AAD

[yurch]

Originally posted by ClaytoniousRex:

Does anyone remember playing during the public test when the Hermes had only a low chance of intercepting incoming artillery?

Yes. It stopped the round "early" enough to leave you half alive without any tires and probably with one less teammate.

It's not just artillery, either. Without point defense, the ATGM would utterly dominate.

I know the wargamers instinct is kicking in, but some of our play mechanics have to be a bit different from full on simulation in order to make things work.

If a minor compromise must be made, point defenses could be changed from removing projectiles to affecting them.

Instead of full vaporization, the point defense could take chunks out of the projectiles, prematurely detonating explosive munitions and hurting the penetration ratings of the now-malformed AP projectiles by some percentage. The end result probably wouldn't be much different, though, except for the very lightly armoured entities.

[ August 08, 2006, 03:23 PM: Message edited by: yurch ]

[Dark_au]

Before I post this I will re-iterate that my grievance with AAD in this post is with its ability vs 120mm rounds and smaller. NOT about artillery as some would imply. This comment is only regarding The mentions of arty in others threads.

Clay, in your comments on Twin peaks tactics you give the sound tactical advice that digging in is an important factor, Cover and concealment. When you talk about the artillery bieng too strong in testing don't forget it had a bug in it which made it cause too much damage. With that now reduced I don't think you'll find arty is at all dominating. The natural enemy to artillery is artillery. The way to stop the enemy from supressing you with artillery is to locate and suppress his artillery first.

[Dark_au]

Dan,

Tactical sense never changes. It is a simple concept and will remain true into the future as it HAS remained true since people like Sun Tzu first wrote about it. Cover, Concealment (of you actions / intentions if not your movements ) and Manaeouver. If these things are not true to this game then why the hell do we have such nice intricate interesting terrain for working in. If a tank is a tank then its expectancy is for it to work like a tank. The point of a tank is NOT TO SIT STILL. There have never been tank battles where staying still was the key to winning. No matter what you may have read or think you've read about the way tanks are used. In WW2 a Tiger did not sit still expecting its armour to save it. Even a big lumbering beast like that was constanly on the move cos the alternative is death. In fact the times when tanks have been used in stationary roles the results have been devastating ( French 1940, Iraqii's in GW 1&2 ). This is not to say that you don't have static defence points. The thing is with those is that you still aren't supposed to hang around. Expose yourself, Fire 2-3 rounds, Displace. If these things in the game are tanks then the same tactical sense applies to them as to any historical analogy. Otherwise they aren't tanks. The basics are Still cover, concealment and manaeouver. Now I know I'm not alone in understanding this because Nexus and I had some very fun hunts the other day using just these basic principals. It was much more rewarding than just dumb static defence and by defending with a scouting / patrolling force they actually defended much more convincingly.

[ClaytoniousRex]

I guess I'm on a different book of strategy to the rest of the community, let alone a different page.

I think there's more agreement here than it seems, Especially since you've clarified that your main objection is with the smaller rounds. It's really more of a problem of play balance now.

I have to agree about the smaller projectiles. Unfortunately, if PD didn't target those then there would be no reasonable way to roll them back. The right solution, then, is probably 2 steps at the same time:

</font>

• Reduce the accuracy of the point defenses so large rounds have a higher chance of making it through</font>
• Don't allow point defenses to target ridiculously small/fast projectiles like 120, 20, 76, etc.</font>

It's very important with #1 above that the accuracy still be high enough that a single incoming round by itself is very likely to be intercepted. Without that, one of the main things that makes PD interesting will be lost (which is that it creates a need for multiple units to coordinate in order to get through it).

The biggest side-effect of this is that rolling back point defenses is now going to be much harder than it used to be. In order to effectively roll it back, you're going to need two team mates both sending large rounds into its effective radius. It used to be relatively easy to find a buddy with a 20mm to help you put out some fire for rolling back. Now, you're going to have to find a buddy with a mortar or ATGM. There are fewer of these to be found usually. Of course, with this change (and a good team), you should be able to rally a team mate or two to coordinate with you on this.

