Matrix Games Forums

Here are some questions on things I'm not sure if they were intended, overlooked or are truly issues.

*On the Unit Option section when selecting your game. No Starting Legendary Units is the title but the mouse over says No Legendary Units appear in the game. Which is it? Does this option remove legendary units from being available at the start as defined in the scenario? Are they replaced with a normal numbered unit? Or as the mouse over says are they completely removed from the game and you never get them????

*On the promote screen for generals the colored band seems below the options. Is that intended to be displayed that way?

*Siege Artillery does correctly filter with the artillery button now. Why are blockade runners still not filtered with ships? They still show up like siege artillery use to no matter what you have selected.

*Do we need the promotion screen at the end of turn, since we can promote from the strategic map?

From the change list:
"In non-remote games, promoting or demoting a general when the "Random Stats" game option is on gives a chance that one or two of the general's stats will randomly increase or decrease by a small amount."
 
What is the chance? Is it an equal chance to go up or down or is it weighted to drop their ratings? I'm promoting a bunch of 1 stars to 2 stars to get the division commanders that i need at the start of the Coming Fury scenario. I'm only selecting generals with good or better ratings displayed (using hidden) and after they are promoted I'm seeing they are now bad generals. Either I'm having bad luck or it's happening too often. IMO this should be a rare random event, not something that happens every time you promote someone.

Should be just no starting ones; I'll put on my list of things to fix.

The colored-band is out of alignment on the promote screen.  It's not a trivial fix and is on my long to-do list, but it doesn't hurt anything.

Will make runners filter with ships.

I wanted to get opinions on whether people still wanted the promotion box.  We thought of making it a game preference, but wanted to see what people thought.  I think it's a useful gizmo.  (I'd really like to make a new "Generals List" -- similar to the Military List, but with 1 column for each general stat, so you could sort your generals by the rating you're interested in and then promote/demote from that screen.  I'd hoped to get that in for this release, but a few things in which we had bugs consumed our development time.  Anyway, when we have time to add a new feature, this'll be at the top of the list.)

When a general is promoted or demoted there's a 50% chance one of his ratings is reduced by 1, and (when this happens) a further 25% chance that a second stat is lowered.  There's then a 33% chance that there's a 50% chance that one of the ratings is increased by 1 and if this happens a 25% chance that a second stat is increased as well.  That 33% chance is in there so that the tendency is to have stats lowered when promotions/demotions happen.  We can change it if people think it should happen more rarely; will look for further feedback on this.

Thanks for the comments/questions!

ORIGINAL: tiredoftryingnames
*On the Unit Option section when selecting your game. No Starting Legendary Units is the title but the mouse over says No Legendary Units appear in the game. Which is it? Does this option remove legendary units from being available at the start as defined in the scenario? Are they replaced with a normal numbered unit? Or as the mouse over says are they completely removed from the game and you never get them????

Yep, that's a tooltip that needs correcting. This prevents the game from randomly generating legendary units among your starting units. In scenarios like A Coming Fury where the designer specified some legendary units, those still appear - but all of the other units are "normal" if this is checked. This does not prevent legendary units from showing up later.

Regards,

- Erik

"I wanted to get opinions on whether people still wanted the promotion box.  We thought of making it a game preference, but wanted to see what people thought.  I think it's a useful gizmo."
 
My first thought was it should be selectable as an option, but I thought it might be easier to just remove it. But since you brought it up that you're looking for opinions then yes I'd vote make it an option for the user to toggle on and off. The Generals List would be a nice addition too down the road.
 
"When a general is promoted or demoted there's a 50% chance one of his ratings is reduced by 1, and (when this happens) a further 25% chance that a second stat is lowered.  There's then a 33% chance that there's a 50% chance that one of the ratings is increased by 1 and if this happens a 25% chance that a second stat is increased as well.  That 33% chance is in there so that the tendency is to have stats lowered when promotions/demotions happen.  We can change it if people think it should happen more rarely; will look for further feedback on this."
 
Well I'm looking forward to seeing what others think but I'd have to say promoting is negative now. It happens too much. Maybe 33% and then 10% for the second trait instead of 50 and 25 for the decrease. We finally get the ability to promote when needed, but doing so makes your army more inept on a massive scale. I've rarely seen traits go up. I think it's swinging too far towards suggesting that being promoted means not many generals can handle the next level. I can see some, but pinning on additional stars shouldn't automatically beat them with an idiot stick.

"Yep, that's a tooltip that needs correcting. This prevents the game from randomly generating legendary units among your starting units. In scenarios like A Coming Fury where the designer specified some legendary units, those still appear - but all of the other units are "normal" if this is checked. This does not prevent legendary units from showing up later."
 
