On Transports: Defining Landing Zones

Hey,
I just thought of a common problem with transports in SupCom. That is undefined landing zones. Because you cannot define landing zones you often get your units dropped where you don't want it.

Have a look at these screenshots:




I intended my troops to be dropped on that raised plateau. But it did not work out that way. If I had had the option to define a precise LZ, I would have had more control (and more control is... awesome)... like this:



I therefore propose a feature that allows you to define exact LZs. Every transport that is selected and get's a drop order for within the defined LZ will only drop his cargo within the boundaries of the LZ.


What do you think?

Of just fix the root of the actual problem and not have such a large 'minimum distance' between the actual unload points? Even with defining an 'LZ' if you keep transporting units you will 'fill' the 'LZ'

If ferry commands becomes FCE it'd be handy if you could give the drop off point a rally so units would all be dropped off at the same point and would 'form up' in a different position if you wanted.

Mike

I like what Knight said. Another option is just doing a simple pathing check on where units are being dropped off to make sure they can path from their drop location to the point the LZ order is given. If all the minimum space is used up then maybe it switches to a smaller minimum space to preserve pathing above all else.

Well wide spacing can be useful, when you go against AOE weaponry... I would therefore go for something like this:

a) There is a standard spacing of degree x.
b) Placing a drop command by single click makes transports drop units with spacing degree of x.
c) You can also hold the drop command and draw a circle from the center. Depending on the number of units and the size of the area within the circle (wich is the LZ) the spacing degree gets calculated to be the maximum possible spacing to fit all units in the LZ.
d) holding shift allows you to drag the LZ, by selecting it per click on the drop marker in its center.
e) holding shift and grabbing the circles outline allows you to re-size it (change it's radius).
f) maybe some way of deforming the outline so you can make ellipses or stuff.

I imagine if you're hot-dropping like that you intend to take immediate control anyways.

I just don't see the need for that level of control to be honest, packing in the units more densely is a good step but I don't see the need for that kind of control when it's just as easy as boxing everything and directing them to where you want them to be with a particular formation or whatever.

Mike

Personally i can think of a couple ways they can do things that might work better. I like the idea of SupCom's spread transport landing patterns but I agree they should have been allowed to land closer together. There should have also been a maximum radius so if you didn't attend to the area for a bit (automated transport route tied to factory output for example) The transports wouldn't stray too far from the LZ.

For the crowding at the LZ I like Knight's rally idea but another alternative might be just to have the units dropped off immediately be given a move order to leave the LZ. Eventually you may still end up with the horde of bumping bots that will block the area, assuming you really leave that big an army standing still, but at least the transport destination would still be clear. Though this would apply to designated ferry routes only, since chances are if your doing a combat drop the LZ won't really have followup landings, at least not automated ones

You are not really saying micro managing a couple dozen or even hundred (as in these screenshots) units that get dropped more or less simultaneously is a real option? If it was that easy where would be the problem with how it works in SupCom then?
Doing a base assault drop in SupCom could cost you a great percentage of your troops right at making landfall. 1 - 2 AOE hits (with Aeon t2 PD for example) right in your bunched up group of units from the same transport and they could be gone (mobile shields had to be activated at drop too...). Why would you then want your transport to always drop in a closer pattern By default, that would make tings even worse, without the power to control it?

(I never understand how people can be reluctant towards additional and optional control power.)

Assuming a SupCom style transport system, even if you spread out individual transports the units themselves are still clumped. Unless you have MASSIVE AOE weapons, I doubt they affect more than 1 transport's worth of units at a time, so then the issue is more so about dealing with the unload pattern of Individual transport, not so much about a group of transports. And again, if you're hot-dropping units like that within range of turrets you're going to lose units period.

Frankly, the point is that trying to optimize transports won't be effective as say optimizing Formations or unit movement in general.

Mike

Your thinking "drop directly on enemy" as a hot drop which is going to cost you massive forces regardless. Unless your enemy had a serious lack of AA coverage anyway.

In reality a hotdrop would be a good way to bypass things like strong static artillery or tactical missiles which generally have 3x+ the range over PD. You land just outside of range of their AA & PD, maybe loose the first transport down to the ready artillery, land the rest and walk fresh undamaged army into mutual fire range of normal defenses.

Problem with SupCom's wide area landing templates is that for any significantly useful force you pretty much had to set the "center" of your LZ outside max artillery range anyway or risk half your transports straying right into enemy AA fire while trying to find a close, untaken, landing spot to offload. You lost more of your army in the attempted drop than you did just marching through the artillery anyway.

There have been mod attempts to create a "bailout on transport destruction" function with the idea of mitigating this but most of the script attempts were still pretty buggy before they where abandoned.

Indeed the picture I had in mind was a drop assault on one of the main islands on Roanoke Abyss, where every drop assault is a hot drop unless you use only hover units.
On non-hot drop drops I agree that the drop pattern is less important and can be dense without any unpleasant side effects. But this is not the case if you land in range of PD. And why not give you the option to dynamically adjust your drop pattern to adapt to these very cases too?

See this:

This would only be true of the vast majority of AOE attacks effected a whole transport load without wasting any AOE dmg on empty space. This is most likely not the case as the targeting AI probably won't only target those units in the center of the bunch to maximize AOE dmg.
Thus I argue that AOE weaponry will most likely be way more effective against a dense drop pattern than against a wide drop pattern like in SupCom.


On a side note: Yes, I would appreciate if the drop pattern of a single transport would be less compact as well.

The thing is even with your idea of a hot drop on heavily armed islands, your still better off with tighter landing grouping. Even with taking AoE weapons fire.

Unless the devs manage some fancy & creative AI coding that can analyze your tactic and spread the fire, the AI is still going to go by general firing priorities which usually means "First Target in Range" with possible separation by unit types/roles. If you simultaneously drop 50 bots, all the same type, into an area the AI isn't likely to tell each AoE defensive weapon to target a different unit. Though I have to admit it would be amusing as heck if it did. What this means is that more than likely the closest target, or transport group, is going to draw ALL the fire from that direction and be annihilated.

In the meantime the more densely packed rest of your assault force is on the ground with fewer losses from "lost" transports that just can't seem to find a landing spot. Thus resulting in more firepower because the cargo is actually shooting once or twice before being blown up. Which translates to more damage and loses for the enemy & a larger beachhead gain for the next wave to land in.

I see, you are right. Though I hope to see more intelligent targeting AI in PA. In fact improved targeting AI is an important step on the way to the next generation of RTS, which Uber once claimed to want to initiate with PA, iirc.

lol true. though i will take strategic intelligence over micro intelligence personally
If your army is going to have as many units as it seems like the game will have over a larger areas I would rather the AI spend more processor cycles planning to wipe me out than micro managing their individual unit firing patterns

We don't have Quantum Computing for games... "yet" :twisted: