need help with adding new propulsion component.

Discuss the future of Warzone 2100 with us.
themousemaster
Regular
Regular
Posts: 611
Joined: 10 Nov 2006, 16:54

Re: need help with adding new propulsion component.

Post by themousemaster »

Watermelon wrote: not possible to filter out heavy weapon for certain 'weapon slot' unless you add another DROID_MAXWEAPS fields of data in body.txt or hack the component list function in design.c,neither of them is what I want to do.
So the 1-1-2-3 option is the most feasible then?
User avatar
Watermelon
Code contributor
Code contributor
Posts: 551
Joined: 08 Oct 2006, 09:37

Re: need help with adding new propulsion component.

Post by Watermelon »

themousemaster wrote: So the 1-1-2-3 option is the most feasible then?
we dont really need to be restricted to 'how many on which body size',since number of weaponSlots is defined in body.txt now.It can be something like this:

viper 1
cobra 1
python 2
bug 1
scorpion 1
mantis 2
leopard 1
panther 2
tiger 3
black L 1
black M 2
vegeance 3
wyrm 3
dragon 3
tasks postponed until the trunk is relatively stable again.
themousemaster
Regular
Regular
Posts: 611
Joined: 10 Nov 2006, 16:54

Re: need help with adding new propulsion component.

Post by themousemaster »

Watermelon wrote:
black L 1
black M 2

Retaliation, Retribution :)

Numerically, seems good.
Solitaire
Trained
Trained
Posts: 32
Joined: 05 Dec 2006, 22:47

Re: need help with adding new propulsion component.

Post by Solitaire »

This has gone sooooo off-topic :D

My original idea was to limit multi-weapon units to very large units and specific propulsions owing to their nature (of course, the insane damage multipliers of VTOLs would be taken off to compensate...) This ONLY works IMHO if there is a new weapon size classification system for filtering. No more Bug-Hover-Dual Siege Cannon!!! I also wanted to vary slots bearing in mind the nature of the unit in question (I didn't even give the NP an assault chassis...) Something like below:

Weapons (not complete list, * indicates not vanilla WZ and not implemented)
Micro: MG, Pyke*, Micro-Pod*, Light Grenade Launcher*, BlowpipeSAM*, Sniper Rifle*, Minigun*, C-HEMG*, Javelin*
Light: Flamer, TwinMG, Mini-Pod, LC, Light Mortar, MRL, HPVC, AvSAM, RotMG*, Flashlight, FMRL* single cyborg rockets,
Medium: MC, Inc/Mortar, Hurr, Inferno, AssGun, Light Howie, HMRL*, Massdriver*, AssCan, TRotMG*, PFlamer, Needle, VinSAM, Pulse, Angel, twin tank rockets+BBuster, most bombs
Heavy: EMP/Bombard, HC, SiegeC*, Inc/Howie, Cyc/Whirl, PPot, EMPCan, HBBuster, TAssGun, TAssCan, Rail, HLaser, Scourge
Assault: THC, TSiegeC, GShaker, HStorm, GaussC, PlasmaC
Fort: Field Gun (mini-Big Bertha), twin superheavy rocket/missile (light fortress weapons)
HFort: TwinFieldGun (replaces Big Bertha), quad superheavy rocket/missile (all for heavy fortresses only!)
(Note that these are a bit different from normal WZ, esp. HPV/AssCan (weaker) and AssGun (stronger))

Across the factions (Ana/Sabre/Judge are the assault-class bruisers, the Wyrm an "ultimate" medium)
Viper: Medium
Cobra: Heavy
Python: Assault
Anaconda*: Fort+Heavy
Bug: Medium
Scorpion: Heavy
Mantis: Assault
Leopard: Medium
Panther: Heavy
Tiger: Assault
Sabretooth*: Fort+Medium+Medium
Retaliation: Medium
Retribution: Heavy
Vengeance: Assault+Light
Judgment*: Fort+Medium+Light+Light
Wyrm*: Heavy
Wyvern: Assault
Dragon: Assault+Assault+Light+Light

I'm leaving out the Scav bodies, the cyborg bods and structures for now. Suffice to say, the bigger they are, the bigger their guns (and the fortresses could carry a crudload of little guns as well)

Also note that ground vehicles get a bonus: (except Dragon) if the *main* weapon is below the maximum size it gets small Acc/RoF bonuses and a big boost in body points. Eventually (when coded) it will look different as well (e.g. HvyCan looks more like a real tank turret) and some Medium and Heavy main guns could mount an independent micro or light gun on THEM as a coaxial.

The real fun begins when you throw the propulsions and their properties in...
User avatar
Watermelon
Code contributor
Code contributor
Posts: 551
Joined: 08 Oct 2006, 09:37

Re: need help with adding new propulsion component.

