Handling Wreckage - The SUPER POLL

Do they do this 'smashing' automatically? If so what if I want to roll my 'big tanks' past but reclaim that precious metal after?
Or do I have to micro-manage them to deploy their 'smashers' or attack ground?

The sensible thing would be for the wreckages to be merely ground into non-blocking generic rubble, which can be reclaimed later, perhaps at a minor loss of mass. (If intact wrecks were worth 90% as the ones in SC was supposed to, then a ground wreck should be worth 80%)

If anything - I'd vote for something closer to 25% for smashed one.
If you want more materials - watch where you're going.
Having 10% drop is nothing - you could equally well have all the wrecks transparent to every unit since the beginning.

I don't really care about the wreckage implementation as long as they block enough to create a battle front like in TA
Still, the wreckage in TA had some problems:
*Pathfinding was horrible. But I'm sure Uber can do a great work.
*And your goliath should not be blocked as much as a Peewee. Again, I don't think it's problematic.

If there's so little difference in their reclaim value why not make them non-blocking rubble from the very beginning and avoid the extra complexity?

So now I have to micro my big tanks' movements to optimise my reclaiming?

Because it costs movement to traverse (and crush) wreckage. If units move at half speed or worse when crushing things, trying to just plow through a field of dense wreckage under fire is suicidal, but you won't end up with the pathfinding nightmare of a single dead Peewee holding up your army of Bulldogs.

In SupCom I would sometimes have an area me and my opponent both wanted. We would both constantly send forces there, making it an endless battlezone. If wrecks would block units, that battlezone would soon be impassable, removing the fun of an endless battle.

I would really hate to see blocking wrecks, in my opinion this was one of the things SupCom did better than TA.

I agree with this.

Unless the game has stellar pathfinding, units should be able to move through wreckage but be slowed. If the pathfinding is there, I don't have a problem with units being completely blocked by it, but babysitting them is never fun and if that's what it results in, yank it.

Elegant solution. I like it.

I remember the battles in Total Annihilation being really fun. The pathfinding was worse than Supreme Commander, but the fact that the battlefield changed dynamically due to the wreckage left behind is what I think made it interesting.

In Supreme Commander it just felt like you were sweeping your units through the opponent's without any change in dynamics. The battles would end far too fast without much of a tug of war between the two sides. It would be two armies running through each other with one losing the edge and being run through completely. Armies wouldn't slow down that much as they engaged, and there wasn't really any "front line".

The wreckage in Total Annihilation would constantly change the battlefield, causing units to change direction flow in different ways. The wreckage blocking shots would also slow the battle down because units wouldn't die so fast.

Here's a video of a battle in Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance on Fields of Isis:



The battle may be fast, but to me it just seems boring because neither player has much time to change their tactics and position units in an effective way. It's merely about clashing streams of units with perfect aim, and quickly pulling them back. It feels like most battles in this game were about steamrolling rather than slowly pushing the front in different directions. It seemed to have more in common with Starcraft than with Total Annihilation.

This is a video of a battle in Total Annihilation:



In this battle, only flash tanks are used on either side, but already you can see the battlefield changing dynamically as the wreckage piles up. The routing issues with these units doesn't look that bad, as you can see units looking for alternative flanking routes. The battle is much slower than the one in Supreme Commander, giving players more time to manage the battle.

This is another video example of a Total Annihilation battle involving mostly tanks in a field of wreckage:



Even in this battle with all of the metal in the way, the tanks still manage to pathfind competently. They are still able to lob shells over the wreckage and hit the Samsons on the other side. This battle is even slower than the previous one, but with more destruction. It has a much more epic feel compared to the Forged Alliance battle.

With wreckage all over the battlefield, it makes it much harder to predict how the battle will go. In Forged Alliance, you can tell where the enemy is going to go, and you can usually tell who is going to win pretty early on in the engagements, as long as you can see their numbers on radar.

I think the Uber developers meant it when they said they wanted to go back to the "feel" of the battles in Total Annihilation because of how truly epic the battles felt. I really think impassable wreckage is a big part of that feel.

I don't know how they'll handle wreckage being "pushed out of the way" lol. Does that mean that a corpse will end up with some bits over here, some more way over there?

