Bacchus WIP

[yurch]

"The best defense is a good offense"

There's a great gap in our force selection right now, and it's air defense. Specifically, Offensive Air Defense.

That's where Bacchus will come into play. Why Bacchus, you ask?

Because no party ever lasts long without Bacchus.

My idea is to put the missile from the Cobra missile towers onto a utility vehicle. Like the Hermes, this is a heavier, slower paladin with air defense capabilities, but the comparison stops there.

Because unlike the Hermes, I want this vehicle to be obvious. The Cobra missile fires at air targets up to 5k away, and to do so I'm presuming some active sensor activity.

The rotary gun, while imposing looking, fires the anaemic 14mm round for purposes of attacking light vehicles and light aircraft*. Unlike the Hermes 20mm, it is not very good at attacking armored targets, and will put itself in great risk to do so.

*infantry have jetpacks and are therefore aircraft.

Balance wise, it's going to be a weak offensive craft with the purpose of backing up friendly advances in the most important way possible - by shooting down dropships, allowing a team some breathing room while either attacking or defending, at the tradeoff of being obvious. The missile will only engage unjammed air targets in LOS and currently fires once every 12 seconds with unlimited ammo. The launcher is easily overwhelmed by multiple targets with such a large reload time and is of course defeated by point defense.

Edit: perhaps not, the 'pool' behavior may mean it attacks up to 6 dropships, but once only every 12 seconds... (?)

Problems:

I would like for the vehicle to bear the big red/green range circle in the minimap, and I want the launcher not to be jammable. I have given the gun's subsystem the IsJammable=false value, but perhaps it needs to be assigned to the chassis instead. Sticking the circle on will probably require a new XML var of some sort.

Bots like to use it and don't seem to be properly scared enough to drop a safe distance from it.

I also don't know how to properly orient the stand at all times under the automated gun. It's just 'there' right now and eventually orients itself in some manner, but it looks about as bad as just having the launcher floating by itself.

Early test ultra-prelim-alpha can be found here. Considerations both on balancing strength and/or armanent details is needed.

[ August 07, 2006, 07:59 AM: Message edited by: yurch ]

[ClaytoniousRex]

I like this unit because it represents a truly strategic target for the enemy. If the other team has deployed one of these then you really need to coordinate with your team to eliminate it. With such a wide area of effect, it's impossible to simply ignore it as you can with many other units. The presence of this unit introduces a larger, strategic challenge much like the important facilities do.

How many of these do you think should be in the default inventory? My main concern would be a team using them to completely lock out the entire map (or even if not a complete lock-out, still causing such severe casualties in drops that it might as well be a lock-out).

On a less important tangent, it also happens to look very cool, too.

The IsJammable flag determines whether a component is affected by EMP attacks, not whether it can be sensor jammed. That's awful nomenclature in retrospect. I completely agree that in order for this thing to work as part of the game it should always be "unjammed", so you really need a new tag that doesn't yet exist. We'll get that in for you on the next update.

[yurch]

Right now I'm using an inventory count of 4. If you want to deploy them all at once then you also have a bit more risk losing them - hard to protect them if half your team is using them. This number might be a bit low, actually, as the craft has severe difficulty defending itself.

With the bots deploying them willy-nilly it can get a little crazy figuring a drop point (especially without the 'circles'). Behind a tall hill usually works as the automatedGun type objects seem to have LOS restrictions.

I suspect if it really gets bad, a team could always use the galaxy as a shield for it's initial drop.

[Jalinth]

I like the concept, and will have to try it out. It certainly looks good and the name is very amusing.

Balencing it should be interesting. More comments after I've tried it out.

[ClaytoniousRex]

Let's work the kinks out and make a permanent part of future releases. I'll throw in the "unjammable" tag for you on the next update.

[Dark_au]

To stop it bieng too powerful with the AAD missiles is there a way to only allow it to have 1 missile in the air?.

[yurch]

I have a reload time and possibly a 'pool' count(what does this do, have a pool of missiles to fire? Are they reloaded independantly?), and that's about it. I'm not too sure of the exact behavior of the AutomatedGun type objects.

[Dark_au]

no sorry last thing this game needs is anymore AAD.. it already has too much

[aittam]

infantry shouldn't be visible, a missile with a shaped charge won't cause any damage

[yurch]

What?

First of all, this vehicle does not carry a point defense. The rotary gun is fired by the player in bursts like the 20mm.

The missile only engages Dropships, Vipers, and Galaxies.

[poesel]

Can vehicles have the abilities of a sensor? If so then I suggest to give the bacchus that ability.

It should have rather decent sensors for the AA anyway and since it is already highly visible on the map it needs not to hide electronically. Giving back its sensor input to the teammates seems logical then.

[yurch]

I don't know how to specifically define a jamming or sensor radius. There may not be a way to... yet. A glance at the sensor/jammer/hermes just has them possessing certain subsystems.

At any rate, the standard sensor sees through hills, if we want a long ranged version, we might not want that.

[yurch]

I'm convinced that the attackers NEED some way to keep defenders from dropping close distances. Otherwise, they inevitably get stuffed into a tight wad and given large doses of hermes in every flank imaginable.

