that's an interessting finding with the execution. but as there are 6 enemy factions I think killing 3 of them should be allright. I mean you need to kill the last one yourself anyway so it is only 2 extra really. for the 5000 kills I am thinking of changing tactics for some missions so you kill more enemies on the way. let's say tau stronghold. instead of camping in the base while teching you could skirmish a bit to get some kills here and there. ork stronghold would be the best to "farm" kills that is for sure. it could leed to some interessting strats where you split your forces efficiently to get a lot of kills arround the map simultaniously.

...all that theorycrafting aside: I like to keep things straight and easy to understand. a 100% category implies that you get everything a game has to offer. for most games it is to get everything that is shown in your "inventory" or at least the highest upgrade for everthing. wargear is keeped track of in the overworld menu and therefore should be included in the 100% category in my opinion.

I would like to wait a few days to see if anyone else wants to say something about that. if there is no big backlash against this rule addition I would then update the rules.

ps: I really feel sorry that I am bringing that point up just as you recorded a run :-S.

Hey there,

I was thinking about the 100% category and its rules. Currently the only requirement for that category is to own all regions at the end of the campaign. This auto-includes to have all special bonuses (like to have more req at the start of a mission etc.) and to have all honour guard sqauds. The only thing not included so far is the wargear. For true 100% you would need to also have all 10 wargear slots filled. Just for the record I put all requirements for those below:

◾ 3-to-1 kill ratio (a minimum of 200 kills required) ◾ 1 conquest (taking a province) ◾ 5 conquests ◾ 15 conquests ◾ 2,000 kills (accumulated) ◾ 5,000 kills (accumulated) ◾ 3 defeated enemies (stronghold missions) ◾ 1 defense (manual) ◾ 3 defenses (manual) ◾ 5 defenses (manual)

I think that you reach most of the requirements as you conquer all regions anyway. Critical would be the "3 to 1 ratio", the kills and the defenses. The first one you normally get at Tyrea anyway. The defenses could also be done quickly by skipping turns and letting the AI attack. The only thing I'm not sure about are the 5000 kills as you normally try to kill no enemies and just go for the mainbase.

What are your thoughts? Personally I think 100% should include all wargear.

Greetings, Max

cool! I would like to see some more categories filed. I am currently working on a Tau all stronghold run as this is the last faction left for all strongholds. hope to see some new runs of you soon :-).

I have a ssd harddrive and it shortens the load times if I campare it to your runs. the best way to go arround that would be to take the times without loads. but this takes a lot of effort or an autosplitter-tool.

as the runs aren't super optimized (speeking of less than a minute between 1st and 2nd place) the extra loading times don't make that big of a difference I say. lets say 15 mission loads with +3 seconds loading for each is about 45 Seconds additional time.

on a different note: ssd's aren't as expensive as they were a few years ago and probably every new pc has at least one ssd for the os and some programms. so my personal optinion would be that if someone who wants to perfect the speedruns of this game he/she should get a pc with a ssd.

thinking of it again, maybe it was sega support and not steam support. anyway one of those give you new codes.

hey, I don't want to spoil the fun, but changing the AI behaviour with a mod is not allowed for speedrunning. I mean basicly every mod is not allowed as long as the community has not decided to specifically allow it.

the easiest way would be to run the steam version. you don't need to buy it again on steam. they accept the code you got with your cd-copy. if it is not working try to get in contact with support and they will send you a working code. that is how I got all the dow 1 + expansions working in steam.

hope I could help you out.

okay, so have fun there!

I guess we can play according to this new rule from now on. I will update the rules on the site soon. if anyone is against this rule please let us know here.

hey guys,

the whole reason behind taking only ingame time was: it's easy. you just play the game and look at the timer in the end and your done. no additonal timer software needed etc. with this it was logical for me to disallow save + load as it would encourage to load as often as you want as the ingame time does not change. in full game runs save + load is allowed as you only can use real time anyway.

now to the crashes. I only had one crash ever in speedrinning this game and it was in mission 5 which is another mission with many ships involved. in most games I watch speedruns of it is that if the game crashes you are just unlucky and you have to repeat.

for this game I could think of a rule as mentioned before. something like "if the game crashes you may load a savegame of that particular attempt and go on. the save, crash and load must all be shown a singular continuous video. you also need to make sure to mention the crash and its time in the video describtion.".

kingcat, please tell us of the missions continues to crash or if you were just unlucky.

so far all additional times fit in.

