Reinforcements and drop-ships

[adzling]

Hey folx the chaos and order thread got me thinking about the whole reinforcement/dropship delivery mechanisms and how we might better implement them to represent what's happening above and on the planet in advance of/during our tactical melees.

First a couple of figures of note:

Space shuttle takes @ 8.5minutes to climb to orbit (for an earth type planet).

Space shuttle take about 30 minutes for a glide landing from first atmospheric contact (this includes a few maneuvers where they burn speed by turning in the atmosphere).

Ok now forget those figures and let's look at some of the strategic situations the commander of a dropteam engagement might find himself in (these are related to the concepts i outlined in the Chaos and Order thread re meeting engagements, set piece battles etc):

Liveship on station:

The liveship has secured local orbital supremacy (driven off or killed any enemy orbital assets) and is in geosynchronous orbit at the optimal launch point for it's drop-ships (usually slightly in advance of planetary rotation).

Quickest and most direct drop times @ 5 minutes from launch to touch-down (assuming as vertical a trajectory as possible and you burn almost all the way down). *This figure is a fudge*

Liveship in stand-off mode:

The Liveship is positioned out of the optimal drop area (perhaps it was driven off by the enemy's Liveship or is avoiding ground fire form the target area) but it is still in geosynchronous orbit.

Second quickest drop times @10-15 minutes from launch to touch-down. *This figure is a fudge*

Liveship in system but not in orbit:

The Liveship has not been able to achieve orbital supremacy and is positioned in the local planetary system but is not in orbit above planet/target.

Drop-ships have to conduct some intra-planetary flight in addition to atmospheric drop to arrive at target.

Longest drop-times expect hours to touch-down (this is relevant though see later in this post).

While this would preclude player drops from orbit in-game you would still be able to drop assets (pods and ships) to arrive at the onset of the engagement (it's assumed the commander ordered them in advance to arrive at the start of the engagement).

Ground reinforcements:

Force is receiving reinforcements from the ground.

Arrival time to off-map staging area is dependent upon distance to reinforcements and local transport infrastructure.

Ok now let's look at how the player receives reinforcements in drop-team.

There is an Asset Pool defined by the map designer from which the player can select assets to be deployed either by drop-ship or map-edge reinforcement zone.

Drop-ship reinforcement takes about a minute, much quicker than actual drop from the liveship would take. This is important as a player waiting 5 to 15 minutes for their AFV to arrive will get dang bored.

Building on all the above assumption I suggest a mechanism for the asset pool and asset delivery to the battlefield that is somewhat more realistic than we currently have, introduces some interesting tactical considerations and just feels more "real".

1). Asset Pool.

There is a secure off-map drop location that is used as a staging area for drive-on and drop-ship based asset delivery.

This represents the Asset Pool as currently used in-game.

Delivery to the asset pool is conducted in advance of the game start and represents either drop-ship based delivery or ground-based delivery or potentially both.

2). Reinforcements.

Reinforcements (when a player call for an asset to be delivered to the battlefield) can be drawn from this pool either via drop-ship or map-edge delivery.

In this instance the drop-ship is simply ferrying the reinforcement from off-map and not orbit and so arrives relatively quickly (and potentially has a different drop-approach see later).

3). Adding to the asset pool.

You can add to this asset pool via liveship drops to the pool (to replenish specific AFV assets such as "more thors") or via ground based replacements if mandated by the map designer (we managed to unload get operational another thor from the mono-rail). The time to add assets to the pool would be based on either the Liveship's station status or an arbitrary time for ground replenishments by the map designer.

If the Liveship is in orbit you could replenish the pool, if not then the time required would be prohibitive.

What this would mean in-game:

The above Asset Pool concept would mean that most dropships are conducting ground-based ferrying operations from the Asset Pool to the area of engagement. This is represented by the common 1 minute drop-time.

This would not preclude a drop directly from a Liveship if you wanted to depending upon the Liveship's station status. Of course this drop will take longer (5 to 15 minutes) however the asset would NOT be drawn from the Asset Pool. Run out of thors? Drop another from orbit but you'll have to sit on your hands for 5 minutes AT LEAST.

