bonusShield is dead! Long live flankingBonus!

[Argh]

Yes, as of 0.75b2. In fact, now that I've tested what gameplay is like with it off, I predict that none of the AA variants are going to use it, because they'd have to rebal all of the mobile units... I'm really, really really looking forwards to being able to set up the "strong face" of the BonusShield, though, it'll make certain units a lot more interesting...

[lurker]

Okay, preliminary usage info.

modrules.tdf gets the following:
[FLANKINGBONUS]
{
FlankingBonusModeDefault=1; //0=no flanking bonus; 1=global coords, mobile; 2=unit coords, mobile; 3=unit coords, locked
}
[EXPERIENCE]
{
ExperienceMult=1.0;
}

the unit .fbi gets:
flankingBonusMode, which defaults to the mod option, which defaults to 1
flankingBonusMax, max damage, defaults to 1.9
flankingBonusMin, min damage, defaults to .9
flankingBonusDir, defaults to unit front, <0,0,1>
flankingBonusMobilityAdd, how much it's ability to move builds up per slowupdate. Movement is done via vector addition, so if it builds up to about 2 it can turn to pretty well face and attacker, defaults to 0.01f

Oh, and argh, if you're going to test life without it, you need to set the damage to a 1.4 or 1.5 mult so it averages the same as before. Unless it really changes it that much... I haven't tried it much yet.

[Argh]

2=unit coords, mobile; == it moves, like it used to?

3=unit coords, locked == fixed facing?

And flankingBonusDir, defaults to unit front, <0,0,1>... so is this by 90-degee sections? How exactly are "flanks" determined?

As for the effect on gameplay... in fact, the opposite has been the case- effective damage went UP, because the first hit isn't setting the BonusShield dir anymore...

[lurker]

2=unit coords, mobile; == it moves, like it used to?

3=unit coords, locked == fixed facing?

And flankingBonusDir, defaults to unit front, <0,0,1>... so is this by 90-degee sections? How exactly are "flanks" determined?

As for the effect on gameplay... in fact, the opposite has been the case- effective damage went UP, because the first hit isn't setting the BonusShield dir anymore...

hahaha wow.

yes, 2 moves like it did before, but mode 1 is actually what is was. global coordinates that ignored unit orientation x_x.
And yeah, 3 is the mode you want for a unit that has weak and strong sides, like a tank.

The way it works is by taking the dot product of attack direction and flankingbonus direction. so an attack from a direction matching the flankingbonusdir vector will do minimum damage, gradually changing to maximum damage from the opposite direction.

[lurker]

heh. I look around to other threads and there is already an EXPERIENCE section. Don't see any conflicts though, that's good, and it doesn't look like what I wrote overlaps in featureset...