Friendly Fire

You have just convinced me to vote for friendly fire. Well done.

Fun Fact: When I first played TA, I didn't know you could "reclaim" buildings, so if I built one that had it's entrance blocked, I shot it with my Commander's Gun.

I like your style.

Personally I'd be concerned that friendly fire would encourage micromanagement, something that not only drives me away from most RTS games but is a stated point to avoid from Uber. If I have to worry about how I structure my units on multiple continents with multiple waterways on multiple planets because, oh noes, if I don't my opponent's micromanagement will ensure better fields of fire, the game's "fun" I think will go down pretty quickly.

I understand that people don't like deathballs, but then with a game with this sort of scale I really don't think it'll be a problem by definition. If I have to command a group of twenty units here, a hundred units there, and another fifty units somewhere else, all on different planets, is that not enough to remove this fear of "deathball?"

I could be wrong, but whenever I see stuff like this I think people are losing sight of the SCALE involved. But then I don't know, I'm not on the project nor do I know what Uber's planning beyond the livestreams.

Friendly Fire off ... My friend is under attack, better nuke him ... friend receives no damage, enemy is very dead.

Hmm. Should go deeper. Friendly fire should apply to EVERYTHING.
Like.. like.. tank rams into the back of another. Boom! They explode.

Or.. or.. you have an army and your dudes are shooting from the back while you have dudes in the front then your own guys in the front line all get shot. Woop!

I am expecting friendly fire a la TA/Supcom.

I never found turret placement an issue and if any unit was close enough to another to die in the explosion, I considered it acceptable losses.

Maybe let friendly fire apply to big things like nukes. And only to your own units. So that you can't grief your firends. Generally FF leads to micro, and micro is something we want to avoid.

If people want to grief, they will be able. What if my ally build building around my base and block me? What if he takes all the metal spots with a plane? It'll make the grieving game even more fun to him.
Designing the gameplay around them is a really bad idea imo.

This isn't a fair argument. Supcom and TA both featured AoE affecting friendly units.

FF for AoE makes sense. It means you have to be careful with artillery, bombing runs, nukes, etc.

I have a strong disposition against total FF. I disagree that it would change the deathball mechanic. I mean, think about it. It would only affect direct-fire units. indirect fire units, like missile or mobile artillery, would not be affected by it. People would then just deathball all their indirect fire units, and the only thing FF did was make direct fire units useless.

Unless you nerf indirect fire, but that has it's own set of problems:
-you can nerf range, but range is kind of the point of indirect fire units. They frontload damage and don't always hit their targets, and thus have a long range. Or atleast, that was the idea with supcom.
-You can nerf damage, but if you nerf it to the point where the deathball isn't worth it, then you can bet that a small force will be less worth it, thus making them worthless yet again. FF isn't going to stop deathballs.
-You can increase rate of fire, but then they basically serve the same purpose as direct fire units, and you might as well have just not put in FF.

Basically, it just nerfs the few direct fire units that you use. Seriously, that's all it does. And it improves micro.

And there will be griefers either way. I say that, in meaning that, while it would be bad in non-FF games, it would be just as bad in FF games as well. Cause now you can pretend to be a good player, then nuke your ally to he stone age, and laugh. Or arty. Or any sort of weaponry at all, really.

I suppose they can put in total FF, but I'm with Raevn in worrying about what it would mean. Testing, testing, testing...oh the testing.

You should try a game on the Spring engine. Most of them have total FF. Deathballs are very rare. Unit spread, positioning and flanking is given much more importance.
As to indirect fire units becoming new deathballs is rare. Usually indirect fire units are inaccurate or have slow projectiles which makes them miss mobile enemy units a lot.
Sure if you have a unit that lobs homing missiles you can create a very effective deathball unit but then you are designing it that way.

Improving micro. That is a good thing whatever that would be.
But I guess you mean increasing micro and yes I'd agree it increases micro. It also makes unit spread, positioning, flanking more important and naturally makes it much harder to form deathballs.

