New Concept For Troops and Fighters

[AstralWanderer]

President_Elect_Shang said:
The no partial construction is not a problem...if you know you are about to get invaded.

Well, there is the AI to consider as well...

President_Elect_Shang said:
The scale on map can be manipulated by changing the picture called on or in the vehicle size file.

Interesting - but will that affect a unit's ability to navigate around buildings and other obstacles? That should be the main disadvantage for really large units.

President_Elect_Shang said:
Your small units will get chewed up pretty quick...Still think you can tie my unit down?

I was thinking about a more extreme case - say you have player A with 1,000 units total split into 10 stacks of 100 each. Player B has 1,000 units arranged as one 800-unit stack and 200 1-unit stacks. Simply by swarming A with the single units, B can ensure that his 800-unit stack gets to tackle each of A's stacks in turn. Attrition will be high for the single units, but much of A's firepower will be wasted on overkill.

Having large stacks supplied with lots of small weapons will mitigate this but the weapon graphics overheads would presumably then be a problem.

Having the stack sizes set automatically would prevent this but for a mod, one workaround could be to give large stacks a "virtual weapon" usable only against much smaller ones which destroys them automatically (in effect giving them the ability to "overrun" smaller units).

[President_Elect_Shang]

Those topics have all been touched on in one post or another already. For more details you will have to weed through but here is shrink wrapped version:

We already agreed the AI would have fits and need heavy scripting. Essentially it will need its hand held and the "most effective" unit scripted which in turn would be controlled by the current state the AI is in.

We didn't talk about navigating, really I am addressing that point now. There are many ways to work around this. If it is a problem the buildings can be spread out on the ground. It can be made to prevent armies of certain sizes from moving through cities or allow all armies plenty of room.

I do see what you are saying with the swarm tactic. Once again the problem is that you will not be able to make 200 1 unit stacks. The smallest "unit" has not been set; however, I think the idea of a platoon has been forwarded. Anyway lets say you can build 200 1-unit stacks for the sake of discussion. The 200 1 unit stacks would all be knocked out in one or two rounds. It would not give the 800 unit stack a major advantage. The problem with your example is that the total offensive and defensive power of the 800 unit stack will give it dominance over all other units. Swarming with 200 small stacks may be possible; I will give you that. However, swarm tactics are old school. I can already do swarm tactics with the current space combat. Does it work there? I haven't tried it in SE5 yet. I am trying it with one empire in the SFTC beta and not having any luck. The program is splitting the larger units fire power and smoking the swarm ships. Maybe what you are saying is that I need to build a new swarm ship!

[Shadowstar]

There is also the fact that you can't animate the units, so your troops would essentially appear to be skiing around the planet. Course, alot of people don't care about that...

Then what about atmosphere types? Can you make oxygen-breathing troops have penalties on non-oxygen planets, for instance, they have to use enviro-suits which reduce thier speed and hitpoints (breach the suit and you're dead), and so on?

[Atrocities]

I don't think you can apply penalties like you recommended, but that would be cool if you could.

[Shadowstar]

Proper infantry would be cool but I'm not sold on it. It could potentially add to gameplay, but the existing system supports vehicles better than infantry, and there's really no reason to add infantry (aside from aesthetics), when you can pretty much achieve the same gameplay variety by modding vehicles.

Besides, from a realism angle, if you're going to be deploying your army in different environments, you end up saving yourself alot of time and money in the end by just putting them all in tanks (alien-environment battle-suits for 5 men end up being more expensive to maintain and repair than a 5-man tank). If you want to simulate the actions of special forces squads or infiltrators, that seems to fall more under the area of intelligence than armed conflict.

Now, I could possibly see the value of using unmechanized infantry for militia, since they wouldn't need to adapt to any other environment than thier home environment, which they already breathe, but then I'd give them jetpacks, skis, or some kind of hoverboards so there is some explanation for the fact that they seem to float around in battle. Hey, it may be nit-picky but I like for things to make sense when possible.

[President_Elect_Shang]

The troops sliding around; or hovering, is just something that is. Ground combat is pretty much space combat. Obvious differences aside that is. I wouldn't be willing to say that the troop idea couldn't done. Just that I don't think it could be done using the atmospheres; maybe with the planet types??? It would be very complex...

[President_Elect_Shang]

You would have split the facilities into groups by colony tech. Then give the facilities an ability that augments troops with a certain AI Tag. Then split the troop vehicle the same as the facilities, think the race selection in AST. Then give the troop vehicle that AI Tag. Set your requirement, something like increases damage for AI Tag XX. That is just a rough stab. I don't think it would really work just like I am saying, only that I think it may be possible. Now my head is hurting.

Edit: No set them using Custom Group. I think that would work better. Ok; no more tonight!

[Tampa_Gamer]

I was wondering when someone was going to get around to suggesting this Attached is one of my white papers I had repeatedly bombarded Aaron with during the beta (this one was sent back in September 2005). Anyway, what it had proposed is similar to what is being discussed in this thread. This actually formed the core of my "Ground Combat Mod" I mentioned a few times (but was rather secretive about) that I worked on/off throughout the beta. I have a score of modded files, primitive graphics, balancing spreadsheets, etc. on this if someone wants to take a serious stab at such a mod, but I honestly don't have the time anymore.