Liveships are the only method of drop-pod delivery.

Drop-ships and drop-pods take the same time to arrive from orbit which as stated previously depends on the Liveship's station status.

This puts somewhat of a crimp in johhny-on-the-spot turret drops and to rectify that somewhat my suggestions are:

1). during the deployment phase the defender doesn't have to wait for drops (as it is currently).

2). during the deployment phase the attacker can specify multiple drop-pod drops to arrive at the start of the game (no waiting time however quantity should be limited to avoid instant map saturation, perhaps 3 at a time?) with any subsequent in-game drops taking the full time based on Liveship station status.

3). Instead of calling for a series of (3?) Liveship delivered drop-pods to be delivered at the end of the deployment phase the attacking player can call for a SINGLE drop-ship delivered asset that is in addition to the force pool. Normally this would mean waiting 5 to 15 minutes but in this instance it's assumed the commander has ordered the asset to be delivered from the Liveship in advance of the engagement to coincide with the arrival of the rest of the force from the off-map Asset Pool.

4). Because drop-pods and drop-ships can now take up to 15 minutes to arrive based on Liveship station status i suggest the player no longer has to wait for their arrival but once he has called for one to be dropped he can then switch to a bot or other on-map asset.

Drop-ship flight trajectory.

This will vary depending upon where the drop-ship is coming from.

1). From the off-map asset pool:

flat n.o.e. from closest map edge to target location wherever possible (taking into account air defenses). If the drop-ship cannot plot a n.o.e. trajectory from a map edge to the target (due to intervening terrain or air defenses) the drop-ship will notify that it is not a useable drop point and prompt the player to select another.

2). From orbit:

The drop-ship drops steeply to location off-map shedding the majority of it's speed prior to entering the map then has a similar approach vector as a delivery from asset pool.

IF the drop-ship cannot land in the location using this method (due to intervening air defenses) it will try to compute a trajectory that places it in the landing zone via a more vertical approach path. This will obviously result in more vertical approach that opens the drop-ship up for targeting as it completes it's final almost vertical descent.

Assumptions:

secure off-map drop location is used as a staging area for drive on and drop-ship based asset delivery.

This represents the Asset Pool.

Assets can be drawn from this pool either via drop-ship or map-edge delivery.

You can add to this Asset Pool via liveship drops to the pool (to replenish specific AFV assets such as "more thors") or ground based replacements.

Most dropships are conducting ground-based ferrying operations from the asset pool to the area of engagement. This is represented by the common 1 minute drop-time.

You can drop directly from a liveship if you want depending upon the Liveship's station status.

Liveships are the only method of drop-pod delivery.

Drop-ships and drop-pods take the same time to arrive from orbit.

The one logical question this brings up is "why doesn't the commander drop every damn asset at once and overwhelm the defender?".

Well perhaps the Liveship is engaged in multiple operations in-system or on-planet and must spread his resources across multiple operation.

So he picks the minimum force combination he believes can capture the objective so he has other assets available for other objectives.

Naturally any commander worth his salt retains some strategic reserve to be committed to tight tactical situations, hence the drops directly from orbit.

thoughts, comments, ideas?

[Chilibird]

It's a cool way of looking at it, but if you think about it, times for drops just aren't feasable. Do you really feel like waiting 5 minutes for your ship to show up?

Personally, I would like to see an alternate form of AFV delivery. Basically, drop pods. But the current way that they do their drops won't work. I think something more like a drop pod that crashes and unfolds.

This has several advantages, I think.

1- Speed. Simple enough, you want to get your unit down, and so you catapult it out of a launcher on the LiveShip and crash it right into the target.

2- Game balance. Well, the random dropship drops are nice, elimating the abililty for point-drops, but it added the issue of dropships dropping their cargo in a less than opportune place.

So here's what I think.

