Entrechments for temporary defense

[Corporal Punishment]

How about this one: As of now, the only way to have stationary defenses is to built bunkers, towers and hardpoints. But they have some major drawbacks in situations where you need such structures only temporarily: They are expensive, slow to built and stay behind once the front moves on. Imagine defending a pass for example. As long as you're on the defense, bunker do well. But once you pushed the enemy back and the pass is in your own hinterland, you may wish to transfer the defensive structures to another location. To be more flexible with defenses, let's introduce a new structure to be built by trucks and engineers, the entrenchment. A simple, cheap to built concrete position that has little to no tactical value of it's own. Field units could "dock" with this structure to make valid defensive structures. Basically, they would temporarily trade their mobility for advanced armor. Once these defenses would become obsolete, the unit can leave the entrenchment and drive to another location where the truck or engineer prepares a new entrenchment for it. Alternatively, they can join an offensive that's pushing past their position or even start such an offensive themselves. It would further allow to withdraw the units if they would be overrun rather than watching them get killed like a stationary defense.

In technical terms, the entrenchment would be a container like a transport. It would count as a concrete structure, exhibiting the appropriate weapon modifiers. The unit within would be safe from harm until the entrenchment is destroyed. Loading and unloading a unit would be similar to transports: Select the unit and click the entrenchment, the unit will then go to and be docked with it. To unload, select the entrenchment and a representation of the docked unit will appear in the left interface window. Click this representation and the unit will leave the entrenchment.
The build cost and time would be something about one third of those of a machine gun bunker while hit points should be comparable to that.

From the artistic point of view, this could be something very similar to the mortar pit, but larger to allow even heavy body/track units to occupy it. If one wants to push the boat further, there could be a trench for cyborgs and a pit for vehicles. Alternatively, it could be small, medium and large pit, allowing for larger vehicles with progressing size and cyborgs being able to occupy all of them.

[KukY]

Interesting idea, but too complicated.

[macuser]

Like gaurd towers in age of empires where the archers can shoot out and you can garison them inside? Great idea! Although it may be to complicated for implementation

[HairyLee]

If this was limited to cyborgs only, I reckon it'd be a lot more feasible (not to mention, actually give us a reason to use them).
Another suggestion (taking inspiration from your comment about archers) would be maybe a small 'castle tower' like structure that you could put cyborgs into (it would probably look something like a tall bunker, so you wouldn't necessarily be able to see the units inside, whice would get round complications a little). They could fire out of it & considering it'd be an elevated structure, they could maybe get some range/accuracy advantage? This would be awesome with cyborgs using a sniper-type weapon & would look pretty sweet as a cornerpiece to a hardcrete wall.

[Roux Le Corps]

I agree with hairy lee on this one! but it shouldn't be too hard to do should it? fan automatic hold ground command after they enter? a few buffs? meh, maybe i don't know because i've never used the script, but i like more cyborg functionality...

[Corporal Punishment]

A guard tower would be obsolete, I think. For base defense, the current hardpoints and bunkers do well, as such positions are by no means temporary and with the defenses gaining experience in the future, it doesn't make any sense waisting field units to man such positions. Out on the battlefield, an elevated tower would conflict with the idea of having a cheap and fast to build position. I believe Olrox can tell you why towers are complicated to build. Plus, they are prone to get artillery shelled. A sunken entrenchment is, not even in the WZ engine, visible from as far as a tower, compare bunkers to current towers and hardpoints in-game.
A limitation on use by cyborgs would drastically cut down on the tactical variability of such entrenchments. Your basic cyborg lacks the durability of a tank, so using entrenchments as staging areas for offensives falls flat with such limitations. Another thing is that there are no AA cyborgs and I specifically thought about entrenching AA units to quickly react to VTOL threats as these use the same flight path all the time as long as they are launching from the same base and change this for another standard path once they are redirected to a new airfield. Or, to put up another scenario, protect your own movement corridor from enemy VTOL raids as long as necessary and then relocate the AA units to another position as your routes shift. The same would be true for artillery units within their respective field of operations, think siege or bottleneck defense.

