Infantry

[BigChiefWahoo]

You guys are all nuts.

I watched a swarm of infantry - a swarm - attack a Thor in its own base and then dissappear. The infy swarmed in out of nowhere and destroyed the Thor then jumped out and disppeared before anyone could do anything about it. It was beautiful. The Thor was completely helpless. I love it.

This game is super groovy.

[yurch]

Flippin' nerds! Leave magic antimatter out of this!

I've found one extremely major reason why I don't respect infantry.

They cannot stop a drop. Well, they can, but that involves some really close AT grenade action.

Nearly every other chassis class has the ability to destroy a deploying dropship, save maybe single ions or mortars.

The infantry cannot do so, and will suffer in any conditions where players are hunting them.

[aittam]

ok but tonight we saw also some nice use of it, you got to admit it!

collaboration overall, one afv and two platoons and we cleared the enemy base with some really close encounter.

btw apologies for the way i quitted but i lost connection and when i was back all servers were empty

[ClaytoniousRex]

Step one: Be able to group squads in formation, so one human player can command more that one squad.

Once bots are properly "driving" infantry then this will already work via the normal formation command.

Step two: Have the bot squads shoot at the same target as the human player. Given the assumption of even basic radios and the the ease of following an ion beam by eye it seems very doable. For that matter why can't you slave bots that way to the human player in AFVs

Right, this would be good for all bots in formation with you, and very simple to implement, too. That's the way I like them - easy to do and big benefits!

On a related issue, if an infantryman can carry a six mm ion, why isn't their a thor turret with about 50 of them installed laying waste to everything on the map?

Since a man can carry a Javelin missile, why don't all hummvees have 20 of them mounted so they can kill tanks?

1 grams of antimatter is a small nuke, why bother with anything else.

Because, as others have touched on:

</font>

• It's a complicated matter to contain it until delivery. This would be exactly the sort of weapon that was used during The Rim's battle with the Mu Arae Entente before civilization in The Rim collapsed and Liveships began to decay. The Liveships are still able to manufacture antimatter powerplants and some other useful things but with each successive generation they're less capable - eventually even these things will be lost. Hellbored have given way to ion beams just as nano-scale weapons have given way to kinetic guns. So will The Rim's collapse proceed until pockets of civilization with their own engineering skills, independent from Liveships, begin to reemerge from the darkness. This is taking a while since you viking bastards keep dropping on them and looting. </font>
• You're fighting for the control of objectives in land based battles because you plan to make use of those objectives - whether it be occupying strategic ground or looting what's there. Either way, wide scale annihilation isn't your objective.</font>

I just don't see antimatter being used for anything except the liveships stardrive. They do not even really need to change the schematics, just the labels on the drawings and some text. It is a small thing, the game works very well. I just want this little piece to make a little more sense. Hammers Slammers really provides a much more coherent theory of vehicle power and so on. And the important parts are generic enough to be mostly borrow-able.

In spite of my above defense of the concept, I completely agree with you here (making the reference to Hammer's Slammers which has always been one of our main inspirations really seals the deal). It was still important to make those points above because of the general tendency to wonder why more miracle weapons aren't on the field in DropTeam.

This will require some more thinking about but I'm basically on the same page with you here.

One idea I had to make the infantry a lot more useful would be to give them an FO mode (forward Observer). Whereby they can mark a target, with a laser range finder or some such and have that info show up on the map as a red diamond (rather than a red dot). Maybe even give them 0.1 of a point for each target they ID like this.

*Very* good idea.

I would like to see "wedge" formation added with the controlling player at the tip.

Easy enough. Didn't make it in time for 1.1.1, though.

My only big issue thus far, is that all infantry should be able to seize buildings! Because, well... They're INFANTRY!

Absolutely right, Caseck. In progress right now.

ATGMs can be fired on infantry in top-attack mode.

Fixed in 1.1.1.

I would like to see infantry be able to hitch a ride on AFV's.

I tried jumping on top of a few last night but just kept slipping off the top. Bah!