Thanks for further clarifying exactly what that option does. I think I'll use it now. The tooltip should explain exactly what you just said so it's clear.

ORIGINAL: tiredoftryingnames
Well I'm looking forward to seeing what others think but I'd have to say promoting is negative now. It happens too much. Maybe 33% and then 10% for the second trait instead of 50 and 25 for the decrease. We finally get the ability to promote when needed, but doing so makes your army more inept on a massive scale. I've rarely seen traits go up. I think it's swinging too far towards suggesting that being promoted means not many generals can handle the next level. I can see some, but pinning on additional stars shouldn't automatically beat them with an idiot stick.

Hm, I've been testing this too and I just don't see it being that bad that often. In effect, you have a 50% chance of something minorly bad (like a single Great rating becoming a Good rating) or perhaps two such. You also have about a 17% chance of something similarly good. The net effect in my experience is that you rarely really mess up a decent general, just sometimes they're not quite as good at a higher rank as you'd hoped.

I mean, going from Great to Good doesn't really equate to "beating them with an idiot stick". I could understand if they were going from Great to Poor or something similar.

For example, let's say you have a two star guy who is Superb, Excellent, Excellent, Superb. You're all excited at what he could do in charge of your army so you promote him to a four star. 50% of the time, he'll look something like this: Excellent, Excellent, Excellent, Superb. If you get unlucky (about 12.5% of the time) he'll look like this - Excellent, Great, Excellent, Superb. That's basically the worst case scenario, two ratings points lost per promotion. If you do well on the positive roll, he might even go up one rating. Now it's true that you may have had to promote him first from a 1 star to a 2 star to get an idea of what his initial ratings were, then perhaps again to a 3 star, etc. The system can potentially have a greater negative effect in that case over the course of his career and promotions, but each time it's only a 12.5% chance to lose 2 points, so the most likely outcomes are really either no change or a 1 point reduction.

Regards,

- Erik

I should add - if you're seeing steeper losses in ratings, it's probably a bug so please report it! [8D]

I haven't seen any drastic drops although I'm writing down ratings now before promoting to watch this. What I'm seeing is nothing like your awesome General going from Superb to Excellent. I'm seeing alot of Good Good ratings drop 1 level per promotion. 

just a quick question, I've started the Coming Crisis (or whatever) scenario and one of my legendary union brigades has rapid fire guns as a starting ability - In june 1861 - is this right? (can't rember the name atm)

If it's defined as such, yeah it's possible. I don't think I've seen that particular legendary unit, but if it's defined as having that ability it will come in with it. Similarly, some are defined as having particular weapons, etc. Note that having one unit with it won't allow you to buy that for any other unit, so it's definitely "unique" until you research the ability.

ORIGINAL: Grey Hunter

just a quick question, I've started the Coming Crisis (or whatever) scenario and one of my legendary union brigades has rapid fire guns as a starting ability - In june 1861 - is this right? (can't rember the name atm)

I think that one's an error that I plan to fix. I still need to tweak the LU's file before the patch goes gold. But if you remember the name of the unit, please post it here, to make sure I change it. No LU's should have that attribute.

ORIGINAL: Gil R.

ORIGINAL: Grey Hunter

just a quick question, I've started the Coming Crisis (or whatever) scenario and one of my legendary union brigades has rapid fire guns as a starting ability - In june 1861 - is this right? (can't rember the name atm)

I think that one's an error that I plan to fix. I still need to tweak the LU's file before the patch goes gold. But if you remember the name of the unit, please post it here, to make sure I change it. No LU's should have that attribute.

Louisville Legion has that attribute set in the special units file in the data directory. He must have had it set to allow Legandary Units at the start and it was randomly picked to replace a regular unit because neither of the new scenarios starts with that unit which is why not everyone is seeing it.

yeah its the louisville legion. 

ORIGINAL: Grey Hunter

just a quick question, I've started the Coming Crisis (or whatever) scenario and one of my legendary union brigades has rapid fire guns as a starting ability - In june 1861 - is this right? (can't rember the name atm)

It should be the "Louisville Legion". I've seen that one before and it surprised me, but I wasn't complaining.

EDIT: Should have kept reading, asked and answered.

ORIGINAL: ericbabe

I wanted to get opinions on whether people still wanted the promotion box.  We thought of making it a game preference, but wanted to see what people thought.  I think it's a useful gizmo.  (I'd really like to make a new "Generals List" -- similar to the Military List, but with 1 column for each general stat, so you could sort your generals by the rating you're interested in and then promote/demote from that screen.  I'd hoped to get that in for this release, but a few things in which we had bugs consumed our development time.  Anyway, when we have time to add a new feature, this'll be at the top of the list.)

What a great idea!

