Friendly Fire

Friendly fire all the way.
Give them arcing weapons some love
As I see it it introduces some nice pros and cons regarding unit composition:
Direct fire weapons have faster projectiles but can hit friendly units quite easily, while the arcing weapons fire slower projectiles with a trajectory which is unlikely to hit friendly units.

+1 on this for me.

This, for the love of god this. The more people playing in a game, the higher the chance for griefers.

the easiest way to reduce the chance of griefers is to cut out teams and actually the multiplayer mode itself. It would also cut down dev time considerably. Now we only have to make sure the AI can't act as a griefer then we are set.

in a large enough group there is always a certain percentage of idiots, that can't be a reason not to support a specific feature. It just means, you have to think about fitting counter measures.
just because there are "griefers" in demonstrations, sport fan groups, in elections... you don't just want to forbid them as a whole (after all, we aren't politicians )

Friendly Fire all the way. Unless it's bad for gameplay, then reduce it gradually (similar to SupCom).



Griefers, Cheaters and other types of "bad" people will happen anyway and you need some other measurements against them in any case (e.g. via meta-game statistics and player ratings and such).

That's taking it a bit far.

I think what we need are different options, so we can turn it off/on if we like.

Yes. People who don't like the full game shouldn't be allowed in places where they can ruin everyone else's fun. I am in full favor of equal but separate accommodations for the kiddies.

For people who remember TA, friendly fire was not only there, but was a MAJOR balancing point to limit army blobs and force mixed compositions of troops. Why should a robot have magic protection from allied weapons? If they could do that, then that technology would be used against every weapon.

Toggleable friendly fire breaks unit balance. You either design your weapons around having it, or you don't. Uber Entertainment needs to pick one narrative and stick to it.
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And what is with these hasty conclusions that being made to think more about structure placement than...not at all...makes something Simcity? It's nothing of the sort.

This is confusing Friendly Fire damage with Friendly fire collision. In TA, weapons passed straight through your own units, but did damage if they exploded on or near an allied unit. What this thread seems to be arguing for is that this does not happen; that all weapons impact your own units. I get the feeling that people aren't thinking through the gameplay repercussions of this. I understand the advantages of doing it this way, but it will increase micro in a massive way, decrease the number of units fighting (more units actually decreases the effectiveness of a force, as only the front ones can fire if they aren't artillery, and more artillery means more FF), and leads to silly situations like playing chasey with enemy units inside your own base because your own buildings are in the way so your point defences don't fire (or if they do, they destroy your own base). This level of micro isn't something that strikes me as good in a game where you need to worry about multiple planets at once.

But we are thinking about gameplay repercussions. We want decissions like do I fire artillery into an area or send troops into it to matter. We want to diminish 'death blobs'. We want it to be possible to rush units past defences and hide them in the back of bases, if doing so is effective--and in turn fu©k up because it's our fault for haphazardly plotting structures. We want terrain, and even other enemy units, as cover to matter in a big way.

You keep yammering about how the game will become a microing nightmare. Even though I gave you the Spring engine as an example of where it isn't. At this point I would like you to explain in detail what apects you think would have to be microed heavily.

Although this is late, Ayceeem, you do have a point there. + in TA friendly fire was on, but due to unit stupidity in the 90's i often found them trying to shoot though the unit in front of them.

Good thing casualty's didn't matter!

it did matter because it usually was large tanks killing my peewees just cause the cannon couldn't lift. although the issue was more about the cannon lift than friendly fire. i am a Big fan of friendly fire. it makes the game more realistic, without having to put stupid logistics in, or having to shoot 3458900 metal at your moon base because it has no metal. sometimes i play against an AI and i totaly pwn him but i want him to rebuild and try to attack, but i have such a large base i couldn't wait, so i nuke it, and rebuild. If FF was on i would realize i wasted a nuke, and just kill whatever was rebuilt.

Peewees?

It didn't matter, they are a dime a hundred.

The infantry bots in TA were cannon fodder, the EMG weapon of the Peewee just made them useful in larger groups.

If friendly fire damage is on, but friendly fire collision isn't, this is still a decision that needs to be made.

The side effect of this is making battles much smaller, as larger forces have diminishing returns. Seems counter to the pitch of this game. Also, why? Artillery already makes massed blobs disadvantageous.

In my opinion, this is a minor, very situational benefit. Overall, hardly enough to justify changing the system.

This happens either way?

Yes, I understand that you can make it so units don't fire if they would hit a friendly. So what does a player have to do with his units? Try and move as many as possible out of the way of each other. The player that does this best will have the advantage, as a fact. You can add in AI and UI gizmos to help but the end result is there will constantly be situations when moving a unit a few pixels to the left or right will let your unit fire when it otherwise wouldn't. This means competative play will further emphasize this kind of micro.

Another example of micro is what happens when a rear unit's line of fire to an enemy is blocked? Does it wait for it to unblock, or does it immediately try to aim at the next target? What if it has a very low turret turn speed? Do I need to either manually change it's target, or will it be constantly changing targets even when the unit it's trying to shoot is only briefly blocked?

Go back and play TA again, they didn't. Put a unit behind another one, and tell it to attack a point past the front unit. The bullet will go straight through. Tell it to attack on top of the front one. The explosion will damage the unit in front.

TA used this method and Sup Com used this method. Changing this to "full-contact" FF gives very few advantages to gameplay while making it far more complex and difficult, and gearing the game towards smaller conflicts. In a game that needs to be easily accessible and is already more complex than it's predecessors due to using multiple worlds, this is not a good trade-off.

You do realise that most units shot over one another right?

I have seen more then my fair share of friendly fire, so I can conclude that units do shoot each other.

Some units do not have the capability to lob shots, mostly lasers. So firing over the top of another unit become a height thing, which means you need to have your army always have the tallest weapons in back. at the end of the day all that would mean is that lasers are worse than other weapons. It adds in a level of micromanagement that generally isn't fun and only punishes players who don't do or know about it (although not knowing about it is a poor excuse). And yes it also discourages larger armies which is sort of the point of this entire game.

In sup com allies damage each other but careful playing can alleviate that.

Finally, some proof to your words.

It does however still look like they are shooting over one another, so you can pardon my thinking of that.

:shock: that is impossible i have TA, and when there is a large enemy at the top of a ramp, and my army is trying to go up it and kill the sumo, the peewees get killed by bullets behind them, no the green lasers that come later.
:lol: i think we got caught up in an argument about whether there was friendly fire in TA.