Entry and riding inside of IFV's is on the way, but right now you can actually climb onto the chassis of one and hitch a ride. It's usually more of a novelty than really being useful but it can come in handy. At the moment, the trick is to ride the chassis, not the turret.

Fer sure hand-placed demo charge, one per infantry man, would be very useful and sensible for all kinds of devious uses.

Absolutely agreed and in progress, but this is not something ALL types of squads will have.

[ July 27, 2006, 11:40 PM: Message edited by: ClaytoniousRex ]

[Alexander SquidLord Williams]

Since a man can carry a Javelin missile, why don't all hummvees have 20 of them mounted so they can kill tanks?

If Javelins had no mass and required nothing more than a 10in by 10in by 10in box to produce an infinite number of them, a HUMMWV would mount a lot more than twenty of them at a time. They'd mount a Javelin-box on everything larger than a Segway and possibly a number of things smaller.

While the LiveShips can't necessarily abstract the theory of ion beams to much larger calibers, the idea of mounting more of them on a given frame is pretty trivial. Clearly, given AM cores, power is not a limiting factor. AM-supplied power is near infinite in the masses we're talking about and the infantry-carried ion beam has no ammo limit. Extrapolation is both obvious and trivial.

(Me, I'd love to have an ion beam weapon replacing the secondary coax or top-mounted MG on most if not all of the vehicles; infinite ammo, way better accuracy, and almost no decrease in actual inflicted damage vs infantry. Its really a no-brainer.)

[yurch]

Since a man can carry a Javelin missile, why don't all hummvees have 20 of them mounted so they can kill tanks?

Isn't that kinda what a shrike is already?

[dan/california]

Clay, my one, and admittedly picky, response to your post above is that you do not necessarily have to use antimatter to get big booms. You just decide the size of the boom you want and do the math for how many micro grams of antimatter you need.

This doesn't work for current generation nuclear weapons because their is a minimum size required to get the whole thing to work and that minimum size is a rather large in terms of explosive yield. Any amount of antimatter, from fire cracker to planet buster is going to go off with exactly the same , very large, amount of energy per gram. The underlying physics are fundamentally different.

The Squid Lord is dead on about the 6mm ion. It is all about ammo space and handling, No ammo, no problem. I still like the idea of giving the infantry a ckem style missile instead.

I apologize if I am geeking out completely here.

[ClaytoniousRex]

Understood, Dan. That just makes the 1st point more relevant than the 2nd. That's why I went ahead and made those comments even though I basically agree with you about antimatter anyway.

[Alexander SquidLord Williams]

This doesn't work for current generation nuclear weapons because their is a minimum size required to get the whole thing to work and that minimum size is a rather large in terms of explosive yield. Any amount of antimatter, from fire cracker to planet buster is going to go off with exactly the same , very large, amount of energy per gram. The underlying physics are fundamentally different.

My friend Eric, who I have not quite lured successfully into the mind-gnawing evil that is DropTeam, and myself were juggling around numbers on how much effective tonnes of TNT were in a vehicular AM fuel cell. They rumble out to about 24 tonnes of TNT per microgram of AM. That's a lot of explosive force we don't see go off on the battlefield when there's a holed battery. Mind you, the battery itself is so large, the AM must be stored in some extremely diffuse, cellular lattice, as I was talking about before. Regardless, a sabot through the chamber should do a little more than set the vehic on fire, since it'd be reacting directly and uncontrollably with at least some of the AM in the store.

If vehicles were dangerously capable of fratricide with a holed AM battery it would be somewhat more realistic. Setting off 60 - 80 tonnes of TNT in the guts of your Paladin can't be good for folks parked the next spot over. (Plus, opportunity for a cool ripple shockwave effect!)

I described the 6mm ion as "the most annoying weapon on the battlefield" in conversation last night. Let's be honest, it fires continuously as a target closes in from 4km, because otherwise it just leaves the operator's initials half-scrawled across the chassis in wild arcs with little other effect. Like dan/cal, I'd rather have some kind of TOW-esque missile system, preferably energy-based, since we have such a lot of it.

