like this:
https://ibb.co/crg1RgM
These should not be too often though! I think amount of enemy shout-outs is adjusted good in AIMNAS right now. The same would fit well for militia too.

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Corporal 1st Class
Re: In-development feature: Individual militia[message #362835 is a reply to message #338230] Sat, 10 April 2021 20:13 Go to previous message
No-Nothing is currently offline No-Nothing

 
Messages:81
Registered:March 2013
I like how you added need of healing militia. I even set it up to be harder than default. Straight off this feature has got a problem! There's no means to separate wounded off (and kinda send'em to your spontaneous field hospital).
The only way I can think about is squads! And since you already did implemented sending round militia like you send merks there seems to be no escaping "militia squads" some way or other.
I designed new GUI for militia site including want-to-be-feature "militia squads". But it's not just adding squads, it's reconstruction of the whole layout as the current layout looks too encumbered. I made it more compact & informative.
https://ibb.co/Rcsd7rL
I understand that making GUI pixel to pixel is too time consuming hence I suggest only consider my layout. Still if you wanna give a try for advanced design I can provide necessary graphics!

[Updated on: Sat, 10 April 2021 20:16]

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Corporal 1st Class
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