ClaytoniousRex
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Posts posted by ClaytoniousRex
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1.1.3 brings some important changes w.r.t dropship delivery.
The number of dropships available to each team is now limited.
Dropships now fly evasively and at higher speeds than before. This is mostly a good thing because it's much harder to snipe distant dropships out of the sky but there are some important repurcussions to it.
First, when a fast moving dropships reaches nap of earth and prepares to drop its cargo, it has to decelerate very hard. This means that for a few terrifying seconds toward the end of a drop, the dropship comes to a slow hover. It's very vulnerable at this time. While dropping in general is safer than before, dropping close to enemy units is now very hazardous! Combine that with the fact that losing a dropship really hurts now due to their limited numbers and you can see that it is usually outright foolish to attempt to drop near enemy units. Ideally, you want to drop thousands of meters away from anyone who might fire on the dropship and preferably with some intervening terrain to cover your dropship during that last nap of earth deceleration phase.
Second, the dropship will drop its cargo as close to the designated drop point as it can without exposing itself any more than necessary. It wants to drop the cargo and dust off as quickly as possible. If it dives in at high speed and misses the drop point by a few hundred meters, it is not going to slowly hover over to the exact spot before dropping its cargo. This means you can no longer drop on a dime. If you try to drop on a perfect little hilltop, don't be surprised if you actually end up a few hundred meters away from the base of the hill. Therefore, choose drop locations which are generally good tactical locations overall. You're really picking an "area" now instead of a "point". This is yet another factor that makes attempting to drop close to enemy units a dangerous plan.
Third, aggressive flying is simply more dangerous than the lazy, slow delivery dropships used to do. If you choose to drop in a nice, flat area then you can expect things to go well. If you choose to drop in a the midst of a bunch of jagged peaks then you're choosing to risk a mishap with the dropship. It's still going to push its performance envelope in order to avoid exposure to the enemy, so dropping in very rough terrain is dangerous. This is a choice you have to make when choosing a drop location. Also, this makes broad, gentle areas of the terrain tactically valuable assets to hang on to. If your team controls all or most of the good drop zones then so much the better. Forcing the enemy to make dangerous drops is good.
Infantry and deployables are now delivered via disposable drop pods as described in an earlier thread. Each team has an unlimited number of these.
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Now in 1.1.3, infantry can occupy buildings. To enter a building, approach one of its entrances just as you do the rear of a Paladin. Press the "special action" key to exit the building. Currently, only the Mu Arae template buildings can be entered (the smaller dark gray ones that are omnipresent in so many scenarios) so you can't enter, for example, the big office complexes in House to House.
Once inside of a building, your squad automatically fires on targets (including the squad leader); you can't manually aim and fire from within. So you might want to TAB away and look around while in a building. You can still issue the Hold Fire command as usual (very useful for letting the enemy close to within ATG range before opening up). Beam weapons and HMG's on the upper stories of some of those buildings have quite a good field of fire.
HE hits on buildings have a chance of damaging infantry inside of them. This chance goes up as the building loses structural integrity. Therefore, the bigger, tougher buildings give you more protection to begin with and they give it to you for a longer time. As a building sustains damage over time and gets closer to collapsing the chance of an HE blast hurting the infantry within grows higher. When a building finally collapses any infantry within are automatically killed.
Close combat between opposing infantry inside of a building is not modelled yet (you simply can't go inside with them).
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That would be just fantastic. I think it's even easier to do without restarting the server process. Just:
</font>
- Don't reload the inventory when the next scenario starts - leave it alone (already in RAM)</font>
- Pick the next scenario based on winner/loser instead of pulling from ScenarioList.dat</font>
- Check to see if this is the "last" scenario and show a special AAR screen for winning the entire connected campaign</font>
Very simple actually. And very cool. You would just need some additional tags in the original scenario file (the middle one) that provide a list of the "left" and "right" scenarios. You could already override the starting inventory in that first scenario with current tags. Wouldn't that cover what you're trying to do?
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Definitely, and this kind of "shock" is one of the things that adz and bjarmson pointed out that we should be doing but currently aren't.Wouldn't the concussion effect crew stunning, delicate instruments / gyros etc with the shockwave?. -
I only meant that mass doesn't effect flight time. You would get the same flight time with a 4,000,000 kg shell at 400m/s. Neil Armstrong on the moon with his hammer and feather, ya know...Roger, I realise that its a "plasma" mortar but it must have some mass / air resistance or why would it comedown at all
No, but it would for the fragments which originate from it, and it those fragments penetrating the armor that we're modelling (not the concussion of the HE).Would angle of impact really matter at all for an unshaped explosive?EDIT: Yurch, there's also the *direct* projectile hit which I guess is what you were talking about. You're right, it does try to penetrate like anything else but its penetration is extremely low. As to whether this is correct or not, I think so, since its penetration is correctly low. Angle would still definitely help against anything trying to push through armor.