Now, if/when we actually get the Ogre scenario, then we might be talking about fractional-kilo AM loads, again, either for its disgustingly huge main cannon or for forces deployed against it.

[Eric the .5b]

Originally posted by Alexander SquidLord Williams:

Now, if/when we actually get the Ogre scenario, then we might be talking about fractional-kilo AM loads, again, either for its disgustingly huge main cannon or for forces deployed against it.

Fractional gram (tens to a few hundred mg), you psycho. I swear, you try to pull out planet-busters in every setting.

(I'm the aforementioned friend Eric.)

[yllamana]

The close-assaulting infantry are incredibly scary now with their AT grenades. I approve very much. Thank-you.

[bboyle]

Originally posted by yllamana:

The close-assaulting infantry are incredibly scary now with their AT grenades. I approve very much. Thank-you.

I agree....I jetted my squad directly into the middle of a tank mosh at the Gulch today and suddenly there were flaming tanks everywhere. Unbelievable. The tweaks are looking very good.

[cool breeze]

I would also like to see some rediculously large explosions in OGRE, at least in a mod.

[bboyle]

Now that I've figured out how badass infantry can be I'm curious about something...if this is the light version then what do you have planned for the heavies? Are we looking at guys with atgms and armour heavy enough to take a hit?

[Jack Carr]

Would you consider an infantry hand held weapon that acts much like a can opener on armor, sort of like an electric battleaxe or a light saber. After all, these guys are space vikings.

This would be really cool when infantry slugged it out with infantry, guys getting their limbs lopped off.

[aittam]

ah btw there's a little bug in the infantry audio, sometimes the breathing get stuck and it's like to speak at the ophone with johnny maniac

[Jalinth]

Originally posted by bboyle:

Now that I've figured out how badass infantry can be I'm curious about something...if this is the light version then what do you have planned for the heavies? Are we looking at guys with atgms and armour heavy enough to take a hit?

Well I don't know about the dev team, but *I* have a couple ideas...

Originally Written by Robert A. Heinlein:

As I hit, the Y-rack on my shoulders launched two small H. E. bombs a couple of hundred yards each way to my right and left flanks but I never saw what they did as just then my first rocket hit — that unmistakable (if you’ve ever seen one) brilliance of an atomic explosion.

Overkill is like Santa Claus. A myth! :cool:

[ July 31, 2006, 06:19 PM: Message edited by: Jalinth ]

[aittam]

well well heavy infantry.......... coaxial machine guns..........

but what about extra light infantry, since R.A.H. is well known here, some lighter armour (btw a burst from a fellow infantry man is enough to kill you already) but faster and with more juice in the jets?

i was just thinking to some anti infantry role, drop and move fast to intercept some inbound enemy infantry......... i tried with a 20mm team but they are'nt fast enough (well same speed but the other guy was sneaking i was running) if the distance is too much

[bboyle]

Originally posted by aittam:

well well heavy infantry.......... coaxial machine guns..........

but what about extra light infantry, since R.A.H. is well known here, some lighter armour (btw a burst from a fellow infantry man is enough to kill you already) but faster and with more juice in the jets?

i was just thinking to some anti infantry role, drop and move fast to intercept some inbound enemy infantry......... i tried with a 20mm team but they are'nt fast enough (well same speed but the other guy was sneaking i was running) if the distance is too much

For me the issue is more about additional stealth than about firepower. We really, really, really need a crawl order. We also really need to be able to keep the rest of the squad locked in the prone position when moving the 'active' squad leader.

My feeling on the 20mm infantry is that the rest of the squad is there to protect the specialist from other infantry while he goes to work on harder targets. To do so most effectively you really need to have the ability to do what I'm talking about above.

[aittam]

yep definitly they should stay down

oh and i just saw again the video"close assault" and i'm even more convinced that those guys need a V and inverted V formation especially when scouting

[ August 01, 2006, 12:55 PM: Message edited by: aittam ]

[Caseck]

I would like to see the RAM auto-grenade launcher. (Multiple AT grenade shots from a semi-auto launcher. HE or HEAT.)

