[OUTDATED]Back to Basics v4.0 file

fps is supposed to be improved. Can you tell me what kind of setup you are using?

I was asking about how many AIs you had in the game you played, but your PC information is also very useful. I'm afraid it might be caused by your CPU, 2.5 Ghz is quite low by today's standards, and that's also quite a slow graphics card.

Unfortunately I can't optimize the script much further in terms of how few actions it does per tick, can't make it multithreaded. Scar scripts run on one thread, 8 times per second, that's all I have to work with. It's pretty much as optimized as right now as it gets. On my PC when I disable the script, it does not add any additional framerate at all, this is how it works, it goes down exponentially, and it sucks.

If you feel like previously it was better, it must be because the updates were once a second, so the stutter would also occur once a second, and then run smoothly for the other 7 updates that second. This current method works much much better for those people who will actually have the horsepower to handle updates without stuttering. 8 stutters a second feels much better. At best, I can try to reduce it to 4 updates per tick, that does tend to feel smoother for a CPU that starts to choke with the script a bit. Unfortunately there's no easy way for you to modify it for yourself only anymore, as everything is now packed into archives. Not sure what to suggest to you, there's no easy fix I can do, there's no easy way to improve it for you only... Just sucks, time to upgrade your PC heh, sorry man.

oh sorry
4v4, in previous we dont have low fps problem

4v4 lags even for me... And I felt like it always did. Didn't know that anything about that has changed.

We thought it would only improve, because we changed one of the systems that had radius scans towards other units on all entities (antiblob), which has now been switched to 1 radius scan per squad instead.

I might download v3 and see if it actually is better there, I highly doubt it though. Thanks for the info so far, I'll see if anything can be done.

Try Easy AI and see if it's fun. It is not gimped in any way like the vanilla Easy AI. Actually Nebelwerfers have been nerfed quite heavily too.

But yes, increased artillery usage is very much a large improvement made to the AI to help it against certain play styles. Defensive static play was way too easy to do as AI didn't utilize any tools that are good against that previously. You will have to react to that, not just complain. Defensive play is actually still by far the easiest style to do, you just have to spread out more. You can also add an AI player to your own team to help out.

Normal AI barely gets any additional resources and barely cheats at all. Please try to learn the game and try to switch up your plans. Quite frankly, I can't reply to complaints about AI being too strong without laughing slightly about them.

Anyway, Normal AI is more like Hard AI from vanilla, Easy AI is more like Normal AI. Don't feel bad about the word 'Easy'. Just replace the names in your head with Normal, Hard, Expert, Brutal. Me and Celution have a pretty hard time beating the hardest level AI, but we beat it very consistently too. Actually at the stage where it starts to get artillery usually we already stabilize and start to win...

If Easy AI is still too hard, then yeah, I will have to look into reducing AIs resources below 100%... But yea man, if an AI with no bonuses beats you then there's clearly a ton of room for improvement in your own play, even besides just improving your 'speed' in the game, you know.

This time I played 2vs2, I and friendly normal AI played as Wehrmacht vs 2 normal USA AI's and we lost, im definetly used to dumb vanilla AI, i could beat 2 experts solo. btw im playing annihilate mode.

I noticed AI always attacks in big groups, they send around 5-10 infantry squads at once, i think mortars are underpowered, one MG bunker and 2 81mm mortars cant stand vs 5-7 infantry squads.

Also friendly AI was a *******, he destroyed my stationary panther tank with V1 rocket... i think he launched V1 rocket at my tank because he was targeting two enemy inf squads that were close to my tank.

Friendly AI had one tiger tank that was bugged for 20-30 minutes (until end of the match), tiger was just rotating on the spot next to fuel point and doing nothing, he looked stuck, but nothing was blocking him.

The attacks in big groups is very much a new feature of the AI. I actually didn't describe it in the news post because it was so freaking large already. There's a system that makes AI do it, script forces it to, and I've balanced the way it sends units around the map to work closely with that system. So yea AI will very much utilize this stuff and break defensive positions quite effectively and with large amount of force.

I don't think mortars are underpowered. Because the fights in the mod are actually rather positional, having mortars do damage quickly and accurately and over large area is simply not possible for balancing pvp. Mortars are a great utility unit, basically a unit similar to a sniper that accrues value over longer games, mortars also have the utility of smoke and being able to destroy emplacements, but you can't rely on them actually stopping full pushes anymore, you have to support them with infantry and try to get lucky hits with barrages, prioritize team weapons, smoke friendly squads that are under fire by MGs etc.

The artillery targeting should never happen the way that it targets friendly units... There's a hard block in my custom script preventing AI from targeting artillery on areas where there are friendly units. I would be less surprised if it targeted squads near a bunker or something, because there's no block for that, heh (it's pretty expensive in terms of cpu power to do these calculations in general, can't make it perfect). In your case, this must have been part of the relic's artillery targeting which is also used in the mod alongside my method... Not sure really. I think it should be possible to fix it but I've actually almost never seen this happening so I'm not sure if it's worth working on it too much. Some people say the performance has suffered with the release of the new version already, so I have to be careful.