Basically, all battlefield assets are delivered via drop pods. These are ejected at high velocity from the liveship in-orbit. They then crash into the battlefield (I mean crash, as in imbed into the earth/crater sort of thing, not like the drop pods are now), unfold, and out comes the AFV. That way, it's less likely that you will drop with your rear end towards danger. Of course, one would think 'well, then people can point-drop again'. Not quite. Since these things are ejected at high velocity from an orbitting ship without the time to determine exact trejectory, there is no guarentee that it will land exactly where you intend. It could land hundreds of meters away from where you intended, which might be good, might be bad. Due from the sheer force of these pods hitting the ground, it makes a small crater, so that it's less likely you will slam into the ground where you can't get any traction. (Of course, when I say fast, I mean fast. Kinda like *click* 1...2...3...4...5... *WHAM*)

And of course, dropships are still used to get damaged vehicles out, since drop pods can't do that. That way, a team can continue to drop units into the battlefield no matter what, so maps don't quickly become a reenforcement-zone fight. However, things can become messy if all of the dropships used for retrieval are lost.

Anywho, I don't know how easily something like what I suggust is implemented, but I think it would make things much more futuristic, and possibly easier to avoid battles leading to pinning an enemy against the reenforcement zones. As much as that is realistic, it's also not very fun when it happens.

Anywho.. how about thoughts on my drop delivery idea? Better, worse?

[aittam]

drop pods are faster because they aren't reused so they could take far more damage entering the atmosphere

other than this we are anyways bound by practical reason to shrink dead times and there's also tactical manouvering involved, DS act also like chopper delivering forces in a 3D battlefield

sometimes i don't mind to sacrifice a 76 in a run against the side of the advancing enemy, taking at least one with me and leaviing a couple of others with some problems

[adzling]

iceman- the 5 minutes drop times are avoided by calling your reinforcements from the Asset Pool per the post.

It is a LONG post but if you read it again you might appreciate it more

What the method described above adds is some complexity and rational for the delivery of reinforcements.

If you MUST have an asset that has been depleted from the force pool when then it has to come down from orbit and that will take time, it's a trade-off.

The current method of asset delivery via drop-ship would remain unaffected.

[Chilibird]

Oh.. heh. Wow, I must've misread. I thought you were talking about all assets coming like that.

*reads it again*

Wow.. heh. I do like that. Instead of one team being stuck with a bunch of cutters or vipers, this would at least allow some assets to be scrambled last-resort.

Maybe, instead of waiting for the call to deploy, reenforcements are sent to orbit to wait as the existing units are depleted?

Still though, for initial delivery, I stand by my 'crash pods into the ground' stance. At least, make it so for stuff that already uses pods...

[poesel]

Yes to crash pods! Make their landing point a bit inaccurate and the pods just a bit steerable to avoid unsuitable terrain.

Would also make a nice experience to only get a straight downview camera while dropping and crashing into the ground

[Alexander SquidLord Williams]

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.

[millan]

I like that "Crash Pod" Idea.

I should use them like a weapons and drop then on the enemy tank.

[ClaytoniousRex]

Adz, that is a very well thought out, detailed post. I think you're right on target. The only thing I would avoid is forcing dropships from the pool to fly NOE from the map edge (and fail if that's not possible). They could just as easily climb to high altitude and then scream down into the local battle area.

But the much bigger idea that you've outlined - a proper pool of local forces vs. those at longer reach from the Liveship - is excellent. There's probably no need to ever explicitly drop directly from the Liveship; the local pool should simply continually refill itself according to the Liveship's station up to whatever limit is specified by the scenario author. So rather than dropping a Thor from the Liveship and wait 5 minutes, you just wait (or more likely do something else useful) for 5 minutes until the next available Thor has been brought down from the Liveship into the local pool. Then you can drop it normally.

The next step is to start breaking this down into smaller pieces which can be released individually. We'll post more about that as the pieces emerge.