But this would require adding specialists to squads.

It would also be nice to have ATGM teams. FO/RECON teams...

If we go down the specialist route... Perhaps the squad should have a EW/jammer specialist? Perhaps even a mortar team? ADA teams would be interesting as well...

[poesel]

I was playing dark_au map with the castle on top and one thing was really annoying: if you got infantry up there and go walking 'under' the buildings then the camera jumps upward and you don't see where you are going. Only solution is to switch to goggle mode which doesn't help much since you still have no overview.

The camera should really try harder to stay closer to the controlled infantry/vehicle. Better have his bum in my face than see nothing.

Another thing: I actually don't mind having a squad of spidermen at my control, but I haven't found the trigger for the web thing..?

Joke aside, but these guys have really a good grip. Take the ice map: you can just walk up any slope, ice or not. Only on rare occasions you will start to slide. Its ok that the inf can go through rougher terrain, but a bit more realism would be nice. They don't even slow down running up a cliff!

Last thing which is not infantry related: when you drop an apollo on a east-west street which has a slope you will allways topple over. The dropship can't really go down to the street (because of the slope) so it drops you from a small height. Since your facing is always northwards then your right track (for instance) hits the street first which gives the apollo a momentum which then starts to roll the tank down the street... Very annoying.

The dropship should try to be parallel the ground where it drops the vehicle or the vehicle should be so it falls flat on its tracks/wheels.

[combatplus2]

Some thoughts on infantry...

-- I'm having the best luck using them for defense in objective scenarios. Esp. the ice mountain map, or anytime you have to protect elevated or urban terrain. For some reason, ppl tend to want to take AND occupy the objective with AFVs (with no infantry support). My squad lies in wait, I order them held in place, and my leader goes Rambo with an ATG. My single gray dude viewed against gray ashpalt and gray buildings is very hard to notice before it's too late.

-- This "Rambo" technique can be effective. It actually lets one player engage a target from two different directions. All but the leader act as the distraction, while you take your leader around for a flanking shot.

-- Clearly, once an enemy AFV spots your infantry at decent range in open terrain, you're dead. One nearby HE hit puts you in that stupor. The stupor lasts just long enough for the AFV to reload and finish you off. Very "WW1" when that happens....

-- Since concealment is so critical for infantry, it would be cool to have a better way to know roughly how concealed you actually are. (My PC can't really handle the foliage, so I always look exposed). Maybe just an icon or an "idiot light" that appears when you're truly standing on bare rocky ground where you can be spotted at max range, or something....

-- Really looking forward to the sticky-bomb / satchel charge... Jet up and land on an enemy Thor, hit B to plant the charge, and you have 3 seconds to split...

[Jalinth]

What I wanted while playing on the 'Where Eagles Dare' map was an indicator that lights up over frindly infanty. When you are in a fire fight it is HARD to tell your guys from the other side. It get's worse when you have more then two squads at once. I know I killed a couple members of my own squad in that action.

All I could do was aim at them and see what name poped up. If your friends had an IFF (even just your squadmates) it would make for less close range Blue on Blue.

It doesn't need to be a long range IFF. Say make it so if you are within 50 meters a piper lights up saying 'I'm on your side'

[konstantine]

I'm really enjoying using infantry, but I have the most fun when my squad is killed off and I am left with the 20mm HMG, or the sole survivor with the rifle--in a target rich environment you can hunker down and pick off targets with ease. A single infantryman is way harder to spot, especially if you end up with the 20mm HMG lying down in a depression. Tonight I picked off 5 Paladins, bots and humans, in quick succession after losing my whole squad, undetected.

In a game last week I killed two enemy squads worth with a lone rifleman my standing behind a hillcrest. Kind of makes me think that squads aren't the best option. How about a "sniper"--a one or two man team with no ATGs and just the 20mm? Just thinking out loud.