Unit Death Explosion

Hey guys,

When units die and explode, could the explosion cause damage to other units around it like pgens in SupCom? This would make blobs of units less effective because they would blow each other up. The bigger the unit, the bigger the explosion.

Thoughts?

I don't like this idea. It basically gives every unit splash damage.

I do think SOME units should explode when destroyed (minelayers, for one).
And some buildings should definitely explode too.

Maybe some units could have a chance to explode as well. Like artillery. So you might not want to have them everywhere in your groups of units.

But your average tank unit shouldn't make a big boom when it dies.

Death explosions are one of the most effective and cool things to have in the game.

Explosions magnify damage against the larger army, where more units can take damage. This helps limit death balls in a naturally scaling way.

Explosions clear out wreckage. This can hurt, limiting your wreckage, or it can help, denying wreckage to the enemy. Either way, it clears the path so more units can get in the action.

Explosions can be tweaked to effectively add into unit roles. A spammy assault bot may have a minimal boom, letting them work in large battles despite leaving most of their value behind. A raider unit may have a large boom, denying wreckage and hurting the enemy, but making them ineffective in large numbers. Artillery and long range units may have varying sizes of boom to limit how well they stack together. Air units may take each other out with huge bombs or shrapnel clouds. The possibilities are endless.

The Krogoth was practically a walking nuke. Whether it lived or died, you cheered all the same.

I think only units that have bombardment capabilities and nuclear power should be extra explosive upon death.

Minelayers, long range missile launchers, reactors and any units/buildings that could/would blow the hell up in real life.

As for the others, they just break down and go up in flames for a moment and then a slight boom kills them.

Or make most of them explosive but randomly, that would bring a bit of surprise to people, not knowing whether to tactically blow up units and buildings to deal extra damage since you'd never know would it explode or not

Generally I like splash damage death explosions, But I think this could be fun, You can't have light without the darkness so... Perhaps make the lowest level units, and basic ground forces have very few explosions on death. Instead have them spark out, catch fire, smolder. Even have flailing death animations. It would create a very tense and visceral feeling on the early battlefield. Giving way to a more epic feeling when stuff starts exploding for real.

Higher end, more powerful units are doing more damage to each other, and need more 'power' to operate, these babies start to explode, or have arms blow off and sink to the ground and explode in flames or something.

I LOVE the idea of a writhing, smoldering battle field with Smoke-forming-clouds that last for minutes after a big battle. You could zoom out and see the smoke trails from the battlefield units still on fire, drifting up wards to create plumes, like this:

I like death weapons, but I don't think it's as interesting if it's a universal thing that applies to all units.

To me it's another tool that can be used to create unique units, like the Inferno in BlackOps for FA, it's a flame tank, so naturally it has a big firey explosion and can hurt other units.

Also worth thinking about things like units falling as they die, potentially crushing other units, so if you had a tall Starcraft Colossus(sp? xD) and they fall over sometimes when they die, they could kill other units if they land on it.

Mike

It's still justified, given the context of this war. Death damage defines a unit's stacking power and how easily it will leave wreckage. Both traits are extremely important considerations for this game.

Everything in TA had death damage, and it worked out just fine.

Those are oil well fires. No military vehicle burns like that, at least not for more than a few moments.

It was the best picture to show gruesome destruction.! Even if isn't terribly accurate towards futuristic robots without diesel motors imagine bot parts all over that battlefield.

I've always imagined the robots run on electricity, or some new future energy source that could power everything.

I don't think that a lot of units should explode though. Definently not the basic infantry soldiers. I think that some huge tanks that cost a lot should explode, which gives more reason to just blitzkrieg some exploding units into the enemy base.

Personally I think few units should explode. And if every unit explodes, keep the area reasonably small and the damage reasonably low.

Here's the main thing I'm scared of with unit explosions. What if you've got a T3 tank running with a horde of T1 kbots... if the t3 tank explodes, it takes all the little kbots with it because their health is so low... That's lame. The whole idea of little guys is cannon fodder right? They shouldn't die from the enemy focusing one of your tanks...

All that being said, units exploding (without damage) looks cool, I just hope they find a way to balance the damage well, so that there's not a snowball effect where killing a few units can weaken the entire army.

Certain units should explode, like minelayers, shield generators, special stuff I think.

It would also keep the ground clear of rubble so other units can take turns blowing things up

Ah, a fan of Supcom, I take it?

The unit scale in PA is going to better match what you see in Total Annihilation. There won't be units with 50000 health running around with units that have 70 health. That sort of scaling won't be an issue.

Don't be too worried about the impact of explosive death. For most units in TA, the worst thing that happened was a pop. Very few death explosions affected things beyond touch range.

Just for commander and Super structures and units (Super weapons like nuke, long range artillery and Krogoth style unit to discourage extreme turtling).

Explosions! Lots of! There can never be too many!

Though something low like 5% damage to units around so your army doesn't chain-react-explode on the first unit death, of course... And limited blast radius, to make it impossible for one unit to take out the rest of a full-health army...

But explosions... Lots of!

MOAR EXPLOSIONS but no damage from the explosions. because thedamage is destructive to hoards.

Doing damage to other units is kind of the point of my suggestion. It discourages large blobs of units and hordes.

Ummmmm... Why would you want to discourage blobs and hordes? That's kind of the whole point of the game isn't it? Personally I love making hordes of T1 units and having them be effective. Or hordes of T2 if I'm rich... But in all seriousness, hordes/blobs should be effective. Obviously things like artillery and bombers should have splash. But a simple unit death shouldn't damage the units next to it by any significant amount.

Thousands of units closing in on your base and there is nothing left to do but you do have one nuke left. You choose to fire the nuke on your base which your commander is not at. destroying all of your units and the entire enemy force causing you to win the battle front and them from moving on from that base to your others. MWAHAHAHAHA

I never said it should be a significant amount of damage, I want it to just be small amount except for things like power generators, artillery, experimental/uber units, etc.

Sorry, but what does this have to do with unit explosions? Wrong thread maybe?