Ecological niche for light bodies

[Corporal Punishment]

How about this one: As you research the mediums, light bodies become pretty much obsolete at the moment. But think about it, they could make for good scouting vehicles, or for hit'n'run tactics if they had better survivability. Now, I am not proposing to increase armor or hit-points on them. But think about light vehicles being harder to spot than mediums, and those harder to spot than heavies. This ultimately means an enemy would have to come closer to a lighter unit to be able to see it. On the other hand, the light unit would experience an advantage when pulling back from a more heavily armored enemy, since it could still see him (and fire at him respectively) while already being out of his sight. This together with the general advantage in speed will allow light units to survive encounters with heavier forces if pulling back in time on one hand and enable them to slip by to do recon or destroy a specific target on the other. Something like this is logical, since lighter vehicles have smaller silhouettes and generate less noise. Eventually, this feature would require droids to have three different sensor ranges, short for light targets, medium for medium targets and long for heavy targets respectively. Cyborgs would in this respect be handled as light while super cyborgs might be medium.

Like it?

[KukY]

No.
You reasearch new things because they are better(stronger)than the old ones.
That just doesn't make sense.

[Kacen]

I think this is a brilliant idea.

It would make light bodies perfect as scouts.

[KukY]

I think this is a brilliant idea.
It would make light bodies perfect as scouts.

Bug Hover works perfect for that.
And it's unrealistic.

[Kacen]

And it's unrealistic.

Not really, if we make the difference just one square for each body.

Keep the current system for heavy, medium can stay out of range an extra 1 square, and light an extra 2 squares.

Super Heavy is easier to see so it's inverse 1 square; you'll see it sooner than other vehicles.

[Corporal Punishment]

Bug hover doesn't work perfectly for scouting because it makes for fire-and-forget-units. You send them in and know the enemy is there when your scouts get killed. Not what I understand as perfection. And it's not unrealistic at all, like I said light vehicles are smaller and generate less noise, what makes them harder to see and hear. And because of their lower silhouette, they have a smaller radar cross section than bigger vehicles. This essentially means they must come closer to the radar, were the irradiation is stronger, to generate an echo that can be picked up by the receiver. Minimizing radar cross section actually is all there is to modern day stealth aircraft and ships. Plus light vehicles have less ferromagnetic mass than heavier ones, what would mask them from potential electromagnetic scanners on the fringe of their range for the same reason, i. e. because the field distortion generated by small masses is to low to be picked up at the edges where the field is weaker.

Giving light vehicles a one-tile-advantage over mediums and so on sounds reasonable.

[guciomir]

maybe devs will say what they think about it?

[Zarel]

maybe devs will say what they think about it?

Think about what?

Making light bodies faster? For some of the lighter weapons, sure.

[Corporal Punishment]

Not faster, no. But reducing their visibility, so that they show up on enemy scanners only at a smaller distance than medium or heavy vehicles.

[Olrox]

Argh, I don't like the idea.
I remember a game where one of my friends kept running some crappy VTOL cannon bug VTOL without ammo around the map because he didn't want to loose the goddamned game. It was a huge map and it took me half an hour to catch him with AA.

Now I wonder what would it be if the bastard was harder to see in addition.

[Corporal Punishment]

I see your point, but isn't this rather a matter of accepting defeat like a man? Would he have proven to be more immature if the VTOL was harder to spot?

[Zarel]

No, reducing visibility is near impossible (and infeasible) in a game like Warzone.

[Corporal Punishment]

That's it then. Now to something completely different...

[Olrox]

I see your point, but isn't this rather a matter of accepting defeat like a man? Would he have proven to be more immature if the VTOL was harder to spot?

Yes - That's why I manage it like that:
Immature friends who doesn't accept defeat - Beat them xD
Weak pwnable light tanks - put wings on them and make them have massive advantage from the speed bonus.

And also, about what Zarel said, I was thinking about feasibility matters. Even if it was possible, who would calculate the visibility coefficient for each body, analysing the volume and silhouette? Who would balance it all to make it not hurt the balance of the game? Using the same logic, vehicles would be easier to see from the sides, also (as they are IRL)...

Too much work for something of questionable usefulness, I dare to say

[Corporal Punishment]

Well then, reducing visibility on light bodies is not going to happen for technical reasons. But would it be possible to impend an accuracy penalty on weapons targeting lighter vehicles? Like, when aiming at a light vehicle, chance to hit is reduced by 30%, on mediums by 15%, no modification with heavies and a 15% bonus when targeting super heavies.