skeletons and unit balance

[Dol Guldur]

And I seem to remember that the dagger animations were the ones that won out against fast spears hands down when testing (I adjusted lethality to compenstate).

It is strange though that CA said the min delay was to adjust the attack animation times (which differ) and then set them all to 25 ...

[xerex]

that min delay between attacks...is it not irrespective of the animations? or is it added to the animation time?

e.g. let's say swordsmen have several different attack animations ranging from 22 to 28 frames (1.1 to 1.4 seconds). So, if I set min delay between attacks to 30 (3 seconds), then which attack animation it chooses shouldn't matter because after the 22 frame animation, it waits 1.9 more seconds before initializing the next attack and after the 28 frame animation, it waits 1.6 more seconds before initializng the next attack. This is how I *thought* the min delay between attacks paramter worked.

Are you saying that it works like this? If I set it to 30, the game waits 3 seconds after each attack regardless of thge number of frames in the animation?..so after the 22 frame attack, it waits 3 seconds giving the unit 1 attack every 4.1 seconds..and with the 28 frame animation, there is one attack every 4.4 seconds?

That would be just plain silly. That makes attack speed completely dependent upon what animation a unit chooses for each attack with no way of normalizing all units to attack at the same rate regardless of animation speed. I *thought* that is what the min_delay parameter was for.

Does the ai randomly select attack animations so that I can at least average out the number of frames of each attack to get an attack speed? Or does it preferentially select low_attacks against short opponents making balancing of differnt sized opponents nearly impossible?

[xerex]

I found this quote from JeromeGradskye on the subject, but which of the two scenrios I posted above is the correct one is unclear from this post. Perhaps he could clarify his remarks :)

There are some fairly subtle game balancing facts involved with the animations, which i should probably mention. For example there is only one attack per animation, so the length of the attack animation determines attack frequency for that troop type. The attack delay values in export_descr_unit.txt are used to balance this, so that it doesn't become too restrictive for artists.

[Dol Guldur]

That's the quotation I was thinking of - I do not think Jerome has posted for a long while though (?)

Not just artists either, eh? ;)

[Monkwarrior]

@xerex
I think you are right.

In my opinion the delay was included as an option to "umbalance" more the stats. I mean, there is no reason because a heavy swordsman and a light one have the same stats, in the same way they have not the same animation (speed). The delay allows to slow down even more the animation for heavy soldiers, reflecting the difficulties to move a heavier equipment.

This is a way to "balance" the artists' work, just in the other way you thought. If the correct framerate for slow animation should be 30 and they put 28, we have the option to make it longer thanks to the delay.

[xerex]

but what isn't clear to me is if the min_delay is the time between the beginings of attack animations or the time between the end of one animation and the beginning of the next.

The latter of these two is useless for balance because every animation has a different number of frames and tacking on an extra 2.5 seconds to that doesn't change the fact that the unit will attack at a differet rate depending on which animation it chose to execute.

The former of these is totally useful if it works as prescribed. In this case, we can set the min_delay larger than any unit's attack animation, and all the units will attack at the same rate.

However, setting min_delay to 50 for two identical units and giving one fs_handed skeleton and the other fs_slow_swordsman still results in a victory for the fs_2handed for reasons passing understanding.

So, I must conclude that min_delay is either broken, or works in the useless manner described above.

Then, noting that setting min_delay exceptionally high slows down combat dramatically, I must conclude that it is working, and thus, must be working in the useless manner described above...which pisses me off

I guess I am hoping someone will come here and teach me how to make the above mock battle (between two identical units save for their skeletons) a tie for all skeletons so I don't have to go through and figure out the combat benefits of every single animation.

[Monkwarrior]

Well, I'm not 100% sure, but I imagine that the sequence is:

[animation time (fix)]-[delay (variable in EDU)]-[animation time]-[delay]-etc

Time lapse between two identical points in two consecutive animations: animation time + delay (= time elapsed between two hits)

Balance:
Slow animation = long animation time; needs short delay
Quick animation = short animation time; needs long delay

The problem is the fine tunning, due to the different units of both times (frames per second and tenths of second).