Simulation: How much is too much?

Anyone who has played TotalA is familiar with its "simulation based" gameplay. Every feature of a unit affected its performance in some way; the swing of the barrels, the unfolding of a popup cannon, the rattle of treads on rough terrain. A shot that hit truly hit, so that any unit could find itself scoring a lucky kill, no matter how unlikely. Many of these features created an emergent gameplay and a feel that was unique for its time (and still a bit unique today).

How much of this is good for the game? How much detail is too much? As PA is a game across worlds, the worlds themselves can play a part in how units function. Can an overly round world cause trouble for lasers striking the horizon? Could an artillery piece be so powerful that it can only fire shells into space? After all, shooting over the horizon means firing a shell that gets arced around the gravity well to its target. Or is a gravity field flat and static, such that a shell always finds itself capable of crashing down?

There's quite a bit to chew on. I suspect that the simple answers will have not so simple results.

I'm conflicted here as well. It might be confusing to have heavily variable gravity, however, it would add some really interesting features: consider a small moon: artillery might be able to reach escape velocity and bombard the planet where that same artillery piece wouldn't be able to reach from the planet to the moon: you'd have the literal high ground. Lobbing shells too far into the air isn't really a concern: with little to no gravity, ballistic weaponry behave like direct-fire weapons. Come to think, that would create some interesting opportunities on low-gravity battlefields: high-ground would be more important, as most everything would need direct line-of-sight to be accurate. The exception would be two-stage missiles, which would have greatly increased range. I like this level of detail as it introduces strategic options.

As for direct-fire weaponry, it's always been the case in simulation-based games that players have to place these carefully. Their advantage is immunity to gravity, high accuracy and shot speed. Their disadvantage is usually short range, and sensitivity to terrain. I think this is were the simulation line can be drawn: the range limit for these kinds of weapons would be visibility (mass-less or near mass-less attacks would be dampened by fog, dust, ash particles on a volcano-type planet) in a pure simulation. Personally, I think that's a little over the top. Similarly, when an asteroid or other celestial body is accelerating, the units on the surface would experience an artificial-gravity effect which technically should screw with ballistic weapons. Again, I think this is above and beyond the call of gameplay.

What I'm looking forward to most in this respect is what the community will do with the base engine. Uber seems to be dedicated to making this a heavily moddable game, and I hope this applies to the physics engine.

That. If it doesn't affect gameplay much or could be replaced with random that will result in seemingly same results - it's not needed. Projectile calculation do affect gameplay and couldn't be replaced with random. Turret pop speed could be replaced with random and doesn't affect gameplay - not needed.

Projectiles should not behave differently based on gravity, this is simply too much to memorize and micromanage. Might as well say that artillery could reach from one side of the system to the other cause the shell was able to escape gravity... makes no sense at all and it would take weeks to code it (if possible).

Projectiles are affected by gravity simply by being a part of the physics sim. However, I think the point of "different gravity based on different planet types" was the goal of the comment? And for me, at least from a "fun game" perspective, seems like it would be one of those things that adds complexity without adding any significant fun. That said, I can certainly imagine a certain amount of variation being fun in certain mods, but as a core mechanic, I think it would mostly confuse most players ("Why the hell are my projectiles acting different?!")

However, I'm not making the sim, so.. This is just my opinion as a gamer, not a "developer providing feedback on how we're implementing it".

Generally speaking, you want to simulate everything that has a meaningful impact on how fun the game is, but no more, because the sim is, well, expensive. I'm not nearly as technical as Neutrino, but I remember this from our days working on Supreme Commander.

This idea of external factors influencing weapon and unit behavior seems to be a recurring theme in the last few threads I've seen. I agree that as a core mechanic it doesn't bring anything fun to the table. When plopping an arty unit or a point defense, we expect it to have the same stats in all situations. (radius, firing speed, turning speed...)

now, if we're talking about mods, or even a unique gamemode... sure, add a different layer of complexity, I'm actually curious to see where this could be taken.