If that happens to a tank (it looking like its rotating in place) it's very likely that it does not want to attack due to there being too high enemy threat nearby. It evaluates where it's going and once it comes too close to areas of high enemy threat, it'll actually retreat or be stopped by a script. Unfortunately, I can't accurately choose a new attack target for it after it retreats, this system has to cooperate with relic's "targets" system, which I also improved a lot, but it's not precise, it's a heat map of where AI randomly chooses to send its units, it doesn't work on individual units. I guess you encountered a very specific situation where enemy must've been pretty close to your HQ, so AI wanted to respond to that, but the tank itself was getting stopped by my script because it does not want to suicide, and it looped... The way you describe it seems really bad however, I am actually unsure what happened there exactly, usually it doesn't look quite as bad at least.

Just played as Brits and I found a bug. British panther tank can't fire its main gun, only mg's are shooting (even attack ground button is missing from the UI).

And friendly Normal USA AI was producing only M4 Assault shermans and Sherman Calliope, he wasnt producing any ''standard'' 75mm or 76mm shermans which made him useless at fighting enemy tanks. Dunno if its a bug or its intended to be that way?

I really think mortars are a little weak, i had 4 british 3'' mortars built next to each other and they were not good at stopping enemy inf attacks in large numbers, its better to build one artillery emplacement than 4 mortar emplacements for defending small part of the map IMO.

Will have to ask Celution what's up with the panther, must've been something that broke right before release as we have tested it quite a few times actually.

We'll discuss mortars a bit as well, maybe they could use some kind of a nudge, but I'm not sure. It's absolutely obvious however that artillery will be better for quick damage because it costs more to barrage, costs more time and money to build, including fuel, and comes later in the game.

Will also check the assault sherman. I am pretty certain that it should buy normal tanks and not spam assault shermans, perhaps it didn't tech up in time. The way it chooses units relies a lot on 'anti-class' priorities so maybe it invested into shermans before enemy AI had any tanks and then you didn't have enough fuel on your team or something... Or maybe assault sherman priority is just slightly too high, dunno.

Overall, expect more mistakes from AI on lower difficulties as it's not tested as thoroughly and all the priority balancing gets much more volatile at lower resource amounts. But yea, I am almost positive assault shermans aren't bugged. I'll put it on the list of things to check though, thanks.

Its funny when you see enemy panthers and tigers, and your friendly AI is just charging with assault & calliope shermans at them. He didnt produce any normal shermans for the whole match.

Overall I like v4, it's much more fun playing CoH with BtB than vanilla or with other mods.

Yep, that's AI for you. There's only so much I can improve ^^
Thanks man, we appreciate the feedback and nice words

Right now mortars feel so weak, it seems like they have to hit directly onto target to deal some damage, i think it would be better to make them less accurate, but increase damage and splash radius IMO.

If you make them scatter less, they could snipe mg emplacements from far away making them OP vs bunkers, but they would still be weak vs infantry.

I told you :) Direct hit on pioneers and they lose maybe 15% HP.

I think even tanks are a little weaker vs infantry than in v3? It feels like it takes too long for 2 shermans to kill 1 infantry squad...

hm, that is very strange. Could you please use ctlr+shift+` (the button near Tab and 1 on the keyboard) to open the console and make a screenshot of the error. I tried the map and it works fine for me, and we play regularly otherwise without any issues.

after playing around with matches, i found your bug. It happens when you go as axis and played against british (any AI levels). tested in angoville(2) and i believe it is the same thing like in other map above (bedum(2))

here is your console log
Img42.com

hope this helps

Thanks! This bug is now fixed, we will release the hotfix as soon as possible.

yes please :)

-applaunch 228200 is a very important part of creating the steam.exe shortcut. All the mod files (BackToBasics folder, BackToBasics module files) have to be located in the root directory of your game. Make sure you installed the "Relaunch" version of Company of Heroes as well, as old game versions have some problems when used with steam I believe.

You can use the shortcut that is provided with the mod, that one asks if you want to run the defined command line parameters every time, but it should work without any setup and from any directory.

You can also check the launch instructions in our main moddb description (click read more).

My Steam shortcut is -> "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\Steam.exe" -applaunch 228200 -mod BackToBasics

"Company of Heroes - Complete Edition" shortcut created via Steam is -> steam:/ /rungameid/228200/ /-mod BackToBasics

All BackToBasics files are in COH main folder. I also used "Launch Back to Basics". Game is updated to latest patch. Nothing is working :/ I really want to play this mod. It looks great...

PiTER

I do believe Complete Edition might be the wrong thing to install. It has to be called "Company of Heroes (New Steam Version)"

Company of Heroes Complete Edition will be Ok if have patch v2.700.2.42.
PiTER

ehhhhh...Thanks Celution. Yep, I was adding "steam:/ /rungameid/228200/ /-mod BackToBasics" to the RelicCOH.exe shortcut instead of "-mod BackToBasics". Im sorry for taking Your time Celution, AGameAnx. Big THANK YOU guys! Im pretty sure this mod will be awesome.
Greetings from Poland! Take care!
PiTER