Questions about TSK01 changes

[Krom]

I have compared TSK01 from my KaM and latest SR3. I see that attack force was almost doubled. Why?

Another question is about 3 axemans group belonging to separate yellow player, why were they kept and not merged to main yellow player?

[Ben]

I can't answer your first question, but I know the answer to the second one:

There were always 3 players, with 2 separate yellow players. The 3rd player has only one group of axe-fighters and they are the ones that attack your tower

[Krom]

@Ben: Thats the question, why did SR3 empowered attacks on player (balance fix), but did not merged 2 yellow players (cleanup fix) ?

[Ben]

I have a lot of experience in scripting in KaM. I've found that it i much easier to have specific players for special attacks (such as attacks at the start of the mission). This eliminates any complications in having merged players. In this case, since the axe-fighters that attack your tower belong to a different player than the rest of the enemy in your base, there is no chance of the axe-fighters leaving the tower alone to run to their allies aid, because they are completely oblivious to everything else going on around them.

As you are no doubt aware, KaM uses defensive positions to organize AI soldiers. Another benefit of separating players is to make managing these defensive positions easier. I imagine that this could have also contributed to the separation of players.

If you don't mind me asking, why is there a problem with there being three players? Is this just a curiosity? Or is this part of your work with the new AI that you are developing? Or am I completely wrong altogether

[Krom]

Thanks for your detailed answer Ben )

I'm asking because I got several complaints about campaign missions being broken in Remake (AI attacking later than in KaM or not attacking at all), so I went curios to see what attack scripts there are and what else was changed since KaM in SR3. Now I see SR3 puts a lot into cleaning up (removing roads, tweaking troop placement) and balance (i.e. making TSK01 twice harder to beat), but somehow there is a dedicated player to control 3 axemen - I thought that's weird, so I asked why. I hope Litude will post his comments too.

[Litude]

The groups of axemen that are on a team of their own (player 4) were so originally. I tried merging them to the actual yellow player but for some reason this changed the AI behavior at the start of the mission so much that I reverted the change and kept them on their own separate team. (IIRC they woudln't even attack the second tower which I absolutely still wanted them to do since trying to save it is one of the most memorable parts during the start of this mission.)

The reason why the yellow player had two groups of axemen added is that they originally had no defense positions for axemen. Once I added them, the axemen that are supposed to attack you at the start instead insisted on returning to your base in order to fill the empty defense positions. And so I had to add some more axe fighters to make sure the defense positions would already be occupied.
You should also note that I only added 4 axemen (2 per group) to the yellow team and removed 4 lance carriers from them to somewhat balance it, so their attack force is nowhere near double.

If you're wondering why I added an additional attack type, it was to make sure the AI would attack with all troop types and not end up having a bunch of e.g. lance carriers stacked in his base.

[Krom]

Thanks for your explanations Litude, now it all makes sense

[Ben]

Woops, the player who attacks your watchtower is player 4, huh? I guess I forgot to count the human player