Home » PLAYER'S HQ 1.13 » v1.13 General Gameplay Talk » Why is "masochist mode" on by default?
| Why is "masochist mode" on by default?[message #339508]
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Thu, 19 February 2015 02:27 
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 Eyestabber |
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Messages:25
Registered:February 2015 |
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OK, I know I've said that I love 1.13, but some "design choices" are simply baffling. Namely: counter attacks. DCA was actually fun to deal with. But massive counter attacks, after a while, become a sad overused joke. Conquered a SAM site? Cool, have some 60 guys to celebrate. New city liberated? Here's 82 guys joining the party. Yo, remember that city you took 4 hours ago and maxed out the town militia? It would be a shame if the garrison had to face 93 guys, wouldn't it?
I don't care how "realistic", "hardcore" or whatever they are. There is a thin line between making the game more challenging and turning it into a form of virtual masochism. Honestly, JA is a GAME and it's supposed to be FUN. Sloggin through endless battles on maps that I've conquered 3 hours ago is NOT fun. Btw, I don't mind facing tougher defenses, but having to fend off wave after wave of idiotic counter attacks is really boring. I've already got a job where I can do repetitive boring stuff, don't need my games to do the same, no thank you.
Aggressive AI shouldn't be ON by default, this is just silly. I've already found it on the INI and disabled it, but it seems like I have to start a new game for the changes to take effect, which I will NOT. GABBI ftw, and I ain't even gonna pretend to feel bad about using ALT + O to skip the masochistic borefest.
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Private 1st Class
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| Re: Why is "masochist mode" on by default?[message #339509 is a reply to message #339508]
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Thu, 19 February 2015 04:15 
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| Vincent J. Claymore |
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Messages:285
Registered:February 2011 |
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Does it really have anything to do with the settings? There are going to be counter attacks in any case and they always cause more militia casualties than enemy losses. That's why I defend my cities with one merc in a bunker per sector... a lot less trouble, better result.
[Updated on: Thu, 19 February 2015 04:15] Report message to a moderator
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Master Sergeant
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| Re: Why is "masochist mode" on by default?[message #339518 is a reply to message #339511]
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Thu, 19 February 2015 23:40
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| Flugente |
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Messages:3509
Registered:April 2009
Location: Germany |
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FYI, AGGRESSIVE_STRATEGIC_AI can be turned off during a campaign - the attacks are created upon completely liberating a town. However, counterattacks on SAM sites are not a part of this. The queen has always sent a team to retake the SAMs, since vanilla, though 60 seems a bit much - you sure you didn't fiddle with some settings there?
A city sector is not attacked until a 'grace period' is over (DifficultySettings.xml):
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GracePeriodInHoursAfterSectorLiberation : This is a delay between the player taking a sector, and the queen being able to decide to attack it.
A longer grace period makes the game easier by giving the player more time to prepare for counter-attacks.
GracePeriodInDaysAfterPatrolDestroyed : This is a delay between the player destroying an enemy patrol, and the queen being able to refill that patrol.
A longer grace period causes defeated enemy patrols to reappear less often.
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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.Report message to a moderator
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| Re: Why is "masochist mode" on by default?[message #339609 is a reply to message #339559]
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Mon, 23 February 2015 06:01
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| Eyestabber |
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Messages:25
Registered:February 2015 |
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Well, it's just that the CONSTANT waves of counter attacks quickly manage to turn the game into a CHORE. Sure, I learned that I can tackle a big CA by taking advantage of the fact that the AI can only have 32 guys on every sector, so a counter consisting of 3 stacks of 20-32-20 can be dealt with with 2 attacks and 1 defense, thus avoiding a single battle against 72 guys. But that's beside the point! I wanna advance the plot, not play whack-a-mole!
Also, from my experience, I would NOT call the Queens's troops "finite" at all!
Anyhow, I just managed to beat the game. Will provide some feedback and thoughts on 1.13 latter on, if that's ok with you guys. Something like "1.13 as perceived by a guy who started playing JA2 in 2015".
Also, I'd like to thank everyone who answered my (SEVERAL) questions along the way. The Bear's Pit is probably one of the most helpful communities around, of that I'm pretty sure.
