New usefullness for commanders

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JorgeAldo
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New usefullness for commanders

Post by JorgeAldo »

I was thinking about commanders, that what i have in mind for them :

1 - Make formations. Real military uses formations while moving into position (Column), when in contact with the enemy (Vee, Diamond, Line Abreast, Line Astern, etc), when breaking contact, etc...

2 - Make units attached to a commander follow these formations (wich include keeping the main weapon covering an arc of fire).

3 - Make impact damage vary with the angle, so a flanking manouver would really be usefull).

4 - Make tanks and bunkers more durable, a general decrease in weapons efficiency, or make them miss more, so you have time to manouver.

5 - Bring a cohesion bonus for units under a formation, leaderless units scatter and are unable to keep formation, so losing its effectiveness.

6 - The number of units controlled by a commander varies with his rank, starting at Liutienant level.

7 - Make formations nested, ie : a formation of formations commanded by a higher officer, meaning you can keep your mortars behind the tanks, etc...

I know how to program in C/C++ but i am too overwhelmed by the source code size to make any contribution, actually, every time i tried to join a big programming i failed to menage to reach my goals, so i ask if another programmer more experienced than me can do this sort of thing... This will make commanders more valuable in the battlefield IMHO.

Ah, other ideas :

1 - Make cyborgs cheaper, to work as infantary.
2 - Make them able to dig into the ground creating trenches and foxholes, wich would give them a HP bonus but stationary...

I know this one is hard, but its very realistic...

Maybe allowing them to enter buildings (and so the building gives them shelter) would be a good idea too... There are some maps with a lot of buildings scattered (but too weak to be true) and cyborgs would use them as shelter against tank attacks...
Last edited by JorgeAldo on 21 Dec 2006, 05:22, edited 1 time in total.
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Watermelon
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Re: New usefullness for commanders

Post by Watermelon »

JorgeAldo wrote: I was thinking about commanders, that what i have in mind for them :

1 - Make formations. Real military uses formations while moving into position (Column), when in contact with the enemy (Vee, Diamond, Line Abreast, Line Astern, etc), when breaking contact, etc...

2 - Make units attached to a commander follow these formations (wich include keeping the main weapon covering an arc of fire).

3 - Make impact damage vary with the angle, so a flanking manouver would really be usefull).

4 - Make tanks and bunkers more durable, a general decrease in weapons efficiency, or make them miss more, so you have time to manouver.

5 - Bring a cohesion bonus for units under a formation, leaderless units scatter and are unable to keep formation, so losing its effectiveness.

6 - The number of units controlled by a commander varies with his rank, starting at Liutienant level.

7 - Make formations nested, ie : a formation of formations commanded by a higher officer, meaning you can keep your mortars behind the tanks, etc...

I know how to program in C/C++ but i am too overwhelmed by the source code size to make any contribution, actually, every time i tried to join a big programming i failed to menage to reach my goals, so i ask if another programmer more experienced than me can do this sort of thing... This will make commanders more valuable in the battlefield IMHO.

Ah, other ideas :

1 - Make cyborgs cheaper, to work as infantary.
2 - Make them able to dig into the ground creating trenches and foxholes, wich would give them a HP bonus but stationary...

I know this one is hard, but its very realistic...

Maybe allowing them to enter buildings (and so the building gives them shelter) would be a good idea too... There are some maps with a lot of buildings scattered (but too weak to be true) and cyborgs would use them as shelter against tank attacks...
I dont think formation is very useful in modern combat,a commander should give some 'moral bonus' such as improved move speed and reload speed,which is much easier to code compare to the complicated formation.

The wz source is not very big though,the point is that you dont have to understand 100% source files in order to add features/fixes,you just have to make a list of things needed to be changed for a feature and get familiar with the source files that contain the things you listed.

updated 'code readme' for the source files I changed,maybe it can help others to understand those files:
Attachments
codereadme.txt
(13.14 KiB) Downloaded 334 times
tasks postponed until the trunk is relatively stable again.
JorgeAldo
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Re: New usefullness for commanders

Post by JorgeAldo »

Some info about what i have in mind :

http://www.gamedev.net/reference/articl ... le1931.asp

And full info about modern military operations :

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ ... index.html

Tatical formations :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:T ... formations

A side note about VTOLS.

I think i know what their problem is :

We must separate two types of VTOL behaviours based on their current weapon :

If the weapon is a dumb munition without own propulsion, VTOLs should "carped bomb" the area as if they were a WW2 bomber. On the other hand, if they carry self-propelled munitions, cannon or missiles they should do the standar army helicopter tatics, ie : Pop-up and down using the terrain to mask their position, while stand still. Every time a VTOL pops-up the mask it fires its weapon, them it pops-down into mask to wait reload time. This is the standard helicopter tatics (Used for one in Enemy Engaged Apache Havoc helicopter simulator).

