[WIP][Server] Junkyard Wars

Discussion in 'Work-In-Progress Mods' started by wondible, October 14, 2014.

  1. wondible

    wondible Post Master General

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    Release Thread; this main post is now out of date.

    Most metal comes via reclaim.

    - All units leave wrecks.
    - All features are reclaimable (trees < rocks < random metal bits on metal planets)
    - Metal spots are reclaimable for significant but finite metal
    - Metal extractors exist only to allow area commands to visit all metal spots.

    Units

    Units with weapons retain them, so you may need to hold fire if you want all the metal from a live target.

    - Basic Combat Fab is the Junkyard Dog - a cheap scavenger
    - Advanced Combat Fab is a basic builder designed for heavy fire situations - a commander in all but uber cannon and death weapon.
    - Inferno has a powerful short-range lathe for mopping up an enemy base and quickly mining metal spots.
    - Vanguard has a heavy reclaim tool; you won't like the power bill, but it usually doesn't need to operate for long.
    - Firefly has a very weak lathe for picking up small rocks and trees
    - Gunship has a moderate lathe for reclaim raiding.
    - Sunfish has a basic reclaim tool; the effect direction may be off since it doesn't have a turret.

    Playing against the AI

    The AI is designed for a streaming economy and really doesn't get this mode. I've tricked into playing with x5 eco and metal_drain_check 0.12, but it will still get stalled pretty easily.

    - https://github.com/JustinLove/junkyard_wars

    Planned Features

    Might look for unit to replace metal extractors; tried reclaim towers but found them fiddly.

    Considering breaking up the major changes into separate mods. (wreckage, features, units)

    Trivia

    - There are lots of rounding or overshoot errors in the economy, but nobody notices in a streaming economy.
    - It's possible to set feature reclaim value, it's just... odd. You can get (metal_value/max_health)/10, plus some error based on the build power used. In the typical case, a feature is either 25/25/10 or 25/10/10 for trees, basically 1 metal if you round up generously, and the fabber error dominates.
    - Features must be damageable to be reclaimable.
    - If a metal spot is reclaimed, the strategic icon stays, but you can't build on it anymore (very rarely a fabber will lucky when reclaiming-to-build) Icons do disappear if the feature is destroyed.
    - You must shadow (at least certain) features for changes in base_feature take effect.
    - The commander produces 1 metal to avoid a bug where you can't reclaim with zero metal income, zero metal in storage, and a metal demand.
    - More generally, reclaim rate is limited by build rate - if build speed is being attenuated by lack of metal, reclaim rates will also be reduced, exacerbating the problem.
    - A unit has 1 part of it's metal in life, and wreckage_health_frac parts of it's metal in death. Killing a unit with reclaim is easier with high wreckage fractions.
    Last edited: October 25, 2014
  2. wondible

    wondible Post Master General

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    Wonderful, I've somehow managed to make moon rocks unreclaimable again.
  3. stuart98

    stuart98 Post Master General

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    Dang it wondible!
  4. wondible

    wondible Post Master General

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    It's looking like I have to shadow each individual rock. Not edit it, just have the file in the mod. Earlier I had them in my files from an single over-expansive copy, and grunt doesn't do anything to clear old files.
  5. wondible

    wondible Post Master General

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    Oh, yesterday I did get the combat fabber reworked. There were two issues:

    1. auto_repair could actually be in the way if you were borrowing metal from your commander.
    2. I was concerned about fabber sniping in the very low metal early stages. This is doubly true with the costly combat fabs, which are otherwise extremely useful due to the weird feature reclaiming mechanics.

    I've turned the combat fab into a cheap scavenger unit that can mainly reclaim and build mex.
  6. wondible

    wondible Post Master General

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    Tried mex as reclaim towers, but found building and ordering them fiddly. Converted advanced combat fab into a psuedocommander that might live up to it's name.
  7. wondible

    wondible Post Master General

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    - A unit has 1 part of it's metal in life, and wreckage_health_frac parts of it's metal in death. Killing a unit with reclaim is easier with high wreckage fractions.

    Also, round out first pass unit tweaks.
  8. wondible

    wondible Post Master General

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    The wreckage mod has me thinking of breaking this up into it's major parts and having them as separate mods.

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