Alexander SquidLord Williams

I think this would be super, especially if I can get Montard* to be my gunner while I drive in an intelligent manner. Yes, only half-joking. I can't hit the broad side of a barn on the move, but the bots certainly can. On the other hand, they can be a bit ... single-minded.

Combat effectiveness as a modifier to score rate seems reasonable; done right, it covers extra points for various hardware in the zone (ie. if you derive a generic "firepower rating" for elements in the zone, a Thor and an Apollo 120mm are both going to have a higher value than a Shrike; even an immobilized but still fire-able Apollo will be more valuable than an mobile ion Paladin). Working up the formulea will be a bit of a pain, but that's why you get the big bucks, right? I'm pretty sure aittam means LoS to his elements, not to the objective. Being under observation implies there are still elements active in the perimeter, so I understand what he means by suggesting it, that the attacker needs to really have control of the site to get maximum scoring, but I think that scaling by "relative element value" probably covers the issue just as well.

There's a MaxDropElevation tag? Mein Gott, I feel ... well, I feel like I need to crack the whip over you to get the XML spec updated and the wiki filled in, but I'm well aware the WWII stuff has got to be putting boot to arse on you guys, of late. I pretty intentionally described the environ as a virtual creation for training, knowing full well that its not a very natural looking formation. Cranking up erosion further and perturbing the edges doesn't actually look like it would be as much fun; as is, there are some silted hills and gullies along the floors that are frighteningly good at masking approaches, and corners become death zones if they're stealthed well, or a Hermes escorts some folk. L3DT is really nice for creating terrain, but you really need to do the heightmap at 1025x1025 to get the rough design map detailed enough to do things like this. I briefly considered making huge pits of water for the true Wumpus experience, but it seemed ... redundant.

Most entirely excellent. I've been meaning to write a lengthy essay for my blog on the issue of communicating commands to systems versus communicating intent, which is something its both far from trivial to do and which really hasn't been done all that much in the RTS field, despite it being a far more realistic method of communication (with the ancient Majesty and the strangely compelling Populous being the main holders of the intent interface). Couple this with the ability to link bots/players to specific squads / units / maniples (which gives away what I've been reading lately), and the ability to give orders for a given unit or "anyone," and the emergent possibilities start looking very, very good.

Defense since the removal of pod-dropped mines is more than mildly tough. I've been playing a lot of the demo with a few of my friends, selling them on the evil, and its tough even with the ability to refresh minefields on the fly and with the Purple Death Balls of Doom of My Grandfather(tm, Munchkin-Fu). By the last 5min of the assault, the attackers have switched to their lighter vehicles, the turret fields are diminished or destroyed, the minefields have been destroyed by taking out units, and its all about the slugging, with little hidey-niches for attackers being brutal to hunt (especially along the north edge of Hopewell's tarmac). I don't want to see defense become impenetrable, but its hard, even in 1.1.5. Oh, I think there are a fairly obvious set that could be ennumerated: </font> Defense turrets which automate against the non-facility-owning team.</font>Deployment zones added to the team that owns a facility (representing more control of a given area; most useful in the particularly large maps).</font>Elements added to the overall inventory, possibly linked with the above DZ addition (ie. vehicles / infantry driven out of a facility / underground base).</font>Trickle-resupply of elements for the facility holder of a given kind of element (ie. every three minutes the site is held, an Apollo 120mm is added to the inventory).</font>Wide-scale terrain restructuring, possibly linked with massive devestation (ie. "hold this power plant for five minutes and this 4km radius sphere becomes a huge crater with everything within the area taking ungodly damage, including your element").</font>Decision-point links for next scenario choice, in linked scenarios.</font>I think that covers the ones that come to mind.

