Difficulty settings and handicaps

Features & systems·Scenarios & AI·AI & teams

Changed in 0.1.0

From the setting to a slot

This section introduces the difficulty slot the rest of the page turns on. Anyone who already knows that a computer house is handed the inverse of the setting the player chose can skip to what one difficulty section sets.

A scenario carries two difficulty slots. In a campaign game both come from Difficulty=, the campaign setting kept in sun.ini; outside a campaign both come from the difficulty chosen for the session. One slot is the setting itself and the other is 2 minus it, so the two always move in opposite directions.

A slot selects one of three sections in the rules: [Easy] is slot 0, [Normal] slot 1 and [Difficult] slot 2. The section names describe the house reading them rather than the player’s skill.

The table gives the section each kind of house ends up reading, for each setting a player can choose. Read the two right-hand columns against each other: they are mirror images, and every later table on this page is a consequence of that one step.

Setting chosen	A player-controlled house in a campaign	Every other house
Easy	[Easy]	[Difficult]
Normal	[Normal]	[Normal]
Hard	[Difficult]	[Easy]

Outside a campaign game the right-hand column reaches computer houses only. Every human house is handed slot 1 whatever the session was set to, so the setting tunes the computer alone there.

In a campaign the handicap is given to each house as the scenario’s [Houses] list is read, one house at a time, and the only thing that puts a house in the left-hand column is PlayerControl=yes in that house’s own section. More than one house may carry it, and each one that does takes the player’s column.

A campaign map that omits PlayerControl leaves the player wearing the computer handicap

The house named by the map’s [Basic] Player= entry is not resolved until after every house has been created and handicapped, and the player-control flag that entry sets arrives too late for the test. A campaign map that names a player house without also setting PlayerControl=yes in that house’s own section therefore runs the whole mission with the player’s own house in the right-hand column — on [Difficult] at the Easy setting. Nothing re-assigns it during that mission; the next scenario reads and handicaps its own houses again.

What one difficulty section sets

A difficulty section carries eight settings that reach a decision, and the table gives all eight together with what a house in that slot does with each. Each of the six multipliers states in its own row which way a figure above 1 moves, because the direction is not the same for all of them: above 1 makes a house deal more damage, move faster and survive longer, but it also makes that house fire more slowly, pay more and build more slowly. None of the figures is inverted the way the slot is — a house simply reads what its own section holds.

Setting	Effect on a house in that slot
FirePower=	Multiplies the damage its objects deal by firing a weapon; above 1 deals more. Projectiles the engine creates outside that path — a nuke silo, either EM pulse, a superweapon, a trigger action, a splitting bullet — are never scaled
Groundspeed=	Multiplies the speed of its ground movement; above 1 travels faster
Armor=	Divides the damage its objects take; above 1 survives longer
ROF=	Multiplies the delay between its shots; above 1 fires more slowly
Cost=	Multiplies every price it pays; above 1 pays more
BuildTime=	Multiplies the build time of everything it produces; above 1 builds more slowly
RepairDelay=	Scales the wait a computer house takes between starting one building repair and the next, the result being drawn at random between a quarter of the scaled figure and twice it, in minutes
DestroyWalls=	no stops its computer objects scoring walls as targets

rules.ini

[Difficult]
FirePower=1.2
Groundspeed=1.1
Armor=1.2
ROF=0.9
Cost=0.9
BuildTime=0.9
RepairDelay=.02
DestroyWalls=yes

The first seven are folded into figures the house keeps. DestroyWalls is read from the section itself at the moment the decision is made, so no country setting and no per-house value can shift it.

A section absent from every file leaves its figures at zero

The three sections start at zero — every multiplier 0, the delays 0, the flags no — and each is read only out of a file that actually carries it. A rules tree in which [Difficult] never appears therefore leaves a house in that slot dealing zero damage, moving at zero speed and paying zero for everything. Incoming damage is divided by the armor figure, so every hit that house takes divides by zero and then lands on the engine’s floor of 1 point, which makes the house nearly invulnerable rather than crashing. DestroyWalls comes out no rather than yes at the same time. Nothing supplies these figures except a file carrying the section.

A later file that carries the section resets the rest of the block

Each section is re-read from fixed built-in values, never from the values already in force, every time a file carrying that section is processed — each rules file in turn, then the map, and in a campaign the scenario’s own companion file after that. A map that declares [Difficult] to change one multiplier restores every other setting in that section to its built-in default and discards what the rules files put there. Only repeating the whole block keeps it.

How the figures are combined

The seven copied figures are worked out once, at the moment the house is given its slot, and not per shot, per order or per frame. The table gives what each of the seven is combined with in each mode; the difference to read off it is that outside a campaign game the house’s country section contributes a second multiplier to six of them, and a campaign game drops that contribution and keeps everything else.