Post by Watermelon »

Solitaire wrote: This has gone sooooo off-topic :D

My original idea was to limit multi-weapon units to very large units and specific propulsions owing to their nature (of course, the insane damage multipliers of VTOLs would be taken off to compensate...) This ONLY works IMHO if there is a new weapon size classification system for filtering. No more Bug-Hover-Dual Siege Cannon!!! I also wanted to vary slots bearing in mind the nature of the unit in question (I didn't even give the NP an assault chassis...) Something like below:

Weapons (not complete list, * indicates not vanilla WZ and not implemented)
Micro: MG, Pyke*, Micro-Pod*, Light Grenade Launcher*, BlowpipeSAM*, Sniper Rifle*, Minigun*, C-HEMG*, Javelin*
Light: Flamer, TwinMG, Mini-Pod, LC, Light Mortar, MRL, HPVC, AvSAM, RotMG*, Flashlight, FMRL* single cyborg rockets,
Medium: MC, Inc/Mortar, Hurr, Inferno, AssGun, Light Howie, HMRL*, Massdriver*, AssCan, TRotMG*, PFlamer, Needle, VinSAM, Pulse, Angel, twin tank rockets+BBuster, most bombs
Heavy: EMP/Bombard, HC, SiegeC*, Inc/Howie, Cyc/Whirl, PPot, EMPCan, HBBuster, TAssGun, TAssCan, Rail, HLaser, Scourge
Assault: THC, TSiegeC, GShaker, HStorm, GaussC, PlasmaC
Fort: Field Gun (mini-Big Bertha), twin superheavy rocket/missile (light fortress weapons)
HFort: TwinFieldGun (replaces Big Bertha), quad superheavy rocket/missile (all for heavy fortresses only!)
(Note that these are a bit different from normal WZ, esp. HPV/AssCan (weaker) and AssGun (stronger))

Across the factions (Ana/Sabre/Judge are the assault-class bruisers, the Wyrm an "ultimate" medium)
Viper: Medium
Cobra: Heavy
Python: Assault
Anaconda*: Fort+Heavy
Bug: Medium
Scorpion: Heavy
Mantis: Assault
Leopard: Medium
Panther: Heavy
Tiger: Assault
Sabretooth*: Fort+Medium+Medium
Retaliation: Medium
Retribution: Heavy
Vengeance: Assault+Light
Judgment*: Fort+Medium+Light+Light
Wyrm*: Heavy
Wyvern: Assault
Dragon: Assault+Assault+Light+Light

I'm leaving out the Scav bodies, the cyborg bods and structures for now. Suffice to say, the bigger they are, the bigger their guns (and the fortresses could carry a crudload of little guns as well)

Also note that ground vehicles get a bonus: (except Dragon) if the *main* weapon is below the maximum size it gets small Acc/RoF bonuses and a big boost in body points. Eventually (when coded) it will look different as well (e.g. HvyCan looks more like a real tank turret) and some Medium and Heavy main guns could mount an independent micro or light gun on THEM as a coaxial.

The real fun begins when you throw the propulsions and their properties in...
you meant some kind of weapon availability filter based on body size?
some weapons are only available for certain 'size' of body to prevent some huge turret from being installed on smaller body,which looks rediculous?
tasks postponed until the trunk is relatively stable again.
User avatar
kage
Regular
Regular
Posts: 751
Joined: 05 Dec 2006, 21:45

Re: need help with adding new propulsion component.

Post by kage »

okay. first the on quasi-on-topic (which isn't at all on topic):

if warzone already stores hardpoint maximums per individual body type, you should just use that (i remember warzone has a lot of "unused" or "unknown effect" properties in its data files). not only is it signifigantly more flexible (limiting it to body size is far too inflexible, especially considering that there are many small vehicles in real life that have several machineguns, as an example) -- in other words, give the modders whatever flexibility they want: if their mod is horrible and unbalanced, well, then no one is going to play it and thus it shouldn't really a concern for the source code developers to worry about balance (you provide the features and the modders can worry about the balance issues, and if a really nice feature messes up, say, the warzone campaign balance, there are several people who would gladly go through and tweak the balancing issues to accomodate).

also, personally, i don't agree with using the tech level as the determining factor for weapon restrictions... it is pretty unrealistic (it's like saying "no, that jeep can't handle having that .30 caliber machine gun that came out this year, however, it can handle the main cannon from a world-war ii era tiger-class tank with ease, since that's quite old enough -- that should fit on top quite nicely!"). on military vehicles from any area (after the invention of mounted guns/cannons), there are two things that limit the type of weapon that can be fitted to any given area:
  • weight of the weapon: if the weapon is so heavy that it makes the vehicle sink 2 feet into the mud, it's not something you can mount on the vehicle (a wz2100 example of this is a heavy cannon mounted on a wheeled bug).
  • size of weapon: if you have limited space in which to fit a weapon - for example, on a normal every-day car by removing the passenger side windshield and having it point out the front though there: you're probably more apt to fit a light machinegun than you would a large cannon, as, even if the cannon somehow weighed only 2 kg, you'd still have no room to fit it.
since warzone has no way simple way to measure size (without analyzing the pie files), but does have an easy way to measure weight - a weight based limitation would be nigh-dead-on realistic and require the same amount of work as using tech level limitations. granted, modders will actually have to pay attention to the weight of the weapons they mod, but in general, a weapon in warzone has a damage potential directly related to its weight, moreover the "size" of a weapon is very closely related to its weight: a heavy cannon is one of the heaviest weapons in the game, and is reliably effective, while minipod rockets are one of the lightest weapons in the game, and are brutally ineffective.

now on to something much further off topic:

well, two things here: first, the concept of "hit points" is as unrealistic as you can get - it's really pretty rare in real-life to shoot someone in the leg and have them say "what, no headshot?! you noob, i've got 80 points left". same thing with tanks -- the only possible real-life possibility of having anything actually resembling hit points is found in sci-fi in the form of star-trek like shields in the form of "shields are down by 40%!", where the whole of the craft is protected by a field that dimishes with each hit and has some kind of central generator, in which you could equate hit points to "remaining kilowatts of shield strength power".

