yurch

Mjolnir is the hammer of Thor. I have an... epic distaste for Halo, actually. Adz: I've managed to import an .obj (a sphere stuck on the end of a barrel) into the game. It's rotated 90 degrees in at least one axis (may be my fault in the converting) and I don't know how to texture, but it does work. [ August 17, 2006, 02:53 PM: Message edited by: yurch ]

I think the cutter just flips between an 'up' blade and a 'down' blade. Crazy animations be damned.

I've still have problems understanding people, especially during fighting or in aim mode (engine noise). Others have said the same about me. Typically I have to type if I really want to be clear about something. I could definitely use the attenuation slider.

As far as cheesy-dropteam-god names, we can probably get away with Mjolnir for the Light MBT. It is, afterall, related to Thor. For the tank destroyer, a friend suggests 'Gozer' (of Ghostbusters fame, of all things...) because of the, well, 'dozer blade. Gungnir (Odin's spear) sounds fun. As does Sleipnir (8 legged horse) if we ever end up with a 8 wheeler IFV. Wouldn't blame you if you want something more recognizable, though.

Oh, kinda odd that the commander hatch is tilted forwards. Do any of our other units have such a hatch? Being space-sealed units, it might not be necessary. Not sure about the 60mm. Poor Thor would definitely be left in the cold then. (although - I'd certainly be happy to make evil use of it) That's also something that I think would be a little more invovled then an extra hole in the roof, which might be difficult for a sealed vehicle. No idea on the extraneous geometry. I actually have no idea how that polygon-XML generator works. How is each polygon grouping chosen?

Hell, I was considering sticking a hurricane style mortar of a lighter caliber on it. I think it's MBTGunLoiter0.cob in DropTeam\data for the 120mm. Those things are added in the XML. I'm fairly sure we can get the glacis sub-plate to move with the rest of the barrels if you keep it a seperate model. Not sure how penetration should work with it, as it's now a seperate entity with nothing to damage, but the other guns are already like this and nobody really complains. For extra detail, I guess some slightly 'raised' bits on the armor (as in, somebody's wrapping extra armor around the turret in places) could be used to give it a slightly asymmetric but militaristic look. Sorta like that 'square' at the front of the Thor chassis. Some of dropteam's units have a rather lumpy look once you get close up. Speaking of those, what's that lumpy thing on the front right side of the turret?

Perhaps even a tad further, as the axis mechanism is unlikely to be in the very tip of the turret. I'm tired of that rear-mounted Apollo turret. Still, much better though.

Might want to slide the turret forward to at least where the sloping starts, otherwise you won't be able to angle the barrel downwards at all. It's also not necessary to model the barrel, as dropteam already has models for these. If you leave it empty we can sub in whichever we want for different varients. Remember the turret is a different file, too. Interesting idea using the 'same' chassis, I like the little slant on the chassis rear.

There's a large hatch on the left side of the turret, that may have to be opened before the mortar can be used. Provided, if that's where the mortar even is.

Heh, wonder if clay wants to be coding crazy pop-out animation events for weapon selection...

There are destroyed models for the chassis too. Not sure of the criteria for what swaps them in, but it's more common for really 'good' hits, like a hurricane shell directly to the battery. The Merkava mentioned earlier is an excellent starting point, both because of the crazy sloping all over it and the futuristic look it has. (by the way, does anyone know how/where the 60mm mortar works on that thing?) Merkava looks to be a pretty dang big tank, though. Thor has a front/side/rear/top rating of 300/150/125/150 and 400/150/100/75 for the turret. If, for the light MBT, I set the standard at 200-250/100/75-100/100 and 300/100/50/75, what's really going to hurt the thing are the sides. We all know how bad the Thor's sides are already. Most modern MBT's of course appear to be designed with as much frontal protection as possible. Our fights are considerably more 'urban', though. Your 'challenge' will therefore be to make a tank Thor sized or slightly smaller (with dramatically poorer armorings) that can survive in dropteam's crazy combat areas without losing it's turret in short order. You may want to go for one of those lemon-shaped turret deals the T90 has, at least for the sides. However, it's a lesser known fact that the Thor turret can be penetrated with 120mm AP from the front at the flat bit under the turret. So... don't forget the front.