I actually just got around to trying this again after the latest round of patches. Amusingly, the dropping events are no longer a problem. I tried 4 bots per side and myself, and the drop period was a no-brainer. Of course, my bots all dropped on the cliff-top in the far northeast of the map, and one crashed and died in the attempt because the thing landed too close to a cliff edge, but that's not the issue. Dropping, at least, didn't bog me like it did, even if the bots were dumb about location choice. I dropped in (and was destroyed the first time by a lousy dropship release, which makes me revisit the ray-cast for DS approach vector idea, but I digress), and could drive around for a bit, no lag. Then I told my bot-buddies to extract en masse. Then things blew up and turned into lag central. Not good. In fact, bloody annoying. Extracts still drop in and pull out pretty vertical, but I suspect their guidance is trying to figure in a good drift approach, and being so close to the edge, it's just not going to happen, or at least throws a pile of failures for every success. So, looks like the Wumpus has thrown us another pit to be dug out of. Now, if only I could get my team-mates to stop dropping in on the walls and instead use the floor. I fear I'll need to use a DZ for that, though, with a tiny deployment radius, or some other hackery. I likewise suspect I may end up waiting for the integrated object placer simply so I don't go mad trying to figure out coordinates before I can finish this thing.

I'm up for it, though I generally work Friday nights, so I might drop unceremoniously. (No one wants to hear R Lee Ermy shout "I'm defending!" during a support call on their multi-million dollar server.)

A couple obvious problems here: </font> It's hard enough trying to find folks to drive a Cutter as is. Do you really want to make it require twice as many people to get things done? No one will drive your NeoDozer, since you've just succeeded in making it even less effective, in an overall sense.</font>The NeoDozer doesn't do anything particularly well save the one job no one wants to do. Digging ditches is unglamorous work and annoyingly exacting, the 14mm rotary is disgustingly underpowered if the kind of elements you dig emplacements to protect your folk from come up on you before you're done, and a Mercury can drop mines and jammers far more securely because they're at range and only the drop pod stands to be destroyed if there's someone looking. The additional armour and the dozer blade mean it's going to be near impossible to justify a faster overall speed than the original Cutter. Oh, yes, and it can still take EMP stun (which is avoided not by having more electronics, but hardened electronics).</font>The NeoCap(ture) basically just adds more 20mm Paladins without much reason not to take them for non-capture roles. The fact Cutters can capture sites is almost the only real reason to take them, anymore. Putting that ability in a marginally slower Paladin isn't really a compelling action. Sure, its faster, which lets you get into a site faster, but then you're stuck dead-still with crappy armour for the very, very long time until the hacking is complete. Being EMP-resistant is a throwaway at that point; the element is more useful for being able to be in the radius of an EMP and still gun down the other side than its use as an Engineering vehicle.</font>Overall, I just don't think it's a net useful change. The Cutter badly needs a re-design from a chassis PoV; the trads are far, far too close together and the center of gravity too high to be a reasonable ENG element. For a vehicle that is intended to spend its time going into and coming out of holes at odd angles, its far too wobbly. If I were going to make a fast change on it's model, I'd probably put the blade on a similarly equipped Mercury chassis and call it done. The Merc is much more stable, slightly faster, and just looks better. The lower profile wouldn't hurt, either. There is a legitimate case to be made for giving the Mercury CMD the ability to capture facilities as the Cutter does. If you really think there needs to be a fast-assault version of the Cutter for such things, that'd be a far better argument to make, as I see it. That would give the Merc a bit more reason to do more than park on a hill 6km away to call in arty, at least.

Reinforcement zone repair seems reasonable, but honestly, I should just extract from the location and switch to a non-damaged behicle. The extracted one goes back into the pool after a delay for "repairs," so extract/redeployment keeps me in play in the tactical situation. Likewise, for rearming. Having it occur all along the reinforcement zone is appealing on a number of levels, even if hard to necessarily work into the in-game metafiction of "how that works."

Ah, yes, it had an ammo increase recently. Still, it's pretty significantly disgusting if its co-located in the only Objective location. It, pointedly, won't be alone so there's no trade-off for deploying it in that situation. Notably why I suggested that the situation at the non-central bases was an acceptable trade-off; an attacking or defending force would have to devote a portion of the force to defending the Thor and manning it. (Though good luck with getting through the armour with a 14mm round from the Bacchus ... I'd rather try it with a 20mm HMG squad, and even then, I'd be unhappy.) As I said, its the potential presence at the central base in a map like Hopewell that introduces issues, especially on the defender's side. Guaranteed co-location of forces with no trade-off is more than mildly disruptive. At least as the attacking force, you have to take the ion tower / reload facility with a Cutter to get use out of it, which is not easy.

