What are some techniques you use to make a map simply harder to beat? Although my two sides are on equal footing, it's still simply too easy to beat the opposing team by gaining command posts and reinforcements. I would like advice on how to make my map generally harder to beat.

Put sniper, mine, defend, and other AI nodes around your CPs so the AI will actually defend them.

Chokepoints will also help, whether it be barred off with a pit, obstacles, or damage/death regions.

Rofl, you got the same answer from them with what I told you on xfire...

Dangerous locals, you can make them pumped, or just give them a buch of bonuses, like blaster amplification, and bacta tanks.

Um... I'm pretty sure there is a lua code for AI difficulty, Pyc0fred's site has it I bet.

Oh I found it.

I’ve added a couple of new lua commands:
SetPlayerTeamDifficulty( value )
SetEnemyTeamDifficulty( value )
where value can be between 1 (dumbest) and 20 (smartest)

I’ve added support for the Historical campaign lua commands:

SetPlayerTeamDifficultyEasy

SetEnemyTeamDifficultyEasy

SetPlayerTeamDifficultyMedium

SetEnemyTeamDifficultyMedium

SetPlayerTeamDifficultyHard

SetEnemyTeamDifficultyHard



Note that Lua DOES NOT accept the "+" sign, so do not do:

SetPlayerTeamDifficultyEasy(+5)

Instead, do

SetPlayerTeamDifficultyEasy(5)



Of course, you can use the "-" sign,

SetPlayerTeamDifficultyEasy(-5)

What else can you do?

Oh! AI Heros.
The code for them was released somewhere.

If it fits into your map, you could lower visibility somehow, fog or something.

Or make CPs uncapturable, though you probabbly don't want to do that.

Increase the number of units. This helps by watering down Human players so that they can't go around and capture every CP in one spawn.
And like Caleb said HeroSupport by Archer01

Adding accuracy lines to various weapon ODFs helps.

MinRange = "5"
OptimalRange = "65"
MaxRange = "400"
AIUseBubbleCircle = "1"
AIBubbleSizeMultiplier = "0.2"

Adding auto turrets each of the teams help too.

You can also increase ord damage values. Of course, playing with the weapon and ord values helps (or hurts, depending on what you did ) the player, too, so I wouldn't do anything drastic. If you keep this in mind, what you do should tend to balance itself. Mind you, that might not always be the case, so always test it out.

Also, you can play with the AddAIGoal lines in the lua. In this way, you can change what the AI focus on doing.

except of all whats said before i would make it more imbalanced
for example i wouldnt give every single unit thousands of different grenades so that you can kill any tank on foot and on your own...everybody knows the situation you drive a tank you drive to the AI or whatever to score and there are 5 or 10 units throwing grenades on you-.-if they wouldnt have grenades they (or you) should better run and look for another way to destroy the tank and this is just one example.
so if your map isnt for huge multiplayer battles where every unit is a human player i would make some hings in it imba

Syth wrote: Adding auto turrets each of the teams help too.

Oh yea, give both sides the Galactic conquest auto turret bonus.
BTW Here how to do that: (thanks to Zerted who taught me how)

In your LUA, (I put it before EnableSPHeroRules() But It may not matter)
Add:

ActivateBonus(man, "blaster_amplication")
ActivateBonus(ifs_freeform_main.playerTeam, "team_bonus_blaster_amplication" .. item.bonus)

In this example man is the side name that shall recive the bonus, so If you want both sides to have it, you'll have to add two of thses calls.
And the bonus is "blaster_amplication"

Heres anouther example:

ActivateBonus(man, "advanced_armor")
ActivateBonus(ifs_freeform_main.playerTeam, "team_bonus_advanced_armor" .. item.bonus)

And here are all the buff/bonus names.
adrenaline,
advanced_armor,
bacta_refinery,
blaster_amplification,
defense_grid

Heros are automaticly enabled, so that bonus isn't there, but I don't know The supply and reinforcements bonuses.

What's this about making it imbalanced? You mean give the AI some kind of advantage? The only real way I can think of doing anything about this is playing with the above stuff that deals only with AI. A lot of the AI behavior is tied to the mapping process, or certain odf/lua parameters.

As for actually making the AI smarter...well...I hate saying this, but I doubt you can do much about that. I think that stuff is hardcoded into the engine. I could be wrong, though.

MercuryNoodles wrote:What's this about making it imbalanced? You mean give the AI some kind of advantage? The only real way I can think of doing anything about this is playing with the above stuff that deals only with AI. A lot of the AI behavior is tied to the mapping process, or certain odf/lua parameters.

As for actually making the AI smarter...well...I hate saying this, but I doubt you can do much about that. I think that stuff is hardcoded into the engine. I could be wrong, though.

i meant that you some kind of fear special units in the game. like in republic commando, if a superbattledroid showed up you had to work hard to get him down and in bf2 hes not more than a normal unit(ok in the clone wars movies they arent that good too but i liked them most in republic commando)

Hard in what way exactly? (I only played RC once, long ago) My impression is that you want enemy units that can shrug off damage, and hit back even harder. If so, you'll have to play with the unit maxhealth line, weapon ord maxdamage lines, possibly even the weapon accuracy lines, and other things like the shot delay, etc, etc. (like we said before) Of course, anything you do to a unit or weapon affects the player as well, when they choose the class/weapon. Anything the AI can choose, the player can choose, unless they're locals, or you make it otherwise. Truthfully, it depends on what exactly you plan to do with your map, as in how you want it used, and how creative you are. There are usually multiple ways to approach a problem, so don't be afraid to try something.

We can't get around the fact that the bare bones AI is generally dumb as a ton of bricks, but all of the stuff we've mentioned can go a long way toward making the AI a little better. You'd be amazed how a simple change like increasing blaster damage slightly makes the AI so much deadlier. So, imagine compiling these suggestions together, if you will. (You're not limited to any one suggestion.) You could turn the AI into a beast. All it takes is some patience to tinker with things a little...or a lot.

@ mercury noodles: the superbattledroids were often escorted by some b1s in RC. those were very weak and destroyd quick but the superbattledroid could take a lot of fire and if you ran out of grenades you were lost (or u used the armor break attachment)
they were slow and taller than you what made them very impressive. that was a completely different feeling than in BF2

when i played the aldaraan map of the conversion pack today there was a sniper droid one shotting me everytime i went into his sight.
can u modify the AI to aim better or was that just random?

I see. Well, you can change the B2's maxhealth so it can take more punishment, and you can increase the wrist blaster damage. That'd get it generally where you might want it to be. Another part of the problem in SWBF2 is the way the weapon loadouts were set up. It's geared for a large battle where you'd need lots of ammo, so you could always limit the clone unit WeaponAmmo lines to reduce ammo count, and even alter weapon clip values so you have to reload more often. There a lot of things you can do. I'm just throwing out examples here.

Take some time to think creatively, and you'll certainly start to get things where you want them.

As for the sniper...well, the AI can be good at times. heh The sniper is one thing that did actually improve from the original. They actually will try to shoot you from a decent distance away. Then again, that could also have something more to do with the weapon's range values than any alteration of AI behavior. We also can't forget the AI is set to attack the player as a priority target.