Blast and critical hits?

Is this a serious question? You might as well ask why games have animations or graphics.

Considering the speed of projectiles, you only ever really see rockets in real life travelling through the air, so unless all of your weapons are using tracers you really don't need to animate their projectile.

You're kind of all over the place here. I'm not sure what stopping to shoot has to do with anything. Players can choose to stop their units or move their units. How the AI will determine how to correct it shots is obviously unknown to both of us. But it seems to me that the corrective action would have some level of randomness to it.

Anyway, it was just a hypothetical example of some possible implementation where an RNG would play a part.

This is not the behavior I've observed in these games. I don't think I've ever started an engagement where both units were still (except for with long range artillery) but shots definitely missed in the situations you've described when I was playing both TA and SupCom. The artillery also usually misses a bunch of shots against immobile targets. In many battles, it appeared to me that one shot would randomly go long or short, even once a target had been acquired after the 1st few initial seconds of the battle. Perhaps simulating the fact that all guns aren't perfect and sometimes a bullet doesn't slide perfectly down the barrel.



My main point; however, is that a % to crit/hit isn't really all that different than how the simulation plays out in TA/SupCom. I think both can make the balancing difficult, which is why I prefer guaranteed hits.

You've got a lot to learn. But for starters, I think this sums it up pretty well.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/patv/episod ... nys-effect

I'm not sure what side you're arguing anymore, but I agree. And from watching the PA gameplay vids, it looks like that's what they've done.

Well that if you don't simulate projectiles, then why show them? They will either hit what they are aiming at or they wont, so to that end just show where the end explosion is.

But with simulated projectiles, using their own physics to get from your units to it's target you could aim at one unit and kill another, so showing this to the player is much more important then the 30kph shells needed to give the feedback to the player.

So your point is that it feels better? Try harder please, because losing a because of a random extra explosion blew out a line of powerplants doesn't feel fun at all.

Now, I'll see your PA, and raise you Eve Online.

Been doing that drop minerals and craft everything deal for a decade now; the game is still going strong. Well, I lie; it's done both systems since time immaterium.


Also, that loot drops are relevant to PVE gameplay - not PVP gameplay.

Also, there's no loot drops in PA.

Also, please tell me what I've got to learn.

Yeah there's basically only two situations where you'll miss, erratic movement or if the enemy has cover by terrain or other units. Both predictable and both tactically useful. Unlike random numbers. Reminder that simulated projectiles originally were conceived to enable such tactical play which Taylor felt was missing in Command & Conquer.

Sometimes you just gotta abstract some stuff!

Critical hits are 100% luck for the sake of luck. There's no reason to include them at all.

TA scouts were also useless as weapons, so they don't really count as a successful use of lasers.

Laser turrets were probably the best example from TA.

I would support critical hits if it were part of the simulation. So if you hit the tracks of a tank it might become immobilized or slowed down.
Well I would also like directional armour. Mm...
Anyway I don't want random crit hits. Like if you hit the feet of a fully health bot and it suddenly blows up or its' weapons stops working.

Critical hits like a lot of tropes really stem from the dicerolling D&D days. Where they existed to try and simulate lucky or extraordinarily precise hits when all you had were figures and dice.

In a fully simulated combat system such silliness is completely unnecessary.

not rly fully simulated, where you hit a unit or how consistently you hit a unit in the same spot doesn't matter

So now we're back to why even have graphics at all? Presentation matters.

I'd argue that losing because a shot missed doesn't feel fun at all. I don't see how you can argue that a small, and therefore insignificant, amount of missed shots is fine. But a small, and therefor insignificant, chance to crit is game breaking.

If 1 shot out of 100 or 1000 did some % extra damage, it doesn't sound like it'd turn the tide of battle based on the argument you've been pushing.

Once again, I'm really just saying that I don't see much of a difference between having a chance to crit and some shots missing due to the simulation.

If that one crit shot hits your commander and it therefor goes down in 5 instead of 30 seconds and you loose in a situation where you would have won otherwise, that IS going to ruin the game for you.

Missing shots? Thats not that much of a problem, if you assume that you need 4 hits on average even with missiles until an enemy goes down and you have a 75% hit chance but you have splash, then everything is fine since the enemy will live only +-10% extra / less in worst / best case. Same with projectiles from a MG as long as the aiming algorithm guarantees a fair distribution of hits and misses. It is mostly cosmetic and has no real impact on the outcome of the battle-

But with critical hits this is more drastic since a single hit can destroy a unit at once. It doesn't matter how low the chance is, this can change the outcome of the game.

So whats the point in having it, if it isn't noticeable in the end?


(Simulated projectiles on the other hand, lead to different and additional emergent gameplay, which is good.)

You don't need to see projectiles if it doesn't matter how they move.

Just make better firing and explosion animations.

no but surviving and maybe going to win does, that happens a lot in FA