Difficulty setting	Campaign game	Outside a campaign
FirePower=	On its own	Times the country’s Firepower=
Groundspeed=	Times GameSpeedBias	Times the country’s Groundspeed= and GameSpeedBias
Armor=	On its own	Times the country’s Armor=
ROF=	On its own	Times the country’s ROF=
Cost=	On its own	Times the country’s Cost=
BuildTime=	Times GameSpeedBias	Times the country’s BuildTime= and GameSpeedBias
RepairDelay=	Taken as written	Taken as written

The country’s own multipliers sit in its HouseType section and each default to 1, so a rules tree that never sets them leaves the two columns identical. How long it takes places the build-time figure in the production chain, and when the computer repairs covers what the repair delay does with its value.

When a house is re-handicapped

• Campaign scenario load or restart. Each house in the scenario’s [Houses] list, as it is created. Applying carry-over state afterward does not replace that handicap.
• Every other mode. As the session’s houses are assigned: humans to slot 1, computer houses to the inverted slot minus the bonus below. The Neutral and Special houses created alongside them are never handicapped and keep a multiplier of 1 throughout.
• A house passing to the computer. The house is re-handicapped with 2 minus the slot it already holds.

That last one runs only on a house a person was playing, and it is the same inversion applied a second time. The table traces a campaign house through it. The right-hand column is exactly what the table above gives every other house at the same setting, so a base captured from the player ends up handicapped as though the computer had held it from the start.

Setting chosen	Slot the house holds while a person plays it	Slot after it passes to the computer
Easy	0, the [Easy] section	2, the [Difficult] section
Normal	1, the [Normal] section	1, the [Normal] section
Hard	2, the [Difficult] section	0, the [Easy] section

Outside a campaign every human house sits in slot 1 whatever the session was set to, so there the inversion leaves the house exactly where it was.

The per-difficulty lists

[General] carries lists with one entry per difficulty. Every one of them is indexed with the raw slot and the inversion is left in place, so entry 0 is the hardest game setting and entry 2 the easiest.

TeamDelays, TotalAITeamCap, MinimumAIDefensiveTeams, MaximumAIDefensiveTeams and FillEarliestTeamProbability are read in every mode, and so are the twelve lists of the same shape that score the kinds of object the computer’s Ion Cannon prefers. AIHateDelays and MultiplayerAICM are applied once, as a scenario outside a campaign finishes loading, and never in a campaign game.

MultiplayerAICM adds to what a computer house holds rather than replacing it. Its entry is a percentage of the house’s credits plus the value of its stored Tiberium, and that percentage is handed to the house on top of what it already had, so an entry of 100 leaves it with twice its starting money and an entry of 0 changes nothing.

The team-creation countdown that TeamDelays sizes runs for every house, human or computer, and each house reads the list with its own slot. In a campaign game that puts the player’s house and the computer’s houses at opposite ends of one list. The table gives the entry each of them takes; the two columns are mirror images, and the entry the player’s own house takes at the Easy setting is the entry a computer house takes at the Hard setting.

Setting chosen	Entry a player-controlled campaign house reads	Entry a computer house reads
Easy	0	2
Normal	1	1
Hard	2	0

The player’s own house reads TeamDelays from the hard end

Nothing about the countdown is restricted to computer houses. Lowering a campaign’s difficulty moves the player’s own house toward entry 0, so a map that switches that house into the AI-trigger pass runs the pass on the entry written for the hardest game setting.

AI triggers and team production covers what the AI lists do and why an AI trigger’s difficulty flags mean the same thing in both modes while these lists do not.

The computer’s bonus with more than one human

Outside a campaign game, CompEasyBonus=yes drops a computer house one slot as it is assigned, provided the session holds more than one human entry and the house is not already in slot 0. A skirmish registers exactly one human entry, so the bonus never fires there; it takes a LAN or online session.

The name says easy and the step does the opposite. A computer house already holds the inverse of the setting the player chose, so dropping it a slot moves it to the slot the next harder setting would have given it. The table traces one computer house through both steps; the right-hand column is the setting its handicap then matches, and it is never easier than the one chosen.

Setting chosen	Slot the computer house holds	Slot after the bonus	Setting it then behaves like
Easy	2, the [Difficult] section	1, the [Normal] section	Normal
Normal	1, the [Normal] section	0, the [Easy] section	Hard
Hard	0, the [Easy] section	0, the [Easy] section; no drop	Hard

What else the slot decides

Every row below reads a house’s own slot directly, with no second inversion applied on top of it. So a row naming slot 0 or the [Easy] section describes what a computer house does when the player chose Hard, and a row naming slot 2 describes what it does when the player chose Easy.