no... hit points started as an attempt to emulate reality: computers weren't fast enough to handle anything nearly realistic when it came to damage, and game designers tried to estimate the average survivability of a person. suffice it to say, hit points are way below the processing capabilities of computers now -- it's really unfortunate that only a few games have taken an approach that's more realistic, such as COD2's complete lack of visible hit points, even if the ability to spontaneously regenerate is extremely unrealistic, it's 80% more realistic than walking on a surgical kit and instantly healing all damage. it's just that there seems to be some deal of stigma around keeping hitpoints player-accessible, so that you can ditch the tactical thinking and win with a calculator -- this applies to all genres of military or combat oriented gaming, and nowadays really belongs in the realm of pen-and-paper strategy/role-playing games, as the computers involved (people) are far too slow at performing the required "realistic calculations" to be playable.

the reality is that in warfare, whether it be a soldier, tank, ship, or aircraft, there are pretty much 2 states of being: functional, and non-functional, and not much in between... in the case of a soldier, if you get hit by small arms fire in an area well-covered by kevlar, you'll probably be in a bit of pain, but will still be battle-functional, though, if you get hit in an unprotected area, whether it be in the foot or the neck, there are far too many factors to be able to reliably predict whether you will pass out, quickly go into shock (either of these cases make you as useful as a dead soldier on the battlefield), or if you'll just get really angry and empty a few clips into your attacker: there have been noted cases of people getting pelted with 30+ bullets to the face and chest with little appearant effect, while at the same time getting shot in the hand can put you out instantly. in the case of a tank, all you've got is the armor: if something penetrates the armor, the tank is as good as scrap, at least in regards to immediate battlefield usefulness, as anything that can penetrate the armor is either explosive, and will incinerate the interior (tank is structurally fine, but no one is left alive inside to operate it, not to mention all the electronics are probably pretty well wasted at that point), or is a very high velocity kinetic energy weapon (more akin to an arrow -- usually no explosives of any kind), often creating an exit hole, and in doing so, creating a flash-vacuum inside the tank which has nearly the same effect as incineration (crew still as good as dead) -- see http://youtube.com/watch?v=Waw_TqKl3Ss for an example of the losat in use (a cheap humvee mounted kinetic energy weapon). note the fun thing with armor: if you manage to send a shell half way into the armor (half penetration), or even manage to penetrate the armor without harming the occupants, that plate of armor isn't substantially effected -- there's no such thing as "hit an armor plate once, the armor weakens, hit it again, it's destroyed". in other words, for tanks, hit points can't exist: if you don't kill it, it's fine -- if you do anything to limit its combat effectiveness by attacking it, it's because you either knocked out its treads, you destroyed the tank, or you opened the hatch and killed the occupants -- effectively, if you want to hurt a tank at all, the only way to do so is to destroy it or its occupants.
Watermelon wrote: I think some weapons give great HP bonus while others only give 1 point? extra HP,this is a bit imbalanced/unrealistic imo.
agreed... unless it's the kind of thing you see on those late-night infomercials: "but wait! if you call within the next 3 minutes, not only will you get this 120mm smoothbore auto-loading cannon: we'll send you a year's supply of 'shell be gone', the armor-hardening phenomenon that's been taking the military world by storm, now available in aerosol-spray form!"

eh... i need sleep.
Last edited by kage on 06 Dec 2006, 15:33, edited 1 time in total.
User avatar
DevUrandom
Regular
Regular
Posts: 1690
Joined: 31 Jul 2006, 23:14

Re: need help with adding new propulsion component.

Post by DevUrandom »

How would you want to model realistic weapon effects??

BTW: Also showing the effects you told of:
http://www.youtube.com/watch_fullscreen ... ian%20tank
http://www.youtube.com/watch_fullscreen ... r%20Buster
themousemaster
Regular
Regular
Posts: 611
Joined: 10 Nov 2006, 16:54

Re: need help with adding new propulsion component.

Post by themousemaster »

kage wrote: Lots of stuff

Realism is well and good, but the problem is... if we were to implement said realism into WZ2100 (or many different games), the entire dynamic of the game changes dramatically.  As it is, one of the more popular strats is to rush Scourge missles (high power AND huge range), and put them on light bodies to go kill stuff at high speeds.  If opposing units can not even take a single hit from said missles before becoming "disabled", then every single other unit and strategy goes out the window, and it becomes "who can get Scourge's the quickest".



HP are not *totally* worthless in a simulator, however.  You give an example of a heavily armored tank vs high impact weaponry.  That's fine, and all true, but what about a said heavy tank vs, say... a vulcan cannon?  It's true, a lucky bullet can go down the tank's barrel and detontate an outgoing shell or something, but much more likely is that the raw volume of incoming lead will end up eventually fracturing / melting / whatevering the tank's armor.  That doesn't happen in one bullet though, it takes a lot of em.  And each one reduces the (forgive the overly-abused star trek term) structural integrity of the vehicle.  Unlike the single-shot kinetic weapon you used in your example (which basically creates a neat "hole" in the armor), beating the tank down through sheer volume will eventually cause it to crack over time, which is indeed "hit an armor plate once, the armor weakens, hit it again, it's destroyed" (though of course, in this case, it's more like "hit an armor plate 200 times, and it weakens).

And an example of a larger weapon affecting tank armor:  Some tanks have (forgive me, I don't know the techincal term) semi-explosive packs around their exterior.  If hit, these packs explode *outward*, reducing the force of impace from the incoming weapon.  So lets say a high-explosive tank round hits another tank at an angle; it ends up blowing off an entire side of these things, and the resulting explosion, say, also rips of any type of bullet shield around the machinegun, maybe wrecks some of the exterior electronics, the heat of impact warps the chassie... this is the equivalent of a WZ tank in red-yellow HP.  It can still *move* and *fire*, but that hit side is now substantially weaker, and less able to survive a hit from enemy weaponry, even some weaponry that until that point wouldn't have effected the tank much at all.

