Air collisions

Thanks for all your comments guys. Good to see there are plenty of good reasons for and against as well.

I'm reading some very simplistic "solutions" that aren't thinking about the problem too deeply.

Firstly, having collisions means all sorts of stupidity involving clouds of scouts used as kamikazi flying walls against opponents' aircraft. Next you have bombers unable to be effective as they'd need to do some kind of bumper car movement to get into a single file (which can be indefinitely defended against with AA, making targets immune to air strike). Next, aircraft that clip don't need to use any kind of flowfield, so there's a performance hit to adding one. Next, aircraft would move like gunships, unless you want to devote even more performance to 3D pathfinding, and even then a group of aircraft moving would look weird as they jostle for position instead of smoothly flying.

So you'd end up with smaller air forces, with more unrealistic/jarring flight dynamics, and for a higher performance cost. You'd prevent precision strikes by airforces, making artillery and defences OP. Air vs Air battles would start with a massive kamikazi crash, and some silly strategies would result.

I have no issue with aircraft moving out of each others way when they can (and without resorting to unnatural manouvers), but they shouldn't be bound by it.

You're still basing your entire criticism off the premise that having 200 bombers all take the same target is desirable.

Which it is not.

If units can avoid friendlies then they can avoid enemies just as well. So I don't know where you get the kamikaze from.

They already have aerial flow fields they said this.

But it can, and will, still happen,at the end of the day, if you can build 200 bombers, it will happen because someone will think it's awesome to do so.

It's not about being desirable in the context of playing the game "well" or "proper", it's about being CAPABLE of doing it, if you implement a system that only works up to a certain scale based on the "proper" play when the POSSIBLE scale is far beyond the arbitrary system that's just bad design. The only way your argument is valid is if you can't build 200 bombers.

EDIT:
This is why the SupCom system that allows for Clipping, is a good compromise in the context of LArge Scale RTSs, it scales perfectly. A Bomber flies just as well when there is 1, or 1000 of them and they will always fly in a reliable fashion.

Mike

There's no reason to be able to do it so you're not making a compromise. Supcom probably does it because without flowfields aerial pathfinding would indeed be a nightmare.

Compromise, gameplay, fun. Erase these words from your vocabulary because you keep using them instead of reasoning.

It's probably much more complex than land units, because land units can stop moving at any time. This looks realistic and nobody will complain about seeing a land unit stop moving because it's blocked.

Air units can't stop moving suddenly. This would not look like realistic. So Air units have to schange their trajectory/speed vector. But if you want it to look realistic then you have to implement Air units collisions and destruction. Because at some point 2 units may not be able to avoid each other.

Can you focus for a minute? Were you or were you not just endorsing the implementation a system that would limit unit movements based on an arbitrary number of units within a certain proximity despite the clear capability to build beyond that arbitrary number?

Mike

I already proposed a solution where planes can avoid each other by going up or down. So you essentially have the possibility for two or three planes to occupy the same spot when needed in a sensible manner.

This would not be realistic. Air units are moving really faster as compared to land units. If you want it to look like realistic, then you have to respect the fact that when moving air units are moving along large curves. And then at some point they can collide. So either you accept clipping or you accept Air units destruction

Planes don't have pitch controls?

That only solves a small aspect of the core issue, and doesn't deal with how 2 separate groups of air units would path through each other, especially if the 2 groups are already using all/some of the possible Z layers. IT also complicates dropped or downward firing weapons.

Mike

I don't see why they wouldn't be able to path through each other or why any of the vertical would be occupied if theyre flying in formation.

What if they're not flying in formation? What if they're both already occupying all the vertical slots? You can't just always work off the ideal assumptions, otherwise you'll only succeed at solving nothing.

Mike

Why wouldn't they be? We're talking about your hypothetical two groups scenario.

All it means is that the airforce will need to be spread out more. That's literally the only consequence. It's a sensible one so I don't see why not.

Okay, 2 large Groups of Bombers are attack the same target, and both groups would pass over at the same time, how does the system compensate for this? How does it stop bombers from dropping bombs on bombers right below them? How do you handle pathing for units than can't go up or down because there are already units above/below them?

But we're just going in circles now, so Just start reading from here and get back to me.

Also still waiting on a response to this.

Mike

You're not in a Flight Sim game :lol:

planes on higher z-layers will move more slowly than planes on lower z-levels

not to mention problems with bombers and friendly fire

You're the one going in circles by insisting over and over that air units need to be all bunched up, and that's just not true.

Except that it is.

Unless you refute his arguements.

We wouldn't have to go in circles if you didn't keep dancing around the questions.

It's not about units needing to be bunched up, it's about how you deal with them when they are bunched up.

Back to the 200 bombers VS 1 Target scenario, it doesn't matter how 'practical' or 'proper' it is, if you can build 200 bombers it will happen and you need to account for it.

Mike