Where	What the slot changes
The computer’s base plan	The 2 - slot extra refineries and the 3 - slot term in the extra defense placeholders
The GDI wall ring	The 3 - slot term in the cap on wall defenses
A computer house’s harvesters	Outside a campaign, a house needs two harvesters per refinery on hand before it builds a replacement, or one when it sits in slot 2
The computer’s Ion Cannon	In slot 0 it also rates objects still under construction
Crushing an attacker	A computer house in slot 2 never answers fire by running the attacker down
A map’s triggers	A trigger whose difficulty flags exclude the scenario’s difficulty is disabled as it is created, and the enable-trigger action leaves it alone; outside a campaign the difficulty is the one the lobby’s computer skill sets

Parsed settings without effect

The difficulty sections carry four settings no gameplay path reads, in three different states. BuildSlowdown has no reader at all. ContentScan is compared in a routine nothing calls. Airspeed and BuildDelay are folded into figures the house keeps, but no gameplay path reads those figures either. A country’s own Airspeed= is stored the same way and read no further. [General] carries FineDiffControl, and the ContentScan threshold in [IQ] is the other half of the same unreachable comparison.

The slot reaches nothing in a map’s own triggers, which answer to the difficulty itself rather than to a house’s slot. A trigger declares three per-difficulty fields and is disabled as it is created when the one for the scenario’s difficulty is clear; Trigger springing covers what that leaves it able to do. The three flags an AI trigger declares are a different set and do decide whether it is drawn.

Related settings

Filter keys

20 of 20

Key	Description	Value	When omitted
AIHateDelaysglobal rules	The frames a computer house waits before picking its first enemy, one entry per difficulty.	list of integers	(empty)
ArmorNo effect in some scopes14 applicable types	An object type's armor class, or on a country or difficulty setting the divisor of the damage its objects take.	ArmorType	Varies by type
BuildTimeHouseType, difficulty settings	The build-time multiplier a country applies to everything it produces, or the one a difficulty setting applies.	floating point	Varies by type
CompEasyBonusglobal rules	Whether a computer house drops one difficulty slot when the session holds more than one human player.	boolean	yes
Cost6 applicable types	The credit price of one object of this type, or the multiplier a country or a difficulty applies to every price it pays.	integer	Varies by type
DestroyWallsdifficulty settings	Whether a computer house in this difficulty slot scores walls as targets while it scans.	boolean	yes
Difficultyclient settings	The campaign difficulty as a slider position, 0 for Easy, 1 for Normal and 2 for Hard.	integer	1
FillEarliestTeamProbabilityglobal rules	The percent chance that the next vehicle, infantryman or aircraft chosen goes to the oldest waiting team, one entry per difficulty.	list of integers	(empty)
FirePowerdifficulty settings	The multiplier a difficulty setting applies to the damage its houses deal by firing a weapon.	floating point	1
FirepowerHouseType	The multiplier a country applies to the damage its houses deal by firing a weapon.	floating point	1.0
GameSpeedBiasglobal rules	The multiplier folded into every house's build-time and ground-speed figures.	floating point	1
GroundspeedHouseType, difficulty settings	The multiplier a country or a difficulty setting applies to the speed of the ground movement its houses make.	floating point	Varies by type
MaximumAIDefensiveTeamsglobal rules	The number of defensive teams above which a house passes over its defensive AI triggers, one entry per difficulty.	list of integers	(empty)
MinimumAIDefensiveTeamsglobal rules	The number of defensive teams a house must hold before any non-defensive AI trigger may spring, one entry per difficulty.	list of integers	(empty)
MultiplayerAICMglobal rules	The percentage of its own starting money added to each computer house outside a campaign, one entry per difficulty.	list of integers	(empty)
PlayerControlHouse (per-scenario)	Marks a scenario's house as the one the local player is playing, which in a campaign decides the difficulty slot it is given and whether it is spoken to.	boolean	no
ROFHouseType, WeaponType, difficulty settings	A weapon's frames between shots, or the multiplier a country or a difficulty setting applies to that delay.	floating point	Varies by type
RepairDelaydifficulty settings	The wait a computer house takes between starting one building repair and starting the next.	floating point	.02
TeamDelaysglobal rules	The frames a house waits between team creation passes, one entry per difficulty.	list of integers	(empty)
TotalAITeamCapglobal rules	The number of live teams a house may hold before its AI triggers stop springing, one entry per difficulty.	list of integers	(empty)

Related resources

• Production and factoriesFeature or system
• Repair and healingFeature or system
• AI triggers and team productionFeature or system
• AI base planning and buildingFeature or system
• Target selection and threat ratingFeature or system
• Trigger springingFeature or system
• Campaign progression and carry-overFeature or system
• Warheads and damageFeature or system

History

1. Changed0.1.0In development

   Keep selected difficulty when restarting missions

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