Friendly Fire

Units firing in a straight line at enemy units at the top of the ramp would most likely hit the ground at the top of the ramp - this would still damage your units if they were standing on or very near that spot. For example, in the below image, the rocko can't hit the radar tower, as the missile hits the ground at the top of the ramp (and does not hit the pewee directly in it's path). But the pewee at the top is still damaged by the nearby impact.

True, but it's important, as many people are arguing that "Full Friendly Fire" should be included because they think TA had it, when it didn't.

Well it did, but not at the extent that we thought.

well it had full damage to friendly troops but projectiles wouldn't impact. Also i find the supposition that PA should have what TA had because TA very weak. PA should have what is best, and if TA is a good example of that then so be it.

Except the devs have stated they are aiming for a TA style game - PA should therefore have what is best without changing the spirit of the genre that TA started. Otherwise there's no definition of "best" - streaming economy or warcraft/starcaft worker base economy? Physics simulation or chance to hit? Rock Paper Scissors or intrinsic unit strengths and weaknesses?

Because the type of gameplay where the biggest blob always wins makes for dull combat? Because full friendly fire allows for the sort of hands-on emergent gameplay you can't get otherwise? And battles between hundreds of units are just shifted over a continuous front instead of one big showdown? Because equating giant death blobs to "EPIC" battles is a superficial way to look at things?

Read what I posted again: Using the enemy army as my own cover against itself.

I posted this earlier: The Spring engine lets you hand draw a line formation of any size with one movement order. The rest of the time, mobile units automatically move themselves to gain a clear line of fire on their target. So I'm still not sure what horrible micro you think will ensue--because it's not anything like Starcraft where you have to select/move every individual marine in an army.

Who cares? The Spring engine handles this better than Total Annihilation anyway.

I believe that friendly fire collision is needed to make a game that has more complex tactics. Take the death blobs of starcraft and TA, you moved units as a solid roughly circular blob of tanks/bots. Formations were a matter of orienting your blob and making sure the squishies weren't too exposed.

Take BA (which has full friendly fire collision). There, you have skirmishing lines, flanking and more varied weapon types (powerful but easily friendly-blocked direct fire lasers, less powerful indirect fire missiles/cannons). It looks like the Civil War down there.
There isn't very much more micro that BA has. In fact, I'd argue that the custom formation tool makes micro in BA faster than micro in starcraft despite the higher demand on the player; you can make a specific line formation in BA with a single extended command (two if you want to separate non-combatants), it can deform to enemy lines, hug a range ring or do more complex things.

You have opportunities for cool antics like a single peewee running amok in a tall, very bad for allied fire, wind-gen farm after its squad ran the gauntlet of light def.

You've contradicted yourself - if units are smart enough to move out of the way of each other, how does it not come down to the biggest blob wins?

There's an assumption here that the resulting emergent gameplay will be more fun, that's a matter of opinion.

Continuous fronts are far more interesting than a set piece battle that's over. TA implemeneted this well by reducing weapon damage and having blocking wreckage. It allows reinforcements to come to the fight and allows defences to be constructed at the front line. But this can be present either way.

I equate epic battles to epic battles. It's your opinion that "giant death blobs" are superficial or bad.

But you say in the next quote that this doesn't happen. If it does happen, my micro argument is true.

An AI will never be as smart as a human in this respect. Microing your units will result in a better outcome.

More accessible & less complex is good for a game as it gets more players. And I can use the same argument - Who Cares about implementing friendly fire collision?

Range limitations, obviously. Moving out of the way, with enough units, is the same as moving out of weapons range. That's the same with all deathblobs; they can only get as big as the range on your units allows. Having friendly fire and trajectory blocking will just mean you reach that limit faster.

This is referring to moving to get a clear shot and avoid hitting the unit in front, not moving to avoid enemy fire.

Raevn, if shots pass through friendlies, then there's nothing stopping you from packing your units into the smallest possible two-dimensional space and marching towards the enemy.

If shots will hit friendlies in the projectile's path then you must spread your units out over more space, and doing so actually increases your total firepower, since many of your units couldn't fire in the same tight formation. However, range limitations mean your firepower is spread out over more space, and not all your units may be able to focus fire at the same single target like they could if they were packed as tightly as possible.

It doesn't matter who they're avoiding; they're spacing out to get a line of fire, and that means you can pack less units in an area. Which means they're going to be moving out of their own range, because all the area inside their range will be blocking someone else's shot.

The whole thing about deathblob is maximum firepower per square meter. Being forced so scatter so you can get a line of fire, means your deathblob no longer works properly.