The only issue being I'm not sure if the bots yet understand the symbolic language as communicated on the tac. That's a hard AI problem, traditionally, and while my respect for Grappler is immense, I'm not sure if he's quite at that point. He might very well surprise me, though. Its possible. But I don't judge it likely. Still, even if the bots don't speak the language, it'll make the bot wrangler's job easier to stay on task and area.

The obvious problem with facilities as currently set up on most maps which reload weaponry: Thor mortar. Park it in the reload base. Odds are good there's an ion defense tower next door, too. Now you have a nearly indestructible artillery-launching nightmare under an umbrella of significant defensive fire. It never runs out of ammo, so the only reason it'd need to extract would be because of damage. It's all but invulnerable to non-Mercury-called counterbattery fire. That is just an argument against deployment in the central bases of the Occupation maps as they're currently designed. Conversely, putting reload facilities out in the non-center non-Objective maps co-located with an ion tower might give Attackers a reason to actually bother with those sites rather than simply wholly by-pass them. Having a site from which to launch an ongoing heavy bombardment would be worth the loss in point-accruing attacker force. So, summary: I think there's definitely a role for an "armoury" capturable facility ... but it'll need to be carefully allocated to maps to avoid creating a serious imballance. (Periphrially related, though, is that being Defender on the Objective maps now that mine-dropping during combat has been disabled is almost nightmarishly hard. People exploding in your deployment-laid fields still appears to degrade said field, and there's no way to refresh them ... so your defensive boundary steadily becomes more and more permeable as you go. Being Defender sucks in that sense, and coupled with the often less-than-useful 76mm turrets, it gets no better.)

Actually, my feeling is voice is actually less useful than a useful set of visual symbols, especially for fast communication of things like direction and intent. That's not to say "Attack from the southwest, three heavy vehicles, moving slow" is unhelpful, but its also ephermal, there's no record of its passing. Useful for the immediate, but less useful for conveying plans and intent, as well as theoretical observations ("They're dropping behind that ridge"). Much like playing Steel Beasts without the initial "let's get some graphics on the map" bit when playing multiplayer, it's still playable (as we've long proven), but its not as coordinated or as effective. Would an increase in voice comm help? Probably, but technical limitations (and sometimes social ones) preclude everyone from using it as much as they might like. Net gain, methinks, in the final analysis.

Looks good to me, so long as we get a brief intro to various symbols, which'll work a lot better to discuss as a communicative channel. One thing jumps out at me, though: the grid needs to be a more contrastive colour. Since its thin and scales differently per map, in theory, it needs to be fast and easy to read.

I'm actually OK with the addition of crash-pods. Frankly, changing the current pod delivery to such a form would go a long way toward making on-site deployables a bit more useful, especially for AA, giving them some nominal screening from fragmentation. (Sadly, 76mm are pretty useless as is, so being half-buried couldn't hurt them much; too large a profile for too little firepower.) I'm not sure about delivering vehicular assets with crash pods. They're just too big, with too many moving parts and long, extended bits like barrels that would take a lot of shock damage. Having them brought in via dropship is a better solution. Plus, the name of the game is DropTeam ... I'm not so sure about the applicability of the varying dropship descent profiles. I can just as easily stage my assets in an orbital position as I can on the ground, if I'm attacking from above. I only need local orbital superiority to sustain a drop asset arena, and that can be managed any number of ways. So, I might tailor the descent profile to just what I need, whether that being a DS that goes ballistic from 250km away on the surface to go over intervening AA, or whether I drop a skimmer from orbit that burns in low NoE from an unexpected direction to use terrain masking. The current DS deployment seems to be a decent compromise, but I certainly wouldn't object to the descent profiles being somewhat settable on a scenario basis.

Facilities linked to sturdier defense turrets would be joyous things. Especially if said turrets are not necessarily co-located.