So the end result might be to make artillery even harder to use overall. I'm interested in trying it out. The only deal breaker here would be if, amongst players in general, it's simply too hard to get someone to help you put arty through a PD zone. You could virtually never do it with a single artillery piece anymore.

When you talk about the artillery bieng too strong in testing don't forget it had a bug in it which made it cause too much damage.

Yes, there were 2 bugs: one was that objects between "you" and a blast weren't properly blocking fragmentation. The other, more recent one, was that 120mm HE had incorrectly high armor penetration. Neither of these effects the general lethality of the mortars or Hurricane (except amongst buildings, etc. where victims now receive proper cover whereas before they didn't.)

[yurch]

What about the object burn that was fixed as well? It was burning Thor chassis from the front...

[ClaytoniousRex]

You're right, Yurch, there was 3rd one, too. That one was in the case of direct hits by the HE on target only.

[dan/california]

Dark, you are right about many of these things, but it is primarily a a game mechanics issue. Real AFVs have a commander, a driver, a gunner, in the Abrams at least, a loader who spends more of his time acting as a radio operator. The sitting still thing is simply a result of one person not being able to do all of these things well. People tend to sit still to improve their situational awareness and or gunnery. It is just very difficult to coordinate everything to do a proper shoot and scoot. If their were a a few hundred people on the servers all the time, it might be possible to have a driver and gunner, but that and decent bot intelligence are not quite there yet. There might be a small ping issue as well.

No one in the industry has decent bots, it an unsolved problem industry wide in unscripted games. I would love to be able to yell, or tap a button and have the driver do something intelligent while I kept trying to kill things. I just wrote something about being able to tell your tank to follow its platoon leader but Clay will need a while if it is even doable.

The bot coordination tools that are under discussion might help this a lot.

[Dark_au]

Ok some simple sollutions.

1. Leave the effectiveness as is but only allow it to target rounds that pass above the plane of its guns.

2. Leave its effectiveness vs Artillery the same(ish) but remove its ability to take on 120mm or below and allow chaining of artillery (bots) to a player command and fire salvos to overload it.

3. Leave it exacly as is (for the towers) but make it so the guns on the towers can be individually damaged / destroyed by ION fire.

[Dark_au]

Dan... there you nail it on the head and thats the clincher to my argument. If someone has no idea what to do to keep out of sight then the magically good AAD protecting him teaches the wrong lesson. Do we want new players learning the wrong lessons and cheapen the game or bieng forced (by circumstances) to learn the right way.

The analogy to the M1 breaks down though because a TC doesn't have that magical overhead view for situational awareness, nor the red marker or lack of green marker to id its owner.

[Chilibird]

I think a better idea would be kinda like what Yurch suggusted. Maybe instead of vaporizing the projectile in a poof, it detonates it, so that the explosion still hurts those sitting below the tower...

[Alexander SquidLord Williams]

Dan... there you nail it on the head and thats the clincher to my argument. If someone has no idea what to do to keep out of sight then the magically good AAD protecting him teaches the wrong lesson. Do we want new players learning the wrong lessons and cheapen the game or bieng forced (by circumstances) to learn the right way.

Well, it begs the question of "right" and "wrong."

Is it "wrong" in the context of modern tactical considerations. But DT is neither a teaching simulation nor modelling modern combat tactics. It models something entirely different, with a wholly different suite of expectations and issues, in particular high-armour resistance elements with relatively weaker weaponry compared to modern sensibilities. In that sense, the newbie tactical activity is more sensible than the grognardy expectation, because it takes advantage of the tools at hand.

(That said, the Abrams actually does have a magical overhead view populated by red and blue markers which show current battlefield awareness, but they've been working on creating a wireless battlefield a good while now and I don't begrudge them that a bit.)

Yurch's suggestion for AAD would be interesting to impliment and I think worth experimenting with. Having that as the behaviour for the Herpes (I fear the nickname has stuck in my head) and the current behaviour for the ion towers which have the advantage of lots of infrastructure. If both behaviours co-exist in the engine, they might even be scenario/unit-settable, which leads to various fun bits.

