As the mod community in TA cranked out thousands of different units, and as megamods grew in size, the community began to adopt certain conventions about referring to weapons generally. Considering how many 3rd party units there were, some organization was functionally necessary just to talk about them coherently. Later games based on TA, including Zero-K, also have weapon classes which give the player a general idea of how the unit performs based on its armament. I propose that PA units be designed from the beginning with a diverse array of weapon classes, not just an unnamed weapon type which players then associate specifically with that unit only. Standardized Weapons Weapon standardization is intentionally designing categories of weapons with standardized behavior that is implemented across multiple units. Standardized weapons should be named, both as a class in general, as well as for a specific instance on a unit if there is going to be any variation across units. The main advantage of sharing weapon names and behaviors is that it gives the player fewer facts to memorize about the game. A player can observe a unit firing a plasma cannon and make a good estimate about how plasma cannons work on other units with the same type of weapon. The opposite of standardizing weapons is to have each individual unit with its own custom weapon. This approach has advantages, especially for targeted balancing of a single unit. However this method is best suited for very small unit rosters with highly unique weapons. As the number of distinct unit types becomes larger, the complexity of using unique weapons increases. Unit descriptions featuring their armaments are actually very useful to the player, since the weapon is usually the aspect of the unit the player is principally interested in. Even if a player has never constructed a certain unit before, he or she can get a pretty good idea of its function from its armaments. Standardizing weapons greatly reduces the burden on new players of having a huge number of different units because they don't necessarily need significant experience with every unit before they can have a basic idea of how each unit works. Differences Within a Class This isn't to say that all weapons in the same class need to be the same. Larger variants of the same tech can be more powerful. For example, a larger plasma cannon does more damage and has more splash. But the core behavior should be the same so the player is not misled by the description. However I think existing weapon standardization schemes would also benefit from naming specific weapons in addition to a weapon's general class. Other units equipped with exactly the same named weapon would have exactly the same stats and properties. For example, a light tank with the exact same main gun as a heavy tank could still have different properties other than its main gun, perhaps more movement speed and less armor. But two units equipped with different named weapons within the same class would have different stats, while still behaving in a fundamentally similar way. For example, a light artillery vehicle might fire a plasma cannon with a certain name or caliber. A heavier artillery vehicle might have a larger caliber, giving it more range, damage, and splash. It might take longer to reload, be more inaccurate, or have other differences. But it would fundamentally be a very similar weapon that behaves in the same way as the smaller gun. Lore Effect SupCom named its weapons purely for lore reasons. In practice, these designations were useless to the player and existed purely as fluff. You really did have to experiment with every unit to have any idea how it functioned. Although naming weapons certainly has lore impact, that is not what I propose. In the PA lore, the technology and weapons used by every faction are literally the best possible weapons given the physical limitations of the universe. Logically, there should be strong similarities between weapons mounted on different units. After all, if you have invented the best possible plasma cannon for a particular size, it makes sense that you would want every unit of suitable size which you want to equip with a plasma cannon would use that exact weapon design. Units as Weapons Platforms One effect of implementing standardized weapons is that the player begins to conceptualize a unit as a weapons platform. The unit is a tool that allows you to put guns in range of the enemy. Different platforms might be used to put the same weapons in range of the enemy, and different units of the same type of platform would be differentiated by having significantly different weapons. For example, the same missile system implemented on a bot, a light vehicle, and a gunship, would have the same properties. However the chassis also brings properties to the package, governing things like speed, terrain mobility, and target profile. The bot might have better all-terrain capability, the gunship is flying and vulnerable to anti-air, etc. The platform is being used to put that weapon system into play. Platforms bring properties to the unit, and so do weapons. The same logic can be applied to a stationary structure. A turret and a mobile unit with the same weapon are conceptually similar, but play very differently. I suspect that the new player's tendency to porc will be greatly curtailed by showing the player that there exists a mobile version, possibly several mobile versions, of whichever turret weapon they prefer. Standardizing weapons also greatly simplifies having multiple weapons. A tank with a primary cannon and a secondary machine gun has the potential to be a highly complex unit. However if both those weapons occur elsewhere in different combinations and on different chassis and units, the complexity of the unit roster as a whole is greatly reduced. For example, a dedicated air superiority fighter and a multirole fighter might have the same air to air missiles. However the multirole fighter would have, say, four such missiles and also four anti-ground missiles, whereas the ASF instead carries just eight air-to-air missiles. The same weapons can even be shared by quite different units with very different roles and behavior, such as a cheap strike bomber that just carries two anti-ground missiles of the same type carried by the multirole. Modding I strongly suspect PA is going to be as heavily modded as TA was. And part of the reason TA had such a lengthy lifespan was because it was intrinsically well-suited to modders. The blocky models meant it was easy for third-party modders to make units that looked like they belonged. The arbitrary and unique unit names like “Stumpy” and “Vamp” made it easier to come up with new unit names that fit into the TA ecosystem, and look like they belong in the game. Giving players a weapons ecosystem to work within not only makes it simpler to understand the units already in the game, it also makes it immensely simpler for a modder to inform a player about the properties and behavior of their new unit. Especially with a potentially huge library of third party units, having a robust weapon base will mean a huge reduction in the amount of player memorization and practical experience needed for each unit type. Obviously modders will be able to create new weapons, and even new weapon classes. But again, establishing a pattern of standardized weapons will enable modders to plug into the existing system. Categories of this type give players a lot more information about units they haven't used before, and allow for a larger and simplifies a large and diverse unit roster. Conclusion Uber should be designing units with a system for weapon categories in mind. Weapon categories will simplify the process of learning a large roster of units, and also make the roster of units easily extensible. Specific named weapons with identical properties will give players a lot of information about a unit based on its armaments, which can be easily displayed in a tooltip along with its name and cost.