Luckily, its not my work. Just a SMoP.

Well, as far as I can see, it'd be hard to deploy within effect distance, and with the ranges of things in DT, it'd be hard to get much use out of it. Either things end-run it, or they fire over it. So, let's go back to base concepts: What do you want its purpose to be? If its movement interdiction, there's the discussion of Defensive Emplacements in the "Chaos vs Order" thread. What hasn't been discussed is an anti-ion effect base. Heavier physical rounds are taken out by ion-beam towers, so those are somewhat covered already. Maybe what we need is some kind of aerosol or sandcaster that only interdicts ions? On further consideration, it might suffice to have smoke interdict ion beams and give the Mercury a smaller, more tactical smoke delivery like other Deployables.

The underside of that turret is just a hint shot-trap-y. I might lower the profile just a smidge, so there's less gap between turret and chassis.

Oh, yes, one more thing it occurs to me to add ... We have in-battle airborne transport that doesn't involve a DS. Its called the "Viper." It's also a stone bitch to pilot in anything like a reasonable fashion. Barely good as aerial recon, getting LoS to the enemy for pipper purposes and looking for Hermes, but anything that requires moving at more than a slight walk? Forget it. Actually using the grapple to pick up a unit? Its possible, but good luck with that. The Viper controls need to be refined in a big, scary way. It also wouldn't hurt if it had a built-in 14mm gun like the one on the Bacchus to harass targets with.

Backstory already has the HE rounds used by all elements as packing anti-matter in the round. Miligram masses thereof, obviously, but AM nonetheless. That said ... the idea of facilities that have in-battle effects that have an offensive component is a solid one.

Mainly because it doesn't fit the backstory as far as I can tell. Plus ... they're kind of boring. You want a vehicle with more armour? We can do that, and even handwave it away as nano-aligned iridium crystaline composite. Aside from a cool FX when its hit until something goes through, what does a non-local force effect grant? (I might accept "it fries infantry on contact!" as a useful side-effect, but I'd rather have surface-mount milimetric-radar-triggered frag detonators on the sides of AFVs for that; it truly fits the retro-tech feel and appearance of the DT vehicle designs.)

I've been thinking on a somewhat less ambitious version of this which would require less code changing, but has some potential. That is: point-based allocation of elements instead of a fixed list. Thematically, there's no reason we can't have any element at any given time. It makes sense that any given engagement has a limited set of resources allocated ... but the specifics can be abstracted away. Inventory control could thus be another question of trade-offs. Couple this with the idea that the points could be gained by controlling Objective areas or Facilities, and you get interesting possibilities: "Can I take out that 20pt Thor in that position with a 15pt Apollo and a 5pt Rifleman squad? Should I use 30pts in Apollos, and hope to come out ahead in damage? Do I take the facility with 75pts of assets and risk them to try and get +5pts a minute more to work with? How does that risk vs reward compute?" I'm sure there's a way to couple this with a time-based limit (ie. "only one Thor every 5min, reduce the time until the next by investing X points"), but it gets complicated to balance at that point. Basic point-expenditure is tinkery enough to start with.

