Friendly Fire on Splash Damage

I'd primarily like to see it on bombers and, to a lesser extent, artillery because I feel like curbing their indiscriminate use is important - especially given the role of air and Catapults in planetary dominance. It's common to see bombers on global patrol shutting down any sort of invasion, and Catapults on small moons having nearly global reach.

When Unit cannons get introduced, the value of dropping units in among your enemy's base would be increased by friendly fire from global-shutdown methods, introducing an important risk vs. reward in how many bombers/catpults you use.

Best reading so far of the topic/problem.

Actually pretty much the opposite.

I like a game where I am free to focus on big overview of the battlefield, and not having to control what my Artillery is doing because otherwise it doesn't fire when I want it to. All units should just fire when the enemy is in range. Period. Any other solution brings troubles.

If my Artillery causes havoc in my base, my fault. I didn't build my defenses appropriately. Or my adversary managed to exploit my setup at his advantage. Fair enough.

Let's keep things very simple. For instance...

How do you define what's inside your base and what's outside?

Just ask yourself this question, and you'll find no easy answer. It is basically impossible for a program to define what's inside your base, because soon you will be expanding, and having proxy bases, and so many little things scattered around that it is impossible even for an human mind to clearly define limits.

Computers have no chances.

Anyway, firing inside your own base is a false problem. If that's your worrying, you may observing the problem from the wrong perspective.

Artillery fires at what you allow it to see. So if you don't have a radar coverage of any sort outside your base, you're not using it properly. As soon as the enemy troops will be on sight, they will be already too close.

Bombers on patrol do not cluster as much as when they are instructed to take a specific target. And here it is the player to give such a directive.

An other solution would be to reduce Splash damage on Friendly fire. Enemy units take 100% of the damage, as they do now. Friendly units take a discount. But still take something.

Having units sometimes decide not to fire is a Bad Idea.

perhaps this could be implemented with artillery, if they had a minimum firing range. then they wouldn't shoot inside your base.

I think the proper way to mitigate damage done by artillery pieces to your base is to have the shell auto-dud if it is going to do more damage to your units than enemy units. When a shell lands, but before the explosion animation is played and the damage is recorded and applied to units, the server would calculate if the damage to friendly units is greater than the damage applied to the enemy's and if it is a "net loss" for your opponent, then the explosion would occur. This would be configurable with one of the buttons on the right of the screen and would default to [off].

if damage to friendly units > damage to enemy units
then the shell does not explode/ only deals direct fire damage
else
explosion occurs and damage is applied to units

The only problem is if the above evaluation takes longer than a single server tick or it causes some other type of delay or excessive load on the server's CPU.

I think that it would add more depth to gameplay. Against a player that's using many Holkins, you could send in a round of doxes to make them shoot on their own buildings. Considering that the Holkins is very strong, having a drawback to using it would make sense imo.

It has absolutely nothing to do with "inside the base." Has nothing to do with boundaries since PA bases have no boundaries.

Again, I've explained this before.

I did think about it and it's actually VERY easy.

Dox A moves into Range of Pelter B. Pelter Be prepares to fire. Before firing, the Pelter determines if a friendly building or unit will be hit in the crossfire. If there's no friendly buildings or units in the splash range, Pelter B fires. Pelter B then continues firing until Dox A is destroyed, Dox A leaves range of Pelter B, or Dox A moves within range of a friendly building or unit.

This'll also be very helpful so Holkins don't destroy your own defending units, especially with how short of a range Vanguards or Infernos. You could be successfully defending an attack and then get screwed over by your own artillery.

That's dumb.

During the Vietnam War our artillery was accurate enough to get in real close to friendly lines. And you're saying our dedicated futuristic robots of war can't do what we've been doing for decades?

Having my defensive structures destroy my own base is a terrible idea.

I like the strategical and coordinating aspects friendly fire splash would introduce, so I'm all for it.

wth man? don't you get that that makes the game better??? that this is an improvement to the gaming mechanics from before TA?

This is what it's all about : immersion. not random rules.

and for the peeps who love micro, this is the kind of micro they should be doing, as it's not a huge amount ; rather than the whole blasted clickfest for doxes.

THIS is what FA was all about. (that said the interpretation of FA featured heavily nerfed friendly fire but this is one rare case where I believe we should follow the TA route rather than the FA route).

So you are from the States? Anyway, PA is just a game, it *only* suggests that you're playing with an army of *dedicated futuristic robots of war*, but they're not. All runs inside a simulation.

A real Army is composed by real people and it is an entirely different thing than a video game. Real people in real conflicts risk their life for real. We are just sit on our couches.

PA is just a game, and best games keep things very simple. Things in those games do what they're supposed to, with no conditionals. In the case of a war game I envision units that do fire at the enemy every time they have it in range. They're not the mind, I am the mind. They do not need to think, my fun is exactly in thinking for them.

In fact, opposite formations of units do not necessarily have to mix. Ultimately it is up to the players to clash their armies, and having to consider the chance of the Artillery fire can only add depth to the battles.

If you placed your Holkins so that they have a better fire inside your base than outside, or if you did not mind to have visits in the yard, that's your choice. If your base is so tiny and features such a massive provision of Artillery that as soon as the enemy break through is a disaster, that's your design choice. So, let's invite people in expanding a little by design. You see, less rules and we're already going in the right direction.

In addition we have walls that can take tons of damage and may be able to keep the enemy at the gate for a little. Enough for the Artillery to do its job. If they break through, perhaps the Artillery also has been already reduced to pieces. If not, the enemy has been under its fire all the time. So now it's your turn.

What you are asking for is a machine that thinks for you, so that you do not have to design things in the first place. It's ok. But I prefer to be the one in charge of the design, and I like machines that do things plain straight. So I disagree with you on this topic.

This is the worst kind of micro. It's the 'if my units had common sense, they would not do this' micro. Otherwise known as artificial stupidity.

Everything should have friendly fire, TA did this perfectly well.

I agree - one should play TA to see just how well this actually worked.
And no this is not nostalgia, I still have TA on my computer and play it occasionally.

Hi Brian,

There are 2 main points to all of this which are getting mixed up. To my mind I think it boils down to:

1: If you drop a large high explosive shell onto your own structure it absolutely *should* damage your units because that's what a high explosive shell does. The current implementation isn't finished and I'm hoping Uber will fix this.

2: Targeting: Your own units should avoid friendlys and certainly should not fire through your units causing damage. This is how the Spring engine deals with it and it makes sense.

So from your posts I gather your are OK with 1, provided Uber do work to satisfy 2 meaning that your units won't level your own base for a single scout?

I like it in TA. It adds strategical depth.

I've already detroyed nearly a complete base in TA with just scout planes and a bunch of auto-targeted opponent's bertha. It's fun to do but it adds micromanagement.

So I'm not against it but it must be done wisely to avoid this micromanagement.

That's not strategic depth! That's 'Lol, my enemies are mentally incapable'

We could also ask ourselves how the adversary managed to place a single scout, which I assume is weak and inexpensive, inside the enemy's base. Shouldn't the Artillery made fine powder of the poor scout miles away, already?

Just because PA's units drive around on spheres that look like planets that doesn't make them super advanced. And they don't need to, they need to be as advanced as the gameplay needs them to be. Not more, not less.

dude it's the exact same thing for running into enemy lines. no difference. this argument could be used the same way.

In any case I stand for friendly fire. If you're against it then I don't know what you're doing supporting a TA sequel.

it lacked graphics and higher unit cap.

I think that's damn near perfect. Other games lack fun, plot, immersion, interest, engagement, fluidity, stability ect ect ect.