EDIT: I'm also curious how laser weapons are affected by the planet "roundness". I remember those Cybran T2 PDs back in supcom...Oh the agony...To watch a wall of PDs hit the ground just because there was a small hill between them and the target. Oh the pain. Would this mean that placing them on high ground would be an advantage?

Planet vs planet could be fun as a mod... mod only

"Ridiculous gravity" could be a fun trait for a planet, as long as it's some kind of "on/off" thing. Your units all have the same stats except on this clearly marked gas giant which has gravity extra high, meaning all your (convential attack?) units only have about half their ordinary range.

Makes the planets distinct, but also makes it a clear feature with a clear effect.

The goal is for truly round planets, is it not? To hit an object beyond the horizon, a projectile has to follow a curved path. A smaller world has more curve in its surface, which means the projectile has an even more difficult shot to make.

For an artillery piece, its projectile path would change with both planet size and gravity. Physics wise, there's a bit of a paradox happening here. A smaller world needs a tighter path for projectiles. To make a shot move tighter around a planet, you need stronger gravity to redirect the shot. This is the opposite of gravity as we know it.

I think it's unavoidable. Even the simple example above shows something new happening, and it's a direct result of worlds not being flat. With a really round world, there is no straight shot to the other side. As a world size changes, the very idea of a "direct shot" can vary by orders of magnitude, and the same gun can end up doing something completely different.

For small units with limited range, it doesn't matter too much. The big berthas, however, are getting stuck with a real problem.

The problem with a round world is that if you make a shot go fast enough, it goes a bit... orbital. It could even miss the entire planet! This could end up being really cool (or frustrating, or both).

I guess one answer is to just change the simulation, to force the unusual behaviors away. Gravity alone won't work for a round world; the projectile also has to slow down or decay in some way. Another solution is to accept it and try to incorporate it into the game. After all, something new and exciting is happening as a direct result of simulation, which is absolutely in the spirit of TotalA. (Remember shooting down aircraft with artillery? Of course you do. Everyone does.) For big worlds, this gun is working as a long range artillery piece. For small worlds it's suddenly an orbital cannon, physically incapable of reaching across the map due to its extreme power. That's a pretty neat outcome.

Besides, a missile launcher can handle the artillery problem on a small world. Physics made a problem, and a new unit fixed it. I guess that makes two neat outcomes.

I'd go with the missiles, I find it very awkward that a unit can suddenly become an orbital weapon just cause of gravity.
At any rate, how small is too small for long range arty to become useless? perhaps this is a good way to avoid unnecessary, resource hogging builds.

When you shoot straight up, and nothing comes back. :lol:

lol, other than the obvious...

I guess any range that can be better done by other defenses like point defense.

Wouldn't be a matter of a planet/moon/asteroid being so small as to make artillery totally useless, but rather when the artillery fires at a distance larger than the radius of the planet: if you're shot would land 100 miles out, but the planet has a 90 mile radius, you're going to miss the planet. This could be avoided by reducing the fire radius to no more than the radius of the planetoids it's on.

Other than that, the fire arc might need to be adjusted, but that's an easy calculation.

Why can't stuff like this be incorporated as part of the game balance? Maybe non-gravity affected weapons simply lose their effectiveness on increasingly smaller/rounder bodies by design; then the situation calls for different types of weapons. Same thing with gravity affecting maximum kinetic weapon ranges.

Much of this playerbase baffles me; they flaunt that their favourite game(s) are simulation based, yet they want gameplay to resemble that of a hard-numbers and dice-roll RTS game; no interesting or flux scenarios can be formed or require adapting to, and everything behaves predictably and comes down to predictable build orders.

Something requiring too much developer resources for little return is understandable. The other points of 'bad for balance' and 'scaring away players' are just rubbish. As for memorization being a problem- have you heard of this great feature called real time range circle overlays? I heard it offers you instant feedback.
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Also this reminds me of one night I remember playing on a spring server hosting the 'duck' map: a tiny, zero gravity map where matches are frantic and over quickly. In one of these matches I successfully built an expensive plasma battery on top of some high ground to gain a significant map advantage- only to discover that it couldn't hit anything below it; because the battery's guns can't aim down, and the shells it fired in high trajectory would just fly off into the air forever! This was okay though because no one in the game really knew how to play, and this was on an 'oddball' map that didn't represent typical play.