Well, the Hermes won't get many of them to begin with. Consider it an exploitable malfunction of the targeting system.

Yes. Although it seems to be that they stop when they can see the hulldown point, not shoot. The result is that they sometimes stop and wait on an incline infavorable to actually hitting the target due to the turret not being able to traverse far enough. Advance works by similarly determining a driving point, but it uses sight of an enemy contact (like hull down does with the defined point) as the stopping condition. Annoyingly enough, once they stop, they need to be given a new order, even if that enemy is no longer present. 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. They do a similar thing with ordered to get back the flag... the bots are prone to just 'giving up'.

I think having the battery close to the engine and the ammo close to the turret generally makes the most sense. There's also asymmetrical and overlapping designs that could be considered - like having the battery completely incased in the engine. Non-overpenetrating weapons like 20mm or 76mm would not be able to destroy the battery without taking out the engine first.

76mm and below don't 'terraform'. Does the cutter digging crash things too?

The subsystems generally would look like this, I think: Not very 3d, I know. Purple engine, blue battery, red ammo, yellow for the squishies. The battery being low centerish-mass I think keeps it in line with the other vehicles, so there won't be much confusion for the newer players. The ammo under the pilots is a bit scary, but there's not much other place to put it. You can assign how likely a subsystem is to 'kill' the object it's in. Battery is 100%, but so is ammo, just that it's usually located in the turret. This will effectively give your tank two batteries as kill targets, which will make it a bit more vulnerable once shots start penetrating. Personally, I think all vehicles, except maybe Thor, should have an ammo subsystem in the chassis anyway, but that is neither here nor there. We can make this ammo subsystem less likely than 100% to kill the thing if you think that'd be more fair.

The paladin is generally bigger than the apollo, no? I can try to help with the XML bits, sure. I'm feeling kind of useless with all this moddeling stuff (blender, bah!) that I can't even get working properly... First question is, do you want the internals to match the other vehicles (tiny pilots, ect) or do you want to follow a, err, 'different' philosophy? There are a few other things to consider. Most vehicles and parts have a 'destroyed' model that gets subbed in when they get blown up good. You may want to think about making one. There's also unique camos for each team in different settings, desert, woodland, ect. I don't know what is necessary to get the track animation in and looking good, as well.

A few things, much from what I've observed from other units: The armor polygons are grouped by facing, but I think you get to determine what is what. That is a very strong sloping. Even if that glacis had the same frontal rating of the apollo it'll be somewhat difficult to penetrate with a level shot. Giving it Thor armor would be a bit excessive, and probably wouldn't be fair to the Thor, who really pays for the armor in speed. Not to mention some of the poor bastards who have to fight your thing. You might want to compromise somewhere between. You don't have a turret, which usually bear a lot of the protection, so you could probably make a pretty good argument for the high-end. The square bit at the nose, though, will be a liability for the tank in close-fighting. You may want to angle it up or downwards. Subsystems are defined as spheres. As it stands most units have the gunner/ammo in the turret, and battery/driver/engine in the chassis. Since you won't really have a turret, an ammo subsystem in the chassis somewhere would only be fair. I don't know if there's a way to link this subsystem to an external weapon, though (for disabling the shooting on loss of this subsystem). Same with the gunner. The gun will need a slight bit of side to side traversal just to do sensitive aiming, which probably spells a tiny 'turret' located somewhere on the technical end. I'm not so sure how well multiple controlled turrets, or turrets with limited rotation can be handled yet. Any info on this, Clay? Edit: this thing could probably get away with Ion, 120mm, 76mm, and possibly a (direct fire?) medium mortar.

The paladin 20mm, 76mm and ion can transport infantry now. Just walk the infantry into the back of one of these stopped vehicles. B gets out if the vehicle is moving slow enough. Although, I think there's a crash involved with it currently...