[ August 18, 2006, 10:04 PM: Message edited by: ClaytoniousRex ]
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Correct, low trajectory will give you less flight time, which is the main reason you would sometimes want it (if there are no intervening obstacles to need to clear).
(BTW, 4kg shell is irrelevant)
Cool breeze, the light mortar is very difficult to use indirectly due to its small blast area. It would really benefit from this new low trajectory toggle.
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The mortars use high trajectory angles so they can be effective at truly indirect fire.
For any point that you want to hit with a ballistic trajectory (with a fixed velocity of the outgoing round) there are two solutions - a high trajectory and a low trajectory. 45 degrees is always the longest range. Raising or lowering the angle decreases the range.
Most weapons in DropTeam choose the low trajectory solution. Mortars are the exception. They choose the high trajectory solution in order to maximize the height of the projectile. This makes them useful for their primary role which is indirect fire, ideally out of LOS of the enemy. A mortar is best used behind steep hills, out of sight of the enemy, using the CTRL-M or targetting waypoints placed by team mates. With a high trajectory shot, the round will go over the maximum amount of intervening terrain (and other obstacles). With a low trajectory shot, you generally have to expose yourself to LOS of the target (though you can sometimes clear some *very* shallow terrain obstructions with a low velocity round, such as we all do now with the Hurricane from time to time).
You're quite right that there are times, even in a mortar carrier, that you would like to deliberately use a low trajectory shot instead of a high trajectory one. For example, when you ARE in LOS of the target (woops!). The ultimate solution would, of course, be to allow you to toggle between high and low so you can choose what fits your current needs the best. And as it happens this is pretty darned easy to do. We were within inches of doing it, as a matter of fact, and if there is now once again interest in this feature then it's a no-brainer to include in the next release.
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Yes, that is a serious problem. Before 1.1.2, bots and turrets never did. As of 1.1.2, they finally started shooting at jammed targets but not often enough. Now in 1.1.3, they do a pretty good job against them (only failing to notice them at about the same rate a player would, hopefully).
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It could be done on a much finer grained basis at the expense of additional memory consumption. Things like this start to pinch on the already-below-min-spec users, but I guess "That's Life". We'll look at how much of a hit this actually is.
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How does the Hermes destroy any of those fundamentals? By having a limited capacity to intercept incoming rounds or by providing sensor jamming?
If it's the former, then are you saying that as soon as something like Trophy or other active defense systems gain widespread use that the entire basis of military doctrine will have to be thrown out on the spot?
If it's the latter, then throughout most of history the Enemy has not had a red target pipper on his head and a dot on a digital map, so I don't think that changes much w.r.t. historical comparison.
Or does the Hermes do something else besides these 2 that you're referring to? And even more importantly, whatever the problem you're pointing out is, how would you like to see it fixed?
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You can turn off "LOS" on the settings tab just to "cheat" and see where everything is. Use that to get past this mission if you want but be sure to remember to turn it back on again. Generally, the game is very dull without limited intelligence.
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Now that 1.1.3 is finally finished, I wanted to take a few precious minutes to return to this thread.
I want to point out a few things about Dark that the rest of the community might not have taken into account. He's a very talented guy with lots of simulation and wargaming experience. He has a passion for seeing things in this genre "done right" and, like many people with a lot of talent, he has a clear vision of exactly what he wants to see. Because of this passion he doesn't take much time to sugar coat things or to package them in a friendly way - he just lobbies for what he sees as "the right thing" and has a hot reaction to things that seem "wrong". I think his reaction is to those things and not the people who mention them; I honestly believe him when he says he had no intention of offending anyone. If he gets a little heated about things then it's like the conductor of a symphony screaming at a violinist - he doesn't dislike the violinist (or like the violinist either) - he just wants the music to be played "just so" and *hates* it when anyone in the symphony plays the music differently.
As it happens, we at TBG and Battlefront have a very long, rich, resume of simulation and wargaming experience ourselves, often even predating computer simulation, spanning many genres including modern mechanized warfare based on more than just the basic principles outlined above. If anyone were going to be offended by "being talked down to" by Dark then it would be us, but we take no offense at all because we understand he is coming from a passionate point of view and doesn't mean to personally insult anyone. It's inevitable that visions of a tactical and fun simulation set in the future will clash from time to time. Debating these competing ideas for what would be best for the game is part of the fun of developing and playing a game like this in the first place!
