Easy way to solve Borg spotting - clock-spotting?

[killmore]

Borg spotting has been annoying me a lot.

The death-clock on tanks has reduced effectivness of AT guns yet tanks effectivnes to destroy ATGs has not been reduced.

So I propose clock-spotting. Every tank can still spot the ATG but it has a special timer that will prevent it from firing for certain amount of time at that target. (depends on radio, whether unbuttoned, TC alive, cupola, etc...)

This would require every tank to have its own clock for every spottet target. Might be a lot to do.

As a half-measure you could have spotting-clock associated with target not tank. This means that no one except the first object that spotted the target will be able to fire at the target for certain amount of time.

That reduces amount of programming work needed.

Comments?

[ September 14, 2002, 01:43 PM: Message edited by: killmore ]

[zukkov]

actually not a bad idea. a good compromise to relative spotting. whether it's feasible to program in the game, i don't know. but you still win a cookie for your idea! lol..

[Sirocco]

When you disturb a segment of code like that, it affects data structures, and other routines and sub-routines, to the point that you're basically re-writing a whole chunk of the engine. Better to leave it for the re-write.

[killmore]

Well - they seemed to put in tank death clock relatively easy...

[Sirocco]

Originally posted by killmore:

Well - they seemed to put in tank death clock relatively easy...

And how late is CMBB..? This just isn't going to be addressed until the engine re-write, IMHO.

[zukkov]

well if nothing else, maybe bfc will see this thread and use the idea in a patch down the road. and if they can't solve the problem of relative spotting for the rewrite, maybe some kind of "spotting clock" can be used...

[Captain Wacky]

I don't think the answer to borg spotting is to impose an arbitrary LOS clock.

[gunnergoz]

I want them to get busy with the engine re-write that will give us relative spotting in it's true form.

Apart from ESSENTIAL bug fix patching, that's all I want the BTS boys to be occupied with for the next year, at least. Steve seems to think that the re-write will take two years. We waited a year and a half for CMBB and it seemed like 10! No, I want my engine re-write. This time, we'll get the full treatment eye candy, improved AI, and a flexible engine that may (and I mean I HOPE) include the ability to mod vehicles or add them (a la IL-2).

[Battlefront.com]

An arbitrary LOS lock like this is not realistic at all. It also does next to nothing to get in the way of the Borg problem. First of all, simply because vehicles/guns are only a part of most battles, and therefore in and of themselves aren't necessarily even a critical part of a particular game. Heck, they might not even be involved at all. There is also no support in the code for such a thing, even if it were a good idea to force in.

The Death Clock was *not* easy to slip in. Weeks of debugging were necessary to make sure it was working OK. Just because we make it look easy doesn't mean it was

Our time is much better spent starting on the rewrite than doing things that, as far as we can tell, really don't change anything for the better. This particular idea could actually make things less realistic. Each tank/gun should be able to spot and select targets naturally. The problem is that they are allowed (potentially) to target things which they shouldn't be able to see. But without Relative Spotting it is impossible to know which is which. Therefore, and arbitrary system which unrealistically penalizes units really isn't the way to go.

Steve

[lewallen]

The real problem with spotting as I see it is that the player can still direct other units to react to something that the first unit has seen. For instance, if your lone, isolated AT gun spots a bunch of tanks coming at him, you can direct a platoon of your tanks to drive over to their flank, even though they can't see them yet.

Even with an LOS clock, what's to stop the player from directing area fire onto an enemy that's been spotted but can't be fired directly on yet due to the clock?

The only solution would be to actually hid information from the player, including information about friendly units. There was another thread about this that tied that in to Command Radius and a couple other things, but I'm too lazy to do a search and post a link right at the moment... I think it was on the CMBO forum.

~Sam