Enable body, engine and turret speeds

[jbreija]

This PR enables engine upgrades, turret speeds and body speeds. Most droid designs (propulsion + body + turret) are already at their max speed and changing the components doesn't make the droids move any slower or faster. This also means engine upgrades have no effect because most droids are already at their max speed. The only differences between current droid speeds are simply the maximum allowed values for propulsions (with a few exceptions). Warzone was never intended to be played this way. The purpose of this PR is to enable unique speeds for most droid designs. I tested the balance to ensure there aren't any egregious imbalances.

• Engine upgrades now make droids move faster
• Droids move at different speeds on different terrains
• Max speed for all propulsions are slightly increased (this is required to make droids move faster)
• Droids on T1 initially move a little slower than current balance (to allow engine upgrades to have some effect)
• Droids on T3 move faster than current balance
• Some weapon classes are faster than others (flamers fastest, cannons/mortar slowest, Rocket/MG in middle)
• Scavengers not touched, cyborg designs are slightly varied (all cyborgs were same speed before)

This commit should serve as a baseline for implementing unique droid speeds and as player feedback is gathered we can tweak values as needed. Please test the droid design speeds on different terrains with different engine upgrades and see if you think it's balanced. The terrain modifiers have not been touched yet so we can tweak that as well.

Edit: Discord discussion link: https://discord.com/channels/684098359874814041/1105206690707689582

[maxsupermanhd]

I agree that engine upgrades not affecting unit speeds is a bug, however this PR falls under the balace category since it directly affects how game is played.
Showing off raw changed numbers is good and all but we do not have brain calculators nor can we simulate game state in our minds (except Tipchick of course), therefore examples and comparisons are essential in understanding proposed changes. Downvoting because of the lacking examples.
Attempts at gathering any meaningful data in Discord failed. Maybe here answer will be different...

[jbreija]

The droid speeds are in the design menu. Check before and after to see the differences.

[jbreija]

Maybe a better way of explaining this is that for 90% of droid designs:

• Terrain table has no effect
• Weapon weights have no effect
• Body weights have no effect
• Engine upgrades have no effect

All of these features are broken. The only exceptions are heavy bodies with heavy turrets.

For example:
• Python moves just as fast as Bug for most designs but lighter bodies are supposed to move faster.
• MG weighs 200 and Light Cannon weighs 1000 but they move at the same speed.
• The engine upgrades and terrain table have no effect. They literally don't work.

These features “exist” but have never been implemented. This is just a PR to enable these features.

[maxsupermanhd]

Terrain does affect how fast unit is moving, compare medium cannon cobra halftrack on concrete and grass.

Still want examples with comparisons of final values...

[jbreija]

Terrain does affect how fast unit is moving, compare medium cannon cobra halftrack on concrete and grass.

Still want examples with comparisons of final values...

Examples are not needed because it only takes a few seconds to test.

It took me 27 seconds to paste these files in mp/stats, start a skirmish game and design a droid.

If you can't test these changes in less than a minute then it means you're not familiar enough with these matters.

[maxsupermanhd]

For me and for other developers thats true, but not for other people who are not familiar with git nor with game filesystem structure. Many people struggle to even find the configuration directory let alome moving in mods/maps or managing sta files. If you want people to evalueate your pull request you must have info available to casuals.
Speaking of being familiar with the game, I doubt you are but I don't see pull requests from you nor any other contributions. (Tho I might be blind)
At the end of the day who needs this pull request merged, you, me or who? I don't care about this feature, played past 4 years without it and had no troubles, something I can not say about you...
I might stop trying to bring attention to this pull request due to lack of examples, no one cares anyways. Waiting for @KJeff01 to add it to Autohoster's masterbalance and we might think about turning back on a lobby room with it.

[jbreija]

At the end of the day who needs this pull request merged, you, me or who?

That's funny you have this sentiment because I was going to say that I don't care if this gets approved or not. I'm trying to give you a gift, I'm not going to plead or beg with you to accept it.

You can either ignore these MAJOR broken features or fix them, those are your only 2 options.

If you attempt to fix them, you'll end up with similar values that are proposed here.

I don't think you realize, you don't have a choice. You either accept these changes OR keep those features disabled.

[maxsupermanhd]

There are features that more broken imo...