For this to work we need variable height for VTOLs. Carpet bombers should fly at the highest altitude possible while helicopter-like VTOLs should fly as low as possible and use terrain masking for self-defense.


Edit :

I am unable to download the MingW version specified in the wiki, it gives me the following error :

downloading mingw-runtime-3.10.tar.gz
SendRequest Error
Could not download http://error.dl.sourceforge.net/sourcef ... .10.tar.gz!

Anyone experienced with MinGW could help me ?
Last edited by JorgeAldo on 21 Dec 2006, 18:19, edited 1 time in total.
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Watermelon
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Re: New usefullness for commanders

Post by Watermelon »

JorgeAldo wrote: Some info about what i have in mind :

http://www.gamedev.net/reference/articl ... le1931.asp

And full info about modern military operations :

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ ... index.html

Tatical formations :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:T ... formations

A side note about VTOLS.

I think i know what their problem is :

We must separate two types of VTOL behaviours based on their current weapon :

If the weapon is a dumb munition without own propulsion, VTOLs should "carped bomb" the area as if they were a WW2 bomber. On the other hand, if they carry self-propelled munitions, cannon or missiles they should do the standar army helicopter tatics, ie : Pop-up and down using the terrain to mask their position, while stand still. Every time a VTOL pops-up the mask it fires its weapon, them it pops-down into mask to wait reload time. This is the standard helicopter tatics (Used for one in Enemy Engaged Apache Havoc helicopter simulator).

For this to work we need variable height for VTOLs. Carpet bombers should fly at the highest altitude possible while helicopter-like VTOLs should fly as low as possible and use terrain masking for self-defense.
I think BB is too 'advanced' to be used in a RTS game,probably it will 'strip' the 'macro/micro fun' from the game.

I agree that the VTOL's need some changes.There should be at least 3 types of air units:bomber,interceptor and gunship

bomber: strong vs slow moving ground units/foritification/stationary targets

interceptor: strong vs bomber and gunship

gunship: strong vs mobile ground units
tasks postponed until the trunk is relatively stable again.
JorgeAldo
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Re: New usefullness for commanders

Post by JorgeAldo »

BB would strip the fun if used it in a too higher level on the player side (ie, substituting him as the commander).

But it would give a great boost to the computer player AI...

Found a set of files called "formation", i added some code to allow echelon left and right formations, but i cannot test this as i dont either understand how this code works and i cannot setup the MingW environment :P
Last edited by JorgeAldo on 21 Dec 2006, 18:54, edited 1 time in total.
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kage
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Re: New usefullness for commanders

Post by kage »

apache crews (manning the longbow variant) tend to like the tactic of firing off a missile and guiding it into something shiny 10 km away -- they came to the realization that's it's a lot safer to shoot at something that's too far away to shoot back  ;)
JorgeAldo
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Re: New usefullness for commanders

Post by JorgeAldo »

Them ask they about doing this against tunguska or a thor-m1 battery :P

Its easy to do this against iraqui army, but not against a modern army, even in iraq the choppers runned into a lot of problems...

The pop-up/down tatic and the "dont-fly-over-cities-and-cramped-areas" rules for choppers still stands when the two sides are at technological parity...

The worst enemy of choppers is still the infantry with hand-held missiles, this was shown in the afeganistan conflict and shown again in iraq war...
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Re: New usefullness for commanders

Post by Solitaire »

As far as air units are concerned (ignoring T3/T4 silliness for now...) I had an idea four years ago and I'm sticking to it! :D

Strike VTOL
Appears: Late T1/early T2
Classes: Light, Medium
BP: Very Low
Defense Bias: Normal
Speed: Exceptional, High Altitude
Cost: Medium-High (quick build times)
Hardpoint: Chin (-1, MG/Laser only)
Integrated: 2x Wingmounts (+1, AAMs/AGMs/rocket pods only)
Offense: Attack Run

Bomber VTOL
Appears: Mid T2
Classes: Medium, Heavy, Assault
BP: Medium
Defense Bias: Low
Speed: Very High, Mid Altitude
Cost: High (normal build times)
Hardpoint: Chin (-1, MG/Laser/Cannon only)
Integrated: 2x Bomb Bay (0, Bombs, Rocket/Missile Arty, AGMs only)
Rear Turret (-3, MG/Laser/Cannon only)
2x Side Turrets (-4, MG/Laser only)
Offense: Stationary (arty) or Attack Run (bombs/AGMs)

Gunship
Appears: Late/end T2
Classes: Medium, Heavy
BP: High
Defense Bias: High
Speed: Medium-High
Cost: Very High (medium-slow build times)
Hardpoint: Chin (-1, MG/Laser/Cannon only)
Dorsal (0, no flamers/SAMs)
Integrated: 2x Wingmount (0, AGMs/Rocket Pods only)
Offense: Stationary/Sidestrafe

If you haven't seen the propulsions schema I was thinking of (actually I'll be putting it up tomorrow at the earliest ::) ) then Classes refers to what body types can be accommodated, Defense Bias refers to balance of armor (damage resistance), typically vehicles have weaker top/rear armor and strong front/side armor, Low suggests that there isn't a huge difference between front and back (better balanced) while High indicates a jouster (very high front damage resistance, very weak rear). Hardpoint indicates what weapon hardpoints are used on the body and Integrated lists weapon hardpoints on the actual propulsion, either may have special limitations in brackets beside.

