Data-driven decision making is the only way to go
To try to better communicate the reason behind changes, I’m trying out a slightly more fleshed-out set of patch notes to accompany the summary published on the mod’s Workshop page.
Each balance change will include a few lines providing context as to why the change was made, something that was often difficult to do within a single cell on a spreadsheet.
All the minor bugfixes etc which don’t affect gameplay are also listed in their entirety.
The damage calculations for RoN are, in short, complicated.
Units have a base attack value, which then goes through potentially up to at least eight unique damage modifiers12 depending on the units (and/or buildings) and circumstances involved. After all the modifiers, the defending unit’s armor is applied as a flat reduction and you end up with the final damage value.3
All of the static modifiers are calculated on game load, allowing for the values that are hardcoded into the game to be modified further by its game files, such as through official patches and user-made mods. The resulting calculation is a 493×493 table made by the game featuring every unit and building in RoN, even some that can never enter combat (Bison, Whales), or that are never used in the game (Siege/Catapult Ships).
This 493² matrix is part of the enormous header located in save game files, meaning we’re able to extract and view it. Here’s how to go about that.
Continue reading “Extracting RoN’s Damage Modifiers Matrix/Table”
Depending on how you classify things, there are three or four different forms for RoN mods:
While pursuing improvements for CBP Alpha 7, I’ve explored many ideas to improve the usability of the mod. In doing so, I got this close to creating another mod format that would’ve combined the stability advantages of Direct mods with the file separation that Local mods have, and the distribution and ease-of-use benefits that Workshop mods have.4 Here’s what went wrong.
Continue reading “That Time I Almost Created a New Mod Format for RoN”
When playing Co-op in Mechwarrior 5: Mercenaries, if you get a mission that starts from a dropship (rather than just spawning directly onto the map), you sometimes lose mouse control when it’s time to exit the dropship. You can still fire, and the mouse will work on the game menu, but you can no longer aim using the mouse.
As an Nvidia GPU user, pull up the Ansel overlay using ALT+F2, then close it again. Mouse control returns.
Now that nearly 100 people have subscribed to Fall of Nations, it seems like I should go into more detail about what exactly I want to accomplish with it. I’m also starting to run into the character limit of a Workshop mod’s description – and even if I wasn’t it’s still becoming pretty unwieldy.
Let’s start with the broadest strokes and work our way down from there.
At the end of last year, I documented the never-built parts list for my dad’s PC.
Now, nearly 26 months since the original parts list request, that system has finally been purchased and assembled – and at just about the worst possible time.
Continue reading “26 Months Later: My Dad’s PC Build (July/August 2020)”
I have a lot of stuff I’m working on right now. Some are large projects (e.g. Olaf guide, Fall of Nations), some are smaller (like individual articles), and there are a few that are sort of in between (e.g. B5 giffing). If my study schedule goes as expected then I have ~8 months of less than a full-time study workload. After the 8 months is over I don’t jarringly stop all content, but I can’t realistically study full-time and do content full-time simultaneously – time just doesn’t work like that.
Over the past couple weeks or so I’ve spent quite a bit of time figuring out what and how I want to work on things over this coming 8 month window, and how long I expect each project to take.
Aka “that time I told a Twitter user to fuck off”.
Continue reading “2018 US violent crime statistics by race/ethnicity”
A few weeks ago /r/leagueoflegends ran a contest for reaching 4 million subscribers to the subreddit. There were four categories, and four winners in each category. With around 2 days left on the submission deadline, I submitted a Loss parody for the category of “4 image description” and ended up getting first place, winning myself 1848 RP.
Here are some notes about the submission I made.5
In the course of my RoN modding adventures, I decided to make a broad-scope “tech demo” style mod, showcasing some of the moddable aspects of RoN that I felt were being underutilisied – and hopefully learning a few things in the process.
After trying to mod a few things that I feel have been vastly undermodded, I ran into.. some problems. After much frustrating troubleshooting and testing, I realised this was due a limitation of RoN’s mod manager.
I then got to work on how to get around it.
Continue reading “My Workaround for the Limitations of the RoN Mod Manager”