Spring RTS Engine

As a method to increase faction differences and add character to each side, we could look at making some perks Faction-specific, applying ONLY to Mechs of that faction. There would still be an assortment of universal Perks - like Heat, Jumpjets, MASC, Radar etc - but each faction would also have access to a selection of unique Perks.

These will include Perks we already have, namely weapon Range perks, but which will be limited to specific factions. Others will be brand new. I'd like to do some "Alternative Ammo" types. These are covered in-depth in BT, such as here. Most of these different types of ammo will only differ in the amount of damage they do or include special abilities like Inferno LRMs which coat targets in flaming gel.

Many of these Perks, especially the ammo type ones, include drawbacks to their use.

Here are some extended examples:

Federated Suns

- Autocannon Range
- Armour-Piercing Munitions: Does increased damage to armour, less to internals (or same to internals but with dyndamage)
- High-Explosive Munitions: Does increased damage to internals, less to armour
- Precision Munitions: Small self-correcting system on shells (tracking!), but 1/2 the ammo capacity (either a new ammo type, or each shot consumes 2 ammo)
- Caseless Ammo: More ammo per ton but some drawback (less range? jamming potential?)
- Note: None of these special munitions apply to Ultra or Rotary ACs, only regular.

Lyran Alliance

- Gauss Range
- Improved Electromagnets propel rounds faster = more kinetic energy = more damage per shot (can reduce Heavy Gauss dyndamage effect)
- Faster SSRM lock-on = faster RoF? (Slight)

Draconis Combine

- PPC & MRM Range
- PPC Capacitor: PPCs do 5 more damage (+50% for a standard PPC) but also generate 5 more heat (again +50% for standard PPCs)

Free Worlds League

- LRM Range
- Thunder LRM: Missiles with mine warheads that leave behind explosives when they hit the ground (not when hitting a target, as it explodes like normal)
- Inferno LRM: Coats targets in flaming gel, reduced damage but huge heat generation
- Semi-Guided LRM: Can use TAG/Narc just like Arrow. For our purposes, they do increased damage to targets lit by TAG/Narc.
- Swarm LRM: Scatters submunitions around impact, doing splash damage around target.

Capellan Confederation

- Thunder LRM: Capellans are the biggest users of these apparently
- ECM Range
- Enhanced ECCM: For when we make ECCM (ECM negating enemy ECM), make this immune to being negated.
- Reflective Stealth Armor? Makes it immune to TAG or something. Or some other perk to do with Stealth Armor.


How these are implemented, particularly the "alternate ammo", is a mystery to me. If we can just swap weapons on a Mech, and make subvariants of these weapons, that would be cool. Otherwise, most of them are simply changing the amount of damage they deal, or rate of fire, or adding secondary effects (flaming targets for Infernos or leaving behind a small mine for Thunder LRMs).

I think this would be a cool way to really hammer home the different playstyles of each faction, as everyone gets pretty unique Perks in addition to the universal ones available to everyone.

Nice ideas but in many cases the same issues as LBX ammo & LRM TAG guidance.

SpikedHelmet wrote:I'd like to do some "Alternative Ammo" types. These are covered in-depth in BT, such as here. Most of these different types of ammo will only differ in the amount of damage they do or include special abilities like Inferno LRMs which coat targets in flaming gel.

How these are implemented, particularly the "alternate ammo", is a mystery to me. If we can just swap weapons on a Mech, and make subvariants of these weapons, that would be cool. Otherwise, most of them are simply changing the amount of damage they deal, or rate of fire, or adding secondary effects (flaming targets for Infernos or leaving behind a small mine for Thunder LRMs).

We can't just swap weapons without swapping units entirely - imo not an option, too much stuff to copy to the new unit and its a horrible hack.

There are different levels of difficulty here:

1. Explosion-level changes. The easiest, e.g. missile acts the same way as normal but has new effects on detonation (Thunder, Inferno, potentially swarm) This is implemented by tracking explosions and spawning new effects/units in the relevant locations. This is similar to S44 smoke rounds.
2. 'Close to target' level changes. e.g. LBX round fires like normal AC but bursts into flechettes close to the target (potentially LBX, Swarm) This requires tracking projectiles and polling their distance to target, at the right distance, you spawn additional projectiles (copy over position, direction, velocity) with any needed attributes. Original projectile can either be destroyed or left intact.
3. 'Muzzle' level changes. The hardest e.g. 'Adding' tracking to a round. This require tracking projectile creation as above and copying position, direction, velocity and potentially more, as well as enabling projectile-level attributes that can only be set on create (i.e. tracking).

I hate Spring. I don't understand why we can do stuff like modify ranges dynamically but not other things like simple boolean swaps.

At least we can limit the range bonuses to faction-specific.

You can probably do something similar to S44 HE/Smoke and have multiple weapons on the same unit, where only one can be active at any time.

hokomoko wrote:You can probably do something similar to S44 HE/Smoke and have multiple weapons on the same unit, where only one can be active at any time.

Don't want to do that, feels like so many mountains of code rely on weapons being representative, plus its a hack as well.

Agree with Flozi on that one, especially since we'd also have to modify the Unit Card to not show "overlap" weapons and show the right weapons, and other assorted headaches.

For the immediately, easily-doable basics though, we can:

* Split Range Perks into more balkanized weapon types. We can base this on Ammo types but I'd like to actually have more control, for example Autocannon Range perk shouldn't apply to LBX (they have enough trouble at range as it is), and should apply to SSRM but not SRM for Lyrans etc.
* Limit Range Perks to specific factions for specific weapons: FedSuns = Autocannon, Draconis = PPC & MRM, Lyran = Gauss & SRM, FWL = LRM
* Capellans get ECM range Perk

So there no clans planned then?

Of course there are! There are 5 Clans factions being implemented atm. They will have the generic Perks but I'm toying with the idea of them not getting faction-specific or weapon perks. Their stuff is already quite a lot better than IS tech.

maybe not mech tech-wise, but support wise? Also don't many clans have exclusive vehicles and what not that would not be shared by other clans? Obviously this isn't so great when making an RTS whre certain roles are missing because you are limiting yourself to cannon technical manuals on clan tech, but in some cases it could give flavor to picking certain clans.

Faction-specific vehicles sound legit.

Anarchid wrote:Faction-specific vehicles sound legit.

And already done (or at least planned) https://github.com/SpringMCLegacy/Sprin ... 0Table.ods