Ranking In Game.

A Suggestion.

I Know That You Can't Get All Of The Special Powers (Your Choise) , But Can You Increase Points:

Maybe:
(If TAOW Ranking System is different please reply)

1 Star (Brigadier General) -> 3 Points
2 Stars (Major General) -> 7 Points
3 Stars (Lieutenant General) -> 10 Points
4 Starts (General) -> 14 Points
5 Stars (General Of The Army/Navy/Airforce/Marine Corps) [Marshal] -> 20 Points


Remeber This Is Just A Suggestion
But Also Can You Make Ranks By Military (Like US Ranks Are Different Than Russia etc...)

Regards From James

That's an excellent idea

We still haven't made the rank system (we are saving that after all the vehicle models are done, that is due to the fact that we are still to choose the unlockables, though we have chosen many already), but it will be very similar, also, just like you said, European and Russian ranks will differ from the American ones (to keep up with realism).

Also, the player's maximum ranks won't be as higher as a General of the Army, that is due to the fact that field commanders are generally less ranked (and we want to keep up with realism in that sense as well).

EDIT: About the points, we will try to balance them, some units / tactical strikes will cost more than others.

i have no doubts that you guys have got ideas for unlocks pilled up to the moon! but im sure that the ones that make it through will still be in plentiful supply, which is why i'm begging you, please get rid of that crappy ZH 7 points per match rubbish!!!
if you make it like james said and give it up to 20 points, the matches will be longer and more fun, and wont just max out straight away then everyone just fights fir ages with top weapons.

Definitely, with the amount of firepower/special abilities that unlocked weapons/vehicles posses, if we only had a mere 7 points, that would be highly problematic (I mean, we don't want artillery raining down the sky on the first 5 minutes , the same goes for tanks and aircraft).

We want players to take their time, work together with lighter vehicles and infantry in the beginning, and then eventually gaining heavier hardware as the player progress through his ingame "ranking career".

One thing we are focused, besides vehicles and special strikes/abilities, is to able players to unlock specific "Upgrade Packs" which able several units to being upgraded with special armament and other upgrades.

The "Game Modes" will have a strong role on deciding the pace of the action, we will make maps which will able players to unleash everything from quick and aggressive skirmishes to true battles of attrition (which can take up to several hours).

Snake wrote:Definitely, with the amount of firepower/special abilities that unlocked weapons/vehicles posses, if we only had a mere 7 points, that would be highly problematic (I mean, we don't want artillery raining down the sky on the first 5 minutes , the same goes for tanks and aircraft).

lol. the only thing more deadly than a tank being paradropped in, is a tank being paradropped in ...when the parachute fails! "WHAT THE F-" *SQUISH!*

Snake wrote:The "Game Modes" will have a strong role on deciding the pace of the action, we will make maps which will able players to unleash everything from quick and aggressive skirmishes to true battles of attrition (which can take up to several hours).

wow. that will be VERY impressive if you manage to suspend matches for several hours! if you pull that off, you wont have to be putting out map after map for download from people getting bored of the current ones, meaning each map can be made very precisely and to a high standard.
im sure the maps you guys have made (if any) are to a very high standard, im talking more about after release. take CWC for example, there initial maps were really good, the ones they made before release. but after release, they just ported over ZH maps, and the last to maps they actually made, were just a bit of terrain really.

One of the greatest "extras" we get from not using the base system is that we'll avoid having huge empty terrains (the "building plains", very unrealistic) and the fact that the map won't need to be "overloaded" with bases.

