Making better use of digging

[Toby Haynes]

With all the excitement of the new tacmap advances plus the possibilities of group control and comms, there seems to be one area that isn't getting discussed much and that is making better use of deformable terrain.

The bots really don't seem to have any clue about how to use the cutters and I'm not 100% convinced that just the one type of digging vehicle is enough. I'd really like to see a more powerful (in terms of digging) engineering vehicle, maybe better armoured and maybe unarmed. Such a vehicle should be capable of digging a trench deep and wide enough for a paladin to get into safetly in one go.

At the moment, the best use of digging vehicles seems to be creating a hole for an EWV or Bacchus to hide in, second to using the Cutter to protect the exposed tanks in the base on Forsaken. Even on Forsaken with 5 mins deployment time, a single cutter can only make one complete circuit of the base.

If we were to have a new vehicle, it should be lower to the ground (to make it less vulnerable) and have a different type of shovel - maybe more like a V-shaped snow plough. It should probably be wider too, to give it better stability and allow it to cut a wider path.

It would also be great to be able to give bots orders to dig in.

Any other thoughts?

Cheers,

Toby Haynes

[poesel]

Umm, you did read my post ?

Try to mod your cutter with the values from here

The cutter moves earth after you drive a certain way with the shovel down. If that way was shorter you could dig better.

And I of course wholeheartly agree with the rest of your post!

[Toby Haynes]

I did read that post (and of course I agree with it).

I don't just want to see an upgraded cutter. The cutter is too narrow to believable dig a tank width trench - having a wider vehicle with a lower profile expressly for the purpose of digging in fast would be a more believable addition. Such a digger could also be believable heavily armoured - after all, it's already tracked and is supposed to be able to move earth - but it doesn't have the weight penalty of carrying a gun system, gunner, etc.

Having a v-shaped plough should also be able to move more earth more quickly - after all, it's not pushing the earth ahead of it, just directing it sideways.

Actually, that's another issue with the cutter. With a flat shovel, it should push earth up in front of it, not shove it to the left.

Cheers,

Toby Haynes

[theIRONGIANT]

if you drop the blade on the cutter, then switch vehicles w/ a bot, then give him move orders, he will cut a trench. it is a hassle, but it is better than doing it yourself!

-tIG

[ClaytoniousRex]

We've been leaning toward not simply improving the digging, but changing the way you do it completely. The Cutter would use charges instead of a blade for digging. The blade would be removed and when you toggle into the digging mode, it would begin firing excavation charges downward into the terrain at a fixed rate. You could drive in whatever pattern you like, firing charges down as you go. Once you toggle out of the digging mode, *all* of the charges that you've placed will detonate after a 15 second delay. The resulting pattern is similar to what you would have achieved by driving that path while digging, but with some serious perks: the terrain wasn't deforming as you drove (so driving was easy) and your speed wasn't reduced while driving the pattern. Much less painful and quicker.

Any thoughts about that approach?

[theIRONGIANT]

can you use it like a claymore? wait for the enemy to go over your charges, then BOOM!

[ September 17, 2006, 12:43 AM: Message edited by: theIRONGIANT ]

[aittam]

Originally posted by theIRONGIANT:

can you use it like a claymore? wait for the enemy to go over your charges, then BOOM!

stolen the words from my keyboard

[emodin-]

And would there be a limit to the number of charges?

[Alexander SquidLord Williams]

Originally posted by ClaytoniousRex:

We've been leaning toward not simply improving the digging, but changing the way you do it completely. The Cutter would use charges instead of a blade for digging. The blade would be removed and when you toggle into the digging mode, it would begin firing excavation charges downward into the terrain at a fixed rate. You could drive in whatever pattern you like, firing charges down as you go. Once you toggle out of the digging mode, *all* of the charges that you've placed will detonate after a 15 second delay. The resulting pattern is similar to what you would have achieved by driving that path while digging, but with some serious perks: the terrain wasn't deforming as you drove (so driving was easy) and your speed wasn't reduced while driving the pattern. Much less painful and quicker.

Any thoughts about that approach?

Hmmm. The problem here is doing things that require multiple passes; making extra deep troughs or trenches will still require driving into and outof the holes in multiple passes.

Maybe we need some pre-constructed "charge patterns" that can be dropped much like infantry formations are now. Point the Cutter where you want the "emplacement" to face, hit "place Thor emplacement" and it blasts a terrace fronted drive-in hull-down position, with forward berm, ready for the occupation of the happy. With the computational resources and AM explosives the setting already assumes, that should be relative cake to justify in-game.

Using digging charges like Claymores would probably not be terribly useful, at least from a "doing damage" point of view. You could certainly disrupt an infantry group by setting them off beneath, but I doubt there'd be enough metal shrapnel to kill anything with even infy armnour. Digging charges are designed to do just that, dig.