I'm somewhat against kicking the infantry speed up. This is a game engine built for tanks - infantry 'feel' much slower then they actually are. There's little reason for them to run faster - that will just shift them more from patience unit to silent nightmare. Faster jetpacks, maybe, since you have to sacrifice stealth for speed. I think infantry on 'full forward' move about half the speed of a Thor. As it is now you can walk clear up to many units if they don't notice you.

The Cutter is a difficult vehicle to negotiate due to it's poor armorings, armanent, and overall movement. Some of which I'm guessing are intentional, but giving one of the slower crafts in the game a limited ammo 20mm and a shovel for armour is just cruel. It is never driven in, and is almost always dropped to a location. By direct support, what do you mean? It could certainly put up positions faster and be a bit more survivable in the meantime if it had some more horsepower, which is awfully weak for a construction craft. I wouldn't want to assault a base with one, but a mortar could be put on a varient, if only to give the defending cutters something to do... I wouldn't mind seeing the shovel on the occasional tank, too.

Like I've said before, if you mean point defense, say point defense. The galaxy and ion towers are AAD but this does not constitute all AAD. I and many others, do not accept this premise, as evidenced all over this thread and the AAD one. It is not 'all powerful', and there are plenty of attackers that have caused complete routs while fighting directly under the influence of such defenses. If certain weapons or methods can ignore a defense entirely, is it really all powerful? If you want to tell people they've 'missed the point', you'd better make an actual point. We clearly do not accept your premises, and we have no reason to assume they are true. It isn't necessary for us to spell it out every time. I can apply this faulty logic to a modern combat simulation as follows: It shouldn't take long to poke a hole somewhere in that. You're confusing high-level with low-level, strategy with tactics. You're also refusing to see AAD as circumstantial, and are not even considering things like coverage, rangings, or intelligence. I chose artillery for the counterexample because the galaxy is very clearly a 'negative' artillery. It is still called in to a relatively small location based on battlefield intelligence of the enemy. The location has changed, and the role on the enemy is reversed.

If the galaxy was a direct hard counter, yes, this would be true. Much of this doesn't have anything to do with the galaxy, just defender air defense superiority. (more flank options for them then for you) Your close range situation is, sadly, remedied by a charge from the hermes. If you can get it within 1500m (same range as the galaxy) it often tailguns the galaxy on the ground. The galaxy is also vulnerable to the AA plasma turret, if you can be bothered to deploy dosens of the uselessly poor ranged things on your flanks. The long range situation is quickly resolved by the ion carriers. 125 armor does not take long to burn through. The ion is actually a very useful unit if only for the psychological impact it has. Some more incentive to carry these things for players would really even things out. Both situations require foresight on the attacker side to bring these vehicles along, however. Due to the AA superiority, defenders can get by with a far more fluid response to any threat. They can use the galaxy to stall while bringing hermes in for permanent anti-mortar solutions, bring ions in response to light units, dropping hurricanes on flanks, or simply reinforcing. The galaxy just accentuates this due to it's instant calldown time. I'm pretty sure the problem will be there even without it. The end result is that attackers have to be thinking well ahead of the defenders to even match them in a countering game. Since the galaxy is itself a 'counter' to many things, it's instant response nature is almost unacceptable when viewed in light of a team that cannot adapt as quickly.

Err... what would it do? Is a little guy going to get out of the back and fix the antimatter engine with a wrench, or change the 5ft rim tires? What we do in this game when we're too damaged to operate is extract. If there's AA in the way, that means we can't do so. It also means a cutter would either need to be nearby already, or drive in from outside the AA cover, which is going to take quite a while in that thing. We're playing timed gamemodes, and frankly we need every player we can get on the field and fighting. Waiting for a cutter to service a damaged vehicle (or even tow) long enough that it can be moved to an extractable area hurts the team far more than whatever equipment loss you prevent. It takes 2 players out of the game that could otherwise be busy maliciously murdering Montard* in fresh vehicles. I can somewhat see the Viper having capability of retrieving and extracting vehicles, since it's so much faster, but if you could extract via air you wouldn't need the Viper anyway, exposing it to air defenses. Both the Cutter and the Viper are often more rare than whatever vehicle they would be assisting. Abandoned vehicles (suicide) can be theoretically dealt with or retrieved after the scenario ends... provided you win.