[Dark_au]

anything which encourages sitting still in a mobile asset in plain sight is wrong.

[Alexander SquidLord Williams]

anything which encourages sitting still in a mobile asset in plain sight is wrong.

If the tactic becomes too prevalent, you get folks dropping three ions at once in and sniping you from afar with enough power to wear you down. Likewise, if you abuse the Herpes overmuch, folks pop your tires with ions then you, or just abandon you there and work around you.

Now, this might be an argument for leaving AAD really tight but switching alternate fire from MG to ion, thus giving folks more responses when the big stuff isn't getting through. And it feeds back into the discussion of the infy 6mm ion portability.

[dan/california]

The mighty SquidLord just combined 5 threads in one, I am awed, not shocked, but definitely awed.

If they come up with the ability to slave bots to players so that they will target the same unit or at least general area this whole sitting still problem will get much better. Rather it will get much worse for the people sitting still. One the issues with the game right now is that each sides firepower is very diffuse. As that gets better and players can focus more barrels on the high priority threats it will get much better.

For that matter if you could just tell one 20mm paladin to follow you around and shoot at the same target it would roll point defense back almost completely.

The trick with the atgm vehicle sending bullets after its own missile also works extremely well. The missiles near vertical launch even means I can't complain about trying to shoot down my own missile.

However their is this little graphical oddity between the angle the launcher sits at and the angle the missile appears to leave at. i am working on a suitably complicated explanation.

[ August 09, 2006, 12:23 AM: Message edited by: dan/california ]

[aittam]

I agree with Dan, missiles seem to leave with a near azimuth bearing that btw is how future atgm would be launched (cover and bla bla)

[Alexander SquidLord Williams]

The mighty SquidLord just combined 5 threads in one, I am awed, not shocked, but definitely awed.

Decades on UseNet's rec.games.frp.advocacy and rec.games.mecha, with the subsequent evolution in communications technology has given me the supernatural ability to cross the threads, but I will only use my powers for evil. Its a self-respect thing.

However their is this little graphical oddity between the angle the launcher sits at and the angle the missile appears to leave at. i am working on a suitably complicated explanation. [smile]

My pure handwavium suggestion is the initial boost stage is actually a railgun launch, with a complicated spin that only appears to arc back over the ...

OK, no, I can't either. Honestly, I think it would actually be better if the vertical-attack launch angle was aiming at a point roughly half-way between the launcher and the target for max height, then a bit of leveling, then the devil-dive. No change in the launcher angle needed at all at that point (as its close enough for approximation) and it gives a target one slight bit of edge, if they can dive bahind cover that's taller than the missile's climb profile.

Very, very slight. But there.

[cool breeze]

I want the AAD towers to continue shooting at atleast 120mm becasue otherwise the bases are simply more powerful sturdy hermes that cant move. I dont believe is should be an even fight between two equal groups of direct fire weapons when both are in the open at long range but one is in a friendly base (under an Laser/ion Tower). Modern warefare has largely elimanated the idea of nonmobile bases (walls get flattened too fast) but game levels need bases. The ion towers give a reasonably explainable way to have important hard to take stationary bases. Without Ion Towers shooting 120mm i think staying in a base vs haveing your group supported by a hermes will be a disadvantage instead of an advantage because they will know where to find you and the hull down spots are usually more limited than on a hill crest.

[konstantine]

For what it's worth, I think it's a little unrealistic that the AAD shoots 10mm and 20mm projectiles, but then again I have seen numerous Galaxies die from 20mm and ion and a few occasions where two players took the time to combine tactics to bring down the base ion tower, after which the Hurricane was able to plaster it with ease. I agree that 120mm should still be targettable.

On the other hand, some maps simply seem to have too many ion towers. In the context of the game, it seems unlikely that all of these isolated ion towers in the middle of nowhere should work so perfectly all of the time.