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Private 1st Class
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| Re: Why is "masochist mode" on by default?[message #339610 is a reply to message #339609]
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Mon, 23 February 2015 12:04
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| JA2 Fanatic |
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Messages:40
Registered:February 2005
Location: Vienna/austria |
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well how strong the queen pushes against you is up to the settings you play, you can turn all that off and have a walk in the park or go in between, or have all that aggressiveness options on. you can turn the whole counterattack thingy off if you want.
you can crank up the AI to max 64 per sector, in case 32 are not enough for you ;)
from the numbers you mention you play expert difficulty? in a novice or experienced game the CA´s are smaller i think.
however, the point is, all this features to make the queen more aggressive and not run out of troops is made for people that are tired of the walk in the park game. i like the whack a mole game, cause i was bored by the queen doing nothing basically in vanilla mode. i do not play the game to advance the plot the XXth time, or to kill the queen the XXth time.
i play the game to have a enjoyable campaign where i can manage and plot against a "active" AI, that does not use wit but at least brute force to get my attention.
depending on how tough your settings are you need to tweak the militia to where you like it. for example, you can allow up to 32 militia in sectors, with reinforcements it would mean the attacker need to fight 64 or 96 militia in the first auto resolve battle, depending on if they can reinforce from 1 or 2 sides.
with such a setting, you A. have more militia to use in battle when you trigger the CA and B. the militia can defend your city against regular attacks on a difficult setting, like up to 30-40 guys without a sweat. only when the huge attacks come in(in my game around 100 with 25%extra elite) you need to be present to avoid total destruction of the militia. for everything else but big attacks the militia will loose troops but you just retrain them, dont rly need to be present unless you want.
if your 20 militia per sector get raped by a harder difficulty setting, it would mean you need to beef them up.
so if that was your first game at all, you did go in balls deep  but i would have recommended to turn off the extra aggressive AI and the like, and play on "excpirienced" setting. that would have totaly stoped the need to GABBY and ALT-O you through the harder sections.
with all the aggressive settings "on" the game does produce insane difficulty spikes at times, give you that. however if you ever get in the situation where you replay the game for the XXth time, you may also look for that extra layer of difficulty
[Updated on: Mon, 23 February 2015 12:14] Report message to a moderator
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Corporal
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| Re: Why is "masochist mode" on by default?[message #339626 is a reply to message #339625]
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Mon, 23 February 2015 19:43
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| Vincent J. Claymore |
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Messages:285
Registered:February 2011 |
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What's silly is, that it takes two hours to walk from one sector to the next, 5 min in cities. But reinforcements get there in 3 turns (which equals a number of seconds). Now THAT is plenty silly.
[Updated on: Mon, 23 February 2015 19:43] Report message to a moderator
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Master Sergeant
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| Re: Why is "masochist mode" on by default?[message #340746 is a reply to message #340668]
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Sun, 26 April 2015 12:55
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| Tyxe |
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Messages:78
Registered:May 2012
Location: France |
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silversurfer wrote on Wed, 22 April 2015 18:39The high amount of troops the OP mentioned don't show on experienced let alone easy difficulty.
The DCA and aggressive AI on by default is a huge mistake IMO.
My guess is even playing in Novice setting a new player will feel raped by these options with the huge spike of difficulty coming from "nowhere".
Anyway i'm very interested by what you said, i like a lot the idea of counter attacks/DCA but i disable it everytime because the amounts of troops is way too big for my taste (i play on Expert).
Can someone give me a rough estimate of the amounts of troops of the DCA/various CA i would fight respectively in a Novice and Experienced setting ?
The idea would be for me to play on a Novice or experienced level with agressive AI/DCA on (with an extensive ini modification to adjust the Novice or Experience setting to the Expert settings, lot of things to change and i should be very careful not to miss anything) in order to have "small" CA (the only "difficulty thing" that is hardcoded as far as i know) in an actual Expert setting.
The ideal amount of troops in CA i would enjoy is between 16-32 max.
Edit : also where did these troops come from ? (taken from the queen's pool quotas or added to it ?)
[Updated on: Sun, 26 April 2015 12:59] Report message to a moderator
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Corporal
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| Re: Why is "masochist mode" on by default?[message #341556 is a reply to message #341046]
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Wed, 01 July 2015 01:47
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| DC_da_big |
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Messages:11
Registered:June 2015 |
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Difficulty level influences army pool size Deidranna has. Aggressiveness of AI are separate settings in INI file. There are several setting regulate this.
Drassen counter attack didn't came to me as a surprise, because I've spent like a couple of hours in INI Editor.exe. Before I changed many settings the way I believe was right, I've played one "probing" game (up to my victory at Drassen counter attack) with default settings.
Roaming militia just killed me as all 3 teams I trained followed my mercs to top-right corner of the map and stayed there (in two sectors, actually, as 20 militia per sector is allowed by default). I was looking for Skyrider. And mobile militia prefers to follow mercs and stay in sector your mercs occupied according to default settings. I just couldn't root them out of those sectors!
