[C4:AC][Programming] Combat Units

[Blake]

I posted in the chat my approximate plan for implementing the first version of units in C4:AC. Here it is in more detail, but still approximate .

Start with a selection of base units, the base strength value is SMAC weapon + armor - 1.
Scout: Can be upgraded to all types of units (of the same chassis type). Can accept generic non-combat abilities only (until PSI).
Offensive Rover: +25% bonus in open. 75% defense penalty.
Offensive Infantry: +25% bonus vs bases. 60% defense penalty.
Defensive: Unable to attack. +25% defense bonus in bases. +25% defense vs Offensive Rovers.
Shock Troopers: 25% defense penalty (defend nearly as well as they attack), can take most abilities (both offensive and defensive). Expensive, since they are both weaponed and armored.
Artillery: Cause collatoral damage.
Ship (Skirmisher): 50% defense penalty.
Ship (Battle): Attacks and defends equally well. Can take defensive upgrades.

Offensive Infantry and Artillery would keep the same chassis (infantry, move 1). Other unit types chassis would upgrade with technology (ie Defenders upgrade to rover at fusion, rover upgrades to hovertank at hovertank, Shock upgrade to hovertank at Quantum)

To keep the number of units remotely sane I would pair chassis:weapon like this:
Defensive = Every armor level.
Offensive Rovers = Particle Weapons.
Offensive Infantry = Missile Weapons.
Shock Troopers = Laser weapons (and a near tech armor)
Noodles = Missile weapons.
Interceptors = Particle Weapons.
Choppers = Laser weapons.
Artillery = Particle and Missile Weapons.
Ship (Skirmisher) = Every second weapon starting at laser.
Ship (Battle) = Every second weapon starting at impact.

Laser weapons: Laser. Gatling Laser. Fusion Laser
Particle Weapons: Impact, Chaos, Tacheyon
Missile Weapons: Missile, Shard

Note that units can have multiple tech-prereq. So for example:
Impact rover requires Doc:Mobility and Nonlinear Matematics.
Plasma Defenders require High Energy Chemistry.
Gatling Troopers require Superconductor and High Energy Chemistry.

Hopefully reactors can be implemented in some cool way, otherwise units will have a 3rd pre-req.
ie: Chaos Rover requires Chaos theory, doc:mobility, fusion power. (we could simply say that fission reactors don't have the power for Chaos+ weapons, or we could have both fission and fusion varities)

Abilities:
The initial model would be sticking with the Civ4 combat experience & promotions model (except reworking promotions to SMAC abilities, sofar as possible) prehaps with the following additions:
1) Defenders get a free ability slot, but only a few abilities are available for defenders: Comm, AAA etc. Other units must earn all of their abilities through combat experience.
2) A bioenhancement center makes units start with a free ability slot (2 in the case of defenders).

Art:
Modern Age Civ4 units will be used. Maybe we can do some reskinning, but I expect the mod will be playable before we have much in the way of our own art.

[Lord Nword]

I generally agree... The overall way I'm thinking of doing the mod is to make the unit workshop the last big thing we do. We can have a pretty solid mod as long as we have a decent number of standard units to choose from (and particularly if individual users and insert their own predefined units... no number of types limit hopefully)

[Senethro]

Re: [C4:AC] Combat Units

I think you've got a good working solution for an early version pre-design workshop. However, this part confuses me...

Originally posted by Blake
Laser weapons: Laser. Gatling Laser. Fusion Laser
Particle Weapons: Impact, Chaos, Tacheyon
Missile Weapons: Missile, Shard

You're not trying to set up some rock/paper/scissors like the unimplemented feature in the alphax.txt here, are you?

And if you were to just ignore prototyping completely, why would the number of units get insane, even if all chassis had all guns available to them at some point? As long as you had very aggressive obsoleting, what would be the problem?

Art: I was thinking about reskinning with specific colours indicating gun level. Red = hand weapons, lasers = orange, Impact = yellow etc.

[binTravkin]

As long as you had very aggressive obsoleting, what would be the problem

Heah, Senethro, people are lazy.
I often find it very annoying that my design workshop needs to be cleared several times a game (especially PBEM and especially if playing momentum approach or at least being at war).
If game get's as far as quantum (and research speeds are really fast) it becomes pretty annoying in the middle of other MM to worry about what designs you have and should have.

[Senethro]

Yes, but thats for a unit workshop. These units are pre-unit workshop, so why can't they just be obsoleted automatically on tech discovery?

[Blake]

You're not trying to set up some rock/paper/scissors like the unimplemented feature in the alphax.txt here, are you?

No. It's something I'd love to implement but only with the full unit workshop that makes more combinations available... but it'd be a daunting task, making it work good.

