Red Odyssey... Literally as difficult as it is bad?

[Colonel Sanders]

I've been an avid BZ player since they gave away free copies with a joystick purchase some, 23 years ago... There was no greater joy than when a harder difficulty came out (Very Hard) because it let me test how well I had become in the game that started it all.

However, this was extremely short-lived hype. After practically speed running VH of the OG BattleZone... I couldn't wait to get started on the Red Odyssey campaign (further referred to as RO) because being from a poor family, and with coverage as weak as it were way back when - It always intrigued me what the middle child of the Battlezone Franchise had to show... Which... sadly amounted to a huge disappointment and utter rage. (Deadass, I have rage quit dozens of attempts of RO's Campg.)

Sure, you could argue: "just lower the difficulty, nerd." and while true... Hardest difficulties shouldn't feel practically unplayable to someone who lives and breathes perma-death modes. Mouse acceleration is somehow hindered between 98 and RO, like I can never get a good lead on anything before the AI "sees" that I am aiming ahead of of them.

Couple hard-felt tracking mechanics and the fact that these dudes literally just spawn on top of you (trust me, I've tried blind firing where I know they "are" and... no surprises: they're scripted de-cloaking spawns.) With no real counter-play to this, than to practically adopt the play-sake of the sequel as some people have detailed: "mass pilgrimage" - I am not sure I will ever truly 100% BZ like I've always desired to.

Maybe it's because these days I am all just M&KB, but realistically - I am a galactic cry better at the game than I was as a child who received his first copy over 20 years ago.

Does anyone have any hard fact trivia about the development of RO? This gripe I have is enough to make me personally feel like the entire franchise probably fell apart because Odyssey was a hugely desired addition to the series and likely fell super short of the bar it originally set for itself with BZ 98.

P.S. Don't even get me started on the stifled and emotionless voice acting of RO - If I didn't care so much about 100% completion on VH, I would probably commit to just speed running RO just for the sole purpose of reduxing the voice lines years ago.

[Herp McDerperson]

LOL

The largely-bad VOs are the best part of TRO by far... what the ♥♥♥♥ is wrong with you? You sound like a very very unfun person... You're going to catch a lot of flak for complaining about the best part of the game.

I can't tell if you are complaining about the original TRO or the Redux here...

Mouse acceleration is somehow hindered between 98 and RO, like I can never get a good lead on anything before the AI "sees" that I am aiming ahead of of them.

There's no difference in the mechanics between base BZ98R and TRO at all. At the higher difficulties, AI avoids your reticle and dodges ordnance. This came from BZ98 1.5 patch that was developed over the late 2000's and early 2010's.

Maybe it's because these days I am all just M&KB, but realistically - I am a galactic cry better at the game than I was as a child who received his first copy over 20 years ago.

Mouse and Keyboard is far better than a joystick these days. I have this belief that joystick players were often better than M&KB players early on because mice simply sucked back then. "mouse balls" collecting dust and then skipping and stopping because you didn't clean them often enough, lol...

I know perfectly how the TRO campaign works as I've played the hell out of them and also seen the scripts. Some of the mission ports were bugged and I took it upon myself to translate some of the mission scripts from C++ to LUA for the purpose of fixing the issues, and I did. They're on the workshop.
Fun part is that one gets achievements even with my modded missions, which is a fact that caught me off guard.

In the original TRO, they upped difficulty by sending A LOT of enemies at you and also relying on the cloak mechanics that they invented. As I mentioned before, the combat AI is much improved since then due to BZ98 receiving unofficial patching and those changes are included in the WHOLE of BZ98R. They did reduce unit counts to compensate though they didn't necessarily do a great job everywhere.

If you have a specific complaint or issue about how a mission works, please state it. You don't win any favor by complaining about things non-specifically and without examples.

Below I will post an explanation of how the difficulty settings worked in 1.5 (and work in BZ98R as well):

Very Easy

No damage to or from friends
50% less damage from enemies
50% more damage to enemies
Enemy units have lowest aim accuracy
Enemy units do not attempt to evade

Easy

50% damage to or from friends
25% less damage from enemies
25% more damage to enemies
Enemy units have low aim accuracy
Enemy units do not attempt to evade

Medium

Normal damage
Enemy units have normal aim accuracy
Enemy units attempt to evade line of fire when fleeing

Hard

Normal damage
Enemy units have high aim accuracy
Enemy units attempt to evade line of fire

Very Hard

Normal damage
Enemy units have highest aim accuracy
Enemy units attempt to evade line of fire
Enemy units attempt to evade ordnance

Here is a YT playlist showing my playthrough of the campaign on Very Hard difficulty
The last CRA mission is not included simply because it is too damn long.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVMIgWtRuoI

aww it won't embed yt playlists

[DustRider]

Yeah I found it too hard as well. I enjoy the story. But my lack of piloting skills gets in the way of having a successful mission. I found my self running out of Ammo multiple times nearly every mission, and having to take a wing man tank in order to stay in the fight to win a mission. (The other tank that I abandoned just runs home to be scraped because it's way faster)

[Herp McDerperson]

mmmmmm my favorite missions are the harder ones: "Lifeline" (the beginning part), "Dire Straits", that kinda ♥♥♥♥.