What about start working on one list(based on SyFy). First: Energy Weapons(Don't have mass)-Laser, TurboLaser ,Phaser,HeatRays, some fancy stuff Mass Weapons (have mass)-Plasma,Gauss Cannons,Rail Guns,Mass Drivers, Ion Cannons, the rest of the fancy stuff.
Total Annihilation: Lasers Light Medium Hella nasty I think it was one more of those really good design choices we found in TA. There is context to what is shooting at you, how far away it could be, and just how bad it's going to hurt.
Hellbore Cannons. Probably the best way to organize weapons correctly would be to determine a common damage point (say 100 damage) and then describe how the weapon achieves that damage, using 'light, medium, heavy' to determine the class of damage- 0-25%, 25-75%, 75-100%. I would also strongly encourage color coding and other way of making it extremely obvious as to what is what - a small plasma shell should be light red, a medium yellow, a large one blue. A long range missile could have a longer body than a short range missile. Some categories: Ballistic Instant hit Self Propelled Guided Self Propelled Unguided Modifiers: Indirect Fire Direct Fire Additional Attributes: Explosive Piercing (passes through units) Damage over time Impulse (pushes units) Impact Detonate Timed Detonate Some examples: Light Machine Gun Damage Class: Light ROF: 6 (6 shots per second) Damage per shot: 0.5 Damage per second: 3 Accuracy: 50% Range: 50m Attributes: Ballistic Direct Fire Light Mortar Damage Class: Light ROF: 2 Damage per shot: 1.5 Damage per second: 3 Accuracy: 50% Range: 50m Attributes: Ballistic Indirect Fire Explosive Impact Detonate And so on.
I made some small edits above. I agree. I proposed changing all the lasers in TA to a standardizes projectiles with a set damage and range for red, green and blue lasers during the work on Uber Hack. Different units could have different rates of fire, but I couldn't get people to change the Can to a Light Laser with fast rate of fire. They liked the green on the Can. I miss lasers.
Just to be clear, there should be no damage types or armor types. No "light" damage or "light armor." Everything deals the same damage to everything, provided that it hits it. Furthermore, the names of the weapons are not the point. The point is that a large number of weapons is greatly simplified by categorizing weapons with certain behavior together. TA did this with plasma cannons and a few different types of lasers, as well as "starburst missiles" used by the merl and diplomat as well as the krogoth and perhaps a few others, among other weapon types with generally the same behavior shared between units. In addition, identical weapons can be (and where appropriate should be) shared between different units. This allows a player to read the armaments on a unit in the tooltip and get a pretty good idea of what it does. And also, a mortar with a range of 50 meters? Seriously, Pawz? Try 5000 meters.
Yes, the only meaning 'light' or 'medium' weapons would have is to indicate roughly how powerful the weapons are. I do think it's important to name the weapons with meaningful names that are consistent. For example, mortars could take on a caliber naming scheme with a correspondingly large shell size. "Dual Light Machine guns" vs "Medium 60mm Mortar" vs "Heavy Hellbore" And yes, well, we're dealing with piddly planetary sizes here, so 50m mortar ranges.
....are you aware what a Hellbore is? Regardless, it's not different from a beam weapon with a short, high damage pulse. Mike
It's not that damage types are cheap, per se. It's that TA took a completely different angle from the norm. Damage types were created through battle interactions in a simulated environment. There were still damage multipliers, status ailments and other sorts of things. There was just no point where one weapon dealt more or less damage because of some kind of flag. The nanolathe is unique in the series, and qualifies as a damage type all its own. It's a non standard weapon that has unique damage rules.
TA did actually have some minor damage type elements, if you ever looked into the unit data. For example, LLT's do less damage to commanders. Some anti-air weapons do vastly reduced damage to anything that isn't an air unit. But for the vast majority of cases, all weapons do the same damage to everything in TA. And PA should avoid damage and armor types whenever possible. Zero-K takes a much more hardline approach on "absolutely no damage types" than even TA did, and has a huge diversity of units anyway. Damage types are hidden, arbitrary, overcomplicated, and in the end totally unnecessary to create interesting units and counter relationships.
I get the impression that this is the route Uber have decided to take, based on the way the AA missiles work. The turret, bot, vehicle and ship AA weapons look virtually identical and perform very similarly. I agree that this is the way it should be.
Except that the tower does double damage, the missile moves almost twice as fast and can target ground units.
