Shooting Robots in the Dark

Also, comments along the line of "I'd love to see you play this super-super specific modded version of the game I made for myself that nobody else plays" doesn't make the point you think it does, it makes the point ledarsi was making.[/quote]

I disagree, He didn't know what he was talking about. And by asserting that rushing the bot with intent for a quick victory was how the game was 'ment' to be played is silly for obvious reasons. TA had many amazing mods that had been very popular and really pushed the game. TAUCP is a well known mod pack for TA played by a lot of people, So was everything I mentioned. I hardly scratched the surface of TA mods because I was too lazy to hunt them out and would rather just play. It sounds like you are suggesting that enhancing the game with mods instead of playing in its vanilla state is also a 'incorrect' method of playing.

I'm really surprised to encounter these attitudes on a forum about a successor to a game that was so popular because it did/allowed so many things differently from its peers. (think command and conquer and starcraft). All I care about is having fun. I'm not a competitive player anymore. I simply haven't got the time. I hope the game supports micro rushing in 3 minutes and persistent games that are epic in scale and duration.

I think you will be good, I enjoy artillery and playing defensively against tough odds. That said it wouldn't be fun at all if Artillery gave some sort of overpowered advantage. I think dumping a bunch of resources into artillery should be rewarded in a balanced way. But I agree with you that it would be lame if all the games turned out the same.

Yea I think everyone has done a comp stomp game just to see the Artillery wipe the floor with the masses of bots

But I also want to be able to play fairly and be fairly played against...

Just make LOS and Radar same thing?

Solves all problems...

And creates a bunch more.

Mike

No, it actually doesn't. Planets are round, horizons block sight, and radar has the same issues as any other unit. The only real difference is with MAX vision range. An explicit intel facility can have more max vision, allowing it to see beyond the horizon for units like aircraft, tall structures and orbital stuff.

The only area of the game that demands wide sweeping vision is to track air power. In TotalA, air units were exceptionally difficult to track and intercept without radar, a problem that was fixed in Supcom and beyond. TotalA also showed that extra ground vision is unnecessary and actually promotes strong spotting roles to support artillery. Providing one without the other seems like a good solution. Besides, thousands of standard units provide all the scouting and vision you'll ever need.

umm im sorry radar works on infantry to aswell as tanks and planes

Not really, and especially not from a ground perspective because of all the planet and trees that get in the way.

Visible light is far superior to radar when looking at ground targets, as is why we use spy planes and satellites to take photographs of Russian missile sites.

radar works by bouncing off metals a tree wouldent do anything it would ignore that but with giant robots running around the radar would work against all enemys.

Edit: but metal planets radar wouldn't work period since it is made of metal

Edit again: and we havent used spy planes like that since the 60s we use satilites most of the time now
Final edit: and robots wouldent need radar prob stealth satilites instead so why are we even having this argument.
The final final edit: it may be because i like to debate

Radar only bounces off something that it can SEE, because it is LIGHT. If there's no Line of Sight, there's no possibility of catching it on radar. We have so many cultural references for Under the Radar because things can actually sneak in -here it comes- under the radar.

I have a question, could X-rays/gamma rays be used as anti-cloaking and stealth detectors?

Because if stealth prevents radar detection, and cloaking prevents visible light detection, then there isn't really much that can prevent a x-ray/gamma ray detection!

Not that they would provide much information on metal robots, and would probably have crappy range, but they could be useful in other aspects!

Chaff blocks radar detection fairly well. A dedicated chaff machine should have no problem blanketing an area to block radar.

A lot of things prevent visual detection. Smoke, dust, debris, practically anything will block visual LoS.

Nuclear weapons create very convenient bursts of high energy particles. A couple months back it was suggested as a way of revealing cloaked units over a HUGE range. Flushing out a Comm isn't so bad, just drop a few nukes.

On the more exotic scale you can use earthquake machines and planet crackers, as a way of shaking a cloaked or stealthed unit. That could reasonably break countermeasures over a large area.

Or you could just bump into the unit. TotalA cloak would break at short range, rendering units visible when something else got too close. The Comm's cloak was near perfect, being invisible at arm's length. Stealthed units are easy to spot, just keep enough units around to see them coming.

+1 for a fog machine cloaking your base. :lol:

Not to shoot down all your ideas...
But I honestly think you guys are over-complicating things a bit too much here.


I propose a simple (hopefully elegant solution?).
As per Supreme Commander:

• Stuff in radar displays on the mini-map regardless of land/air.

• Units/Buildings will autoshoot enemies on radar.

New Change: Radar Penalty
Game Mechanics:
Radar will NOT provide full accuracy.

• If; Your have have Line-of-Sight on an enemy, your units have their full accuracy.

• Else; Units shooting at radar targets receive an accuracy penalty.

Fluff/Fictional Reasoning:
We can just call it a "radar haze". A simple radar station isn't a "weapon" lock-on system. It tells you where stuff is, roughly.
It shows a structures, units. An "omni" radar might even be smart enough to decipher different power signatures so it knows if it's a plane, vehicle or if it's AA. We can figure that part out later.


Benefit to Uber

• Simple Game balance

Whatever that penalty is, 15%, 25% even upwards of 50% to 75%. It's just a simple global number that Uber can play with at their whim balance.
This is a simple 1-number tweak for them which could easily change from patch-to-patch.



I consider this elegant solution because radar still behaves like previous games.

• You can still "auto shoot".

• You can still use artillery to rain down hell.

• You still know roughly number of enemies and enemy location.

• But you can't just easily kill EVERYTHING before line-of-sight.

I believe this will encourage varied unit compositions of short, medium, and long range units including scouts and spotters.


It's a system (like the proposed econ system) is almost like what we have from the previous games, BUT tweaked just enough so there isn't more micro required.
It would be an evolution and not completely depart from what we like?
thoughts?

This sounds a lot like radar-wobble (where a unit's radar signature slowly moves in random patterns regardless of the unit's real movement speed) except radar-wobble is more intuitive I think. But definately worth including, it's a very worthwhile addition.

(Except for when you know something is a structure because it's silly to see a structure outline with a moving radar signature. You know exactly where that thing is and it's not going anywhere)

You do not necessarily need to have the marker wobbling about, the radar only shows something is there, not the size or shape of it so it would be understandable for some misses to happen because the size and angle of the object was inconclusive.

Besides seeing every radar blip swaying about constantly would probably get some people nauseous.


An alternative would be to make Radar operate on pulses where unit movement is not actively updated in real time, but updates every pulse. This would still enable it to be used for early warning however it greatly impairs the ability to just shoot in the dark for moving targets.

Oh. So it's a luck thing.

Radar wobble is interesting, but it it exists only because artillery spotting was far too powerful. If radar can not find ground targets(at least no better than any other tall unit on a hill), wobble becomes a moot point.

While there is a huge difference between radar and vision processing in today's world, for a pile of robots they're just different shades of light. Large light waves certainly lack the fidelity of the nano scale colors that we're familiar with, so at the worst it wouldn't be able to identify units until they get in closer.

Culverin has already said what I was thinking but perhaps I can put it even more simply.

Units are less accurate firing at targets that are on radar, but not visually revealed.

This creates incentive to risk units visually scouting enemies, creates a use for (using SC units) T3 air scouts after T3 radar has been built, and lets you enjoy actually watching the fireworks.

A game mechanic that is simple to understand and makes the game a bit more about awesome explosions than watching little dots make icons disappear.