As a TA player starting to play Spring, a few things were difficult to get adjusted to. The new click setup was the first big hurdle for me. The next big thing for me is that units simply stop firing when a friendly unit gets in the way. In TA this wasn't an issue- weapons wouldn't collide with friendly units.
Now that I'm porting Devolution into Spring, I was considering adding collidefriendly=0 and avoidfriendly=0 to all my weapons, as it seems weird to me that I can't place LLTs behind solars and HLTs behind LLTs, without having them stop firing at important moments.
Now, I assume there is a reason this isn't done for all mods, and maybe people like that units won't fire like that?
I was wondering what peoples thoughts were on collidefriendly and avoidfriendly?
Collidefriendly/Avoidfriendly- Thoughts?
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It all depends on the dynamic of the game you seek to generate. It is a content developer's decision, intrinsically. I like both - in some contexts, the inability to fire through others either injects a different build priority or a sense of realism; while in others the ability to do so improves flow.
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Forboding Angel
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1v0ry_k1ng
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Some TA-based mods simply have it because disabling collidefriendly wasn't an option until fairly recently so they had already rebalanced everything to suit the new behaviour. Overall it's your call and mifght even be useful for balancing (some units can shoot through friendlies while others can't...).
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Forboding Angel
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I really like the "shoot through my first line of defence with my second line of defence"... it's normal for RTSs to allow this and if that's how your mod is balanced it should work... granted for "realism" and to prevent the "build a 10x10 block of missile towers and noothing can approach it" thing people might not like it... but I do.. I loved that part of TA
I didn't like it much. I just like a more realistic game that sticks with at least a FEW rules of realism. Not to mention, it takes a good deal more strategy to place towers in nice defensive positions.
But, I believe it should be used interchangeably.
My rifle soldiers have both, so that they can pop a shot off, however, my SMG guys, do not have them, so they have to get up front and unload.
But, I believe it should be used interchangeably.
My rifle soldiers have both, so that they can pop a shot off, however, my SMG guys, do not have them, so they have to get up front and unload.
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Forboding Angel
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It depends on the type of gameplay you want.LordMatt wrote:llts not being able to fire through things like winds makes for a more dynamic game IMO. You have to more carefully think about how you lay out your base, as a good player will find the hole (even if it's tiny) and stuff jeffs, fleas, and peewees into it.
If you want single unit micro, then yes, that is a good idea. If you are all about macro group control, then CF/AF=0; makes sense.
I was playing the Classic TA mod for spring recently and one of the most alarming things was the collidefriendly = 0. (On a general note, i also played FunTA and didnt even notice it was collidefriendly = 0, which just shows the difference between a micro mod and a macro mod like FunTA).
As has been said, it takes an awful lot of the skill out of micromanagement and defence placement. In a game with a physics engine (Which very few RTS's have) it only makes sense to have friendly fire.
It also puts more of an emphasis on the difference of units that can shoot over eachother due to an arcing trajectory, or units with their guns high enough off the ground (Like the Anni or Bertha, which shoots over almost everything no problems).
Note that in BA, the solar is small enough that you can use it to shield an LLT relatively effectively, so if you make careful note of your hitspheres when you design the game, you can still have units shooting over eachother.
I think the general consensus among Spring players would be that micromanagement is an important part of an RTS, but perhaps you want to focus more on the big picture than on what an individual rocko is doing.
As has been said, it takes an awful lot of the skill out of micromanagement and defence placement. In a game with a physics engine (Which very few RTS's have) it only makes sense to have friendly fire.
It also puts more of an emphasis on the difference of units that can shoot over eachother due to an arcing trajectory, or units with their guns high enough off the ground (Like the Anni or Bertha, which shoots over almost everything no problems).
Note that in BA, the solar is small enough that you can use it to shield an LLT relatively effectively, so if you make careful note of your hitspheres when you design the game, you can still have units shooting over eachother.
I think the general consensus among Spring players would be that micromanagement is an important part of an RTS, but perhaps you want to focus more on the big picture than on what an individual rocko is doing.
AvoidFriendly / AvoidFeature and CollideFriendly / CollideFeature are extremely useful for creating more realism, and they can help keep computational costs down, too.
Using all four states set to 0 cuts down CPU usage during weapon aiming checks and during shot travel by quite a lot. Even setting Collide on, but Avoid off, helps a lot- the Collide is already pre-computed, and setting to 0 just avoids the explosion during that frame, whereas Avoid=1 triggers a fairly long check against the path of the projectile. For long-range weapons like Berthas, setting AvoidFriendly / Feature to 0 is very beneficial to their behaviors- they will continue to fire at the desired strategic targets while your units assault a base, instead of jamming constantly, for example.
In the latest version of Spring, Avoid/Collide is finally available for BeamLasers, which is extremely useful- finally, we can have hordes of things with BeamLasers that can exhibit "rolling horde" behaviors, like they did in OTA!
In short... having these as designer-configurable switches gives us a lot to play with, and gives game designers new ways to approach certain problems. You can use a mixture to generate a wide variety of subtle behavioral differences to your units, which I really think is a good thing
Using all four states set to 0 cuts down CPU usage during weapon aiming checks and during shot travel by quite a lot. Even setting Collide on, but Avoid off, helps a lot- the Collide is already pre-computed, and setting to 0 just avoids the explosion during that frame, whereas Avoid=1 triggers a fairly long check against the path of the projectile. For long-range weapons like Berthas, setting AvoidFriendly / Feature to 0 is very beneficial to their behaviors- they will continue to fire at the desired strategic targets while your units assault a base, instead of jamming constantly, for example.
In the latest version of Spring, Avoid/Collide is finally available for BeamLasers, which is extremely useful- finally, we can have hordes of things with BeamLasers that can exhibit "rolling horde" behaviors, like they did in OTA!
In short... having these as designer-configurable switches gives us a lot to play with, and gives game designers new ways to approach certain problems. You can use a mixture to generate a wide variety of subtle behavioral differences to your units, which I really think is a good thing