It does indeed. The simulation becomes a lot more complex as turret positioning, hitbox sizes and targeting points on the units can have huge effects on gameplay as when units would just otherwise fire through eachother might not fire because there is a friendly unit in the way but depending on the position of turret, size of hitbox and targeting points the units might not be able to fire at the enemy while the enemy is able to fire at them.

If they can test for whether they are going to hit an obstacle they can test for whether that obstacle is friendly too surely...

If it's simply to decrease the amount of deathballs, there are other ways to do so, as veta outlines:
viewtopic.php?f=61&t=45056&hilit=deathball

I'm against deathballs, don't get me wrong. They make Starcraft annoying. But I don't think FF should be the immediate solution.
And I'll admit that I was perhaps exaggerating what could happen with indirect fire units, but at the same time...mobile artillery in Supcom was very effective, and had enough of an AoE that missing wasn't an issue. Mobile arty had plenty of counters, but...hmm. I'll take a look at Spring when I have time, but we're talking a game where we're building lots and lots of units. I have to wonder if it will just get cluttered if only the front line of a force will actually fire.

Whoops. Yes, I meant increasing micro, which I'm against, because there are many reasons that micro is a bad thing for a game like this. Starcraft is all about positioning, and starcraft isn't the game that a lot of us are looking for...granted, the only friendly fire there is only from siege tanks, but it's a perfect example of a game that's all about positioning. Unit tactics like flanking are definitely important, but that can be accomplished without FF or deathballs: flanking an army by outranging them on two sides of a chokepoint is just as useful as flanking a smaller FF army.

And I doubt we're going to see mass marine-esque games here. Unit mix will be important regardless.

This actually reminds me a bit about supcom. Buildings were not immune to FF, if I remember correctly, and friendlies didn't particularly care. This is one big component that bothers me about FF. A very feasable scenario is plopping your units in an enemy base with a transport that just so happens to hide it in a square of buildings. Either the base is going to get shredded by FF, or the units within will have free reign to fire on everything. Which is basically cheese...
But then, I suppose you could disable personal FF on buildings.


I'm not arguing to keep it out. I'm just wanting to be aware of both sides to it. Because there are two sides to this. There are positives, and there are negatives, and they don't really cancel each other out. It really depends on how it would play out either way.

EDIT: I guess what I'm saying is, both should be in, both should be tested, and both should be evaluated based on how fun they are. The fun factor for either may be apples to oranges, or the community might simply not be able to agree on one or the other, meaning both should be in for skirmish options, but ultimately leaderboards would have to be decided on by Uber. Also, both have huge ramifications to balance, to the point that if it wasn't so time intensive, it would actually make sense to balance them separately.

The problem with mitigating deathballs with methods other than friendly fire is they all feel 'video gamey'. By that I mean the interactions on screen no longer feel real, because the game is relying on artificial rules which I have to suspend my instincs to accommodate, which takes me out of the game.

Dropping units into someone's base, causing havoc would be an awesome thing to pull off. You worry too much.

I know, it sucks

I just don't like hasty decisions. I'm not sure which way would be the best. Hence why I think they should try out both. I'm playing devil's advocate at this point, though I do favor SupCom's approach.

You mean as hasty as 2005?

It doesn't necessarily increase micro as much as it increases the need for good formation moves.

Spring is worth checking out - if not just to see different approaches to simRTS.

The way FF affects direct fire is a fair criticism as multi-line formations are much less effective in full-FF spring games. In Zero-K I generally use long line formations 1 unit deep.

Also worth noting spring games are usually well developed conceptually but poorly developed graphically.

worth remembering is that the thinner the line the easier it is to cross the T. it's a bit of a tradeoff and also requires better flank coverage.

making it all the more important to have good easy to use formation controls so you don't have to fiddle with it

How many units and players are possible in a Spring game? How big are the maps?