It's mostly based on units that get built often. Impact Rovers, Missile Penetrators etc are available. The offensive infantry are the ones that are commonly mass produced, Missile Infantry for being the most powerful 2-row unit, shard infantry for being the most powerful 3-row unit - in terms of base cracking power over cost.

Likewise the Impact Rover provides good price/performance as does the chaos fusion rover (both at 3 rows). The cost of a more powerful weapon often isn't justified, these units are for whiping out soft targets rather than cracking hard targets.

By keeping the number of units down it makes it remotely possible to give each a unique appearance. Also reduces the download size to some degree, maybe (depending how easy it is to make unit types share model data). In any case there's already 35 combat units in the lineup I proposed above. That is quite a lot.

Ofcourse the unit lineup can be altered if there are serious gaps... maybe in the laser era. Might need recon rovers.

[Senethro]

Guys...guys...waitaminit, waitaminit, its coming....its nearly here.....

Ok, heres my idea. All units are strength 1. Lasers give access to special ability offense +100%. Synthmetal gives access to special ability defense +100%.

I think you know how the rest goes with impact weapons/plasma armour.

amirite or wat?

[NanoDingo]

Re: [C4:AC] Combat Units

Originally posted by Blake
Abilities:
The initial model would be sticking with the Civ4 combat experience & promotions model (except reworking promotions to SMAC abilities, sofar as possible) prehaps with the following additions:
1) Defenders get a free ability slot, but only a few abilities are available for defenders: Comm, AAA etc. Other units must earn all of their abilities through combat experience.
2) A bioenhancement center makes units start with a free ability slot (2 in the case of defenders).

3) Researching Neural Grafting gives all units an extra free ability slot?

[binTravkin]

Ok, heres my idea. All units are strength 1. Lasers give access to special ability offense +100%. Synthmetal gives access to special ability defense +100%.

You just repeated what I said in initial thread a couple of months ago.
Amazing how fast people forget good ideas just to reinvent them later..

[Senethro]

>.<

So why did you say it would be hard and we would have to go hacking about in the .exe to restore 2-strengths combat?

[binTravkin]

I said it'd be hard to implement exactly how it is in SMAC, so to say 'clone'. Because we'd need to code in the entire dual combat aprroach.

If we go the easy way and use abilities/promotions, it's not a clone anymore as it will not behave 100% as dual combat, more likely at 90-95%..

[Blake]

Originally posted by Senethro
Guys...guys...waitaminit, waitaminit, its coming....its nearly here.....

Ok, heres my idea. All units are strength 1. Lasers give access to special ability offense +100%. Synthmetal gives access to special ability defense +100%.

I think you know how the rest goes with impact weapons/plasma armour.

amirite or wat?

It'd be neat if it worked but the AI might have a lot of trouble with the concept, not to mention making the units actually look different. The reason I propose making a selection of base units is so it fits with Civ4.

The most difficult part of making the workshop may well be having the custom units appear in the build list, it's one thing using a script to modify a units strength, but another to have it seamlessly buildable. The interface is the main reason I don't at this point support trying to go the unit workshop right away. (if it proves really easy... then sure)

[Senethro]

Pre-Unit Workshop you can hardcode in Offensive Rovers, Defensive Rovers, garrisons and shock troops. These archetypes might even be a useful way of explaining to the AI how to use the design workshop effectively.

While I'd be happy to release a first ver. without a workshop for publicity reasons, I don't think you can go too many vers without having the central features.

[Blake]

I looked through the python API reference, as I expected there is no access to the "Unit Type" class.

Btw the way I outlined it units DO have Attack/Defense.

For example an Impact Rover has strength 4 which it uses to attack with, it has a defense penalty of 75%, on defense that is.. 1.
In SMAC the Impact Rover attacks with a strength of 4, and defends at strength... 1.

Ofcourse the recon rover would only have defense 0.5 and the Chaos Rover would have defense 2. In terms of packing offensive punch but being vunerable to attack is represented quite well.

Also reading through the API I note that for units we can indeed alter how the AI uses them, but the API only lets us work with units *after* they've been built, this is why the Workshop is tricky. We might be able to create a new build select dialog with the custom units and attach the statistics to the (base) unit being trained, then when it pops out, grab the attached statistics and update the unit's stats and rename it, but err, that's easier said than done.

I just think the solution would probably be a lot more elegant and seamlessly integrated if we implement it using the C++ SDK.

[binTravkin]

I see we are starting to make mess.

As I stated in my proposal things should be discussed over separately from each other and all the related people should get into discussion

Now there are thread where I and CT express one though, and other where Senethro and Blake argues over other.

That is nonsense.