I like the idea of walking units being able to get past more wreckage than tanks and rolling units, which would be blocked by most wreckage, or perhaps cause damage to it.

Coldboot: Nice post

I totally agree with your post.

Still, sometime TA was a bit frustrating. But with a better pathfining and area reclaim I'm confident it would play beautiffully.

Very nice post coldboot.

Planning flanking attacks knowing the front line would become impassable, and using screens of chaff to block counters against your long range support was part of what made TA.

Seconding coldboot's post. The wreckage in Total Annihilation was annoying at times, but it definitely reshaped the battlefield in unexpected and exciting ways. With the obvious exception of generic choke v. choke maps where it could just create a trench-like slog.

Not sure if this is a unique idea or has been proposed previously (sorry if so):

Units destroy (and/or "sink") wreckage on contact. So you can micro around wreckage if you want to, and/or send out scouts to reclaim the metal if you want it. Or, you could just plough through the lot.

Some corpse-death animations could show explosions of corpses, some showing them sink into the ground. Maybe depending on terrain.

Perhaps in addition, wrecks would be squished into the ground (or explode) but on first contact they slow the unit very slightly, then they sink and don't take up any more pathing cycles.

(Hey, maybe even the wrecks of large units are still volatile and dish out area damage!)

I like wreckage blocking units. But some units being able to perhaps walk over it or push it out of the way would also be cool. I think it's important that wreckage has a place on the battlefield that matters besides simply being a collectible resource. Then it can be important to clear an area not just for the resources, but to make a path. And you can also blow up a lot of units coming from a certain direction inhibiting further aggression and makes pushing a bit harder. If wreckage doesn't block it seems to take out a whole lot of tactics and gameplay mechanics that are fun and interesting. Just send out a builder to reclaim stuff or you could even have a wrecking unit that specializes in bulldozing through wreckage and walls to lead a charge. Using it to bust a hole in the enemy's defenses to poor in units.

You could even have a little exploding unit that blows itself up and anything nearby destroying nearby wreckage as well. Like how cannon fire can reduce wreckage to rubble, so can explosions and a suicide exploding unit could double as a wreckage clearer.

How exactly you decide as to which way exactly works best for pushing or not pushing or being able or not able to walk over stuff will just have to be based around what makes sense and is fun. I chose the arbitrary physics option, but I think the choice is flexible to a degree and just needs to be tested for what plays well.

I like how wreckage worked for the most part in TA, but making it a little easier to reclaim an area or have some sort of auto-reclaim for builders is needed so it doesn't require too much micromanagement. Having to individually click on a bunch of bushes or wrecked units was a hassle.

I guess I should add that abilities that allow for pushing or going over wreckage should be a special unit rather than the standard. I think most units should be outright blocked.

Sorry, I haven't waded through the entire thread, but has someone else suggested positive and negative hit points?
Basically, a unit's wreck has as much negative health as it had positive when alive.
If the damage inflicted, either in one massive hit while the unit was alive, or accumulated on the wreck post mortem, exceeds the negative hit points , that unit wreck is removed from play.
The negative health also determines how much the wreck is worth for reclaiming, so you have a decision to make, blow the wreckage out of the way, and waste it, or reclaim it with builders. Also allows a player to prevent or limit their opponent's ability to recover wreckage, by blasting it away with artillery (or maybe the prudent player will wait until the engineers arrive, THEN fire!

Advantages..smaller lighter wrecks are more easily dealt with, big units leave more problematic wrecks.
Adds strategic elements, as players make decisions on whether to reclaim, destroy, or leave wrecks as bait.

I don't know, coldboot, I honestly found the Supcom video the more compelling one of the three.
While wreckage like that in TA does provide an ever changing battlefield, it also unfortunately results in the battlefield becoming a bit of a pachinko machine, with units filtering through in a way that just results in more losses. Clearing it can become a bit of a chore, especially if the enemy is on the other side, shooting down your reclaiming units. I definitely wouldn't want to keep the system quite as rigid as it was in TA.

The biggest problem with wreckage, was that you couldn't tell your units to just blow it all up. Every piece had to be force attacked, which made chokepoint battles turn to a standstill.