In this particular case, the core problem is that Dark simply does not like point defense - it forces him outside of the tactical envelope that he *likes* to play in. It offends his modern and historical grognard sensibilities. As pointed out in numerous posts above, these point defenses are not at all "game breakers" in the sense that they're too powerful. In fact, they're trivially easy to bypass or destroy. But Dark, and there will be other players like him, do not want to be bothered having to bypass or destroy them. They don't like that facet of the current tactical scenario. There's nothing wrong with this, and as I stated above we believe that a scenario author should have the freedom to create scenarios without these devices in them which is exactly what we've done in 1.1.3.
This means that scenario authors are now perfectly welcome to create scenarios without any point defense in them, and even without air defense in general if they like. This will necessitate some other changes along the way (which are already in your power to do as a scenario author) if you want to have a balanced game but that's part of the fun.
Think the game is better without that stuff in it? Go ahead and change your scenario to not have them in it and let's play. I'll bet that everyone enjoys it more in some ways and less in others, but the nice thing is that we all get to try it various ways and just trying it out is fun. Some players will strongly prefer the game this way and will want to exclusively play those scenarios. Others won't. We've bent over backwards to make this thing flexible and open, because this is our golden rule:
We think we're really good game designers. But we also know that some other people out there are good designers, too, and we want to see their visions realized just as much as we want to see our own.
One thing will never change. When you propose or implement a new idea, not everyone will like it. You should hear half of the cruel spirited junk we've had to hear about DropTeam itself (this thread is nothing in comparison). This doesn't mean they're stupid or haven't read enough history - it simply means they don't like it. There's nothing wrong with that, either. If they don't like your scenario or Mod, they don't have to play it. There's no need to tell each other what morons you are.
So in summary, what I would like to see is "Dark_au's More Conventional Tactics" scenario pack, rather than seeing Dark, or anyone else, walk away due to hurt feelings.
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The most important thing to keep in mind is that all objects are modelled at 2x scale (some historical discussions about that here and in the 8th post down in here).Do you have some over-all dimensions for the various AFV's currently in-game (like height, width, length)?On top of that, many of the current unit types are simply big to begin with. The Paladin, for example, is a big IFV because it needs to accomodate Medium infantry.
The Thor MBT is 17 meters long - about twice the size of an M1 Abrams. The Shrike is 9 meters long and 3.5 meters tall.
You can implement a blade just like the Cutter's (it simply has up and down positions). If you want more elaborate fold-up "stowing" of the blade or something like that then layout specifically what you want and I'll tell you whether or not it's currently possible (and what it would take to make it possible).i wonder if it would be within the realms of game balance to include a fold-up dozer blade on the chassis as the s tank has
I don't have flat, empty camo textures available. Marco hand paints all of the vehicle textures and Gordon then goes in behind him and applies the camo. Gordon may very well have the "empty" camo textures that you need. I'll try to find out.camo textures -
They do this deliberately. "Attack" means push toward the target point until it's reached and then switch to defense of that point (the bot assumed you attacked it because you want to hold on to it).I've noticed that bots seem to flip the attack/defend order around by themselves. Often when told to attack an objective, they switch to defend and just hang where they are."Defend" means stay within a wide radius of the target point, engaging enemy units that come into LOS, even possibly moving toward them (but without leaving the defense radius of the target point). They will also try to maneuver around intervening obstructions within the defense area in order to get a clear shot line to a target, etc. Grappler could elaborate more on how this works when he returns from vacation.
The bots are Grappler's babies. I'm the one who haunts the forum, but there's a long list of names on that "Credits" tab for a reason. They just send me out to the forum because I am the most bald of the lot. ( No, that's not a typo -I'm not sure what kind of architecture Clay's been using to construct the bot-minds... )Alex, your list hits all of the important points. We're moving in exactly this direction. If all goes well, it looks like we're finally adding a new dedicated team member with impressive credentials in this field who will be refining the higher level "tactical" AI. Keep your fingers crossed. But whether that pans out or not, we know that these features are important and we'll accomplish them as soon as we can.
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How has this been for everyone lately in 1.1.2? Did the normalization seem to help in general?
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Ice, zip up your scenario and email it to me. I'll find out what the problem is.
Aittam, do you mean that 512 is the max dimension available to you in Terragen?
(Should be using 513 instead of 512, actually)
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Iceman, how many vertices is your terrain in width/height and what's the vertex spacing? You might need to zip up a prelim version of your scenario so I can look at why this is happening.
