Spring RTS Engine

real quick? on Small Divide it takes FOREVER even with NUKES! to make it passable for tanks!!! i suppose that those ( cool) donut mines could do it fairly quick though :)

real quick? on Small Divide it takes FOREVER even with NUKES! to make it passable for tanks!!!

well, that's the way the map designer wanted it. What I'm saying is that if you could build on mountains, you could start a building on the lowest part of the hill, cancel it, move a little bit more in to the hill, start building/cancel, repeat until you have a path. This doesn't cost anything to do, so it sure as hell beats building 50 nukes.

lol lets see a replay of that. if it is that easy to do i expect it to be done in 5-10mins

It would be possible if you were allowed to build on mountains... right now you're not. The whole point of this thread is wether or not to allow it. I say its a bad idea based on my agrument.

If there was some cost involved in "leveling hills", I guess it would be ok but it would still lead to some cheesy/unrealistic tactics as the hills "level" right away.

oh! right sorry! X.X yah i agree keep leveling structures as it is!!!

I vote yes, with the following reserve: it should depend on the building's footprint. Building a radar dish on anything but the most extreme slope makes sense, but building a K-bot factory on the same spot does not (and it looks bad).

Cutting a pass through a mountain (an exploit) relies on the assumption that leveling before building will always use the lowest level possible. I do not see any reason for this to be the case.

I you build over and over on a mountain you should just end up with a terraced mountainside.

Um, I'm rather trepid about this function.

While I agree that some maps are rendered unplayable by the difficulty which people have building, I must say that it has the potential to completely throw the carefully designed map gameplay out of the window.

Therefore, I suggest the following:
I think that yes, all terrain should be potentially buildable.
However, I think that this must be balanced in some way, so that people can't just tear down mountain ranges in order to put their buildings up.
The time taken to Teraform the land beneath a building should be what balances it.

All land should be buildable on, assuming there is no unmovable obstruction (the sea, unreclaimable feature, etc). That means you won't ever be told that you can't build a unit because of terrain shape. You click, and your con unit will trundle off and start terraforming the land. However, if you say, click on top of a sharp mountain range, it would take much longer to terraform the land then to just build the building!
So, if you want to build something on top of a mountain range, good luck to you. If its anything wider than a 1X1 footprint, and the terrain is particularly uneven (remember, the unit has to adjust to the lowest common level, so you won't see any structures on very steep terrain, which would take as long as some level 2 structures), good luck to you; you're better off building the structure on flat ground, as it'll halve the time required to build the thing. And on contested terrain, like on Small Divide, you don't really stand a chance, because your construction units will just be picked off as the terrain is reshaped.
(construction units should expend energy to terraform. This energy level shouldn't in itself be very high, but should be high enough to make it so that it would be an expensive venture to simply tell a number of construction units to power terraform a strip of terrain.
Construction aircraft should require more energy to terraform than any other construction unit.

Ok, Im for a different method...

You should be able to basicly build on land depending on the size of the footprint.

1x1 (2x2 in game squares) no incline greter than 50

2x2 (4x4) no incline greter than 30

3x3 (6x6) and greater... normal builing placement (which is about a 10 degree max)

When you go to build your structure it will still terreform the land to make it flat, but as all the factories and stuff are bigger than 3x3 theer will be no ugly deformations on hill sides.

Also bear in mind that in spring the grid is like half the size of the smallest buildings, so by 1x1 i ment teh smallest build footprint, not the smallest game square, which i have put in brakets. (or is it 4 game squares to a footprint??)

Tereforming can still have a cost if it likes.

If you let people try to build a factory on top of a small hill then they will. But it would look awfull so dont let them.

aGorm

aGorm : don't building have a maxSlope tag? If I'm right, it's up to the unit maker to choose.

Yes, but Im pretty sure that they dont in spring, that or the build angles are very small. The terain is just deformed insted. In spring you cant seem to build anything on anything greter than a very gental incline. However it makes sence that if units can terraform that they should be in theroy able to make all land useable. (which is what the argumnet is about)
My angles bassed on footprint size is to stop people building whereever, whilst giving more room to build. Basicly teh terrain will still count as an obsticle, without some of the smaller hills (half of which on my maps weren't ment to stop building) getting in the way.

aGorm

aGorm, the problem with your system is that it is very complicated, and not particularly intuitive. Player's won't be able to assume that "yes, this can build here, this can't", they will have to go and find out.

Voted no.

Maybe allow sticking down concrete (or something) like C&C Tiberian Sun did.

I do think that players should be allowed to build on level, inclined ground.

LOL "level, inclined ground" <-- Spot the Paradox!!!

what!?!?? my ideas not complicated!?!

Game already must look at foot print size to draw the thing befor placement. And it already checks the gradient of teh land. My idea just changes what it checks, plus I think you'll find you canty tell by intuitive with the current system. I'm forever goin, well it looks like it should go there, only to find it wont.

aGorm

MaxSlope tag already controls how much terraforming can be done for a building and the cost of terraforming is already quadratic to the change being made.

If thats the case why does everything seem to onlky want to build on the flatest land? Could you make it more lenient perhaps in the next release? Add a couple of degrees to each units max slopes?
Or just change the code so it does a global modification to the numbers when reading them in (though that not good for people making mods...)

It realy only needs a small change. Just s few more degrees leniance.

aGorm

Why has the terrain to be terraformed ?

Just allow construction on unterraformed terrain (with respect to MaxSlope), and that way no more "mountains digging cheat".

I have a weird Idea... you can raise/lower/level terrain, but it costs metal/energy and is dependant on the DISTANCE the leveled terrain is gonna be from the origional terrain... Thus it would cost exponentially more resources so say a 50 unit elevation differnce costs 200 metal/energy (per square area), and a 500 difference costs, 20,000 metal and 20,000 energy (per square area) and 5,000 differnce costs 200,000,000 metal and 200,000,000 energy (per square area... basically a limit)..... this all to elevate an area of the terrain to a flat surface...
how you would control the code to complete such a task... I dunno

basically it would seem OK to level a small area...

but cost an outrageous amout to raise the terrain much...

nah if terraforming is implemented (obviously not this release) it should cost enrgy+metal /tick => if you have large income and buildgroup you can terraform quickly (albeit at a high cost)