Speeding up battles

[Kristoffer O]

Originally posted by Davidious:
This is correct. besides, I don't actually want to 'watch' the battle replays (although it's fun).

What I want to do is READ the battle replay. So something that generated a text file with all the 'to-hit' rolls, damge, current state of the unit, etc. Basicaly a blow-by-blow text account of the battle would be awesome.

Awesome ?

I wouldn't like to have hundreds of pages of text to wade through just to analyze one battle.

Two commanders fighting for five turns would probably make at least one page of text (if
presented in a readable way). Imagine a big and important battle with hundreds of units, mages and in-battle summoned creatures. Finding and analyzing the role of a specific unit in the battle would be a 'härke' of epical proportions.

[Arryn]

Originally posted by Kristoffer O:
I wouldn't like to have hundreds of pages of text to wade through just to analyze one battle.

Just because *you* wouldn't like it doesn't mean that there aren't some players (such as myself) who would like the ability to do so.

Some players like MP, some SP. Some large maps, some small. Some fast battles, some very detailed ones ... with text reports.

[Pocus]

Originally posted by Kristoffer O:

I wouldn't like to have hundreds of pages of text to wade through just to analyze one battle.

Two commanders fighting for five turns would probably make at least one page of text (if
presented in a readable way). Imagine a big and important battle with hundreds of units, mages and in-battle summoned creatures. Finding and analyzing the role of a specific unit in the battle would be a 'härke' of epical proportions.

Sure, the best solution is to allow us to jump at the start of each round (I dont care about not having the rendering done between these rounds). Often in big battles some issues are not decided before round 10+, and its a big pain to wait for this moment.

[Kel]

Originally posted by Pocus:
Often in big battles some issues are not decided before round 10+, and its a big pain to wait for this moment.

Actually, I just hate when I miss it happen and I have to start it all over again

- Kel

[Davidious]

I wouldn't like to have hundreds of pages of text to wade through just to analyze one battle.

Two commanders fighting for five turns would probably make at least one page of text (if
presented in a readable way). Imagine a big and important battle with hundreds of units, mages and in-battle summoned creatures. Finding and analyzing the role of a specific unit in the battle would be a 'härke' of epical proportions.

well I'd love it.

besides, once I had the text output I'd write some little 'combat analyzer' utility to help sort it all

[Arryn]

Originally posted by Davidious:
besides, once I had the text output I'd write some little 'combat analyzer' utility to help sort it all

Several of us have the same idea.

[condors]

i think it would also be helpfull for aar's
i would love going over the battle logs of a game

[johan osterman]

Originally posted by Davidious:
well I'd love it.

besides, once I had the text output I'd write some little 'combat analyzer' utility to help sort it all

No you wouldn't, you just think you do, fortunately illwinter is not one of these modern everything goes companies that never says no to the players of their game. Illwinter with a firm and gentle no, much like the parent stopping its child from eating to much coockie dough, dares take the responsibility to decide what is best for you. And 400 pages of hit and miss statistics for a single battle is not good for you, no matter what you think in the matter. You might not appreciate it now, but as you get older, and perhaps make games of your own, you will come to see the wisdom of our ways, perhaps even smiling wistfully at your own scallywag ways, wondering at the saintlike patience and almost supernatural wisdom with which we denied the numerous and varied demands of the playerbase.

[Torvak]

How about a scrollable log of just the spellcasting then? Maybe with turn number and success or failure.

[Arryn]

Originally posted by johan osterman:
No you wouldn't, you just think you do, fortunately illwinter is not one of these modern everything goes companies that never says no to the players of their game. Illwinter with a firm and gentle no, much like the parent stopping its child from eating to much coockie dough, dares take the responsibility to decide what is best for you. And 400 pages of hit and miss statistics for a single battle is not good for you, no matter what you think in the matter. You might not appreciate it now, but as you get older, and perhaps make games of your own, you will come to see the wisdom of our ways, perhaps even smiling wistfully at your own scallywag ways, wondering at the saintlike patience and almost supernatural wisdom with which we denied the numerous and varied demands of the playerbase.

Despite being wrapped in a humorous tone, this is a rather patronizing reply. It's also a patronizing attitude for any company to assume they know better than their customers what the customers themselves want/need.

It's not like this request is particularly hard to code either. The logic is likely to already be present in the code for debug purposes. A simple switch (via command line, or preferably menu option) that enables logging, and all combats get dumped out to a file. All you need are a few strategically placed fputs. Yes, it'll slow the combats down dramatically when activated. I'm sure that anyone who turns this on will (or should) realize that they are creating an huge I/O overhead and a dump file that may get rather large in size. That's what readme notes are for: warnings.

But to simply tell us that we don't need it "because you say we don't need it" is poor customer relations at best. At worse, it's a disingenuous smokescreen to keep hidden the detailed mechanics of combat resolution, which would be odd given how open IW has been in the past about answering questions on the subject.