Try it at home yourself.  Take a classical-looking block of reinforced concrete.  Stand on it.  Now take a sledgehammer and wail on the block a few times.  Stand on it again.  Repeat the process; as you continue, chips, then chunks, of the block will fall apart, but will still be able to hold your weight, until some critical point is reached.  That is the concept of HP.


Why there are HP variances in the weaponry can be describe the same way.  A tank cannon is basically a tube, made of the same material the rest of the tank is, whereas, say, a Scourge rocket isn't.  If incoming fire hits your vehicles TURRET, then the Scourge will be disabled long before the Cannon-tank is.  In realities sake, if this game could handle an equation to determine where on the droid a hit occured, and that determined how many "hp" was removed from the vehicle, or perhaps from that area of the vechile, that would be more accurate, indeed.

Which, I'm sure, isn't the reason the original programmers made it that way... they chose their ways for balance purposes.  But it's not entirely unfeasible ;p.
User avatar
kage
Regular
Regular
Posts: 751
Joined: 05 Dec 2006, 21:45

Re: need help with adding new propulsion component.

Post by kage »

themousemaster wrote: Realism is well and good, but the problem is... if we were to implement said realism into WZ2100 (or many different games), the entire dynamic of the game changes dramatically.  As it is, one of the more popular strats is to rush Scourge missles (high power AND huge range), and put them on light bodies to go kill stuff at high speeds.  If opposing units can not even take a single hit from said missles before becoming "disabled", then every single other unit and strategy goes out the window, and it becomes "who can get Scourge's the quickest".
you are absolutely right: no sane designer can take this game as is, make everything use a "either one shot kills or not-worth-mentioning" damage system, and not deserve to eat 3 dozen pitchforks generously donated by formely-content players. there are two things i always stand by when it comes to gameplay altering features/imrovements to the source code:
  • the old behavior is still accessible - new behavior must explicitly set in mods so that no breakage of old mods occurs, or if any, very little breakage.
  • all change that signifigantly alters game balance (such as the above "one shot, usually one kill" possibility) will probably put existing mods into an irrecoverable downard spiral of unbalance, and thus should be tested and used only with new mods designed specifically to take advantage of new gameplay changes.
in regards to something like scourge overbalance happening: if you made a game that was completely realistic, there'd be absolutely no balance whatsoever -- there couldn't be... the whole reason for military research and development is to find new and exciting ways to slaughter your enemy in the most pathetically effective way -- look at hiroshima and nagasaki: if you call that "balance", i'd call you a psychotic.

warfare works sort of like a business (it's been said it works the other way around too): "supply and demand" is a very big deal... if your enemy has a whole lot of tanks but no infantry, you're probably not going to develop anti-infantry weapons, and you certainly won't bother wasting time teaching your troops hand-to-hand combat techniques. so, your enemy has tanks... you find out that you can't get anywhere near close enough to them with your infantry to plant explosives on their underbelly (no armor down there, so very light explosives do the job), or toss grenades through the hatch, or anything like that because they have really effective machineguns, and let's say, nerve-gas grenade launchers just for effect. you could make gas masks for all your soldiers, but then you'd still lose most of them to the mg's. so, you decide you will develop really really long range armor piercing rocket and the means to launch them: they allow you to kill the enemy's tanks with zero risk to your own troops, since they're way outside the maximum range of the tanks. you make a lot of these, and destroy all the enemy tanks. the enemy, then, realizes, that your infantry aren't at all trained in infantry vs infantry close combat, and make a lot of guns, and train their soldiers to wipe you out, or alternatively, make really manueverable light vehicles that move too fast for the rocket launchers to effectively take out. that's simply how war works.

giving a real world example: tanks... if the machinegun never existed, neither would the tank: machineguns were so disasterously effective in trench warfare conditions during world war 1 that the tank was created specifically to take out machinegun positions, while providing protection for doing this (aircraft was entirely ineffective at hitting such precise targets). then petrol grenades and other incendiaries ("molotov cocktails") were used to take out the tanks, so the tanks were given a whole lot more armor, so that only really lucky throws with an incendiary grenade would have any effect at all. at this point tanks had very small cannons, as they only had infantry and light emplacements to deal with, and were effectively impervious to all threats, so bigger tanks with big cannons were created to take out other tanks, so now all new tanks needed bigger cannons to handle anti-tank tanks, and then man-portable anti-tank rifles and rocket launchers became effective, so tanks needed machine guns to protect against that threat, so tanks are given stronger armor. simple explosive shells and rockets now do nothing against a tank, and shaped-charge warheads are developed to melt a hole through armor. for some time thicker/stronger armor races more powerful shaped charges until reactive armor (that's the term you were looking for, master) explodes outward on contact with an explosive shell, neutralizing to some extent the effect of the "explosive jet", and pushing it away from the tank so that it can harmlessly burn out. at this point, the only way for explosive shells to be of any effect is for them to either be nuclear, or hit in the exact same spot as was hit previously, which, unless you're 5 meters away, isn't all that easy. more than ever before, tanks are pretty much invincible - those with reactive armor pretty much sit around and take out anything that comes their way (note that british tanks had a passive form of reactive armor during desert storm, and not one of them was destroyed by formely devastating anti-tank weapons). so explosive weapons don't work any more, so researches have the classic idea of "let's take a big metal shard, and send it towards a tank a 1.5 km/s. this was really really effective, and no known tank in existence, nor any that are conceivably producible within the next several years could possibly withstand the effects, as these new weapons can penetrate armor 3+ times harder/thicker than that which is found on the heavier tanks, and reactive armor doesn't make them any less effective - in fact, reactive armor is now weaker against these weapons than old style "metal plates". not only that, but the technology is cheap, and can be mounted on light and fast vehicles such as the humvee which can easily outmanuever a tank and always take it out from a safe distance: the future for tanks is bleak... the only way to protect against this new weapon is to use old-school armor, and everyone is already really good at defeating old-school armor - soon enough, as more world-militaries figure out how to develop these new weapon systems, building a tank will quickly become an "instantly lost investment". that is what you call "escalation".