There's no doubt that crash pods sound like fun (and just are a cool idea in their own right) but there are some serious gameplay implications there. Giving anyone free reign to drop instantly, anywhere, would wreck any hope of having a tactical engagement. If air defense were still effective against them, then they wouldn't cause a serious problem.

[aittam]

only infantry and ammo should crash pod but I'd like to see a flashing dot on my screen plus may be a smoke trail

once you know where they are you can deal fairly with them

[adzling]

Hey Clay,

a few more things:

1). I guess given how nimble the drop-ships are and how localized (i.e. low-ceiling) the air defences are giving them flexibilty in their landing trajectory makes sense.

2). The idea of dropping directly from the drop-ship vs. refilling the local Asset Pool is kind of a fudge. I agree that in reality the way you would want to do it is refill the local Asset Pool as an asset runs out.

Let's look at that for a minute.

-The Asset Pool is a game device to maintain play balance via a logicaly constructed mechanism to restrict the player to certain unit choices and use his assets in a tactically appropriate manner (instead constantly dropping thors, hermes and hurricanes). It represents the fact that certain units are more costly/difficult to construct and so therefore are inherently rarer.

-It's restricts the quantity of various units available to the players.

A Liveship on Station in an optimal position could refill it very quickly, effectively removing most of the unit restrictions to the player. Although if one side ran through all 6 thors in 5 minutes they would still have to wait at least another 5 minutes + drop-ship deployment time for replacement thors to arrive on the battlefield.

This becomes marginally so when the Liveship's Station status is sub-optimal as it could take up to 15 minutes + deployment time to refill your Thor stock....which could easily be longer than the duration of a game if you're already 10 minutes or more into it.

If you Liveship Station status is "in-system" it's not going to be able to refill your Asset Pool at all as the time to planet is hours, much longer than the engagement itself.

This means that you could give one side a very powerful advantage in numbers/ asset strength through manipulation of their Liveship Station status.....i.e. attacker gets more/better assets leaving the defender with a different set of tools to work with (see other post in chaos and order re: HQ, emplacements, stronger defensive turrets etc.).

The other interesting scenarios this creates is to further increase the importance of drop-ships.

If the defender can shoot down enough of your drop-ships then you won't have enough to replenish your Asset Pool AND ferry assets to the battlefield.

Perhaps a player in a command track has access to a slider that lets him adjust how many drop-ships are available to ferry troops to the battlefield and how many are available to replenish the Asset Pool. The default setting is to have drop-ships give priority to ferrying reinforcements to the battlefield. But if the players really need those replacement thors they could divert dropships to replenish the Asset Pool forcing them to drive onto the map via the map-edge reinforcement zones in the mean time.

Additionaly the player in the command track could have the option of changing the constituency of the Asset Pool over time.

Of course the map designer could still have significant reinforcements to the Asset Pool for a defender w/out a local Liveship based on them being delivered to the Asset Pool via local transport infrastructure.

and finally a couple more thoughts......

1). The Station status of the Liveship could well be affected by events on the ground or a pre-timed event by the map designer.

These could represent respectively a fight for a ground-based orbital battery or the arrival on Station of the opposition's Liveship.

2). The Station status of the Liveship should be represented in the GUI for the players, with a simple light/indicator that perhaps turns from green to amber to red to represent "optimal drop-orbit", "sub-optimal drop orbit", and "in-system".

3). infantry could have the option of being delivered direct from the Liveship by the orbitally fired drop-pods (smaller signature/smaller targets + not drawn from the Asset Pool) or via drop-ship from the Asset Pool (in which case they arrive WITH an IFV).

The really nice thing about all this is it introduces some interesting tactical and strategic elements to the game that are really sci-fi.

Your Liveship's orbital status becomes a critical part of your battlefield plans.

[Chilibird]

Maybe, instead of having it change colors, just have it defined in the scenario's victory conditions using a tag. That way, a certain side could have a single point to defend, but no reenforcments, whereas the attackers liveship is in optimal drop orbit, and they have as many units as they need.

It would be more useful in the single player though, as noone would want to be on the underpowered team in multiplayer.