Shield generators

I'd like to see scouted buildings get "destroyed" based on what damage the unit thinks it did. And then if you scout again it wasn't actually destroyed because it was repaired or there was some kind of shield or something....

Big Bertha's are obviously superiorly designed, so I expect them to be in. After all, its TA with a new engine (paraphrasing uber), so its reasonable to expect there to be long range arty. :mrgreen:

(Just listen to the Big Bertha's sound effects. The massive boom when it shoots, the shrieky explosion when the shell hits ground. It's just great. I can still remember the sound to this day!)

I still feel like a stealth building that re-hides spotted buildings could be cool mechanically.

But I guess that'll be a mod for me.

Possibly umbrella shields too.

Keep in mind that you can simply re-wind the game to see when you last scouted; so hiding the buildings won't actually help.

It would from the automatic targeting aspect, preventing artillery from continuing to bombard a shielded location.

Players who pay attention to the location will obviously have the advantage, but as to rewinding the game? I don't think you can do that during a game, so I am not sure about that point.

The idea is to cancel out the ability for scouts to invalidate a stealth field once it was spotted once, giving it continuous use even when spotted but not continuously observed.

Igncom did you watch the last live stream? The ability to rewind during a live game is already implemented.

During a multi-player game it won't be, other wise you would just unwind every mistake, and nothing would ever happen in a game.

The idea is goof for jumping into replays, or possibly for singe-player but otherwise it is really stupid.

"I didn't see his planes coming, so I'll rewind our game so your strategy no longer works!"

And that's just the tip of an ice burg for problems that would appear, only one RTS tried this as a actual mechanic, and it dropped off the map.

Rewinding is view only; you can replay a point in time but not change it. It's essentially watching a replay in the middle of the game, while the game keeps going.

That's different, and I am really not sure I like it.

It just seems lazy to let players recall information like that in a game where the lack of information or misinformation is everything.

The ability to replay mid-game seem like it would take up a players time and would just get in the way.

It's no different from having a good memory. It doesn't allow you to see anything you couldn't have, and since it's machines fighting the concept of "forgetting" information doesn't make sense anyway.

Then don't do it.

Considering rewind, remember while its implemented technically in the game, uber hasn't decided yet how you will be able to access it.

It could be you could only see the death of an unit, or go back the last 3 minutes or any other way it could be made available, depending on balance issues.

The server has to send you the old data too, which could also be an eventual performance issue that would limit replays.

The server has to send data regardless of whether you request the current game state or some point in the past, so I don't believe there would be any performance impact.

With rewinding, depending on the speed of it you need a multiple of the normal amount. Ie. go back with 2x speed, twice the amount of data sent.

Of course having no idea how much bandwith actually will be needed for it, it can be trivial or not.


But you could still implement stealth that way, just make sure that a stealth generator also hides buildings in replays of the past. :mrgreen:

No. This will break replays and make people go "how did I lose" and see nothing. Also, there appeared to be no FOW in the live stream. Unimplemented?

GET BACK ON TOPIC please. If you want stealth gens to hack and wipe a replay, make a new thread with a poll.

Is that even possible? I mean, without ludicrously expensive algorithms for no other purpose than to troll the player?

I would just have it hide what it was supposed to when it was built.

If the player want to go back to find the location of one base, then that's their advantage, and time lost to obtain it.

I prefer to think on my feet, no matter the cost of previous information that I might have only seen a flicker of.

I see a certain humour in a post that comments about something offtopic while at the same time telling people to get ontopic again, without being ontopic itself. :mrgreen:

I think it wouldn't be too hard to do. IIRC they said they use a set of linear functions to save all whats happening. You'd just need to alter whatever function is setting whats visible for a certain player. Ie. if there would be a stealth building, you'd then add the stealth function as an additional override to all replays. Since it would only effect a players vision, it shouldn't mess with the other parts of the simulation itself since those are most likely independent from the human vision area.

I doubt it would be in the scope of the game to have something like this though, but I don't see anything preventing it either.

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To have one sentence ontopic though, as was so nicely requested:

Imo this thread shouldn't be about shields per se, but about artillery (or any long range weaponry) balance, where having shields or not is one part of the balance question.

A com is pretty vulnerable late game, therefore I like to be able to put him under a shield.

viewtopic.php?f=61&t=41336&hilit=Commander+snipes

A couple of bombers is all it takes to snipe a commander. (at least in FA)
No need to blow the entire planet.