never do two equal armies meet in battle - one is always superior to the other -- be it technology or number of soldiers. the only way to even up and defeat a more powerful enemy is through tactical superiority. the build up of scourge units already does happen in warzone multiplayer, or at least the last 5 games i've played, except they take the form of mantis/hover/heavy-cannon units, as they seem to be the preffered unit used in rush tactics. your balance issues already exist, since the only way to counter a well-rounded assault vehicle is to be able to take it out instantly -- if you can't take it out quickly, you will always lose to a well rounded enemy -- in those mp games i played, there was nothing that could do that, which was why they were favored for rush tactics - eventually two huge armies consisting solely of mantis/hover/heavy-cannon units would inevitably meet in battle, and both players could get up, take a jog, eat a snack, and then come back to catch the last 5 minutes of the battle... the only way to have balance is to not have balance. if two armies, truely equal in every single way met in battle, you'd not have a winner... you'd have a truce, thus balanced a truely balanced game is never worth playing.
themousemaster wrote: HP are not *totally* worthless in a simulator, however.  You give an example of a heavily armored tank vs high impact weaponry.  That's fine, and all true, but what about a said heavy tank vs, say... a vulcan cannon?  It's true, a lucky bullet can go down the tank's barrel and detontate an outgoing shell or something, but much more likely is that the raw volume of incoming lead will end up eventually fracturing / melting / whatevering the tank's armor.  That doesn't happen in one bullet though, it takes a lot of em.  And each one reduces the (forgive the overly-abused star trek term) structural integrity of the vehicle.  Unlike the single-shot kinetic weapon you used in your example (which basically creates a neat "hole" in the armor), beating the tank down through sheer volume will eventually cause it to crack over time, which is indeed "hit an armor plate once, the armor weakens, hit it again, it's destroyed" (though of course, in this case, it's more like "hit an armor plate 200 times, and it weakens).
again, you are indeed correct. the a-10 thunderbolt ii (aka "warthog") does exactly that, though, really, each one of those rounds is supersonic, and the avenger (the a-10's gatling gun) has very little trouble penetrating armor when it can send 140 very large rounds into a tanks relatively light top armor during a 2 second burst.
themousemaster wrote: And an example of a larger weapon affecting tank armor:  Some tanks have (forgive me, I don't know the techincal term) semi-explosive packs around their exterior.  If hit, these packs explode *outward*, reducing the force of impace from the incoming weapon.  So lets say a high-explosive tank round hits another tank at an angle; it ends up blowing off an entire side of these things, and the resulting explosion, say, also rips of any type of bullet shield around the machinegun, maybe wrecks some of the exterior electronics, the heat of impact warps the chassie... this is the equivalent of a WZ tank in red-yellow HP.  It can still *move* and *fire*, but that hit side is now substantially weaker, and less able to survive a hit from enemy weaponry, even some weaponry that until that point wouldn't have effected the tank much at all.
it is quite concievable that a high-rate of fire vehicle-mountable machine-gun could be developed with anti-tank warfare in mind - this was once popular, and could indeed phase back in, as some things do. you might think i'm missing the point in saying this, but, as it stands, light arms do *nothing* against a tank's armor. as an example, take a standard metal breastplate ("knight in shining armor") at 1/8 inch thickness -- for novelty purposes, many firearms were tested against that design and it was found that anything lighter than a .44 magnum (which is pretty much one of the most powerful handguns in existence) could not penetrate that armor (remember, 1/8" thick) -- standard 9mm handguns made "soft" dents, and some of the large handguns would make noticably harder dents. now think of a 2 inch thick armor (which is a light tank) that is specifically designed to protect against stuff like 60mm shells. there's a sort of rule out there: any projectile that is designed to kill infantry (even an anti-body-armor projectile) is never ever going to be able to penetrate a heavily armored vehicle (such as a tank) -- in fact, it literally wont make a dent, as anti infantry ammunition is designed to be really really cheap, and it really doesn't take much money to develop and mass-produce even a body-armor-piercing bullet compared to one that comes close to being able to dent a tank, much less penetrate it. while it is true that something that can "dent" a tank's armor, even if it's a really small tank, will eventually weaken and destroy that plate of armor, there is nothing in existence that is anti-personel or anti-light-vehicle that can even do that, as even .50 caliber bullets, the largest anti-personel/anti-material round in common use, which can lay waste to lightly armored vehicles, will actually shatter on impact with a tank's armor because it's not nearly hard enough to survive the shock of initial impact. on the other side of the rule, any rapid fire anti-tank weaponry is devastatingly effective against infantry, but is way too expensive to use against infantry on a regular basis -- that being the case: you'd never design an anti-tank machinegun, and give it to infantry engaging in infantry vs. infantry battles -- you'd quickly find out that no matter how much money you had, it'd not be long before you'd be unable to feed yourself, much less your army -- that pretty much eliminates the "end all be all weapon". so really, it comes back down to: either a weapon does absolutely nothing to a tank (you could empty all the pistol and hand-rifle ammunition expended in the whole of world war ii into the front armor of an m1 abrams battle tank and you might actually get lucky -- that is, you might not have gotten wounded from all the fragments of shattered bullets flying back at you. simple high-explosive rounds (designed for anti-infantry use), even if they're extremely high yield, upon striking that same m1 tank, would not even dent the armor enough to cause the explosive plating to react - it's like trying to light a brick wall on fire. on the other hand, anything that can kill off a tank is either going to be anti-tank or anti-aircraft - for those light anti-tank rifles that have a rate of fire of about one round per every two second, emptying 200 rounds into the side of a tank would kill it off quite reliably -- you'd kill it off in 20 rounds, but after all, it is an anti-tank weapon -- the only issue is, the tank isn't empty... if you are in a tank, and you actually hear a "clank... clank... clank..." sound hitting your side armor, you'd realize immediately it's a threat, and would be able to localize it pretty quicky -- before you got through 5 rounds, you'd have the cupola machinegunner trying to take a shot at you... so you kill him/her easily enough, but at the same time you're only 2 seconds away from staring straight down that barrel, and at 200 meters, you couldn't trust annie oakley to win that fight.