[Dark_au]

OK here is a nice example of a problem with the misuse of this.

Where Eagles dare. The intention of that was to have battles of control over the roads up to the top. From the first time it got played online it became obvious that the AAD makes it a race to see who can get a cutter in the fastest and capture the enemy AAD. Once one side has done so they can defend with such ease that the other team has no hope of getting anything in to the area.

Now I can't take the AAD away or it just becomes about who can get the Herpes or the galaxy into the zone quickest.

If I replace the Ion Towers with Missiles its a great idea because the missiles force people to come in from further out. But of course if I do that then its going to be about who gets in a galaxy quickest to nullify the Missile towers so they can land other stuff straight into the zone.

If I take out the cutters then there is no chance for digging defences.

[aittam]

just make the towers non capturable

btw that's exactly the point of my grievance with aad, also "cross road" map offers the same problem, if you don't know the map or just join after work to relax the nerves or you pop in after the beginning then you play the looser

[yurch]

Originally posted by Dark_au:

If I take out the cutters then there is no chance for digging defences.

...and players are going to drive cutters up those hills just for fortification? That's a long drive - is the objective area even cuttable?

What you describe is basic game mechanics to give the attackers a chance and to keep the game flowing somewhat in normal circumstances. If there's a tower covering 78 square kilometers, attackers have little choice but to set up a jammer/galaxy reinforcement point. Otherwise they're stuck in an attrition setting where a defender can be fully replaced 3 times in the time it takes for a replacement attacker to drive back.

Attackers can't bring in a superior strength force to defenders, through either unit quality or numbers, and generally are fighting with inferior strength due to drive times, enemy turrets, emplacements, ect.

How's that for lack of options or tactics. Sun Tzu never had to wait for one of his soldiers to die to bring a reinforcement in, and he probably wasn't limited to 8-10 units at a time. This is a very unique and unintuitive constraint we're dealing with here.

This would be less of an issue if attackers had a way to set up similar air defenses to likewise limit the enemy, but the best and longest ranged air defense - the plasma turret, generally sucks and requires a dropship in the first place. This assumes the ever present static deployable jammers aren't already covering defender drops. The hermes 20mm often outranges its tailgun for dropship work. My frustration however, isn't directed towards the use or counters of AA, it's the lack of options for it that get me. Without the emplacements, engagements are fast and bloody with reinforcements flowing in as fast as the dropships can be put down. Running out of HEAT rounds and getting Paladin 20mm's dropped on me repeatedly gets old real fast. The alternative is using the hermes or dropping a galaxy...

To win, I need to sit on that objective, so give me some breathing room please!

The dual-attacker scenario would work better, I think, if you used multiple missile towers for each team and possibly just do away with the hill. The hill and all that cover favors the use of jammers heavily. The jammer-drop techniques are most effective when the enemy can't see it happening, you need to be allowing players to spot the hermes-drop/jammer-highway activity while it's happening and to investigate. This will be the only way to get the galaxy in, too, if there's enough incoming missiles to overwhelm the thing.

Remember the missile towers need LOS in order to target, so placing them on top of a large hill actually allows dropships to appear under its coverage.

[Dark_au]

Yurch. There is a band of green around the objective and along the route up the hill. I wanted the cutter as an option for people to dig fighting positions along the route. There are only 5 jammers per side to stop too much of those.

Aittam... you know a way to make towers non-capturable?.

[aittam]

I thought there was an option, i'm not much into programming sorry

[Grappler]

Clay, i never want to play against you....

You guys don't know how lucky you have it. I have to play test against Clay all the time. He has beaten me up so badly, I have lost all confidence and simply mentally surrender at the beginning of each round. It makes testing go so much smoother and lowers my blood pressure.

[Drusus]

First, I must say that I might be a little bit drunken (finnish style...)

But, why not make it so that the towers have a smaller chance of shooting down the small caliber rounds. This way it would be possible to roll the defence, jet it wouldn't ruin fighting against units around the tower. Maybe I am not seeing the real problem, but to me this sounds the perfect solution.