Back from the Con and fighting either Con Crud, but its worth noting a couple things that spring to mind immediately: </font> Dropships Well, the game is called DropTeam. We should no more pare these back than we should drop tanks from the game; its just not reasonable. Recent changes have made the lowly DS just a bit more lowly, plucking them from the air with brutal intensity. This isn't wholly bad, but it is something to keep in mind. The ability to deploy tactically in a broad area of the battlefield is one of the things that sets apart DT from the reasonable number of modern tactical shooters out there. That's one of the reasons I'm generally sad to see small DZ's in some scenarios; given the overall mobility of defenders and attackers, unless the scenario is intended to be LiveShip vs colonists where the latter is a densely defended area, there's no reason both sides shouldn't be able to drive in anywhere along whole sides. Attackers can be assumed to drop in through an AA hole off-map and skim to a safe drop, defenders can be assumed to do much the same thing or simply have resources off-map nearby. The "chaos" of DS wide-deployment is countered inherently by something every good Prefect player knows well: Force concentration. The wider you spread the net, the fewer forces you have hitting one spot. "When you strike, use a fist" is well known doctrine. Its because of this I'd like to see more maps with multiple objectives ... forcing both sides to make judgement calls about force concentration. (This is one of the best design facets of Battlefield 2; multiple spawn points that require capture keeps forces moving dynamically and demands command choices.)</font>Bot Wrangling Yes. 'Nuff said, here, I think.</font>Defensive Emplacements And offensive ones, too, in theory. These should be pretty easy to code up as "Drop Options" that show up during Deployment (and some during the combat phase). Berms should be droppable in 20m sections easily enough, as should Deployable, Thor, Apollo, and Paladin Pits. Those are all just scripted terrain deformations with a facing. Iridium wire, abatises, and any other "blocade" style hardware should be deployable during combat by a drop pod. They're just as useful to the attacker suddenly defending a position as to an emplaced defender. Likewise with spider holes, which should be deployed as explosive rain from a drop pod, or by simply increasing the coverage value of artillery craters for infantry.</font>Communication Like real estate's "location," communication is the key in DT. The wider you can make the window of communication, the better coordinated the group will become with less effort. Possibly shading over into bot wrangling, being able to tell the bots "drop in this area" without telling them what would help. And likewise for humans. In a sense, the more simple symbolic language you can create for inter-player comm, the more of that you can use of that to gather intent for the bots. If the bot knows its in Alpha Platoon of Obsidian Company, and Alpha has this area of suggested drop and this current defined axis of assault and this is where the minefield is, and this is where the objective is, and this is the current desired platoon stance/formation, you can get a lot more seemingly intelligent behaviour out of a bot keying on a relatively simple number of inputs ... like a human does. All communication, all the time.</font>Misc Longer deployment times with both sides having a deployment area, if different elements they can deploy, would help a lot. (Attackers can drop jammers, sensors, turrets to secure the flank deployment area, light raiding vehicles to secure a beach-head. Defenders can deploy berms, defensive emplacements, and heavy elements already positioned to meet an axis.)</font>