That will allow us to enhance and making pretty and realistic cities , forests, enhanced detail to the building/vegitation themselves, the map's environment (combined with the realistic ambiance) and the fact that the player will want to use the map for his/her advantage (to gain the better tactical position, capturing "strong points", capturing Airports and other buildings which will assist the capturing player during the battle, etc.).

i never thought about that. sure i've been following along and am full aware of the removal of bases, and the thought did cross my mind that this would mean no base building spaces. but i forgot that without bases, there's more room for the engine to put more work into other things. all the AI's base destroying scripts will be gone making room for new combat scripts. without bases the engine can proccess more map detail! i was wondering how you planned to make all the added quality such as grass and building detail work, now i get it! no bases, better maps! did you guys actually think that through when you removed bases or is it just a nice little bonus you found along the way? because either way, it's brilliant!!!

Exactly!!!

In fact, that was our main incentive to move forward with such a bold move (to remove bases altogether), the compensation would be EXCELLENT, and so we decided to delete them , due to the fact that the AI won't need to destroy bases, it can be much more enhanced in other areas such as terrain movement and most of all, responsiveness to player's attacks, the AI will actively use the environment (such as "fortifying cities") and try to creep up on the player (to flank and catch the adversary with the pants down ), that's why we are nicknaming our AI as a "Smart AI"

It's not news that bases and their dedicated scripts are one of the main causes (if not THE main cause) of a ZH's mod crash (too much "attention" needed to be put into this in order to work perfectly). By removing bases, we simply "eliminate" such issues in one go.

With the time we would otherwise need in order to "fix" possible base-relationed errors, we can focus on creating better tows, environments and even enhancing the AI to uniquely move and use them

... *speechless*

how much extra juice do you think this'll give you for other game enhancements?
(you don't need to say an exact memory number, just 'not much, lots, heaps! etc...' will do)

I have no estimative at this point, though I think it can be considered a "normal / medium" mem capacity or pc power.

Marc is making sure that TAOW won't be "heavy" (both on memory usage and computer power) so I wouldn't worry about it being a "Crysis" ZH counterpart.

Snake wrote:due to the fact that the AI won't need to destroy bases, it can be much more enhanced in other areas such as terrain movement and most of all, responsiveness to player's attacks, the AI will actively use the environment (such as "fortifying cities") and try to creep up on the player (to flank and catch the adversary with the pants down ), that's why we are nicknaming our AI as a "Smart AI"

i think that that'd probably be best that before the 'Smarter' parts of the AI get made, that you should look deeper into the terrain movement part. because (correct me if im wrong) i think that i heard from many ZH mods, especially from the guys over at VGO, that the pathfinding AI is one of the main gamespeed sluggers of the whole game that EA never fixed. so if this problem were iscolated, hopefully the results would be fantastic gamespeed improvement.

That's too true, we gotta make sure we have "solid bases" for the standard AI commands before moving on to the "advanced AI section" or it could be a bigger problem later on.

do you have any clus as to what causes the Pathfinding slow-down? because although we all know how lazy game publishers can be *cough!* EA! *cough!*, but you'd think they would've resolved a problem as critical as basic movement!?
if you cant figure it out, you should definatley talk to the guys at VGO, and i think maybe even there was a mention of the same issues with CWC?? maybe you could ask Skleni? he's pretty easy to grab a hold of.

Pyrospastiac wrote:do you have any clus as to what causes the Pathfinding slow-down?

Well, me and Marc have made some theories about it.

Pyrospastiac wrote:because although we all know how lazy game publishers can be *cough!* EA! *cough!*, but you'd think they would've resolved a problem as critical as basic movement!?

I'd say they should have

Pyrospastiac wrote:if you cant figure it out, you should definatley talk to the guys at VGO, and i think maybe even there was a mention of the same issues with CWC?? maybe you could ask Skleni? he's pretty easy to grab a hold of.

I suppose they've been having some big issues with pathfinding?

TAOW's AI pathfinding will be kinda different (specially since we won't have to worry about base scripts and other "prone-to-be-problematic" issues), therefore we can focus on pathfinding instead.

Our AI will be very "curious", I think that Marc also managed to enhance pathfinding and that will hopefully simplify the process (and hopefully preventing future issues), I mean, pathfinding is a big issue on a more "tactical" mod like TAOW.