Combining this with the Mercury certainly wouldn't hurt, or at least moving from the current Cutter chassis to the Mercury frame. Wider, lower, and prettier.

[Toby Haynes]

Originally posted by ClaytoniousRex:

We've been leaning toward not simply improving the digging, but changing the way you do it completely. The Cutter would use charges instead of a blade for digging.

...snip...

Much less painful and quicker.

Any thoughts about that approach?

I like it with ONE caveat. If your cutter gets destroyed, your charges go off.

In other words, a deployed digging charge constantly receives a not-yet signal. When the signal is lost, off goes the charge. This also means that charges which are out of range of the cutter would detonate.

Of course, if you are dynamiting (antimattering, whatever) the hillside, it's going to scream OVER HERE to the enemy.

Not that that is necessarily bad if the deploying team knows what they are doing. Indeed, getting tanks down into newly created holes quickly is then critical.

I also think that the range of such digging charges should be carefully considered. If you can fire these things 2-3km, then they could be used to punch holes in existing defensive structures. That needs careful thought.

Cheers,

Toby Haynes

[poesel]

I like that too. I'm with Toby about the dead-man switch but not about that signature thing. You wouldn't wate precious antimatter to dig holes. The resulting explosion and dustcloud will show the enemy anyhow.

What I don't like is the fixed rate of fire for the charges. Rather drop the charges with the normal fire button. That way you could easily dig deeper trenches if you'd fire twice on the same spot. There should probably be a limit how deep you could fire (=how often you can fire on one spot).

The placed charges should be marked by a flag or something. These markers get stacked if you fired several times on one spot.

The charges explode as Clay said.

Altogether that would make digging easier since you could place the holes at will without a time constraint and you have a good overview where you have placed the charges.

Another big problem is that witch explosive charges you can only make holes, not hills. Or to be exact: you make craters and that is not a defensive structure. The charges would need to have a direction in which they will throw earth. Maybe that can be assigned by the direction you look when you press the fire button to set the charge.

[Alexander SquidLord Williams]

You wouldn't wate precious antimatter to dig holes.

Actually, if we've got enough AM to use as the explosive in HE rounds (and that's what the backstory says we're using), using it for digging charges seems de rigeur. Though I agree they shouldn't create any kind of "tac shadow" on the enemy tac display; since its not an active power source, no more echo from it than the HE rounds.

Rather drop the charges with the normal fire button. That way you could easily dig deeper trenches if you'd fire twice on the same spot.

Two digging charges on the same spot without the first exploding, then placing the second wouldn't actually dig that much deeper a hole. If we're talking simultaneous explosion, it'd just be a more oblong one, and if not, the first one would uproot and dislodge the second.

That said, "charges" that act like a claymore (has directionality) is not untoward, though if we want to keep the flexibility of being able to create trenches, they'd be facing left, tossing the dug dirt largely to the left side of the vehicular facing and letting you drive along a trench line.

[poesel]

Yes, forgot the HE. Silly background.

About two charges in one place: if you'd explode the upper one first it would (probably) work. I dunno, I always had to use a shovel for that kind of work.

Nonetheless: even if not SO realistic it would be easier gameplay wise. We don't simulate soil composition or rock formations so IMHO that won't hurt much.

Edit: yes to the Mercury!

[ September 18, 2006, 01:38 AM: Message edited by: poesel71 ]

[Alexander SquidLord Williams]

About two charges in one place: if you'd explode the upper one first it would (probably) work. I dunno, I always had to use a shovel for that kind of work.

Requires you control the depth of each charge seperately. I acknowledge it'd probably be easy to do in practice in ... whatever year it is ... but our interface is necessarily more limited, and dialing in the exact penetration desired per round could be annoying. And just hard to manage.

Damn, I suppenly want a Penal Auxilliary Squad armed soley with shovels and thrown rocks ...

[poesel]

I thought more like that: you drive to the desired spot, press fire and set the charge. A little flag appears. But you want a deep hole here, so you press fire again and set another charge under the first. The flag gets a second streamer and thats it. Go to the next point.

I think its enough to have depth 1, depth 2 and maybe depth 3. No need for a depth value.

[Alexander SquidLord Williams]

Originally posted by poesel71:

I thought more like that: you drive to the desired spot, press fire and set the charge. A little flag appears. But you want a deep hole here, so you press fire again and set another charge under the first. The flag gets a second streamer and thats it. Go to the next point.

I think its enough to have depth 1, depth 2 and maybe depth 3. No need for a depth value.