All in all, I am not familiar with coding in general, but I can't imagine making such entrenchments would be utterly hard. Most of the functions necessary are already in the game: Units can sit atop structures and interact with them, see VTOLs and rearming pads. Loading and unloading a unit is a common thing with transports. A "Stay-where-you-are-even-if-it-gets-you-killed" command is present in the AI-menu with the "Hold-position" command. Correct me if I'm wrong but the only thing that needs making up something from scratch is a script that would override the type of the entrenched unit for "hard structure". Everything else should be about reassembling existing scripts.

[Roux Le Corps]

I still think, and i know this will sound pushy and like i paid no attention at all, but cyborgs have little, if any practical defense use apart from a meat shield to protect your heavy hitters, so the added defense of having them entrenched would easily have them see some practical use.

Although you do raise a good issue with those VTOL, and seeing as a purely AA cyborg would be odd, maybe just give like lancers and assault gunners etc the ability to aim at the VTOL? if you use tanks then the entrenchments would always be used instead of the normal defenses...

but i think entrenchments should be a strictly borg idea, i don't think a tank could be easily protected while allowing it to fire back, but for borgs it would make sense... and look cool too.
i think this is just a serious difference of opinion and seeing as i have no experience in these matters... i'll be willing to debate with you until someone higher up (like zarel or olrox ) comes in to say hi heres what i think ^_^

~cheers! Roux

[Corporal Punishment]

Of course the defensive value of a cyborg is low to non-existent. Entrenching them would give cyborgs merit in the defensive role, we don't need to argue on that. But I see no reason to restrict entrenching to them. Modern armies use entrenchments for their tanks all the time, basically these are holes in the ground which the vehicle can drive into via a ramp on the back. They leave only the turret visible above the ground giving the vehicle extra protection and making it harder to spot.
Entrenchments with tanks may although replace regular defenses, I give you that. They need a proper disadvantage over the traditional structures when it comes to prolonged use. A good idea may be to skip the unit becoming safe from harm until the entrenchment is destroyed and divide the damage a weapon deals the manned entrenchment evenly between unit and structure. This would force the player to either dispatch trucks AND repair units to maintain such defenses or to withdraw the units regularly and sent them to a repair station. It would also make coding easier, I think.

[Roux Le Corps]

hmm... you have made a good point there....

Actually the way you put it forward then i think i agree wholeheartedly now ^_^
maybe as the turret would be all that is exposed, only artillery (and plasma cannon i like the boom) would deal damage evenly? being from a different trajectory and the big explosion, but others have maybe a third of overall damage done to the tank?
oh and flamers.... if they can get close enough

AND WAIT! we forgot one part of the coding! the terrain distortion! if its a hole in the ground that would mean we would have to make edits to the tiles/ hight maps to show it as entrenched wouldn't it? and even though messing around with the terrain would be cool i dont think that would help for clipping etc lol

[HairyLee]

There is an AA cyborg. I know it's not specifically AA, but the lancer cyborgs always make mincemeat of my VTOLs in skirmishes with the computer.

[Roux Le Corps]

forgot about them, lol

[Corporal Punishment]

Terrain distortion can't be that much of a problem, since this already exists. Prior to building anything, trucks level the ground. And it may not even be necessary to make the actual entrenchment model much of a depression. The Art Revolution Team is doing great work in making actually flat surfaces look structured, and the graphics of an RTS are symbolic at best anyway. Doesn't have to be realistic, just convincing. I think something like a super-sized mortar pit will just do the trick. That model pretends to be a depression by having it's outer faces rise at an extremely low angle from the surrounding terrain and showing vertical inner faces. Good enough for starters.
As far a damage division goes, I would go for a banana approach: The product ripens at the customer. Microsoft gets away with this all the time. Start with equal division and then adjust it according to players experiences.

[Roux Le Corps]

hmmm.... true true... WELL i think if i had any skills in coding or modelling id get onto this pretty fast but i haven't got the programs or know-how to do it... im only an art boy so apart from sketches (and a symbol thats really annoying me) i don't think i could help... maybe i should lure olrox in here?

[Corporal Punishment]

Rather than putting Olrox or anyone else to work on a new structure, it would be better getting an opinion from the dev team if they would have a feature like this at all. It could always go as a mod, but than it still needs the opinion of someone experienced with the WZ code on the matter prior to putting an artist to work...

[Roux Le Corps]

true true... Well i think it's a good idea and shouldn't need much tweaking to get it to run now that we've debated any problems from it hahaha ^_^