A testing environment for battles

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    • A testing environment for battles

      One of the problems I have is that I cannot really test my theories on battles - unless I am extremely lucky to encounter something similar in real games. Additionally, the battle calculator is obsolete in various aspects, plus it doesnt allow to simulate the patrol of planes.

      I was thinking that it wouldn't be a huge task for Bytro to provide a testing utility (surely they have something very similar for internal use). The requirements would be very simple:

      1. A very simple map with 2 countries only, all terrain types, a no-man land in between. Resources and cities etc. are indifferent.
      2. I am able to control both countries. If that is too tough, a second player controls it (he is invited to the "game")
      3. As first step, I assign the troops and the battle begins. Maximum duration of the test is 2 days. I can only move the units but not add extra units.
      4. I cannot create more than one such test battle per month.

      That way all players would be able to test their ideas using the true game mechanisms, without causing a heavy overload on the game servers.

    • But why not simply take one of the small maps as private one with password ? -- preferably together with a player you know.
      I think that will cause no more server load than an other, extra map, which before even has to be new invented.
      ..and with disabled anti-cheat the losses in test fights will has no negative impact in the Statistics.

      Browser games are an ingenious business idea to lure out money ..
      ..... >> more or less cleverly camouflaged as a real game <<
      .... .. so beware of caltrops, spring-guns and booby traps. :00008185:
      Warning! Texts above this signature may contain traces of irony! :D

    • Restrisiko wrote:

      But why not simply take one of the small maps as private one with password ? -- preferably together with a player you know.
      I think that will cause no more server load than an other, extra map, which before even has to be new invented.
      ..and with disabled anti-cheat the losses in test fights will has no negative impact in the Statistics.
      I thought of that, but it would require days (or even weeks) to build the troops I want to check. While I could manually put troops in minutes...

    • If it's a pure testing zone, there is no reason to limit the timeframe to only 2 days.
      Things I'd include for a pure testing zone:
      • Completed Research
      • 5-Day Length
      • No Units at Start
      • Limited to 1 testing game per month
      • Max buildings built
      • 2 Nations (20 provinces each)
        • These nations are loaded with resource provinces: 4 food provinces, 5 good provinces, 4 metal provinces, 4 oil provinces, and 3 rare material provinces. There's also 5 mountain provinces, 5 cities, 5 plains and 5 hills.
      • Both nations start with 100,000 food, 200,000 goods, 150,000 metal, 100,000 oil, and 50,000 rare materials.
      If you notice any key details missing, please mention them.
      "Know your enemy and know yourself and you can fight a hundred battles without disaster." ~ Sun Tzu, The Art of War

      "War does not determine who is right - only who is left."

    • atreas1 wrote:

      I thought of that, but it would require days (or even weeks) to build the troops I want to check. While I could manually put troops in minutes...
      Well, it may take a while, so of course you are right -- on the other hand such once arranged test map can be used forever, and if the setup is to go a little faster the Mediterranean Theater is suitable.

      Browser games are an ingenious business idea to lure out money ..
      ..... >> more or less cleverly camouflaged as a real game <<
      .... .. so beware of caltrops, spring-guns and booby traps. :00008185:
      Warning! Texts above this signature may contain traces of irony! :D

    • atreas1 wrote:

      it would require days (or even weeks)

      A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step ;)
      War is a game that is played with a smile. If you can't smile, grin. If you can't grin keep out of the way til you can. - Winston Churchill



      VorlonFCW
      Retired from Bytro staff as of November 30, 2020.

      >>> Click Here to submit a bug report or support ticket <<<

    • BMfox wrote:

      Didn't i see the exact same tread a small week ago?
      I suggested a similar idea, if that's what you were talking about.

      >>> HERE <<<
      "That's impossible! The Americans only know how to make razor blades."
      "We could do with some of those razor blades, Herr Reichsmarshall."
      Hermann Goring and Erwin Rommel

    • atreas1 wrote:

      VorlonFCW wrote:

      A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step ;)
      What about
      Give us the tools and we will finish the job
      How do i double like it!!!!!!
      Criticism is the key to being proud but empathy is the key to being successful.
      Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. Robert Frost
      Ask not what your countrycan do for you, ask what you can do for your country. John F Kennedy
      Time is beyond our control, and the clock keeps ticking regardless of how we lead our lives. Priority management is the answer to maximizing the time we have. John C. Maxwell

    • atreas1 wrote:

      Restrisiko wrote:

      But why not simply take one of the small maps as private one with password ? -- preferably together with a player you know.
      I think that will cause no more server load than an other, extra map, which before even has to be new invented.
      ..and with disabled anti-cheat the losses in test fights will has no negative impact in the Statistics.
      I thought of that, but it would require days (or even weeks) to build the troops I want to check. While I could manually put troops in minutes...
      And sadly it would also require us days or weeks to implement such a feature for the public. For a feature that likely only 0.01% of our playerbase would use this is simply too much. I suggest you follow the suggestions of this thread for testing purposes :).

    • Great. Then publish somewhere (anywhere) the exact formula for the battle mechanism, even without the details of the functions. It requires 0 work for you, it keeps everybody happy, and it proves that you respect even the 0.01% of your customers (which is good company practice).

    • Sadly we also cannot do that. First of all it is not just a simple formula that just takes up some lines of code, but the combat logic is spread over maaaany places in the code (thousands of lines), and is intertwined with many different features. Therefore its not possible to just copy out some formula. It would also require work from us to make a comprehensible formula for the public out of it, and even then it may not be 100% accurate anymore because the connections to some other features are lost in that formula. Besides that, its kind of intellectual property, like the rest of the game code, and no company liks to share such property. Plus, we don't want to have 100% accurate combat simulators swirling around somewhere, as this gives unfair advantages to the few players who happen to have these.

      Making players happy is good company practice, yes, but you can try to find other browser/mobile games which publish their internal formulas. I would guess that this is a very rare thing and thus not common practice. Spending time on making only 0.01% of the customers happy takes away time from making the 99.99% of customers happy, which has priority (since we dont have unlimited working time). Thanks for your understanding.

    • Being myself a programmer I absolutely understand the difficulties. I also understand that up to a year ago a very nice tool (created by one of the players) was covering this need. Unfortunately, it has not been updated it seems (SBDE data are clearly obsolete and wrong) and there is no way to test the patrol function there. Thus my initial request.

    • I understand your request as well, it only shows how dedicated you are to the game. Of course you try to understand everything about a game that you like.

      I have to say that the fan made simulator was quite good, but even a year ago before being outdated it was not 100% accurate, as it missed some aspects of the combat system and didn't have some of the interconnections that I was talking about in the previous post. Basically it was trying to re-engineer the combat system by trying to mimick the results you see in the game as close as possible, but by using different means than the means which are used internally by the game. Still it's sad to see support for such nice projects cease to exist.

      Ah well maybe one day we can invest in making the combat system easier to understand. Maybe... :D