Wreckage blocking unit movement

KBot-style units should be able to deftly move around / over / squeeze past wrecks of almost any size.

Vehicles should be bogged down by them and blocked if the wreck is large enough (relative to the unit size), but some should be able to crush or push them out of the way.

I loved how wreckage worked in TA. It stopped people hammering away on the same front for too long and made them work multiple angles. The wreckage fields were so valuable they got cleaned up incredibly quickly. It was never a chore! Competitive players used to salivate at the very sight of a wreckage field they'd gained control of because it gave you such a metal boost.

It kept the pace of the battles down to a reasonable level so units could travel very quickly across the open spaces in the map but not through your defensive lines and into the back of your base.

In Zero-K, wreckage reclaim is a bit slower than in TA, but heavy units can crush wreckage, turning it from full unit corpses to piles of metal shards with less reclaim value.

This tends to mean that wreckage is strategically important but doesn't block the movement of armies, as it will only block the movement of the smallest units, which can usually navigate around it fine anyway.

Not really. Once you combine wreckage with walls, ground units became tedious. It made more sense to just go air.

Man, I reviewed multiplayer demos on TADRS for years. Walls and dragons teeth barely got used in competitive matches. People LOVED wrecks. They sucked those things up like lightening. Choke point maps (i.e. newb maps) got a bit choked up but the larger open maps played much better because of wrecks. It got to the point the best way to get metal was take it off your opponent and throw it back at him. Truly a wonderful dynamic. It meant that there was a risk involved in every offensive movement, which was really important because in TA there weren't many incentives to be defensive. Every attack was like throwing a ton of money at your opponent. Could you control the money sitting out there after you'd attacked?

THIS!

The problem I have with that system is how it supports a defensive playstyle and makes the attack work harder to attack, something that really should be encouraged.

Mike

I voted yes because Air units ignore it anyway

I always thought the wreckage added a nice dynamic to the game. Plus now they have the processing power to let walking robots climb over while forcing wheel/tread based tanks and cars to drive around. Keep it says I.

Well, I disagree.

Air is already more manouverable, if you get what I mean. It's faster, can fly over everything... And now air becomes even better in this area, because ground units can travel over even less terrain.

Wrecks large enough yes. But things as small as fleas shouldn't affect bigger things other than slowing them down
I really liked this feature in ta.

I say yes. Wreckage blocking units is something that's actually entertaining in Cortex Command.

With that said, manual unit operation a-la Dungeon Keeper to level trees/wrekage would be cool.

Hmm I just tried out a bit of TA -havent played it in years- and I have to say I didnt really like how my tanks basically refused many move commands cause some wrecks fucked up the pathfinding. Well the first few maps of the campaign did have alot of chokes. It might work fine with better pathfinding and more open maps.
I am not sure about it. Needs testing. Should not be hard to turn if off or on, depending on what works best.

If there is going to be wreckage, it should have a tangible effect on strategy.

Otherwise the wreckage should not be husks of a unit, but just plates, scraps, etc that wouldn't get in the way in the first place. That way it's still there, but prevents the need for micro to deal with it in the midst of a battle.

I'd say yes, as long as it's not overwhelmingly silly

Like if they only slowed units down as they ploughed through the wreckage, reducing it to those like speckles of metal you could reclaim in TA

That way you could either take a few engineers and grab the extra resources, or just smash your way through if you're feeling lazy

But I definitely agree that units should just clip through them *Looks at supcom with a disaproving head shake*

That's not a trivial thing to find, or it wouldn't have taken 12 years.

I know what's "all" he did, but it's still awesome that they are modding the exe after all this time, as well as normal mods.

I will not vote because there is no option that I agree with.

I think that wreckage should SLOW movement, but ONLY if the pathfinding is drastically improved over TA/SC. Having units get stuck or go ridiculous routes is not fun and ends up causing tons of micromanagement which is what we want to avoid.

I saw an interesting video of Spring where the units dynamically moved around obstructions and other units, like water flowing through rocks. It looked great and if a similar system was implemented in PA I think that it'd be okay for wreckage to slow units down slightly as they move around it.

I think the annoying part about blocking wreckage in TA was that the path-finding wasn't all that great. If the path-finding is good enough that units can find there way through or around wreckage then I'd rather have it than not. A toggle-able option could work but if it affects gameplay significantly it would be harder to balance for both situations.

If it does block, I'd like to see a few things
1. Area reclaim commands
2. Larger units being able to roll over / crush smaller wrecks at the cost of speed.
3. Make it really easy to attack ground (so you can target and destroy wreckage quickly), as far as I remember in TA you could just hit A and then click where you wanted the unit to shoot, I think in SupCom you had to change an option from whatever it's default attack state was to attack ground (correct me if I'm wrong)

Wreckage should slow and stop attacking units, given enough wreckage. Big battles with hundreds of units are fine and dandy, but they usually come with an extreme lack of tactics. Just had your massive wave of attackers flounder at the front line because of wreckage and return fire artillery? Maybe you should have thought up a better plan than "me hav tank. me hit you so haord!"

I often use masses of T1 units as a mere distraction for my real efforts. Let them stumble over the wreckage, the dragons teeth, and fail to approach the defenses. Just let that human watch the carnage a little longer while my veteran units throw artillery from the far rear of their base...

Personally, I really want wreckage to block unit movement. This means that a massive, ill-thought-out land rush will get choked when attacking a well defended base. For someone who plays more defensively early and mid game, this is important. Not to mention, when commanding my own armies, it was manageable to destroy wreckage to keep my path clear.

However, if this becomes too contentious of a topic, I would like detractors to be able to turn off wreckage blocking -- though I would like it on as a default.

I agree with this, it does really allow for some new strategic options/considerations, and as long as it's easy enough to clear, it shouldn't cause too much of a problem