[jbreija]

If anyone is interested in how droid speeds are calculated, Reg312 also known as Crab, has the best explanation here:

https://forums.wz2100.net/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=9300&p=101745&hilit=speed%2Fweight#p101745

[TheOverlord95]

What are the arguments against this? I see some thumbs downs.

I thought the engine upgrades were just so small that you couldn't notice them but them not doing anything is absurd.

I only see positivity here. If things are too fast/slow, they can always be changed.

[maxsupermanhd]

I only see positivity here

Unfortunately I only see generic filler words that describe nothing. Author still did not showed a single comparison and that's why there is a dislike. Just saying "well now it matters" tells casual player nothing, we need transparency for everyone even non-technical people.
How T1 will be played now? How it will affect end of T2 and transition to T3? How slow first units will be and how fast can last tech units become? Will medium cannon on cobra still be a semi-viable choice? Will flamers become OP (even more) since they got a speed buff? There are no concrete numbers that we can compare shown.

At some point when I will have some motivation to actually go and check it out I will take the master build with this PR and do a side by side for myself to understand the situation and no one will be able to hold me if I will find some wild stuff.

they can always be changed

I dislike approach of merging something without firmly checking it and then changing it back/again because it was bad. Don't forget we will be forced to play with all the changes that are merged here at least for one release cycle and it can vary between 1 month to literally more than half a year. I play multiplayer if not daily but at least 5 days a week and I dislike having not polished changes in the release like autorating lookup that was pretty jank in first iterations until I reached back to it and fixed it.

[TheOverlord95]

I mean, testing the balance can be done easily.. It would be interesting to test... I'm not saying apply it to the game right now, I'm saying it is a very enticing idea and I want it.. obviously we need to test and make sure, but I am all for testing it.

[Zispah]

Could you upload this as a mod for everyone to test? if the results are bad, consider adding more commits to improve.

[jbreija]

mod attached as a .zip file. Github doesn't allow uploading ".wz" files so once you download the .zip you have to change the file type from .zip to .wz

speed.zip

[jbreija]

I attached a screenshot of the various values needed to perform speed calculations. Hopefully this helps.

Also need to undo 1 previous change; Scorpion weight should be 1700. If someone can change that.

[jbreija]

I just realized how to properly interpret propulsion weight in propulsion.json:

Higher weight = Speed mostly determined by body weight
Lower weight = Speed mostly determined by weapon weight

Wheel, Half-Track and Track should be mostly determined by weapon weight
Hover and VTOL should mostly be determined by body weight

I reduced the propulsion weight for Wheel, Half-Track and Track so that they are highly sensitive to weapon weight.

speedv2.zip

[jbreija]

Does anyone else have speed suggestions? If so, attach your mod here.

After doing more testing I found that engine upgrades of less than 10% aren’t noticeable and have little impact. I changed them to 20% and then readjusted the propulsion weights and modifiers. I’ve attached the latest mod and summarized the changes. I abandoned the changes in weapons.json and body.json.

I also found some interesting information when researching appropriate values. I searched for terms like “heaviest military hovercraft”, “fastest tracked tank”, “heaviest wheeled tank”, “fastest wheeled tank”, “most expensive jet”, “most expensive tank”.

speed_apr202023.zip

[jbreija]

Hi,
I had to leave the Discord because I couldn’t spend any more time testing but I recently had some down time and found the minimal changes needed to enable the speed features.

prop speed/modifier

wheel 175/80 --> 250/50
HT 150/80 --> 200/60
track 125/80 --> 175/80
hover 300/100 --> 375/70
vtol 700/140 --> 3500/70

HT "weight" 400 --> 500
engine upgrades 5% --> 15%

track "spinSpeed": 70
vtol "skidDeceleration": 2500

It should be the same as current balance but with speed features enabled.

Alright, I’m moving on from this topic and considering it done. (finally!!!).

Proceed however you wish.

Propulsion.zip

[KJeff01]

@jbreija Your latest mod seems nice with some of my tests. The only issue I found is how slow VTOLs decelerate if they happen to be a lightweight body with a lightweight weapon. They can overshoot their position and take too long to decelerate fast enough to get back to the target position. So skidDeceleration and deceleration will need to be increased substantially. Other than that pastdue and I would be willing to add this to the 4.5.0-beta1 release to gauge how everyone feels about it.