Expanding the Energy as Ammunition System

Well it mostly depends on where it is used, I don't think anyone really wants to see this system used on everything.

Mike

You'd use it where it makes sense obviously. Units with a time to live of less than a second aren't going to need a salvo stance, and units with a single shot reserve aren't going to need them either.

Wouldn't mind seeing an option with artillery to use salvo fire to land all the shots at the same time..

This actually depends. A strike bomber is obviously going to be intended to always use its entire bomb payload, both because it is obviously optimal, and also because that is how the unit is intended to function.

However a machine gun weapon might have enough energy/ammunition to fire continuously for a time period, say ten seconds. This weapon, despite being limited by energy, doesn't really have a "salvo" option so much as an optional variable rate of fire. If after two seconds of firing it kills its target and there's nothing left to shoot at, it stops shooting and saves its ammo. It begins recharging from 80% full, which means it will be fully recharged sooner than if it completely emptied its reserves. If another enemy enters its range it also has eight seconds of constant maximum fire-rate remaining immediately.

The same process also works for other weapons. A unit using an energy count for missiles might be designed to fire them one at a time, not all at once. Suppose we have a SAM or ATGM carrier vehicle that carries twelve missiles and has a 30 second recharge for each. But it doesn't fire all twelve simultaneously- it fires them one at a time, with a few seconds before it may fire another even if another missile is already available. Such a unit not only does not "alpha strike" because of its design, it is not able to alpha strike. However unloading all twelve missiles in quick succession is, in some senses, an "alpha strike" considering the 6 minute recharge time to get another twelve missiles (if no logistics are available to expedite the process). However it could fire just one missile immediately after 1/12th of its energy was regenerated, once every 30 seconds.

Agreed. This does open up a lot of new possible unit designs and features which makes balancing more complicated. Even ignoring interactions and different ways the same unit might be used, there are basic unit usage characteristics like the maximum fire rate and the recharge rate which must be designed.

However a mechanic like energy is not necessary for all units. Some unit roles are created, some others can be made more focused and cheaper, and those units become somewhat more complicated. But simple units that just plug away steadily at the same rate whenever they fire have no need for an energy bar and are unaffected.

So do you basically want the ZK Felon weapon mechanic (just with a battery, no shield)? I think the Defender weapon mechanics are equivalent but implemented in a different way such that it is not clear whether they are equivalent.

The ZK Felon would be an example of a unit with a high rate of fire and a large energy/ammo reserve. The Defender could be implemented in the same manner where its energy/ammo reserve gives it a total count of three missiles.

The ZK Catapult might also be implemented using the same system, only instead of being unable to fire until fully reloaded the player would have the option of firing with a half-reloaded Catapult to fire half as many rockets.

Nope, I have thought a bit more and the Defender could not be implemented using this system. Defenders fire at a rate of about a missile a second, contain 3 missiles and each missile reloads independently in about 10 seconds. So over the first 2 seconds a Defender will empty its pods (at times 0s, 1s and 2s), wait for 8 seconds and then fire another burst of 3 missiles (at times 10s, 11s and 12s).

This cannot be done with your ammo system. The 8 second delay would have to be implemented by an ammo accretion rate which only creates one missile every 10 seconds. This would cause the Defender to initially fire a burst of 3 shots, fire another shot 8 seconds later and then fire one shot every 10 seconds.

It's good to explore exactly what this system can do. I still agree that the Felon uses exactly the system you describe. While technically the Catapult could use this system (anything could) I don't see why you bought it up because it actually does not use the system.

You are correct that a single pool of three missiles is slightly different from the ZK defender, depending on implementation. The one I was thinking of was to have one missile regenerate in 3.3 seconds, so it is possible to wait 10 seconds to fire three in sequence again. Under this design the Defender has the option of firing three, and then firing once every 3.3 seconds indefinitely, which it cannot do in ZK.

To precisely mimic the Defender in ZK you would just give it three weapons which each load one missile, and each independently takes 10 seconds to fully charge. You don't actually need energy to do this, since you really just have three normal weapons with a fixed cooldown. But the concept of having multiple weapons is still useful for designing units' firing patterns. Such as multiple weapons firing independently to limit the number of projectiles that can be fired simultaneously even if it has a larger energy pool.