The problem for the defender as the Objective games are currently designed, should it be set so that defenders have to reinforce from zones only, is that the attacker gets a massive advantage, in that they can reinforce directly on-site once they dislodge the main force of defenders. The defenders get stuck a good 2min drive away, which is forever in the frenetic pace of DT's hyper-mobile combat. Combine that with the new affinity the bots have for the Thor-HM, and you get a defender's nightmare. Even with a Hermes and a Bacchus, there are only so many inbounds you can take out, and the attacker can (and generally does) use its superior mobility and force concentration capabilities to swarm the defenses from multiple directions. With equal numbers of directing forces on each side, immobile set-piece combat is just impossible. If the defending force has access to dropships, the difference in force concentration speeds goes away, somewhat. If the defender were limited to dropping within X metres of controlled facilities, there'd be reason to hold onto those far-flung facilities when they get dislodged. If the defender's reinforcement zone is smack over the defended territory, then we can model, somewhat better, the idea that they are there in force, despite how many elements are "live" at a given moment. Being 2min+ away in a predictible direction once dropships are expended is murder for the defender. If, during the initial defense, the defender is using the local DZ and saving their DS while the attackers are burning theirs, if dislodged, the defenders can switch to DS outside the umbrella to re-mass and re-push in. It makes sense to use DS as the primary way to move vehicles around the battlefield, even on a local basis, if they're the high-speed drop-anywhere heavy transport answer. Where do they come from? Next area over, probably a better fortified, better air/space-defended facility or city that explains why our forces are where they are, hitting the fringe areas. Random scenario idea: The target is one of the inevitable big Hellbore-class artefact planet-based orbital defenses, largely automated. Both sides get no dropships, because the local airspace is deadly because of the AAD on the thing. Truly monsterous, and its object animation has it hurling massive bolts into the sky of scintilating energy every few minutes, trying to hit the orbiting LS. Defenders have several patches around its base they can spawn from; underground tunnels, etc. Attackers have gone high-mobility and are coming in across two entire map edges with Apollos, Paladins and Shrikes. It is, of course, necessary for the attackers to capture several facilities (non-AAD) to disable the orbital cannon. The Defender simply has to keep that from happening. Let's say drop pods are available for both sides, just to keep it interesting (ballistic-insertions on both sides, coming in too low and fast to trigger AAD ... much. (No, I have no specific plot in mind to lead to that, uh uh.) Objective scores, as is, are a bit whacked in terms of how fast they advance. My suspicion is that they need to be slowed to a rate equal to how many "points" in vehicles that you have in the necessary locations. Base it on chassis, Thors > Apollos > Paladin > Shrikes > Infy. The defender gets an advantage there, but that's as it should be. Its hard to get and keep a Thor in a base against an agressive flanking force, they just don't maneuver fast enough. The dropships themselves seem like a reasonable abstraction. Waiting for a 20min orbital transfer before you can get back on the ground again, or a 6min if you don't care about impact speeds, is just no fun. And while others may eschew that aspect of it, I think fun is one of those things that make a game popular. Crazy, I know. Steel Beasts makes their compromise by letting a commander jump from element to element, and gives them multiple units of elements to command, thus, they're not out of the action for minutes after one bad engagement. Since DT doesn't have that going on, as yet, the alternative is to get the reinforcements on the ground and in control without much of a wait. So, in game pseudo-justification? Linear-rail boosting away from the DS in high orbit to lower atmo, with several DS in orbit, evasive, at any given time for an area. The pool of elements you get to choose to drop is what is on-station and ready to drop as designated for your battle. If its considered an important battle, you'll have scads of dropships and elements ready to go, wheeling and probably dueling overhead where you cab't see. If not, you get skimped on DS assets, vehicular assets, and you have to make do. So delivery isn't from orbit ... it's from high-atmo resource pools. Thus why there's a limited number of things. This also suggests a new option, that is, ordering up a shiny new Thor from the LS ... assuming you can wait the 6min until its ready to go. Deploy now with limited avail vs deploy later with exactly what you want. Better hope to Hell that ship comes down somewhere safe that wasn't just Cobra'd. Oh, and Dark ... we have anti-matter cushioned tanks; the Tempest and the Hurricane. Apparently, its borderline lostech, which is why the whole force isn't a high-mobility hover force. That, and they're fragile as glass. Reading the backstory is good. I have no idea where you get your idea of "what an MBT" is. The modern military surely doesn't see the Abrams or Leo2 as a crazy monster that can stomp anything it sees. Its an integrated part of a combined arms force, because it does many things well, and some things but poorly. They have a tendency to be very pricy for a big bang, which is exactly what DT has them doing. Three Thor hull-down on a target area makes things moving through that area fear the finger of God in an ugly way. But they're vulnerable on the flanks to infantry and anti-tank IFVs. ... just like an Abrams or Leo2. For someone so comfortable impuning my skills with Steel Beasts, you seem to have missed the strategic implications of the environment provided on the battlefield. I, honestly, don't see how you can reconcile wanting to simultaneously have "more modern-like tactics" and "have MBT's be the finger-of-God to anything lighter than them." You might make the contention that vehicles in DT need to be higher tech, which I can only respond to with vague hand-waving and grunting about lostech, because its part of the suspension of disbelief for the setting. You might make the contention you'd like tactical choices to be more like modern doctrine, at which point I'd have to suggest the elements would have to be more like the capabilities of modern vehicles to have reasonable reason for modern doctrine. But to suggest both simultaneously, in the same post? I'm not even sure how to answer that, in a real sense. Truly. Clay's said that 1.1.5 will be a stability release, and I think its a good time for that. I'm content with that. We need to get the things out there working as intended, before we can decide if we like them or not. The tac interface and informational displays need some love, too, just for better situational awareness and ease of use. And, in the meantime, the active user-base (ie. us) need to work on the wiki as a better source of tactical and strategic understanding for new players, because writing documentation is hard. Try it professionally sometime; its a thankless, stressful job no one is ever satisfied with. Breaking it down across the active community is something that should serve to get more, faster, better. TBG has their marching orders. We have ours.