Battletech

[NightfallGemini]

very nice texture work on the atlas. :B

[Neddie]

I have to say, I have never seen a better Atlas.

[bobthedinosaur]

just saying im back from deployment, dont have my own ISP yet but working on it. would like any one whos still interested to try and get ahold of me: pm, here, what ever. but please include an email i can reach you from.

new guys accepted.

sorry for the bad REZ

[Neddie]

I'm interested in playing and testing. Good to see you back.

[Guessmyname]

I'm interesting in testing and modelling (which I'm much better at now!)

[Wolf-In-Exile]

Done!

Squishy things next!

[rattle]

Did you change the preshading or is it just the renderer? Because it looks a lot better.

[Wolf-In-Exile]

Thanks!

I "baked" the preshading on using Max, though in these pics I re-rendered it with advanced lighting (mainly for the ground shadow really) so it looks darker here than it actually is.

Added the finishing touches such as weathering, dirt and fixed various little details here and there like the missile racks.

[Archangel of Death]

Aye, thats an awesome job.

[bobthedinosaur]

Okay. Heres the deal, me and arch have been talking on how to do this ammunition resource managment. Not the lua bit of it, but how it should look and work.

Heres what we got so far:
Aircraft fairly easy since they can land at pads once they have depleted ammunitions, how ever troops vehicles, and mechs shouldnt be running back to a resupply point away from the front lines and so there should be some form of mobile resupply.

we talked about crates that transport units could create that once they resupply so many units they become a corpse (empty) but that seemed to have problems. maybe trucks specifically for that, but have some form of limited resupplying so no units can camp next to it and have 'near infinite ammo'.

so what we really need is some feed back. how do you guys think we could do this.

the idea is kill the 2 standard resource collections, only have 1 resource and on the side ammunition/ supply management. hence making realistic supply lines (which thru out history decided the fate of many battles), and adding a new form of gameplay.

so brain storm away!

[PicassoCT]

so brain storm away!

ARGH´s Hovertank in the Nanoblobs (That Triangular THing)had some kind of Amonition, this little subunits who would fire the electrical Bolts - but i may be wrong. Otherwise it would be easy, invisible subunits who fire a shot and kill themself in silence by the Way. Limit of Subunits is limit of Ammonition

[Archangel of Death]

This question is more about the what, not the how. Thusly, good type of suggestion (though the suggestion itself isn't, nor is it likely true of tabletop B-tech):

Well in a table-top game you have a supply depot that units resupply at whenever they can. So you should do it like that.

(again, accuracy of this statement not guaranteed, it was merely an example)

bad suggestion:

You should use lua to store a list of all the units that use ammo and call reload scripts in their cob files. You should use a cylindrical search to determine if they are close enough to a get reloaded. With some scripting like (huge script block) you could make the whole process look believable!

I hope what type of suggestions we are looking for is sufficiently clear!

so brain storm away!

[Pressure Line]

perhaps something like using the mobile command vehicles to reload/repair mechs, like in MW3. the mech that is being reloaded/repaired cant do anything while this process is going on, and it takes about a minute (although allow for adjustments for the sake of gameplay)

this prevents the "camping the ammo spawn" scenario of a pair of 100 Tonne mechs standing next to a supply dump and constantly thrashing all comers. this also nicely represents the actual loading of the ammo.

for tanks? hmmm... a similar process perhaps?

[bobthedinosaur]

just some helpful reminders:
-the game play is set on a scale where dozens of mechs if not even ten times that many could be commanded. so anything short of auto micro management will create, hectic user management. possibly?
-vehicles, and infantry will need to be reloaded as well
-one system may not be the answer, a variety of systems might be needed to be implemented for the game play and realism to balance?

[REVENGE]

As a sidenote, consider looking into Zpock's work on custom weaponry. That looks like it could be fitted perfectly here.

[rattle]

Bob back in business :)

Well ammo needs no LUA, reloading from an ammo depot can be made easier through LUA however, now that units can be accessed by ID and you should've access to spring function to select units in a radius. So once a unit has run out of ammo it announces every second or two that it wants to reload through a call-out, script checks all depots if the unit ID is in range and runs a cob call-in which triggers the reload.

I'd suggest using COB scripted infinite ammo with timeouts and using either a CEG for status billboards or a modeled icon, if any. The latter might be useful for either ammo solution. Reloading at a depot is too much micro in my opinion.

[SinbadEV]

You could have (if technically possible) the reloading handled by the supply unit... Let's say you move it to the front lines and tell it to target a unit, target unit is paralyzed until it's ammo is restocked... then you could allow automation, like a unit that moves with X range of a idle supply unit/depot and has less then 50% ammo is targeted automatically by this function.

[bobthedinosaur]

yes the resupply /logistics vehicle is what i was thinking would work best.

something arch brought to my attention tho:
if each unit was searching for a supply vehicle when it runs out, thats alot of macros running at once and could lag up the engine? more than say, the unit just paralyzes itself (weapons i mean, it can still move or shoot energy) and throws up an "empty tag". while resupply vehicles which only purpose is to drive around and find units with an empty flag and (is it possible with lua) edit a simple function that the empty units are searching for to reload their ammo storage like "reloaded = 1" variable. well would that take up less engine, and would it be efficient?
and if we used something like that how would we limit the trucks from camping next to heavy firing units, giving them IDKFA's? any suggestions?
maybe even throw in a ammo reloading supply dump as well so units could patrol past it? or maybe the resupply trucks could have a fuel system like plains and return to a supply dump so they are refilled. because if they run out it halts their search and refit functions?

bah just some ideas, maybe they wouldnt work so well?

[SinbadEV]

Ooooo, you said something cool there... you could have supply depots (maybe on metal spots, geovents, whatever) and supply trucks can carry only X ammo at a time, and would need to return to the depots to refill with ammo (or refuel or whatever it takes)... you could even have your commander be immobile and be the supply depot and have to keep the supply lines open all the way to the front. meanwhile you could also send individual units back to be filled up.

[bobthedinosaur]

yes, and eliminating the energy resource and only having metal and supply/ammunition would be pretty balanced IMO.

on another note, im playing with some units and for some reason spring doesnt like my use of MAX_SPEED. can you not set the fbi speed to 0 thru the cob? or maybe its the way im using it? does it even work?