And a note about the funny number in the limitations brackets... new space-saving system, it denotes at-a-glance how many size classes bigger or smaller the max weapon size can be compared to the body-propulsion combo its sitting on. Yeah, weapons don't have a size class yet, its just a handy guide at this stage to what kind of stuff fits where (e.g. MG would be Micro, Light Cannon or Flashlight would be Light, Medium Cannon or Mortar are Medium, Large Cannon/Howitzer are Large, Gauss Cannon and Hellstorm/Groundshaker are Assault) As a guide: plusses are RARE. Mostly its a limitation restricting the size (and overall effectiveness for its techlevel) of add-on guns. And yes, air units have lots of funny weapon requirements...

For example, the rear turret of a Bomber sits on the propulsion rather than body. It covers the rear of the unit as a point-defense weapon and has unlimited (or at least near-unlimited) ammo. Its size class is -3 so just count back three steps from the body. If you were building a heavy bomber it could carry a very small (micro) weapon. If it were a huge big assault bomber (yay!) you could put a slightly bigger (light) weapon there. If it were a medium bomber you couldn't carry any such weapon, there's none small enough!

Also, IMHO main weapon ammo should still be very limited for aircraft, but dealt with on a class basis. It seems fair that a medium fighter could carry more missiles than a light fighter. And a gunship has great ammo capacity regardless, but has great difficulty rearming on a standard pad (too slow!).

Bear in mind that only the MG, Assault Gun, SAMs (and their airborne counterpart AAMs) and Flak AAA are really effective against Strike VTOLs due to their small size and great agility. These weapons will pretty much bounce off a Gunship (lighter SA weapons emphasize either accuracy, blanket coverage and/or blast radius) but a Gunship is vulnerable to more weapons (including Heavy and Rotary MGs) and a few weapons (rebalanced Whirlwind) will make them dead real fast owing to exceptional armor penetration. In the middle, multirole weapons (Rapier/Scimitar VLMs, Javelin laser) can assist in taking down slower air and ground units but have targeting difficulties against those nippy Strike VTOLs.

And I agree with JorgeAldo on the cyborg business, although I had slightly different ideas (light cyborg class, crouch/lie stance modifiers) to achieve very similar goals. If only I was a hardcore coder (and with a better connection!)... Meh... :-\
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Re: New usefullness for commanders

Post by Watermelon »

I will try to fix the VTOL-Helix patch I made a few days,and I'll look into how to make a vtol gunship to 'strafe' and how to make a bomber vtol to do 'carpet' bombing.Another thing I want to do with vtol's is to make striker/bomber vtol to use airfield rather than helix rearm pads.
tasks postponed until the trunk is relatively stable again.
JorgeAldo
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Re: New usefullness for commanders

Post by JorgeAldo »

im still stuck with the mingw software installer...

looks like i will have to donwload every .tar.gz in the chain and install manually :P

Edit :

Found the problem - MingW installer 5.0.3 is too old, you should use the newer 5.1.2, should i update the wiki to point to this installer ?
Last edited by JorgeAldo on 23 Dec 2006, 21:44, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: New usefullness for commanders

Post by karmazilla »

JorgeAldo wrote:should i update the wiki?
Sure  ;)
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kage
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Re: New usefullness for commanders

Post by kage »

Watermelon wrote: I will try to fix the VTOL-Helix patch I made a few days,and I'll look into how to make a vtol gunship to 'strafe' and how to make a bomber vtol to do 'carpet' bombing.Another thing I want to do with vtol's is to make striker/bomber vtol to use airfield rather than helix rearm pads.
a true vtol could always land vertically after it's dispensed its ordinance -- it's only the extra weight (from bombs) at takeoff that might require a runway for traditional takeoff
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Watermelon
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Re: New usefullness for commanders

Post by Watermelon »

kage wrote: a true vtol could always land vertically after it's dispensed its ordinance -- it's only the extra weight (from bombs) at takeoff that might require a runway for traditional takeoff
just curious,did your airfield work as runway or just rearm pad with airfield model/texture in your WWII mod?
tasks postponed until the trunk is relatively stable again.
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kage
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Re: New usefullness for commanders

Post by kage »

Watermelon wrote: just curious,did your airfield work as runway or just rearm pad with airfield model/texture in your WWII mod?
heh. nope, it was a normal vtol rearming pad, but took up more space, and still had the circular "lights" of a normal vtol rearming pad. since, at the time, we didn't have the source, without some sort of glorious hack, there was no way to make it work like a normal runway.
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