Alternately, a unit might have a secondary weapon that it can use regardless of its energy state on its primary weapon, such as a nose-mounted cannon on a plane. Even with no missiles or other energy-dependent weapon, a unit may still have other weapons.

If you really wanted to push the boat out, it is easy to imagine a unit with multiple energy-consuming weapons, either with a shared or independent pool. Having two or more distinct energy bars is probably too complicated to display, but it is easy to imagine a unit with two different kinds of ammunition. Probably not a good idea to implement for clarity and simplicity reasons, but an interesting concept.

Again, though, please name a unit in PA that will last 8 seconds in combat. I love the concept and I completely agree that it would add a wonderful amount of width to the tools available to unit designers and balance engineers, but, it would still require an overhaul of PA's 'time to death' for units in general.

Well that is also something many want so yeah.

Mike

Pawz, imagine you are playing TA and you are allowed to build nothing except Peewees and Flashes. That is pretty much where PA is at right now.

They should not increase the HP of the existing units. They are too cheap for that.

Instead, Uber should add more expensive unit types which have more HP.

Even the Peewee could take more than one hit... and the FlashTank was positively ... well 'tanky' for a basic vehicle.

Yeah your example actually doesn't work very well at all Ledarsi - the flash lasted a fair few seconds, and Peewee vs Peewee was also pretty interesting because of the low damage but high ROF of the EMG.

TA level 1 game is more interesting, currently, than PA's level 1 game.

Don't want to make this thread a rehash of the TTL discussion going on elsewhere, just noting that this suggestion *requires* a high(er) TTL than the current crop of units.

The usage of the word energy here isn't very consistent.

If you are talking about an individual value that recharges at a set rate and allows for full voleys to be doable, don't use the word energy.
If you are talking about energy, the resource, being used to allow units to attack, then use the word energy.

I have nothing against either system, but they both carry different implications.

A missile defense system that launches its missiles rapidly, then loses speed as it must reload missiles individually is an example of the first use.
A laser defense system that drains your energy as it fires is an example of the second.

From what I gather, bombers use system #1. And it works for them. I get the impression that not everything in this thread is discussing the same definition though, so please be more clear.

Perfect!

Peewee's where great against fellow basic units. They easily got oneshotted agains the more powerful weapons however.

PA Basic units tend to 1 or 2 shot one another, which is a bit of an issue.

Uber will fix this in the future though, no point worrying about it now

They have said time and again that balancing will be done later.

I apologise for my REALLY bad pun there. Use of powerless was unintentional.

I don't really see the point of the catalyst, if I'm honest. The issue is still there, the catalyst just changes the position of the curve on the graph.

Rather have the global power supply catalyst, I'd rather have a supply and logistics buildings and units which give an adjacency bonus. That way you can multiply the strength of your force just by adding a few units to the force, and vastly weaken the opponent by destroying his supply units.

Hmm...

Earth 2150 had a system where each unit had an ammunition pool. Then logistics buildings produced ammunition, and supply units moved it from your base to the front lines. It was pretty cool (also a great way to find an enemy base or an enemy army - follow the supply line).

The disadvantage was that it meant any attack had to be done from the front, because your supply units would fly the shortest route to your units and back to your base, so they'd fly through the enemy base if you attacked from the rear. Unless you micro-ed them. But that means you aren't micromanaging your combat units, which kind of need it more.

Rise of Nations had an attrition system. Attrition damaged friendly troops in hostile terrain, unless a supply unit was nearby. Supply units also increased the attack speed of friendly artillery.

Force multipliers don't make sense in a world of pinnacle technology. This, along with area logistics fall under the umbrella of "auras and buffs". They are extremely expensive on CPU resources because they must run constant area scans for viable units. Won't work for a game that wants to support a million units.

Sins Rebellion does it with thousands of units, Sins Rebellion doesn't use multi-threading.

AI War: Fleet Command has something like 50,000 units in a battle at a time. That game uses multi-threading.

Millions of units in your game have to do constant area scans for whether or not they can attack enemies. Your comment doesn't make sense.

I suppose I should start by explaining that a thousand isn't a million, but I just don't know how to begin.