same rules apply as in the rest of life: if you're going after a tank, unless yours is bigger, you'd better catch them by surprise and kill them off before they can react. in all other cases, you lose.
themousemaster wrote: Try it at home yourself.  Take a classical-looking block of reinforced concrete.  Stand on it.  Now take a sledgehammer and wail on the block a few times.  Stand on it again.  Repeat the process; as you continue, chips, then chunks, of the block will fall apart, but will still be able to hold your weight, until some critical point is reached.  That is the concept of HP.
well, the physics are just a little bit different here (there's no way to represent the effect with such slow velocities): to make the analogy apply to tank warfare, the following changes are needed. that sledge no longer has any reference to small arms fire - that sledge now represents an armor piecing shell, and you get to chuck that sledge the slab of reinforced concrete at 800 meters/second. you'll find the results are extremely good. next, you test small arms fire -- in this example, grab a half-pound (or around .5 kg) wooden mallet: again, you get to chuck this at the concrete at 800 meters/second... okay - now we get to move on to anti-vehicle weaponry (.50 cal does this quite nicely). this time it's a thick 2 kg rubber mallet: chuck that at the concrete at 1000 m/s. let me know how that goes...
themousemaster wrote: Why there are HP variances in the weaponry can be describe the same way.  A tank cannon is basically a tube, made of the same material the rest of the tank is, whereas, say, a Scourge rocket isn't.  If incoming fire hits your vehicles TURRET, then the Scourge will be disabled long before the Cannon-tank is.  In realities sake, if this game could handle an equation to determine where on the droid a hit occured, and that determined how many "hp" was removed from the vehicle, or perhaps from that area of the vechile, that would be more accurate, indeed.
that's exactly how the more accurate damage models work: many of them still have an "overall armor remaining gauge" to make things simple, but do often round off non-anti-tank weapon damage to 0. a step above that would be giving each plate of armor its own hp, where there is no overall "shared vehicle armor/hp" -- if an armor plate gets to zero, it is assumed to have so many holes that any direct hit to that area that is explosive in native (even anti-personnel explosives) would destroy the inside of a tank. which such a thing could happen, in 98% of tank destruction via armor penetration, the very first thing to make a little hole is what makes the "big boom".
User avatar
kage
Regular
Regular
Posts: 751
Joined: 05 Dec 2006, 21:45

Re: need help with adding new propulsion component.

Post by kage »

(having to double post because i exceeded maximum post length: if you don't know me, you'll quickly find out i'm notorious for long and often superflous posts with a hint of the redundant)