Should be just no starting ones; I'll put on my list of things to fix.

The colored-band is out of alignment on the promote screen. It's not a trivial fix and is on my long to-do list, but it doesn't hurt anything.

Will make runners filter with ships.

I wanted to get opinions on whether people still wanted the promotion box. We thought of making it a game preference, but wanted to see what people thought. I think it's a useful gizmo. (I'd really like to make a new "Generals List" -- similar to the Military List, but with 1 column for each general stat, so you could sort your generals by the rating you're interested in and then promote/demote from that screen. I'd hoped to get that in for this release, but a few things in which we had bugs consumed our development time. Anyway, when we have time to add a new feature, this'll be at the top of the list.)

When a general is promoted or demoted there's a 50% chance one of his ratings is reduced by 1, and (when this happens) a further 25% chance that a second stat is lowered. There's then a 33% chance that there's a 50% chance that one of the ratings is increased by 1 and if this happens a 25% chance that a second stat is increased as well. That 33% chance is in there so that the tendency is to have stats lowered when promotions/demotions happen. We can change it if people think it should happen more rarely; will look for further feedback on this.

Thanks for the comments/questions! ericbabe

Yep, that's a tooltip that needs correcting. This prevents the game from randomly generating legendary units among your starting units. In scenarios like A Coming Fury where the designer specified some legendary units, those still appear - but all of the other units are "normal" if this is checked. This does not prevent legendary units from showing up later.

Regards,

- Erik

Hi,

Personally I like the option of completely being able to have not any LU's. Reason; a unit didn't become an LU until it actually performed well enough to be considered elite.

Also, having LU's with obscure Company names is to me an unhistorical turn-off. Plus, some of those Companies' names that are used are very early war provisional units etc. that never went into battle as a unit, so wht are they being used and why were they even considered to be used as LU's??

I don't want LU's unless I can make them myself, based on personal preference and histroical fact, and if a unit in the game earns consideration for upgrade to an LU.

Remember, the names of the regualr units can be changed by the player to anything they want, so if I want to create the 1864 AotP Zouave brigade I can do this. If all I have is low morale troops then I can selevt a Brigade of them and give them weapons and attribute upgrades in order that they do perform better in game battles, and THIS IS A LOT OF FUN to do.

I don't want LU's with obscure Company and other obscure names. So, I guess I will be forced to mod the LU file, maybe get rid of it and see if the game runs without it, or just change the names and attributes and weaposn etc. myself.

So, I beg of you, I plead and bleed, and I implore you all to leave that option in to COMPLETELY NOT HAVE LU's. Of course, a button to have LU's appear later in the game is OK for those that want it, and to even have them at the start of the game if some people want that, but for those many of us that don't want LU's please leave this LU shut-off option in the game.

Thank you for your time, effort, and consideration, Chris

PS: Also it is fun sometimes to mess around and joke, as HS did with his Corps of Rejects and I was doing with my FAT32 Division or Corps commanded by Fat Cat Halleck himself. Those are LU's. [X(][:D][;)][8|]

Chris [>:][>:][>:]

LU's were selected for the game either because they were famous or colorful (or simply had colorful names). That last one might explain why you haven't heard of some.

We'll consider making LU's optional, but that represents new programming, and this public beta patch is intended to let us make sure the patch works, not come up with new stuff to program. So, no promises.

EDIT: If I remember correctly, there's a way of modding so that LU's don't appear. Perhaps Eric can enlighten us on this.

I wouldn't waste valuable programming time on LU options, when there are other more pressing things that need to be worked on (like scenario design and testing.) Let's get the cake baked before we get to arguing about the frosting...[:D]

ORIGINAL: tiredoftryingnames

From the change list:
"In non-remote games, promoting or demoting a general when the "Random Stats" game option is on gives a chance that one or two of the general's stats will randomly increase or decrease by a small amount."

What is the chance? Is it an equal chance to go up or down or is it weighted to drop their ratings? I'm promoting a bunch of 1 stars to 2 stars to get the division commanders that i need at the start of the Coming Fury scenario. I'm only selecting generals with good or better ratings displayed (using hidden) and after they are promoted I'm seeing they are now bad generals. Either I'm having bad luck or it's happening too often. IMO this should be a rare random event, not something that happens every time you promote someone.

I promoted or demoted eight generals, Butler from 3star to 1 star, and seven 1star to 2star. The only change in known stats was Rock Thomas, who went from a 3 to 2 in tactics, and from 3 to 4 in Command. None of the others had any change in known stats, since I'm playing hidden stats, I don't know all of them, but maybe 50% are known, so say 5x8=40/2=20...2/20=10% change one up one down.

I think its neat that some stats can go up and others down on the same general, it reflects how he may be better at one area than another.