[Colonel Sanders]

Honestly, this is about as rude as it is assumptive. If they were the best thing about it,
I can see how this would mean unwell for a series that should've been given the chance to be taken more seriously...

Originally posted by Herp McDerperson:

LOL

The largely-bad VOs are the best part of TRO by far... what the ♥♥♥♥ is wrong with you? You sound like a very very unfun person... You're going to catch a lot of flak for complaining about the best part of the game.

I am "complaining" about a noticeable difference in how my exact same hardware and settings do not translate properly to the same feeling of commanding the ships between games as they are in the Steam Store, where this forum technically resides(98/TRO). Further and unfortunately, I have never played the original TRO - as I would've hoped someone with half a mind could've gathered from the whole, free game - poor family notion.

I can't tell if you are complaining about the original TRO or the Redux here...

Mouse acceleration is somehow hindered between 98 and RO, like I can never get a good lead on anything before the AI "sees" that I am aiming ahead of of them.

Really, there's no difference in the mechanics? I literally stated that I relished the idea of the increased challenge, did I not? Did you know that there were only 400 material copies of TRO? I don't know how many releases of the original BZ98 were handed out, but I definitely had one of those. I would say, from an economics standpoint - that is quite mechanically different in potential game development, whether utilizing the same engine or not. Just because something was patched, doesn't mean another problem couldn't have potentially arisen due to other "features."

There's no difference in the mechanics between base BZ98R and TRO at all. At the higher difficulties, AI avoids your reticle and dodges ordnance. This came from BZ98 1.5 patch that was developed over the late 2000's and early 2010's.

You make good points here, which are something I couldn't have even considered - alas irrelevant to your point; I picked up the steam copy of the game in 2017, and while you couldn't have know this - you've made quite a few assumptions as it is... I don't exactly live in the past, except thru extremely fun games such as the BattleZone series.

Maybe it's because these days I am all just M&KB, but realistically - I am a galactic cry better at the game than I was as a child who received his first copy over 20 years ago.

Mouse and Keyboard is far better than a joystick these days. I have this belief that joystick players were often better than M&KB players early on because mice simply sucked back then. "mouse balls" collecting dust and then skipping and stopping because you didn't clean them often enough, lol...

I appreciate your efforts I've yet to tap into, however am in quite the disdain of your apparent lack of understanding. If You did happen to provide such a service, then you know how "sub-system" your understanding of the problem I feel is apparent in the mechanics of the hardware acceleration. I don't mean to make jabs, but maybe both of us need to look into a few things - seeing as it's possible some of your work fixes my hardware acceleration, I wouldn't know because I haven't considered that far due to the fact that I just posted about it here since there's no "rant" channel.

I know perfectly how the TRO campaign works as I've played the hell out of them and also seen the scripts. Some of the mission ports were bugged and I took it upon myself to translate some of the mission scripts from C++ to LUA for the purpose of fixing the issues, and I did. They're on the workshop.

This pleases me in ways hilariously pertaining to the above-quoted.

Fun part is that one gets achievements even with my modded missions, which is a fact that caught me off guard.

The problem I am having is that despite waiting (and/or according to some videos, just merely do not use my SR as much as I should be), searching and looking - the lighting and affects I see in other people's videos even 5 years ago on fresh steam release actually show up unlike on my apparently maxed out 1660 super. Trust me, I haven't attempted to skimp on quality when setting up for playing around as a grown-up. I make no joke that despite multiple dozens of attempts these things still practically spawn on top of my units, despite any attempt to rush or fight without playing the "hop out your ship and then pretend its easy to just, turn around and jump back into it because the hardware acceleration doesn't seem to work properly" game.

In the original TRO, they upped difficulty by sending A LOT of enemies at you and also relying on the cloak mechanics that they invented. As I mentioned before, the combat AI is much improved since then due to BZ98 receiving unofficial patching and those changes are included in the WHOLE of BZ98R. They did reduce unit counts to compensate though they didn't necessarily do a great job everywhere.

To your fairness, I will state that I am ironically on the "Spilt Milk" mission here in my current rant.

If you have a specific complaint or issue about how a mission works, please state it. You don't win any favor by complaining about things non-specifically and without examples.

Thank you for posting this for people that need it, but I can't exactly express my pleasure in saying that I probably would've read the patch notes of my "literally quoted most favorite game of all time."

