atlantean: water rising too fast --> can't end mission / messages

[LAZA]

I played this scenario my first time with bzr 5886 under Windows 7 in Virtualbox 4.0.4 (Host: Ubuntu 10.04.2) and for me worked everything good and well but i had at the end some problems:

1. The water risens too fast, i can't evade everything out of my HQ.
For this, i can't finish the scenario cause i had no worker for the dockyard - no iron to build the missing equipment Also the place to build is very small, the trees grow very fast and are a lot around the sea.
The 'hero' (odul?) who comes up with the idea should be in the HQ if the event is triggered so an continuance is trusted.

2. The masses of messages that the water risens is very annoying and the news permanently pops up with this.
Why not as a normal message a sound and for the first warning an pop up of the news.
But please not every time, it blocks permanently the sight where you wanna build, etc...

3. The event 'water rising' should be triggered not before the player himself had found the sea and so have only a little bit work to do.

I will try it at the weekend again (hope for a new pre-release :-) and now i know whats coming so i change my strategy a bit, expand further and report then again if there are more/other problems.

[SirVer (sirver)]

Thanks for the feedback!

1. This is intentional. You should not be able to salvage every ware in the HQ but you should make a choice of what is important for success.
2. This is also intentional. With the building, you also loose the worker. You should rip the buildings before the sea kills them.
3. The scenario should be challenging, so I am not of your opinion.

I am unsure though if we met the correct balance, therefore I am very grateful for your comments and leave this bug open for further discussion ( also from other play testers).

[Nicolai Hähnle (nha)]

+1 on keeping the flood as it is. I've managed to reach the lake only a short time after the first flood messages - and it's certainly possible to reach it even faster. Now I'm on the fast end because I know the game rather well already, but we should give people a challenge. The Barbarian and Empire campaigns that exist so far are forgiving enough...

[LAZA (laza74)]

I tried it today a second time, so here some more experience/thoughts:

I played it this time a lot more aggressive and expanded earlyer and with Towers instead of Small Towers, so i got the warehouse and trigger for 'water rising' after 3 h 15 min...
I paused the game, got into the menu of the HQ and evacuated ALL from HQ - the ship builder was in there.
To force the rescue i opened the menu from my warehouse and set the ship builder to 'get in stock'.
After the flood destroyed my HQ no ship builder in the warehouse... *hmmm
But i already had my Toolsmith and so i got a 'new' ship builder.

Another equivocality at this time:
To i need only one time to fill up the dockyard or three times or what?
So a little hint in the message would be good...

I was also able to put up a little economy and finished in about 4,5 h?
So i change my mind and say, it is doable - but not for the first time. ;-)

I would also appreciate more comments to this scenario in/at the forum.

[SirVer (sirver)]

Paragraph 3: I do not understand what you mean with fill up the dockyard?

Par 4: I think it is, but you cannot save all the wares in your HQ, you have to prioritize. And you have to have a well working transportation system.

Par 5: I'd like to avoid spoilers at the forum. It is better to discuss scenarios here on the bug tracker.

[LAZA (laza74)]

$3:
In every building is an amount of ressources who can stored in it.
I know now, that with this (i don't remember the exact numers! it's just an example)
- 12 Planks
- 4 Trunks
- 4 Spidercloth
i can build ONE ship.
So it is for an newbie not easy to estimate who much of these ressources where needed to win the scenario.
Or is the space to store the wares in the dockyard completly independent from the ressources i need to build the ships?

If there where a hint in the message from Ostur(?), that he will need for his 3 ships:
50 Planks, 12 Trunks and 15 Spidercloth this will be absolutly clear and the player knows, if he must build up again some building to produce those wares or not.
Just an thought for the wishlist...

$4:
You are shurely right, but an newbie (and for those is an tutorial) would also have the problem to think about it and don't knows what to save and so he would act like me... (this was my consideration, to do it like i have no idea about the ongoing events)

$5:
Ok, i like this one very much and will try it again some times and will also - if this is appreciated - post one more!

[Nicolai Hähnle (nha)]

Re build costs of the ships: It is correct that the cost to build a ship is currently exactly the amount of resources that the shipyard can have in store (in its "wares queues" -- that is the term used internally in the source).

[fuchur (fuchur77)]

I played this campaign last week for the first time (build 5800 I think) and I had enough time to build the ships. Maybe it helped that I cheated a bit... As I know widelands since build 12 or 13 I already had a warehouse in the mountains before I was asked to build one. Same with the horses. Another failure of mine was to read the message too quickly so I built 3 shipyards. Maybe these buildings should be disabled until the player is asked to build them.

To the topic with the news: If I continuously had watched the coast line and destroyed every building in danger I wouldn't have been able to build the necessary buildings around the lake to finish the ships. So I ignored a lot of these news messages. If it is intended that the player should save all the workers (are they really dying if the building is flooded?) the winning condition should be modified. At least to save a certain percentage of workers.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for widelands because there has been no activity for 60 days.]

[SirVer (sirver)]

I set this to won't fix as a no clear cut problem/bug is addressed and there are too little opinion to tweak the balance.