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It would probably be a good 3 or 4 man-weeks. Since it's entirely a programming problem, that would probably mean 2 weeks of calendar time. That means en entire release cycle dedicated to this single feature.About how much work do you guess it would take?Of course, this is a time estimate from a programmer. These are about as accurate as computer models of global climate change.
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A great list of ideas, Coyote, especially for your first post! I hope we get to hear more as you find time to play.
It adds a huge amount of replayability to scenarios so there's no question this is a good thing. It's been on our feature list for a while now. Honestly, it will take a while to get there (but we eventually will).Weather effects that offset visiblility and (potentially) traction...squalls
This is probably the only thing you suggested that we're not very interested in at present. The same basic game but with a thermal or other night imaging shader applied to the graphics doesn't add much gameplay value for the amount of work involved. If done properly then, yes, it could actually change gameplay, too. But there are a lot of other features that would probably please us all more for the same or less work.Night...NV and/or thermal IR
Yes, this is how it already works in 1.1.3. The scenario author can specify any number of reinforcement zones for each team.Reinforcement points/areas will be useful, but a scenario designer ought to consider the possiblity of using dropships or at least have more than one such area, because otherwise the opposing team could camp the area under certain conditions and that would be the end of the scenario.
This is fixed in the imminent 1.1.3 release.Propogating hits through AFV tires to their bodies would be desireable if it's not done now -- my interpretation of another post by Clay is that the tires effectively stop AP rounds because the tires are seperate objects of some kind.
Right, Tanki. This would be implemented along with the ATGM countermeasures feature since the code is so similar.In desert maps I would like to see tanks kick up dust, which blocks LOS.Anyway, welcome aboard, Coyote!
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Outstanding work at adz's usual high level of quality!
The main problem is, as Yurch indicated, that it basically has 2 turrets. You need to mount the 120 on a small turret, even if it isn't visible, to make it work. There's no provision right now for controlling 2 turrets so in making your separate MG on top work will require code changes. That means the soonest you could see the MG working would be in 1.1.4. But you could get everything else working, even with the MG in place but non-functional until 1.1.4 (or you could mount it coaxially until 1.1.4).
For the "little turret" for the main gun, just use the <LoStop> and <HiStop> tags to limit its traverse to a small side-to-side angle. When you get the modelling finished I'll hook this up for you in a new .physicalobjectgroup so you can see how it works. Then you can tweak it more from there.
It's literally by the polygons. Your slope is really going to make a difference, so follow Yurch's lead with balancing issues.I'm not sure how the game models armor thickness.......anyone shed some light here?Is it by geometry (i.e. polygon y & polygon x) or is it simply by facing (front/left/right etc)?
It's not as bad as it sounds. You can make the spheres extend beyond the vehicle's interior in which case they're basically clipped by the hull. So you can fill spaces pretty effectively. Also, it's OK to be a tad abstract here (for example, don't worry much about overlaps, etc.)pity about the sub-systems being defined as spheres only as that is a little sub optimal for squarish afv's.... -
Run Start/Programs/Battlefront/DropTeam/Game Updater.
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I use Filters/Colors/Channel Mixer and give each channel about 35% of itself (depending on how opaque you want the mask for a given scenario).
You could probably also just use the brightness/contrast tools instead, but I like the fine control of using percents.
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Now that sounds interesting. It would be pretty easy to give it an umbilical like the Galaxy's and also give it some more cargo room to justify this huge load of extra rounds that it's carrying. We would need to limit the amount of resupply available from it.
People have also asked in the past that it be able to drop deployables or at least mines. This still sounds interesting, too.
Deployment Zones
in DropTeam
Posted
The 1.1.3 release includes Deployment Zones. These are a way of bringing up reinforcements from outside of the local area without using dropships (either nearby reserves on standby or drops at greater distances with overland driving into the local battle area). A team can always deploy into its deployment zones even if it has run out of dropships.
These zones are shown as dashed boxes on the Tac Display. The green boxes are your team's deployment zones and the red boxes are the opposing team's. When picking a drop location, just click inside of one of these boxes in order to deploy this way instead of using a dropship. Once you've picked the location, some time will pass before the unit you've requested is brought up as a reinforcement. After that time elapses, the new unit will appear in the deployment zone (just as they doing during the Deployment Phase).
Nothing prevents either team from doing anything they would normally do inside of the deployment zones. For example, deployment zones do not represent some kind of "safe area". Yes, this means a team can "camp" the enemy deployment zones and even place mines and turrets in them. This is a risky use of a team's limited number of deployables and it's very hard to try to keep the cork on that bottle (an entire enemy team appearing simultaneously in a small area is a force to be reckoned with), but you're welcome to try!