anyways, yes, a one-shot-one-kill/nothing-at-all damage system can't work in a game, at least, not by itself, as there would be no way to make it playable... effectively, to make it work, and to make warzone support a "fairly realistic in almost combat-related ways" form of gameplay (excluding combat psychology), all of the following would need to change/be supported (having typed it out, i realize i forgot some things):
  • directionally signifigant armor: attacking from the rear, or from above would incredibly more effective than attacking from the front. hitting front armor with heavy weapons is the only common case where shots will do nothing to the tank overall, but a third might get through.
  • support for faster projectiles: projectiles in warzone are fairly slow in regards to reality, though artillery is more or less on track, as are some missiles.
  • angle of attack signifigance: hitting a piece of armor at highly suplemental angle (125 degrees 180 degrees) will be ineffective against vehicles with heavy armor, regardless of type of weapon.
  • maps would have to be about 5x larger to be effective for this style of gameplay, and most weapon ranges would have to be modified (the current heavy-cannon range in warzone is about the effective range of a real-world m-16... enough said).
  • the hit/miss system would have to be replaced with a ballistic flight path/collision detection system - this would make it so you couldn't shoot "through" units as is presently possible in warzone, in addition to having numerous other benefits.
  • since the weapons would be realistically deadly, ai would have to be adapted - low rank units would be stupid, and would stand still to take a shot, higher rank tank/vehicle crews be smarter, and would always stay mobile, trying to keep their strongest armor towards the enemy. tank battles would take about as long as they do now, if not longer, because, to avoid that "single shell of death", most tanks would be constantly manuevering: not only would the gunners have to hit a moving target at .5 - 1 km range from a moving vehicle, and would have to do so as their sights shake all over the place (since the tank would be moving over terrain generally more bumpy than pavement). so it's a lot of shooting with eventual lucky hits. having to lead enemy targets based on each vehicles speed, direction, and relative altitudes would be extremely difficult. vets get better at manuevering and aiming.
  • limited ammo: rearming costs power, but rearming expensive and effective weapons (such as bombs, and anything that has any homing/tracking capability) is quite costly.
  • only minor field repairs (fixing a damaged engine, not replacing damaged armor) could occur - tanks must be serviced regularly.
  • true infantry must exist, and must have the ability to have devastating anti-tank capabilities, though equiping soldiers with anti-tank weapons is considerably more expensive than rifles, it is still considerably cheaper than tanks
  • heavy weaponry would destroy most weapons in 2-3 shots.
there is some inherent balance in the above already, but tactically, not damage wise (since damage is mostly all or none): while tank vs tank combat is slow (from having trouble hitting each other), machineguns are terribly accurate, as you can "lead" the bullets onto the enemy - that said, a tank is effectively invincible if well maintained until it is flanked on multiple sides by infantry with any tank weaponry (since the machinegun can only attack a few enemies before one of them can get a shot off, while the main cannon has a hard time the enemy is spread out, as it would have to spend one shell per enemy), in which case the tank is as good as dead. the player with the tank can surroud it with infantry and make it much much more resilient to infantry-based threats, yet all someone has to do is bomb them with incendiaries (which will do nothing to the tank will eliminate its infantry cover), at which point they can once again move in with any tank weaponry.

main problem with this is that it's effectively a whole new game - was impossible before (without the source code) -- very difficult to even attempt to implement now... i'll try to think of less invasive ways some of this can be applied to some, if even minor effect, using suggestions from master, dev, watermelon and others.
themousemaster
Regular
Regular
Posts: 611
Joined: 10 Nov 2006, 16:54

Re: need help with adding new propulsion component.

Post by themousemaster »

I type long posts too, jsut don't have a lot of time all the time ;p.


It sounds like we are both stating the same exact thing anyway... as if the end result is getting lost in the semantics (oh how many arguments in the real world go this way... lets make a realistic game about it!  ;p).



Anyway, the only part I wish to point out of your last post is...
if you are in a tank, and you actually hear a "clank... clank... clank..." sound hitting your side armor...
True, but that's assuming you are the only one trying to take that tank out with rapid fire weaponry.  I'd assume if you had infantry with rapid anti-tank weaponry, you'd have more than 1 person with it.  If all of the anti-tank guns, and for the heck of it, assume the infantry cover is gone, so all of the 50cal's, etc., were all firing at that tank at once, the combined effort would get it quickly.  Even if all the 50cal bullets do is cause frictional heating of the tank's shell, that still aids the anti-tank weaponry in "depleting its hp", as you will ;p.
User avatar
Watermelon
Code contributor
Code contributor
Posts: 551
Joined: 08 Oct 2006, 09:37

Re: need help with adding new propulsion component.

Post by Watermelon »

  • support for faster projectiles: projectiles in warzone are fairly slow in regards to reality, though artillery is more or less on track, as are some missiles.
    doable via weapon.txt.
  • angle of attack signifigance: hitting a piece of armor at highly suplemental angle (125 degrees 180 degrees) will be ineffective against vehicles with heavy armor, regardless of type of weapon.
    should be done via 'top armor' checks.
  • maps would have to be about 5x larger to be effective for this style of gameplay, and most weapon ranges would have to be modified (the current heavy-cannon range in warzone is about the effective range of a real-world m-16... enough said).
    not sure how to do this
  • the hit/miss system would have to be replaced with a ballistic flight path/collision detection system - this would make it so you couldn't shoot "through" units as is presently possible in warzone, in addition to having numerous other benefits.
    done not really ballistic with trajectory,but it does have collision now(no more flying through building/units)
  • since the weapons would be realistically deadly, ai would have to be adapted - low rank units would be stupid, and would stand still to take a shot, higher rank tank/vehicle crews be smarter, and would always stay mobile, trying to keep their strongest armor towards the enemy. tank battles would take about as long as they do now, if not longer, because, to avoid that "single shell of death", most tanks would be constantly manuevering: not only would the gunners have to hit a moving target at .5 - 1 km range from a moving vehicle, and would have to do so as their sights shake all over the place (since the tank would be moving over terrain generally more bumpy than pavement). so it's a lot of shooting with eventual lucky hits. having to lead enemy targets based on each vehicles speed, direction, and relative altitudes would be extremely difficult. vets get better at manuevering and aiming.
    target prediction is sort of working,not sure about the AI.
  • limited ammo: rearming costs power, but rearming expensive and effective weapons (such as bombs, and anything that has any homing/tracking capability) is quite costly.
  • only minor field repairs (fixing a damaged engine, not replacing damaged armor) could occur - tanks must be serviced regularly.
  • true infantry must exist, and must have the ability to have devastating anti-tank capabilities, though equiping soldiers with anti-tank weapons is considerably more expensive than rifles, it is still considerably cheaper than tanks
  • heavy weaponry would destroy most weapons in 2-3 shots.
    need to add a field engineering truck/ammo truck to do rearming,limited ammo could probably be done via weapons.txt,maybe scavanger model/animation can be used as infantry/person workaround.
tasks postponed until the trunk is relatively stable again.
User avatar
lav_coyote25
Professional
Professional
Posts: 3434
Joined: 08 Aug 2006, 23:18

Re: need help with adding new propulsion component.

