Gravity and Ballistic Weapons

Something I'm wondering how it will be addressed: In Supcom, gravity was constant, and therefore ballistic weapon arcs were a function of shot velocity and firing angle. What happens when you have a game with variable planet sizes, and thus variable gravity? It would be anybody's guess how your ballistic weapons would behave. From a physics point of view, there would even be an escape velocity, where if a cannon shot its shell faster than that amount, it would simply not come back down! How does the PA team plan on addressing the issue of variable gravity in relation to ballistics?

In theory, it would simply be a matter of polling the gravity amount on the current planet and adjusting angle/speed calculations accordingly.

In practice, this might result in shorter or longer effective range on artillery weapons or anything ballistic really

The real question here is whether or not the range of the unit changes on planets with different gravity. Of course the same thing goes for laser weapons which may not be able to target on a planet with a close horizon.

So back up a second and think about it from a practical game balance standpoint. What do you think we're going to do?

I would hope you'd let gravity change ranges, lol. Just because of the awesome factor. And if you clamp max/min gravity then it's not a giant balance problem (i.e. no global artillery on low gravity planets). Oddly high/low gravity for a planet could be more than tolerated since we'd mainly/only see it in action via projectiles.

Well, true gravity-influenced ballistics is going to look odd - units could literally shoot themselves in the back on a small enough asteroid. However, the only other solution I can think of would be to hold the state of the asteroid in the simulation as a flat plane, and then render the effect of a shot projected onto a spherical space, resulting in things like lasers that curve too.

Planet gravity has the potential to be interesting, if it can apply global modifiers to units. It would obviously be important to make it clear what is happening, but it has potential.

First of all, to simplify the effect, it should be assigned a discrete integer effect rather than a decimal multiplier, with the same effect increments always applied on planets with the same approximate gravity scale. And it needs to be clear to the player how much they are being affected by the gravity.

Reducing range for weapons that would be affected by gravity is a good idea. I think certain units might also have their movement affected by increased gravity, such as walkers having reduced movement speed (but not wheeled/treaded vehicles). More massive units would be affected more severely by gravity. Planes should also be affected, and might also be further affected by atmospheric density, another simple, discrete integer effect.

Beams should probably not be affected by anything, though. For extremely long range beams, sure, it might be reasonable to curb their range based on the curvature of the planet. At that point you need to be asking whether you should have beams on the surface with such range that curvature of the planet becomes an issue. If they are in space, no problem.

Keep It Simple Stupid!?

If all ranges are scaling then the ratio between unit ranges will remain the same, not much benefit to scaling ranges. However the movespeed of units won't change and this will change the dynamic between longrange and shortrange units.

I'd argue in favour of keeping gravity the same, in order to (vastly) simplify the balance between units.

Agreed. Scaling everything defeats the whole point. Scaling a subset has an effect, such as excluding missiles, beams, and other weapons not reliant on gravity.

Ballistics you can artificially fudge by not permitting them to target anything beyond their designated max range, even though the physics could technically allow the shell to go farther. In RTS games, knowing the maximum range of enemy turrets is rather important. Permitting cheap ballistics to fire at ridiculous range would wreak havoc on game balance I think. That, or it would simply mean that the player must be aware that game balance is highly dependent on the gravity of the world the battle is taking place on.

I suppose a solution I hadn't considered, but which would be the easiest and cheapest would be to make gravity a universal constant. I'd hope this isn't the route you choose, but I suppose this is one of those things where you need to decide if its worth putting the time into.

The laser-horizon issue you mentioned is even trickier, because you can't "fudge" that unless you allow the beams to go through the ground (seriously, don't do that). For this, I guess it depends on if the really small planets are that small. I sincerely hope the general weapon range isn't going to be artificially small (Starcraft) because long range combat is just too awesome to give up. When it comes to planets where the horizon is closer than the max range of a beam turret, I would recommend treating the horizon just like any hill, where the beam turret would simply not fire until it has line of sight. I don't think this is as big a deal as the ballistic issue though, because all it does is make the beam weapon's effective range shorter the same as if you were operating in a very hilly environment - where the ballistic issue is rather important because it could mean you have cheap ballistic units able to out-range units which they ought not be able to win against normally. This would essentially result in ballistics ruling the smaller worlds.

For a giant increase in complexity and balance compromises.

Sure you can, have them behave like a projectile with mass, and bend around the world.

Please, please, no bendy lasers! :shock:

orbital mirrors to bounce your lasers off instead?

Full of awesome ideas today.

Remember: Awesome trumps Realism.
A fundamental part of Awesome is Gameplay.

Bendy beams work just fine in Super Stardust HD. It's not a great solution, but it's less ugly than all beam weapons being modelled on the Giraffe.

Oooh, I'll take a guess: gravity corresponds to the size of the planet and thus the size of the play field anyway. Unless the range of artillery is very very short, you wouldn't necessarily be able to hit anything you normally wouldn't.

On an asteroid, gravity is negligible and artillery becomes a direct fire weapon. Potentially helpful for busting incoming enemy spacecraft (a space vessel can be armored much more heavily than an aircraft). On the other hand, it would give a significant kick to the asteroid, moving it somewhere you didn't necessarily want it to go.

Of course, if gravity can be varied independently of the size of the planet, all bets are off.

Well, imagine a ballistic tank that can't shoot far enough to hit a medium laser turret from outside its range. On a slightly smaller planet, suddenly it could, which drastically changes the strategic constants that players try to get used to in any RTS game. It would affect more than you are suggesting.

Again, I'm not saying this is necessarily bad. But it must be considered at the very least. It may be quite interesting, who knows?

If I were to take a wild guess though, I would guess that Uber is going to either (a) limit a ballistic weapon's max firing range independent of gravity but allow gravity to alter the firing arc of the shell, or (b) make gravity itself a universal constant. I vote for "a" if it were up to those 2 options.

Also... This is highly consistent with the artificial targeting range we already see on beam based weapons! After all, beams by definition are not range limited at all. So why do any beam weapons have a max range? Because its an important game mechanic. So limiting the ballistic weapon the same way is actually very consistent. But again, I think it'd be cool if variable gravity were to affect the firing arc.

Maybe beam weapons should have an AOE effect where damage drops off based on the range from the emitter.

TA had gravity and wind effect ballistic weapons, and for the most part it worked out OK (though it was a little wonky on some maps). Also this would allow for shooting off at other planets if you were on a small asteroid.

I would hate to see bending lasers, it would just look wrong, particularly on small maps.

Beam weapons are limited by the ability to focus them, which for lasers is directly related to the size of the lens.