Please strive for a cause and effect damage model. In traditional rts, the infamous health bar was the end all be all for damage. Ex. unit takes damage = health goes down, and maybe even unit stats (fire rate, speed) go down. But that type of damage alone, does not leave the player with a suspension of disbelief. On the trailer i was thrilled at how when units took fire, they exploded. Obviously not every weapon will create such a reaction but every weapon can create a cause and effect. For instance, while small arms wont do a whole lot to larger units, they will have an effect on smaller to medium size units. Taking small arms fire should slow or stall movement and fire. Explosives should also push units around and large explosions should send shock-waves. So in a nutshell i am saying it would be really cool if weapons stalled and pushed enemies around based on their type, it would lead to a more cinematic feel. ps: you guys rock, keep up the good work
You mean like, if weapons could rattle tanks or push them around? TA allowed tanks to rattle around, which ruined their aim somewhat. It was pretty cool to have.
Sounds more like physics effects to me. It's nothing explicit about damage values, just the way things react when they get hit by something hard and heavy.
I like the idea of this. Ignorant of the coding required as I may be, I wouldn't think it would be too complex to make this sort of system a reality in-game. I'm guessing you could just classify different units into different armor types, and different weapons into different projectile types with some kind of interaction between the two categories: Ie. a long-ranged "rocket" type weapon might have the amount "x" explosive effect on a k-bot. You could then vary the extent of the effects by a random amount to make them more realistic. You could also assign each unit a specific weight which determines how far it is knocked around by certain types of ordinates. Seems like a great idea.
yeap these types of effects require physics code and adjustments to pathfinding, but i think they could bring the game to life. it would also play into the gameplay in a very unique way.
remember the game Z? it was a top down rts with little robot guys. im reminded of what happened when a unit exploded.
A physics system where units are pushed around by explosions should not be too hard to add I feel, every mobile unit is assigned a weight value and every explosion or projectile a force value, artillery having a force put out in a radius around itself and simple shots having force in only a straight line. Where I see this being a nightmare is in the pathfinding because as units are knocked around they get slowed down and have to stop and entire groups are stopped dead by colliding units. And depending on the prevalence of artillery in the game this could prove very problematic if artillery is common, causing to units being unable to advance on a defensive position due to artillery slowing them down. This would make assualting artillery nearly impossible as only a trickle of units might be able to get through and get toasted by defensive guns one at a time instead of overwhelming them. I can understand special weapons like the commanders guns pushing units around, especially smaller ones, or very large artillery, but I dont think this needs to be a factor in the normal combat and it may make combat simply impossible as units remain pinned down and unable to get around, especially bot type units which are going to be lighter and get knocked around more
artillery has always been devastating in good rts games, supcom was no exception. and i was talking all the way down to small arms. an artist doesn't paint using a bucket. a good one at least. my point is how much these effects push, stall, throw off aim, slow down fire rate would all be something that needs to be fine tuned as to not disrupt gameplay flow to an "un-fun" state. the idea is just to have a more complex reaction to damage than a health bar and then death.
There's different kinds of devastating thought, there's devastating as in 'vaporizes everything it hits if it hits' like in FA, and theres devastating as in 'gives a tactial advantage such as affected units getting knocked around'. Supcom 2 lacked both of these, hence why I hated the artillery in it, many artillery guns were required before the artillery felt like it was actually helping. I would like to see both of these aspects of devastating put into play to make artillery something to truly be feared as it is in reality. I think that units under fire being slowed down or having their accuracy knocked off is a good mechanic as it gives a reason to use more then just the biggest guns available. It's kinda bland when everything is mearly about what can do the most DPS in the game and not when its about getting tactical advantages such as ruining enemy accuracy and movement, since an enemy that is slowed down by defensive guns that they have to blast through, even weak ones, are good targets for the bigger guns, just like in reality.
This situation is impossible. Not only is flow field pathing too good to really care about a push or nudge, the units involved would be dead long before the endless explosions cause any pathing problems.
That depends on the impact radius for the artillery impacts compared to how much damage they do. In supcom 2 arty just sorta tickled units and it took a good amount of hits for them to die which is what I would like to avoid. I know the flow fields are awesome since I understand how they work but its more the units acceleration time after being stoped by an impact that would be a problem, and whether or not the wreckage will impare unit pathing or not. I just forsee the phyics of being pushed around causing problems when on a scale with so many small units moving in tight formation if it is not carefully tested and tweaked. I'd like to see this added later in development when it can be imperically tested whether it is a nice feature or not rather then simply added in now on suggestion.
