DESIGN: Armor and HP's

[MrBaggins]

Nope.. because AP shouldn't effect FP, if there is no Armor. AP's maximum effect should be limited to Armor, in fact.

[Gilgamensch]

Actually after rethinking yours is better.

[Locutus]

D'oh! You're right of course...

[Locutus]

Oh, there are two issues with this system we'll have to keep in mind:

1) Pretty much any change we may make to the meaning of the Armor value will render the game incompatible with current mods. It might be useful to add some backwards-compatibility option that will use the Armor value the way it's currently handled.

2) With this system it's possible to create deadlocks: if you have units who have a high armour value but a low firepower value, all units in a battle may be immune to each other, thus making the battle go on infinitely without anything ever happening. To solve this, the battle engine should check if this occurs in advance and if so, make the attacking army retreat automatically.

[MrBaggins]

Originally posted by Locutus
Oh, there are two issues with this system we'll have to keep in mind:

1) Pretty much any change we may make to the meaning of the Armor value will render the game incompatible with current mods. It might be useful to add some backwards-compatibility option that will use the Armor value the way it's currently handled.

There aren't THAT many mods. Would probably be less work to just do new separate unit.txt's for each, with HP equal to the old HP's * Armor, and Armor and AP equal to 0.

2) With this system it's possible to create deadlocks: if you have units who have a high armour value but a low firepower value, all units in a battle may be immune to each other, thus making the battle go on infinitely without anything ever happening. To solve this, the battle engine should check if this occurs in advance and if so, make the attacking army retreat automatically.

True. Simply set a new class member variable to zero at the start of the battle and if any damage is done during that round set he member variable to zero. At the end of a round, increment the member variable. If it reaches 10 (that is 10 consequitive rounds with no damage done,) then a retreat is forced.

[The Big Mc]

It would be even better MrBaggins with a useless little msg box before the battle starts.

"sir it's no good are weapons will only bounce off the other units “

[Matthew Hayden]

Erm, I hate to be a fifth wheel but I have to agree with Locutus that the idea of a unit's Firepower value being deflected by both Armor and Hitpoints in the manner proposed could cause some problems.

I agree about the invincibility of the armor value, however, and hope to any God's presently in fashion that you can make this work. I'm just concerned for the same reason I notice epeterson remark a few pages back. He said something about not reinventing the wheel.

I see no problem with the actual combat calculations as they are in the vanilla version - since in that you have all the values you need, you just have to graduate them upwards so that later units will have an armor value that renders them basically unkillable by any units that are very badly out-of-date.


I wish to rant about this because I don't see a big problem with the vanilla combat system, I just see lazyness - Activision didn't create a big enough gap between the armor vlaues of early units and those that came later on.

[Matthew Hayden]

OH! And bring back the CTP1 paradrop order!! The CTP2 paratrooper literally makes my head ache

[MrBaggins]

Firepower isn't deflected by HP's. They "take" damage.

In CTP2 the armor stat divides the firepower damage, but since partial damge is done to HP's (rather than any rounding,) all this does is multiply the number of HP's, which makes the armor stat moot, since you could just multiply the base number of HP's for exactly the same effect.

[Gilgamensch]

Actually MrBaggins, you might want to run another poll, if we shall alpha/beta test your suggestion.

[child of Thor]

i agree - this should maybe be one for the actual 'improving CTP2 - making CTP2.5/3' stage? To be honest, i dont have a huge problem with the way CTP2 resolves conflict - it mostly does an ok job, but i would love to see it done better as discussed in this thread

[J-S]

I voted #1. Armor is different from HPs. I hope I'm not repeating anyone else's idea but armor could work like this: it absorbs damage. So, in order to succesfully damage a unit of armor 5 you have to attack it with a weapon of 6 or more.
Also, units should have inmunities, strengths or weaknesses against certain other units. A way to implement this could be that all units are invulnerable to units from 2 ages before.

[Gilgamensch]

I am just converting the units.txt into a nice xls-file to post here, (including my suggestions for modifications of Armor/FP/...) when I recognised that the mounted archer has two ObsoleteAdvance programmed Is this correct?

ObsoleteAdvance ADVANCE_INDUSTRIAL_REVOLUTION
ObsoleteAdvance ADVANCE_TANK_WARFARE

[J Bytheway]

Yes, the engine supports multiple ObsoleteAdvances so you will lose mounted archers when you research either of the specified advances.

[J-S]

Btw, would it be possible to have certain units require a certain city improvement to be built first?
For example, a tank unit could require a war factory to be built in that city.