Friendly Fire on Splash Damage

To be honest, I kinda think it's a good thing that he hasn't. Even if we disagree, it brings a non-biased, fresh point of view to these debates.

Not saying he shouldn't going forward, as when he plays it now, he will be coming from the perspective of playing PA/Sup com(?) first, rather than the other way around.

That's part of the reason why I haven't gotten around to playing it yet. I like having a different perspective.

Eventually I'll get around to playing it. But right now I like not having the "TA was the best ever, anything different is wrong" filter that seems to be so prevalent amongst the community.

Since we're on the topic, my RTS experience is most of the C&C Games, most of the Age of Empires games, SupCom, and Forged Alliance. Haven't played SupCom 2 or TA.

Well you have no real perspective if you haven't experienced all available options. I also played pretty much all of the games you listed, plus TA. When you have tested all available options you can judge what is the best one in your opinion, everything else is just pure speculation on your part.

Isn't that you are a bit too afraid about preserving your own actual personal strategy, than about the quality of the game under a wider perspective?

Even Age Of Empires has friendly fire.

And that seems more then fine.

That is so... Not even sure the right word.

That is like saying I can only speculate on what food tastes good unless I eat every single kind of food known to man.

Of course I have a perspective. It's just a different perspective than yours.

Actually yes you can only say which food is best from a selection of certain foods if you have tasted them all.
(Considering a reasonably limited amound of food choices of course - just like we have a reasonable amount of possible options for PA)

So how is food different than video games?

My perspective is different than yours. That means my ideas don't have the same inspiration and filter than you.

Having different perspectives is a good thing.

Claiming that I don't have a valid opinion until I have played a certain game is just dumb.

By that reasoning none of us can say anything about PA until we have played every single RTS out there.

I simply have a different perspective and different filter than you.

That is a good thing.

We need variety if we are going to change the RTS genre.

Not true in the slightest. If I were fighting for my personal strategy then I would advocate for units who will shoot themselves in the face since I don't use artillery nearly as much as other players.

Just asking.

So why bother so much. It seems you're running a personal fight. Everyone here understands what you mean. We just think you're plain wrong on this topic.

I bring you an example as just seen online a minute ago.

An enemy tank made through inside the territory of the player I was observing. The area was covered by Metal Extractor. A single enemy tank roaming freely here and there, and nothing there to counter-attacking on it.

This dude didn't have any Artillery in range, so we can assume that it could be, but avoiding fire because the risk of damaging the Metal Extractors.

Finally the tank made it into the base and go shot by a Laser turret. No Metal Extractor being affected. All fine, right?

You would say that's exactly the way it should work, also in the presence of Artillery.

Well, you're plain wrong.

Ten second later, a Nuke impacted exactly where the tank has been destroyed.

Game Over.

In fact you are underestimating a tons of things.

Denying Intel to the adversary is king.

Denying freedom of movement is equally important.

Denying time to the opponent is also very important. That's why you destroy fabbricators as soon as they are in range.

Friendly fire is really a minimal price to pay for achieving fundamental goals in game. If you set up your Artillery to judge when to fire or not, you're gonna lose. Badly, and in a silly way.

I would really like to be able to prove it for the ones who still do not understand the consequences of an AI that could *hold fire if*. Unfortunately it's impossible, so you have to use your imagination to figure it out.

I think you should give it a go, perhaps you will see the flaws more than us hardcore TA fanboys. It is really good and free!!!

this

I recently had a game that demonstrated why friendly fire is not only a good idea, but may be necessary for good gameplay.

I was playing a guy who defended his base entirely with flak and T2 bombers. I couldn't use fighters against his bombers because the flak would waste them instantly. I could get in his base with a ground army but he would just bomb my army, and his own structures, except that thanks to the current state of the game, he was not penalized for this sort of sloppy defense. His bombs blew up my units and magically left his own structures untouched.

Which is ridiculous.

Sorry that friendly fire hurts anyones feelings but if you're going to defend your base with giant explosives, you need to pay a penalty for that.

I actually joined this forum to reply to this after searching for a solution to the stupidity of the artillery in Forged Alliance.

While in the process of building my base, a few of AI tier one tanks positioned themselves outside my base, close to a cliff. Any that actually entered my base were converted to friendly units by my tier 3 engineers so presented no threat. Meanwhile my defenses get built and the tier 2 artillery decides to fire at the 'threat'. Since they are downslope and sheltered by a cliff face they cannot be hit but in a few seconds the artillery is merrily destroying my shields, power generators and factories, doing far more damage than the enemy ever could. I was playing without any mobile offensive units at this point so couldn't destroy the tanks but could certainly destroy my self quite handily.

Surely this is not the sort of AI you would want in this game is it?

That's a separate issue to this though; of whether artillery should fire at things they cannot hit. This usually comes down to performance, as it becomes more costly to do more accurate checks for obstacles in the line of fire.

I like it if good videogames are ignoring the demand for new things and just focus on making everything almost exactly the same as i am already used to. I really like it that this game is more like TA then anything else while it still improves quite a lot on it. The game is not ready so we got to wait to see what they got in store.

Well to be fair...how much has the RTS genre really changed?

Like how much divergent is Dune 2 from PA? Like really?

I like PA, Im just saying that refining the same formula doesn't necessarily mean it's better then trying or innovating something new.

Wow. 5 pages of defending with weapons that are not defensive weapons?

TA already solved this. The troublesome stationary artillery weapons that flatten your base don't exist. It's really that simple.

Synthesis is an art.

How do we feel about crawling bombs and friendly fire? They're not in the game yet, but they will be soon. Should they only harm enemies, only harm enemies and each other (other crawling bombs), or should they damage anything that's in range? In some games (I think TA) crawling bombs have reduced splash area and damage when destroyed by enemy fire rather than detonated manually or via their own attack. Helps prevent chain detonation and prohibitive friendly fire loses.