Post by lav_coyote25 »

excellent discussion. ;D  now... what was the topic?  ???

seems we have some beginnings of future documents. ;)
‎"to prepare for disaster is to invite it, to not prepare for disaster is a fools choice" -me (kim-lav_coyote25-metcalfe) - it used to be attributed to unknown - but adding the last bit , it now makes sense.
Solitaire
Trained
Trained
Posts: 32
Joined: 05 Dec 2006, 22:47

Re: need help with adding new propulsion component.

Post by Solitaire »

How the hell did I manage to start that?! :-[

Err... the point I was trying to make is that multi-turrets will cause problems as they will need quite a bit of rebalancing to make them effective yet balanced; this will probably break balance with older mods, and many (well, probably all!) of my gameplay ideas are closely interlinked so we might be getting ourselves into a rut if we allow multiturrets outside of a mod. All that can be done is to add the facility, unless we want to add ALL of the new features in, which will make the game a lot better and hopefully get around some major balance issues still in WZ while making the game a lot more interesting, but would almost certainly break compatibility with LOTS of stuff. Kind of a nasty dilemma that...

I do NOT want "WZ Simulatorz" outside of a separate mod because that kinda thing derailed a major HW2 mod - not least because it ended up becoming a freaking simulator! My ideas were all created by an urge to add a tiny bit more realism and a fair bit of fresh new interest to WZ, and I'm not the only person who wants multiturrets and I'm not the only one who knows that would open all sorts of cans of worms with balance. Thus the idea of grading weapons came into being, killing two birds with one stone (it would also finally kill stuff like the old Bug-Hover-Hellstorm/Plasma/Scourge/Archie rushing bs), and without using restrictions based on tech level. Also, adding big units to fall in line with the Dragon is an old idea too, and would either need multiturrets or really big guns or BOTH judging from what was said about the Dragon years ago to really make a difference. Yes, the Dragon was a missed opportunity, but at the time there was no way to expand on the concept. There is now. But its damn hard to say whether its all better off as a mod or as a Warzone Revolution. Either way it'd need code support.

I certainly do believe vehicles (and later maybe even defenses) need hit-locations like they had in the Ground Control games, to force players to think more tactically and hopefully devalue rushing a bit (if the rush found itself surrounded...) It links in closely with the addition of true projectile collision modeling which is currently ongoing. Yeah, arbitrarily saying tanks take less damage from the front and more from the rear seems as arbitrary as the concept of HP, but it is as close as we're going to get to realism while maintaining playability. Which is ultimately far more important! Ultra-realistic tank sims do seem somewhat less popular than Half-Life 2 for some odd reason... ;D
User avatar
Watermelon
Code contributor
Code contributor
Posts: 551
Joined: 08 Oct 2006, 09:37

Re: need help with adding new propulsion component.

Post by Watermelon »

Solitaire wrote: How the hell did I manage to start that?! :-[

Err... the point I was trying to make is that multi-turrets will cause problems as they will need quite a bit of rebalancing to make them effective yet balanced; this will probably break balance with older mods, and many (well, probably all!) of my gameplay ideas are closely interlinked so we might be getting ourselves into a rut if we allow multiturrets outside of a mod. All that can be done is to add the facility, unless we want to add ALL of the new features in, which will make the game a lot better and hopefully get around some major balance issues still in WZ while making the game a lot more interesting, but would almost certainly break compatibility with LOTS of stuff. Kind of a nasty dilemma that...

I do NOT want "WZ Simulatorz" outside of a separate mod because that kinda thing derailed a major HW2 mod - not least because it ended up becoming a freaking simulator! My ideas were all created by an urge to add a tiny bit more realism and a fair bit of fresh new interest to WZ, and I'm not the only person who wants multiturrets and I'm not the only one who knows that would open all sorts of cans of worms with balance. Thus the idea of grading weapons came into being, killing two birds with one stone (it would also finally kill stuff like the old Bug-Hover-Hellstorm/Plasma/Scourge/Archie rushing bs), and without using restrictions based on tech level. Also, adding big units to fall in line with the Dragon is an old idea too, and would either need multiturrets or really big guns or BOTH judging from what was said about the Dragon years ago to really make a difference. Yes, the Dragon was a missed opportunity, but at the time there was no way to expand on the concept. There is now. But its damn hard to say whether its all better off as a mod or as a Warzone Revolution. Either way it'd need code support.

I certainly do believe vehicles (and later maybe even defenses) need hit-locations like they had in the Ground Control games, to force players to think more tactically and hopefully devalue rushing a bit (if the rush found itself surrounded...) It links in closely with the addition of true projectile collision modeling which is currently ongoing. Yeah, arbitrarily saying tanks take less damage from the front and more from the rear seems as arbitrary as the concept of HP, but it is as close as we're going to get to realism while maintaining playability. Which is ultimately far more important! Ultra-realistic tank sims do seem somewhat less popular than Half-Life 2 for some odd reason... ;D
if you are referring to 'hit sides',it's already done for units(droids) 6 sides:FRONT REAR LEFT RIGHT TOP BOTTOM,now all bodies have equal amount of armor on all sides.

fps's such as Half-Life 1,2 are very newbie friendly,the learning curve is relatively short compare to the complex system of wz,that's why they became more popular to wz/other RTS's imo.
tasks postponed until the trunk is relatively stable again.
Post Reply