It can be more than mildly challenging to hit the exact same point given the aiming system, so for UI purposes you have to accumulate all charges within a radius, and that just gets messy to calculate all around given everything else beeing calculated.

Frankly, I think trying to manage depth on a single pass is too fiddly than "laying out lines" by just driving where you want things to blow up, truth be told. Make a second pass through the newly excavated trench if need be; it'll be faster to do that than to fiddle around trying to set depth with manual control of the digging apparatus.

Combine the automatic "charge launcher" which only fires down in front of the vehicle with a short range, high-radius, low penetration "digging mortar" to produce pits or extra depth with automatic berming around the edge (because its a shaped-charge round designed to throw the dirt up in a berm around it, rather than out and up), and I think you'll have sufficient flexibility. If we happen to get "pre-made" digging emplacements the vehicle can deploy automatically in front of it, like a "Thor pit," I think we'll be thinking of it as gravy.

[theIRONGIANT]

I have always thought it was humerous that the Cutter has a bundle of low-tech rope tied to the back of it. As if the engineer inside is going to use it as a tow-rope or maybe to pull-down buildings. Funny!

I like having the cutter be visibly identifiable, as compared to all the classes of paladin which you need to observe the turret to tell what you are dealing with. When you spot a Cutter you know you are shooting fish in a barrel.

I guess I really don't have much to say about this, except thanks to the developers for taking all our input!

peace, tIG

[poesel]

Sometimes you have a picture before your inner eye and its obviously not the same that others see.

I always thought the mine layer would be some device at the back of the Mercury. Something like a cannon shooting straight downwards. Thats why I never thought of aiming as an issue Alex. Stop, press fire twice and you have that depth 2 hole. The direction the turret currently points to would be the direction of the charge. Thats all about aiming.

The digging mortar sounds fine, too.

[Alexander SquidLord Williams]

I always thought the mine layer would be some device at the back of the Mercury. Something like a cannon shooting straight downwards. Thats why I never thought of aiming as an issue Alex. Stop, press fire twice and you have that depth 2 hole. The direction the turret currently points to would be the direction of the charge. Thats all about aiming.

Luckily, Humanity developed the ability to communicate just so that we could get these little incongruities straightened out.

I can see that working well enough, I suppose. It's not going to be something you work out while putting down a defensive trench/berm, but if you were hand-crafting one emplacement it could work out well enough. The issue I see (in both cases, really) is if we take explosive facing from the turret, you'll have to be driving one way and facing 90o off it to build a proper berm. Not the most fun you can have with your pants on, especially in some of the terrain we have.

Thoughts?

[Hub]

[ October 21, 2006, 07:43 AM: Message edited by: Hub ]

[Alexander SquidLord Williams]

I would still like to see earth moved with a blade, but barring that, what about a line charge launched similar to a present day MICLIC? Or maybe better still, charge rolled out behind the vehicle, cut to length. Vehicle moves off and detonates it at a safe distance.

I'm pretty sure the latter is effectively what we've been talking about; the vehicle fires a charge into the ground as it rolls along every X metres, then detonates the lot at once, throwing dirt to one side or the other. Which works neatly from the PoV of interface for a player, keeping things relatively simple.

Or, how about a beamer? Sort of like in some of the Star Trek episodes where they had to drill into a planet's mantle with their phasers for some critical reason?

Not sure the setting backstory is supportive of a beam-weapon digging system. The old Hellbores could do it, but the 10mm ion seems to be about the most powerful beam weapon they can put on a mobile platform. Otherwise, just from a physics PoV, I'm not sure it'd be the best means. Beams pump energy into a target, radiating it or melting it, depending. For a digging tool, you really want quantified explosions to literally kinese dirt around.

Or a slave Auxillia. Mmm, slave Auxillia.

I wouldn't mind seeing the Cutter look more like today's M9 ACE - lower profile and with a higher speed (not necessarily while digging, but for getting there).

I think switching it a Mercury chassis will help a lot with the profile issues. Honestly, the Paladin is a little too huge and towering for my tastes in a vehicle. Drive one up next to an Apollo sometime and then cringe ...

[Hub]

[ October 21, 2006, 07:43 AM: Message edited by: Hub ]

[ClaytoniousRex]

Yes, but if the X X X's are close enough together then it acts like the === (or close enough). Still, a line charge might be quite doable.

[theIRONGIANT]

i think the infantry squads should have one or two of these digging charges. 'digging in' is a routine and nescesary manuever for soldiers, it is the first thing one should do when fired on by distant enemy units.

also it would be good to switch the 120 HE for a couple of bunker buster type shots, so fortifications can slowly be picked away at. i imagine it would have an effect on the earth much like the heavy mortar, but with hardly any vehicle damage.

peace, tIG