Spring RTS Engine

heyya, how is "IsTargettingUpgrade" calculated?

i.e. does it multiply all accuracies by a set amount?
if so what is the amount?

thanks alot
D.R

It multiplies the radar inaccuracy by a set amount but I have no idea how much. I wish we could influence that...

It'd be awesome if we could get more control over this and do things like triangulate enemy position with more radars for more accurate targeting; i.e. the more radars you build the more accurate the positioning.

Per unit with that tag enabled the radar error (distance from radar blob to the actual unit position) is divided by two.

So if you have 1, the error is 1/2 the default error,
if you have 2, the error is 1/4 the default error,
if you have 3, the error is 1/8 the default error, etc.

It does not influence weapon accuracy directly as far as I am aware.

Hmm, thanks for that info., I thought it was just a one-time bonus...

Indeed - I didn't realise they were cumulative!


This reminds me of a related idea I had the other day. It'd be cool if the targeting facility also helped weapons fire more intelligently so instead of multiple weapons all firing at the same unit they distributed their fire to multiple units, prioritising based upon max damage per shot and health of the targets.

Do you mean by adding targeting upgrades your weapons management would get smarter automatically in phases, too?

Does it accept only integer values, or decimals too?

You could have something like giving radars a value of 0.2 so that building more helps more, and give jammers something like -0.2 so that building them comes with the cost of greater radar inaccuracy?

It currently is a boolean... But if you think it's worth being able to set it to chosen values, spec it out, I'd say.

Here's a possible spec:

Float FBI tag TargettingUpgrade.
This is the multiplication factor for the radar error for each unit being built with this tag. It defaults to 1 (no change in radar error) if IsTargettingUpgrade=0, it defaults to 0.5 if IsTargettingUpgrade=1.

TechnoTone wrote:This reminds me of a related idea I had the other day. It'd be cool if the targeting facility also helped weapons fire more intelligently so instead of multiple weapons all firing at the same unit they distributed their fire to multiple units, prioritising based upon max damage per shot and health of the targets.

I'd rather have that even without the targetting upgrade if it's not mod-definable.

Also can we have a defaultRadarError tag for the modrules?

Furthermore it would be cool if we could have radars of varying accuracy and jammersthat don't block completely but increase the radar error but that's more advanced stuff.

For many of the ideas mentioned here (jammers that decrease accuracy, radars that increase accuracy but only in a certain area around them), reasonably big changes would be needed. The radar error is currently one variable for each allyteam, and it is not bound to map position in any way.

I'm not saying it is impossible or hard to make, it just takes a heck of a lot more time then just making the hardcoded 0.5 multiplication factor bound to a FBI or modrules tag.

I hope changing the base accuracy wouldn't be that hard to do? Some mods might want larger or smaller radar errors without tying that to any units.


For reference, an older thread where I proposed a more complex system once: http://spring.clan-sy.com/phpbb/viewtop ... ight=radar

I know this is old water I'm treading here, but this new discussion brings up an old idea. The factors of targeting upgrades, radar, stealth, sonar, jammer, and so on could all use a tier factoring system. The systems could all use varying levels in order to interact at a more complex level.

An example would be a stealth fighter escorted by a jammer airplane approaching a radar site. The stealth factor could be something like "4", the jammer factor could be something like "2", and the radar perhaps a "3" in this example. The radar, being rated at "3", is unable to see the stealth fighter (rated higher at "4"), but is perfectly capable of seeing the jammer (rated at a mere "2"). The jammer perhaps at most would only cause slightly degraded radar effectiveness. Why? Because the stealth would work all or nothing, if its level is higher than the radar then it works. But the jammer, by nature would only degrade the radar, not delete it altogether. In this way the radar, being technically superior to the jammer in this case, is able to see the targets in the jamming radius just fine. (For shits and grins you could argue the point that the jammer should be at least 50% effective since it is only 1 tier - that is 50% - less advanced.) If the radar is backed up by a targeting upgrade then the radar would recieve a bonus for each and every targeting upgrade produced. In this way old radars still have value for some extended time as the match drags on, but eventually would need be replaced.

A more realistic approach to stealth would be for the radar effective range against it to be relative to the stealth and radar factors. The stealth could potentially only be fully effective if its rating is twice the rating of the radar. For each level of advantage in stealth the radar is degraded in half. At a common level, say radar at "4" and stealth at "4" the effect would be that the radar is only degraded by 1/4 range. But if the radar is "2" and the stealth is "4" then the radar is unable to see it without help from targetting upgrades. Furthermore a stealth at "2" and radar at "4" would mean the stealth negates a mere 1/16 of the effective radar range against it.

You wouldn't have to change old mods at all if you simply looked for the factors =>1 and detected if a unit had radar, jammer, etc. Factors less than 1 would be ignored. Units that had the attribute but no factor set then would set the factor to "1" by default. Stealth is either 0 or 1 now, so it works by default with this method. But a radar unit with any range =>1 would be radar=1. And so on this could be done with radar jamming, sonar, sonar jamming, siesmic, etc.