Also, selling weapons to locals at 10% price is not realistic at all. Hamburger costs $20 in bar and PMM costs $33 when sold to locals? C'mon, it will never happen. Wise locals would fight each other for a chance to buy guns from you. Then they would sell guns to store owners for huge profit. And the more locals would know about such easy money the more will buy from you all the guns you can sell. Locals are mostly unemployed, remember? High demand from them would definitely increase the price of guns they buy from you. I'd estimate fair price around 60% of local store price. The rest would compensate risks and logistics. So I've changed sell to locals price to 33%, just to keep game challenging. I need all the money I can get to train militia!
Regarding counter-attacks. It is fairly simple. One should be a tactician. One sees a counter-attack build up. Enemy forces moving into positions. So one should destroy each attacking group separately! Have militia reinforce your attack. Militia will have losses so re-distribute militia from other sectors after each of your attacks so that you have complete 20 men squad of militia as reinforcement for next attack.
You have several days or hours of cool-down period after you capture each sector. See INI Editor.exe. BTW, "insane" difficulty is for masochists, indeed. 800 men army pool size by default, 8 hours of cool-down time...
So, while you have your cool-down, you should train militia in last sector (you have already trained militia in other sectors, as you don't proceed with attack without your rear secured). Also, get a shipment of land mines and tripwire rolls + grenades from Bobby Ray. As many as you can afford. Have them set up.
Put your mercs into windows of several buildings, check their lines of sight, have them overlap to get good fire coverage.
Also, there must be a way to build fortifications in this game. I know it as I saw "empty sand bags" and there is a "construction" trait. I just didn't figure that out yet.
All these preparations make up a huge and very interesting part of the game.
[Updated on: Wed, 01 July 2015 01:53] Report message to a moderator
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Private
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| Re: Why is "masochist mode" on by default?[message #341613 is a reply to message #341567]
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Mon, 06 July 2015 15:03
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| DC_da_big |
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Messages:11
Registered:June 2015 |
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Yesterday I've had a fantastic time preparing for and repelling Drassen Counter Attack. Deidranna planned to hit with 93 total soldiers, 40 of them - greyshirts, 53 - redshirts. Preparation was obvious, so I've attacked one group of attackers consisting of 20 men before all was set for their attack. When I attacked these 20 men, army called 13 men from adjacent sectors as backup. So I've had 8 mercenaries and 4 bloodcats against 20 soldiers from the beginning and 13 soldiers coming during fight as 1st group were moved down by my team.
2 enemy soldiers were killed by bloodcats.
Forest from where my team acted provided good cover from enemy fire, while enemy had to cross river and then open space between river and forest to engage my team. My casualties: none. Ira was shot in shoulder once (losing 4 points of dexterity) and another merc (I don't remember exactly who it was) got a scratch.
I then spent ~3 hours real time training agility for all my 8 mercs with one of bloodcats, which for some reason didn't participate in a fight from the beginning. I found it by chance while pursuing last wounded redshot who tried to run for his life. After bloodcat training I had a team of 7 level 5 mercs with agility 95-98 and Ira with agility 100, who just didn't want to level up from level 4.
My team then went to Drassen mine, and after ~5 minutes of game time (barely enough to sort out spoils of war and take places for defence) main DCA began. It went very well for me thanks to 4 Mk2 defensive and 5 mini grenades I was able to collect from first group of enemies. I didn't use them all. Agility helped a lot, too, as APs were many and restored fast. My team consisting of 3 mercs occupied wine store building in the west (against 20 enemies) and the rest of my team was on roofs of 3 buildings in the east against 40 enemies. Though I didn't kill a single enemy with a grenade, many of them were savagely beaten by explosions (I've tuned up explosion damage twice in INI Editor.exe). Because enemy didn't have a chance to spread up, being pinned down by fire from my green militia and my mercs.
Screenshots above were taken 3 days (game time) after DCA, in the process of training militia to light blue shirts. I even still have some money left! Light blue shirt militia costs me $1500 per team (I've increased cost twice using INI Editor.exe).
It was real fun. And I didn't abuse save-load this time at all. Drastic contrast with my previous run, when I had only 7 mercs, 3 of them were Ira, Barry and MD. And I didn't have grenades that time. Though only ~68 enemies attacked in that run, I've spent an hour real-time save-loading though that battle. It was not very fun. But I was unprepared and it was a test run anyway.
[Updated on: Mon, 06 July 2015 15:05] Report message to a moderator
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