Blast and critical hits?

Hi

1st real post and long time LAN TA player in my younger years.

Q1: Is there any idea for say a random critical hit eg. Range between 1:1000 hits to 1:10,000. Would be great to see a small soldier get the bonus and destroy a large unit, a bit like a Rambo shot?! Lol

Q2: Also is there an idea on blast effects? Eg. Random effects on units close to a blast. From unit disabled for set time, damage, or reset of instructions given (simulated unit power reset)?

RTV.

Most likely no for both, Neutrino has expressed a dislike for random-chance.

Oh thank god everyone voted no, my heart fluttered a bit when I revealed the votes.

Random chance makes me sad and in my opinion detracts from competitive game play.



Having said this I do wonder if units will do X damage or X-Y damage.

RnG Counteracts balance.

The physics engine will provide all the random chance you will ever want. There doesn't need to be any more.

RNG is contrived, EMP could be a thing though

No.
Things like this leads to micro, which leads to horrible macro RTS gameplay. Maybe for something like Starcraft or something equally micro-intensive, this would fit in. If you cannot trust an army of units to kill a small squad of low-tier tanks, the game is changed entirely for the worse, considering we're talking about the scale of an entire freaking solar system. (Maybe even multiple systems! )

Perhaps as a mod, I'd like to see a very infinitesimal chance for a slightly higher damaging hit, and a one in a billion chance for a one shot kill.

Excessive micro is bad, but overall micro is a good way of keeping the player in the action.

RNG are bad, however a mechanic where a weapon does more damage under a defined circumstance like a limited range EMP for nukes are kinda cool.

If that were true, shots wouldn't be able to miss.

Crits have absolutely nothing to do with micro...

Shots are a part of a simulation, they don't have a % chance to miss.

Many simulations use RNGs.

But does this one?

That, I doubt.

The only time that is used is when a weapon has scatter/Inaccuracy, but in SupCom at least that only affects the initial trajectory, the shot can still hit something that gets in the way or hit a different target.

Mike

I have had a gunship be shot down by a enemy nuke attempting to launch, and that was in SupCom2!

I don't know how they are planning to run their sim either, but one possible way RNG could be implemented into PA's system is determining whether or not to lead a unit.

But even if they find a way to not use any RNG, it is still the case that sometimes shots will miss and sometimes they won't. And when they hit is going to be completely unpredictable by the player. I don't see how that's any different than % to crit in practice. In both cases, the damage done can be considered to be out of the player's control.

Not to say I don't like predictability. I'd actually prefer it if the projectile sim wasn't used and every shot was guaranteed to hit. It makes it much easier to determine if you are going to win a battle.

If you have every shot always hit, why have projectiles at all?

Most of the time the only reason shots miss is due to the speed of the projectile compared to the speed of the unit it is being shot at.

Meaning that a shot misses because the bullet couldn't get there in time, a good example of this is AA weapons shooting down spy planes, but it works equally well with tanks.

Shooting to where the target is going to be, but then the target changes direction, causing a miss.

I think sim is better because it allows for balancing around natural characteristics. For instance, if I have fragile units that are quick and agile they can run up to a more lumbrous unit and swarm it while it constantly misses.

That's why lasers make the best weakest weapons, and the best overkill weapons.

TA scouts had them, and krogaths had them.

Seriously? That is really ridiculous, especially considering that PA isn't Starcraft, units don't have to stop to shoot. it really breaks the entire point of the system. The idea is that units are Aiming to hit, moving or not. Obviously leading a target uses the assumption that the target maintains it's current heading and speed. which kinda leads into the next point...

First off, this only applies to weapons that have inaccuracy as I mentioned before, that that case, yes it is somewhat random, but the shot is still simulated and can still either hit the target(if it happens that the particular shot is accurate or the target moves to where a 'missed' shot is going to hit) or something else that is within the area it can hit. This type of thing is often used in part as a unit feature/balance aspect and in SupCom was used Mainly on Artillery type weapon where in some cases it's inaccuracy was used to help achieve balance.

To say that the Simulated system used by TA/SupCom/PA is "completely unpredictable by the player" is patently false. Think about you and me each having a Tank that's shooting at each other, if they don't Move they'll hit every time(Predictable), if they're both moving in a straight line at a fixed speed they'll hit every time(Predictable), if your tank is moving around and changing directions often, my tank won't hit every time(Predictable[based on the behavior of your tank]) The weapon's Aiming and firing patterns all follow set rules and by knowing those rules one can predict the outcome, We're only human so we might not be able to predict every shot as it happens, but we can make broader assumptions like those above.

A percentage based system is similar, if I know our tanks only hit 40% of the time we know they'll effectively only have 40% of the 'raw' DPS, but the deciding factor isn't the 'random' chance of when I hit or down, but how the application of the rules plays out in a simulated system.

Mike

@thundercleez: please read this, and let me know when you've read it. Thanks.

It comes down to the branch of mathematics called statistics. Go learn about it.

But I'll give you an executive summary of the relevant parts.

There's this thing called reliability. It's a measure of how likely you are to get the same result when repeating a task. Guns with chance to miss are clearly less reliable as guns without.

But just exactly how much less reliable? Well, you'd do a bunch of tests, record the results, and do some maths.

If one shot misses, and does nothing, how important is it? In a game of PA, where the gun that fired it is probably going to shoot again momentarily... and if it doesn't, there's 30 tanks on either side of it shooting too. I'd wager that one shot missing from time-to-time is insignificant.

We can chalk that up as acceptable, and account for it mathematically.

Now lets look at the trusty comet rocket. Lets suppose that it has a chance to miss too. Lets say that it's fairly reliable too; only 1/100 comets miss. If you fling one at your opponent, you're probably going to squash him flat.

But if you miss... is that a big deal? ******* oath, it is! Why is it a big deal? Because you're not going to be able to launch hundreds of comets in one game, so you can't just smooth out the failures by the successes of other comets. Having a comet miss is significant.

People don't like when significant things happened outside of human control. Insignificant things are fine, because we can predict how they'll affect us when they add-up. When we can predict it, we can account for it, and adjust how we play.


Critical hits can become reliable if you make them frequent within the scope of one game, and make individual ones insignificant. But if they're frequent, and insignificant then they're not special or interesting at all; they're just wasted CPU cycles.

So why waste money putting them in?