I was thinking about frames as well but wasn't sure on what fps this game runs tbh.

updates: one of the two times not fitting in my theory was wrong, so only 1 out of 59 times don't follow my formula.

while doing attempts of the first roman mission I realized that the game does check the time exactly every 3,2 seconds. two examples as proof:

1. look at kingcats run of the first roman mission. he conquers the last tower while 1m 16s is allready showing in the bottom right and gets the victory message right away. this is because the game checks at 1m 16.8s if the victory conditions are met.
2. in contrast to this I noticed that I never get the victory message for 1m 20s when this time is allready shown on the bottom right. this is because the game checks excactly at 1m 20.0s. so if 1m 20s is shown on the bottom the xx.0s is allready over. I only got the 1m 20s victory message when conquering the last tower at 1m 19s or earlier.

so it's not the game that rounds down the check times. we are doing it as we are only getting an update of the game time every full second. now I am pretty sure that my theory is 99% right.

ps: if someone wonders what mission time does not fit in: it is roman mission 8 in saschas full game run.

hey there,

as I am a sucker for numbers and stuff I set up a google table with all the recorded victory times in seconds and tried to find a formula to calculate the times the game checks for victory. roman mission 1 times suggests that it must be an time between 3 to 4 seconds in between those checks.

after a little testing I can say that with the times we have now it is most likely like this: t = rounddown(3,2x;0) with x being a natural number ...or in other words any multiple of 3,2 rounded down.

only 2 of 58 sample times don't fit in which is fine by me. when we get more times on the leaderboard I can second guess my theory and maybe adjust it.

here is the link to the google table: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-GNWwjxE11dreeBclUWMz0GbpYhMMFpZH-iw8mHBnnA/edit?usp=sharing

oh...than I have no idea sorry :-/

also the version from gog? if so, it may be a problem with that version.

I noticed that with the certain times as well. but still on a 10m+ mission you can do so much stuff "wrong" so that you never get a perfect run where these 3s will cost you the record. thats all I want to say. for the shorter missions it is quite the disadvantage I agree on that.

anyway, we can't help you if you don't share what version you are playing on.

I don't have any problems like that. Which version do you play on? I use Patch 1.6 - Gold Edition Version on CD.

ps: in the longer missions (10m+) this 2-3s won't make much of a difference.

there is a button just next to the "submit run" button. it is called "view rules". there you find the rules for the individual category you are in. for this game all induvidual levels have the same rules. only difference is with the full game runs.

so be it. I make it clear in the rules. I will add theruns I have allready recorded. new runs after that only with easy. let the competition begin.

ps: it is really nice to have some people running this game. keep it up guys!

you don't need to be sorry! it is great to learn more about the game. for me it is kind of exciting to know as it could leed to some way faster strats in later missions. I again would like to allow easy. as there not many runners for this game I would like to hear what Tigger and Sascha say to this before changing any rules.

you are probably right. all my runs are done on normal as well. I actually don't know what the difference is really. most/all people I have seen playing use normal. but if the easy setting really makes a difference it should be allowed as the goal in speedrunning is to have the fastest time possible.

I compared the time two soldiers need to conquer one tower in the new record on easy and the old records on normal and there is a 3-4 s difference which is huge. so I would vote for allowing easy difficulty. even if this means I have to redo all my runs :S.

I also don't see any point in seperating easy and normal in different categories as we have way more missions than runs as it stands.

Thanks! Well, what category? ^^

For all strongholds you can whatch my run. There you see my route and the strats for every mission apart from tyrea.

Rule of thump for chaos is: easy mission -> raptors medium mission -> anti vehicle demons hard mission -> av demons + terminators Tyrea -> throw everything you've got at them. including the kitchen sink^^