Below I will post an explanation of how the difficulty settings worked in 1.5 (and work in BZ98R as well):

Very Easy

No damage to or from friends
50% less damage from enemies
50% more damage to enemies
Enemy units have lowest aim accuracy
Enemy units do not attempt to evade

Easy

50% damage to or from friends
25% less damage from enemies
25% more damage to enemies
Enemy units have low aim accuracy
Enemy units do not attempt to evade

Medium

Normal damage
Enemy units have normal aim accuracy
Enemy units attempt to evade line of fire when fleeing

Hard

Normal damage
Enemy units have high aim accuracy
Enemy units attempt to evade line of fire

Very Hard

Normal damage
Enemy units have highest aim accuracy
Enemy units attempt to evade line of fire
Enemy units attempt to evade ordnance

[Herp McDerperson]

You're a little bit of a ♥♥♥♥ but your responses got less ♥♥♥♥♥ toward the end so I'm going to just let it go

I grew up very poor and played the original on a Packard Bell with a 200MHz Pentium 1 with software rendering mode. I had that computer until 2002, when it made doing school work very problematic LOL.

I don't think you stated, let alone made clear, that you were having actual technical problems with the game. If you are willing, I will attempt to help you. You should friend me on Steam so that we can look into this.

400 copies of TRO, yes, but far more copies of the "Gold Pack", which contained TRO
I only played TRO-proper like 2-3 years before BZ98R came out. I managed to score a NIB copy of the Gold Pack for like $32 from ebay a few years ago, too. Lucky me... at the same time I saw a NIB copy of TRO for sale. Care to guess what the asking price was?

EDIT: and yeah, "Spilt Milk" is a pain in the ass
It's legitimately difficult keeping the APC alive. The main thing is that you need to repair/rearm and immediately head in its direction the moment the VO comes up mentioning it. keep building units as you get the scrap and have them follow you and they'll eventually catch up to you and the APC piecemeal.
I hop out in that mission because I want a Yeti, lol... and you needn't turn around to get back in your ship... just walk backwards into it.

EDIT 2: I have a strong feeling that you're having issues with mouse input more than anything and you wouldn't be the first one... the game uses annoying enforced mouse smoothing and always has. Depending on how "gaming-oriented" (high DPI) your mouse is, you probably want to make sure Windows is set to have pointer speed somewhere in the middle of the bar (in control panel) and I personally bottom out the in-game slider. If you're finding that your movements are heavily delayed and that you keep moving after stopping the mouse, this is probably why. BZ98R changed the definition of what "reverse mouse" is compared to the original game and I personally play with BZ98R's reverse mouse setting on such that the mouse kind of behaves like a joystick because that's what I'm used to. (pull the mouse toward you, your nose rises, etc.)

[Herp McDerperson]

K I guess you're gone?

[Red Spot]

Originally posted by Herp McDerperson:

I grew up very poor

Ahwww, have sum hugz.

[Herp McDerperson]

Originally posted by Red Spot:

Originally posted by Herp McDerperson:

I grew up very poor

Ahwww, have sum hugz.

wtf apparently...

www,

is HOW URLS WORK, SO SAYETH VALVE

[Skinner]

Red Odyssey is honestly kind of crappy. The escort missions are more or less impossible to beat the first time because the enemies kill the transports to quickly and don't change targets, forcing you to know where they're coming from ahead of time.

Overall, I feel like the chinese campaign wasn't really well designed for the game. It's a little more manageable if you're good with micromanagement, but the game's UI isn't built for quickly ordering different units to do different things. It seemed like they really wanted to do something cool and different, and I like that, but I don't think it worked out.

The wave mission was the absolute worst. You get hit so hard and so often that it's hard to keep your forces up and the stupid ass scavengers automatically go back to scavenging after like 30 seconds. It takes too long for hangers and depots to restore HP/Ammo because they can only do it one at a time. Then you've got the super soldier soviet "paratroopers" that spawn in the center of the base and do high damage and have huge HP pools for infantry. I cheesed the ♥♥♥♥ out of that mission by sending my recycler away once I learned the enemy tanks and walkers are coded to go to the location. I had to set up turrets though because the super soldiers were coded to attack the recycler, so they'd march there after spawning.

Then you get to the final chinese mission and it's just such a damn foot slog, especially with those ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ sniper 1 shotting you.

I know it's never going to happen, but if this series ever gets a reboot, I'd like to see the chinese campaign redone.

[Herp McDerperson]

Originally posted by Skinner:

Red Odyssey is honestly kind of crappy. The escort missions are more or less impossible to beat the first time because the enemies kill the transports to quickly and don't change targets, forcing you to know where they're coming from ahead of time.