Might I add that if basic tank weapons do a limited amount of area damage, then clumping up will be a bad idea against an enemy who's got a firing solution on you.

Of course considering the scale of this RTS, only in choke points will this really matter.

The most revered games in history are the ones that allow for greater emergence.

Units behind one another still take time to move around and position themselves. Such delays may be crucial to battles. This also wouldn't be possible in chokepoints that can only take so many units abreast.

At the level I described to you... There really comes a point where the edge gained from direct human input of every individual unit is so diminished that it becomes not worth it. Certainly not in any real game.

Intuitive and mechanical complexity are not the same thing, yo.

You were using tradition, and a rather trifling piece of it for that matter, as an argument, and I responded--Who cares?

The most revered games in history are the ones that allow for greater emergence.

Beware the Daikatana...


John Romero let things go to his head after making quake and players invented the rocket jump. He said there is so much in daikatana that emergent behavior will happen... thinking about that game gives me shivers of bad.

Yes, and there's emergent gameplay either way. Why is the emergent gameplay with Full friendly fire automatically "better" and "more fun" than the emergent gameplay without? There are strategies that are only possible using one method or the other.

Doesn't actually refute my point. And you've just made chokepoints even harder to overcome, and increased the frustration levels by having to watch units wiggle around to get a firing line.

But there are varying amounts to be gained, and the player that is best in this gets the advantage. This still encourages more micro. Moreso because the battles involve less units, making micro more effective.

Because changing this means in all likelyhood, the gameplay will be changed too. If you're aiming for TA/Sup Com style gameplay, which the devs are, then any deviation has to be justified - you're asking for the gameplay to have smaller battles (with less units shooting), more fine tune control needed for units during battles, more fiddling and frustration in general, more emphasis on sim city building placement, higher system requirements, more advantage towards defenders and many more issues.

raevn: Have you tried playing BA? It has full friendly fire collision and most of what you detract from it hasn't really come to pass.

Fire occlusion fixes the Jethro. The Jethro fires a long range, low damage missile directly at targets. If other units stand in the way(like other Jethros), then it can not fire. The weapon can not compete against a high damage, low range assault weapon. Moving peewees out of the way means you lose a critical front line unit only to gain a weak long range arsenal. Rough terrain means that it has poor performance compared to any ballistic long range weapon.

Alas, that was one of the annoying things about BA. The Jethro's weapon was arbitrarily allowed to only target air units, when all that they really needed was a LoS check to not fire (which would have been most of the time).

In PA, LoS gets another slap with round planets. Anything that is over the horizon can not be shot by a direct weapon. So even a long range weapon can end up with crippled range if the unit isn't very tall.

Friendly fire is fine, but what about backstabbers? I've had a few people backstab for absolutely no reason even in ranked SC2 and WC3 matches.

Then report the players and if they continue to grief then they can get banned and purchase another copy of PA to play again.

Apparently there is a policy of rezzing threads and I hadn't read the last half of this one so...

This Is Not Gamebreaking
There are games in this genre in which units can shoot through their allies and games in which they cannot. Either way works, there are games out there that show this working. They are all similar to TA, messing with fire checks will not redefine the game.

I can't think of any TA-like games without AoE which damages allies. I would prefer it if AoE damaged allies but I don't see how this change would fundamentally break the game either.

Performance and Stupid Weapon AI are not issues
I hear that Supcomm units cannot shoot through terrain but decide to give it a try regardless. This is not a fundamental issue, units in the Spring engine have no trouble avoiding shooting at terrain. Also, projectiles are able to collide with allies and units take this into account. They avoid harming allies both by shooting them and through weapon spread and AoE. This behaviour has been in place and working very well for as long as I can remember, probably before the release of Supcomm.

As a note; weapons can be configured to avoid harming allies in the weapon definition. Modders have control. A nuke will not refuse to fire at your own units, it is expected that players look where they are aiming.

Deeper Gameplay
There are tactics which require your units to be able to shoot through each other. But stopping them from shooting through each other adds more interesting tactics.

Base design becomes more complicated. Chasing an opponent's raider through your base can be prevented with smart turret placement and a good layout which allows your defending units to corner the attacker. There is more interaction between players in the form of base design vs. raiding attack plan.

Large scale battle maneuvers gain more importance. Flanking and concave armies are rewarded because units will work best in a long line. This also allows more unit roles because the distiction between direct fire and arcing shots become important. The arcing shot units lose less efficiency when clumped.

Griefing
People will always find a way to troll. Don't let them control the design unless there is really no other reason to prefer one system over the other.

Deathballs
There is a good thread on epic armies here. In short it says that large armies are less interesting than multiple slightly smaller armies. Friendly fire fights against deathballs.