Fun time that was.

Thankyou Nord for quoting my very relevant post. These two threads have a lot in common with each other and what I just posted in the projectile thread is very relevant to here.

In short, like many people in here think, if a realistic element can add fun and noticeable gameplay value, then it should be considered for inclusion. If not, what can be done to it to make it more enjoyable (awesome) so it is worth adding to the game. Such an element must also be easy for the player to identify and use by the player when it affects them. Finally, regardless of everything else, the element must fit into the game among its other elements well.

-- Only read below if you are bored or wish to make a counter argument --

Lets take an example. Someone somewhere mentioned the possibility of adding projectile drag due to atmospheric pressure, the idea being that different atmospheres/no atmospheres would affect the projectile and it's range.
- Realistically, the change would be very minimal from one planet to another (assuming bullets are reasonably aerodynamic.
- This would result in units performing differently on different planets. This isn't a bad thing in itself, but...
- It would be difficult to tell when and by how much this affects your units. Someone mentioned adding a stat in the UI, which means the player has to know where this stat is, what it means, and that this element must be significant enough to justify a dedicated ui element.

In short, this element will have minimal effect on gameplay, will be largely concealed from the player, and require its own UI element to be understood. Not that appealing, at this point air drag fails the test.

So what can be done to make it more appealing? This is the point where we take a step away from reality in favour of making a better game. The first problem is that air drag doesn't do that much. A solution could be to exaggerate it, possibly so that no atmosphere results in 25% more range than a dense atmosphere. The second problem is that the element is hard to identify by players. One way around this could be to make the drag coefficient the same one every type of planet - asteroids are the same, terran planets the same, moons the same etc.

This leaves two questions - is it fun and does it fit? Unless the element has been used in another game (I don't think air drag has) there is very little that we as forum posters can discuss about. The only real way to answer these questions would be to test them in the game, although if we were a dev or otherwise able to look at the game we could make an educated guess if the element would fit or not.

I just started uni again and this is how I killed time in my first lecture.

It's a classic battle between consistency and flavor. There are very sound arguments for having units behave. It makes the game play out more stably and be less prone to (bull$#17) luck. There are good arguments for letting things happen, because the emergent gameplay is just plain awesome.

The behavior of low level units is something that has to be very carefully controlled for balance reasons. I'm not sure it's something that can be entirely avoided, since every slight difference gets magnified a hundred fold later on. Fortunately, basic units tend to be small and short ranged, so they will not feel any major effects of world shape or gravity. That's good.

As the game advances, there are more chances to do and allow crazy things. Big guns and strategic tools will absolutely be affected by major changes in world shape and gravity. More importantly, it's going to take a lot of effort to try unmaking the new effects.

Since round maps haven't been really done before, I'd say let the guns do their thing. See what happens, and experiment to see what it can do. It could be a disaster, or end up excellent. It's kind of a new frontier, isn't it?

Pretty much ALL the counterpoints point out one fatal flaw:

-The effect of a planet on stuff is unknown.

Star wars: Empire at War did do different planets, and had things like weather affecting unit movement and such.

The player was notified of this by an icon (next to all the other buffs and such) saying "Wet world: unit speed decreased by X".

Inform the player that this is a moon. that there's no air, so air units don't work. that it's small so guns shoot further

See my last post. These were obvious, not implicit.

Drag affects bullets a huge deal.
After just 2 seconds or 1200 meters a supersonic bullet has lost half its speed.
wiki
IRL projectile drag is a major coefficient in reducing the range of artillery.
In TA and SupCom projectiles have a really low speed compared to unit velocity but if you want to have projectile drag affecting ranges of artillery realistically there is no problem with it.