I think a proper mobile AA vehicle is the answer. And with the new deployment zones, I don't feel as bad about doing it.

[ClaytoniousRex]

Yurch, do you need anything else besides the new "unjammable" tag to get this puppy wrapped up? If that's the last thing you needed, then send me your final .physicalobjectgroup for it and I'll put the new tag in and include the Bacchus in 1.1.4.

[yurch]

Well, we definitely need a range circle for the thing. The most favorable way I can see this being done is like the old AA turret, just unable to be hidden via jammer.

If it has a dot on the minimap, it will be a constant ctrl-m target for artillery. If it doesn't, players would probably find that strange. I'm leaning towards having the dot.

Personally I think the galaxy and hermes should have range/jamming circles too, but not neccessarily 'unjammable'.

Something also is needed to scare the bots away from dropping near it. When I'm testing offline the launcher is going like mad.

poesel71's idea about a sensor sounds pretty neat.

Balance-wise it's very good at knocking down ships, but it still has severe problems with defending itself. This is inevitably going to need tweaking later, but without some online testing I have no idea how players will react to the vehicle.

Here is the version I'm using, with a slightly better rotary and 1.1.3 subsystems matching the hermes.

[ClaytoniousRex]

OK, it's hooked up as unjammable and also always present on the other team's sensor net - you can always see this thing. I slightly reduced the ROF of that Vulcan just so we don't clobber network bandwidth with this thing (should still be high enough to meet its intended goal, though).

This is, indeed, a new concept. You're right about that launcher staying busy, especially on the smaller maps. I think that for 1.1.4, we should put the Bacchus in the inventory on some of the scenarios instead of in the standard inventory. This way we can all play with it online and probably tweak it a bit before making it a part of every scenario by default. Sound good?

[yurch]

Yuh.

I think having more mobile elements play a factor in the 'objectives' of a game is a good thing.

[ClaytoniousRex]

I do, too. The usual worry is accidentally introducing something that greatly upsets balance.

However, in the case of the Bacchus, the main issue isn't even balance per se; the vehicle's "unjammableness" and constant presence on enemy sensors are pretty good counterweights already. But it causes a required change of tactics that is sweeping. With these things out there, both teams now basically have to first earn the right to use dropships by first hunting down and destroying the other team's Bacchuses (or at least probing from the deployment zones to verify that the other team hasn't deployed them). This is an interesting and probably good thing, and not so different from attacking a team that has done a good job of placing the new Cobra missile turrets, but since it's such a big change to how scenarios are played a little caution is in order. I imagine SOP will be to bring in some mortars via the deployment zones and start working hard on those glowing Bacchuses in the distance.

Tweaking this individual unit aside, you're absolutely right that more of these mobile units of high strategic value add a lot of interest to the overall gameplay.

[Alexander SquidLord Williams]

Speaking of changes made for the Bacchus (which I look forward to driving, frankly; its a "never say stop" kind of ride), was there any more thought on the ability to have effect circles on the Hermes and the Galaxy, definitely for the side using them and, for the Galaxy, probably for the other side, too (lest its in a Sensor Jammed radius, likely a useful new tactic)?

If so, it surely wouldn't hurt to get at least "faded" engagement circles for friendly Cobra Turrets that are jammed; its often hard to tell how big the circles should be when shifting between map scales between scenarios. If you do "fades" for jammed Cobras, the Hermes' perimeter should also be "faded."

Visual feedback on the tac screen is a good thing.

[ClaytoniousRex]

All AA shows up on tac now in 1.1.4 - Hermes, Bacchus, Galaxy, turrets, buildings, etc. Jammed friendlies don't stop showing their radii.

Alexander ... SQUIDLORD ... Williams. That may be the very best forum name ever.

[Alexander SquidLord Williams]

All AA shows up on tac now in 1.1.4 - Hermes, Bacchus, Galaxy, turrets, buildings, etc. Jammed friendlies don't stop showing their radii.

My squallid and squamus heart swells with the happiness and pleasure of this knowledge. If nothing else, it'll make dropping jammers and AA fields a little faster so I can focus on what I really suck at (no, not shooting ... OK, that too):

Creating earthen defenses!

If anything deserves some wiki love, its the Cutter and using it to prepare defenses.

Alexander ... SQUIDLORD ... Williams. That may be the very best forum name ever. [Wink]

You laugh, but all my friends have a tendency to call my Squid. To my face, even. A friend of mine modeled a take on a furry version of Otto Octavious for a comic pitch to Marvel on me. A squid with extra mechanical tentacles, of course.

If you're going to be a squid, be the Lord of squid, say I. [amused look]

[ClaytoniousRex]

Yurch, you'll notice that the Bacchus that ships with 1.1.4 has the 2nd turret removed (the one that the AutomatedGun was attached to). Having 2 turrets causes a serious network bug, so that will need to be fixed before putting that 2nd turret back on.

[yurch]

That's... interesting. It's not needed for anything more than aesthetics, I note your cobra turrets don't have that bit anyway.

[Alexander SquidLord Williams]

Oh, yurch ...

Having driven the Bacchus around the map a bit lately, I have to say, I really love the roof-mount gatling. It feels meaty and can hurl a big pile of ammo down field right fast-like.

Figured you deserved kudoage for the idea.