iMac wrote:
CONs to this are structures are weak when first built.
CONs to this are if you pull a truck off a structure(factory or otherwise) , or the truck gets destroyed(by ground or air units), then you will slowly lose that structure that did take TIME to build.
i don't see these as major cons. certainly one can expect that a construction operation should be vulnerable, and that abandoning it, or having its build-crew destroyed would make it forfeit. i would even go so far as to suggest that it wouldn't be a bad thing to allow an enemy to kill your truck, finish where you left off, and put their flag on it (all of these things just vary on the degree of vulnerability, not the kind -- war is war).
however, i do agree that half-builds, as i've always heard them called, are very unsportsmanlike... i felt it wise to considering again the way that structure building occurs in warzone -- the multistep process is as follows
1. gathering power for the structure (green bar). during this time, power is drained from your total power pool, but the structure gains no hp. after some testing, it appears that the structure full hp, and they're much harder to deal with at this point, since they are completely "flat" at this point, meaning that with the improved collision-detection system, they're almost impossible to deal with except for flamers and artillery.
2. doing the actual construction (yellow bar). during this time, the phyiscal height of the structure increases to it's "finished" size, and at the end of this stage, the structure becomes operational. just like before, it has full hp throughout this whole stage.
I propose two simple changes:
1. if a structure is abandoned (there are no trucks building it) during the "green" phase, the structure is removed, and all energy spent up to that point is returned to the player.
2. during the "yellow" phase, if a structure has at least one truck actively building it, during that time it has full hp. if there are no trucks actively building it, it will have the same percent of its max hp, as it is percent complete. thus a 200 hp building abandoned at being 5% complete will have 10 hp. as soon as a truck starts building it again, it will again have max hp, minus whatever it was damaged (the damage done to it during construction should always be present with starting or stopping the build process -- either converted to a percentage and back again, or using the raw damage.
this should make half-builds meaningless, since they will be very easily destroyed,
and even though the truck didn't spend a lot of time, it did use the full amount of power for only a percent of the hp, and intentional use of half builds would disadvantage the one building them.
it also shouldn't require and logic additions to the code, since these conditions can be hooked into the existing start/stop construction code blocks for trucks, or however it works in the engine.