I don't think anyone would dispute that missions like "Spilt Milk" are intense ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. AI was far less good at combat in the original (though they generally just threw more units at you to increase difficulty). The Redux seemed to attempt to rebalance but ... I don't know. Developers are notoriously bad at their own games and I just find it surprising that they decided the difficulty of some of the missions was OK. I am VERY good at this game and have played most of the missions MANY MANY times and I still hate "Spilt Milk" hardcore.

Originally posted by Skinner:

Overall, I feel like the chinese campaign wasn't really well designed for the game. It's a little more manageable if you're good with micromanagement, but the game's UI isn't built for quickly ordering different units to do different things. It seemed like they really wanted to do something cool and different, and I like that, but I don't think it worked out.

Mission 1 is kinda odd but it's manageable once you get through the snipers and such.
Mission 2 was not super difficult but they broke several aspects of it, especially General Fu's convoy.
Mission 3 is fairly difficult and very annoying and I am not a fan of random chance (the APC that contains General Fu is randomly selected). I tend to do A LOT of sniping on it.
Mission 4 isn't very interesting and if you don't happen to notice the unoccupied Flanker on the high ground near the silo for you to steal, it can be very difficult. They added that: it wasn't in the original. I didn't initially notice it and save-scummed trying to land a snipe on one of the flankers coming after you and hope I can get to the portal in one piece.
Mission 5 is my favorite but I recognize that it is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. Those soldiers were not supposed to spawn on the ground and it is a travesty that it went unnoticed. Lack of follow up with reported bugs combined with an unfortunate coincidence causes them to spawn on the ground when they should spawn 400m in the air. I have a LUA replacement for that mission up on the workshop that fixes this.
Mission 6 ... let me just sum up the whole thing by saying that I find the ridiculous characters and tropes in the campaign to be funny and that's mainly why I like the CRA campaign. Some of the funny stuff you only see if you fail in certain ways... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBcdQGfi4dg

Originally posted by Skinner:

The wave mission was the absolute worst. You get hit so hard and so often that it's hard to keep your forces up and the stupid ass scavengers automatically go back to scavenging after like 30 seconds. It takes too long for hangers and depots to restore HP/Ammo because they can only do it one at a time. Then you've got the super soldier soviet "paratroopers" that spawn in the center of the base and do high damage and have huge HP pools for infantry. I cheesed the ♥♥♥♥ out of that mission by sending my recycler away once I learned the enemy tanks and walkers are coded to go to the location. I had to set up turrets though because the super soldiers were coded to attack the recycler, so they'd march there after spawning.

https://youtu.be/Z5ZNvHK7cEU
I thought I made a video of my modified version but apparently I never uploaded it ...

Overall not a strong enough effort was made to re-balance the campaign given the huge changes in AI behavior.

[Colonel Sanders]

Originally posted by Herp McDerperson:

K I guess you're gone?

sorry bud, been swamped with work and tbh the response i had typed up to you the day of - literally got 404'd because i navigated away from the page on accident.

[Herp McDerperson]

Originally posted by Colonel Sanders:

Originally posted by Herp McDerperson:

K I guess you're gone?

sorry bud, been swamped with work and tbh the response i had typed up to you the day of - literally got 404'd because i navigated away from the page on accident.

RIP
I hate that.
I still haven't learned to write any longish chunks of text in a text editor instead of trusting the browser to not ♥♥♥♥ me over.

Well if you have anything else you want to say on the matter or want assistance with something. I'm in the top 10 of people brain-damaged enough to dedicate a meaningful portion of their brain to ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ BZ (technical) knowledge.

[Colonel Sanders]

Originally posted by Herp McDerperson:

Originally posted by Colonel Sanders:

sorry bud, been swamped with work and tbh the response i had typed up to you the day of - literally got 404'd because i navigated away from the page on accident.

RIP
I hate that.
I still haven't learned to write any longish chunks of text in a text editor instead of trusting the browser to not ♥♥♥♥ me over.

Yeah, its funny how hind-sight always leads to that enigma of realization.

[Colonel Sanders]

realistically, ill probably just end up leaving the game on the back burner since I've been more invested in at least trying to complete combat commander... Im not sure how much further I have to go, but judging from the amount of chieves i have left, I think I am at least in the last "arc" of the story.

[Herp McDerperson]

Originally posted by Colonel Sanders:

realistically, ill probably just end up leaving the game on the back burner since I've been more invested in at least trying to complete combat commander... Im not sure how much further I have to go, but judging from the amount of chieves i have left, I think I am at least in the last "arc" of the story.

BZCC contains cancerous grinding achievements.
>3000 hours and I'm at 61/66
BZ98R is possibly my only "perfect game"

In BZCC, 48 of the achievements are non-grinding and just involve beating missions (on hard)
The campaign forks in two directions depending on what you do in "Fanning the Fire".