Spring RTS Engine

Are Drop Pods possible? If so how, and what kind of problems would there be?

Drop pods? In what capacity? A Dawn Of Waresque construction animation? Perfectly possible.

In some other capacity? Its probably luable.

Are you thinking of making a mod that includes them?

SWS has drop pods currently working in a number of different ways.

You might have seen me accidentally let that cat slip out of the bag a few weeks ago in this shot here:



That is done with reasonably complicated LUA, which we'd ideally like to keep mum about until we've released our mod.

We have another 'drop-in' system for factories, but that is mostly just complex build-anim scripts for eyecandy.

It really all depends on what drop pod method you are thinking about.

also, what mod are we talking about?

imo drop pods have no real place in TA mod. but could work well in others

Basically just spawn a drop pod unit that has a crashing animation, opens and then spawns the contents (or load the contents into the drop pod and unload if you want to do it that way...).

Im thinking it in the way of unit/group of units being deployed once the drop pod lands, so yes like dawn of war,

Pressure Line wrote:also, what mod are we talking about?

imo drop pods have no real place in TA mod. but could work well in others

What do you mean? there has been all sorts of crazy stuff trying to be added to TA in the past, plus TA is set thousend of years in the future, so big hairy monkeys... arse... to that, then again it would **** up BA, they'd be like a unstopable air drop, unless they could be shot at, and even If so n00bs be trying to drop pod comms all the time

I've already made one kind and plan on having others.

It's fairly easy...

Pressure Line wrote:also, what mod are we talking about?

imo drop pods have no real place in TA mod. but could work well in others

R u crazy?

Flash drops

AK drops

Gaeter drops

Peewee drops

Atlas bombing enemy coms

Deployable repair and rez only nanotowers that can reclaim themselves when they're done

Krogs

etc...

Would be fairly simple with some zwzsg-style transportation.

You can do this after learning LUA for maybe 1-2 days. If you wait until we have some more LUA guides it would take a few hours.

Abokasee wrote:to that, then again it would **** up BA, they'd be like a unstopable air drop, unless they could be shot at, and even If so n00bs be trying to drop pod comms all the time

i believe that was my point.

possible to? yes. a good idea to? probably not.

the balancing would be unbelievably complex.

In DoW, the 'drop pods' in most cases are nothing more than a build animation (Though i think terminators can teleport in or drop into the middle of the battlefield or something? I forget, perhaps im thinking tabletop).

Thats trivially easy and can be done using .cob/.bos, just have every unit have its own pod in the model, when the unit is almost completed have the pod fly down from the sky, hit the ground, spawn some impact fx and then burst open. Hide the pieces (probably make them explode or sink into the ground, rather than just disappear) and you are done. If you want the unit to 'drop anywhere', just give it its own constructor turret (Orbital com centre or whatever) that can build in whatever sort of range you want to give the pods (infinite if you like).

Might be more elegant with lua but you can have full functionality with .cob/.bos. It wouldnt really fit TA mods though as their whole point is everything is made by the commander through nanolathe- thats like the primary premise of the fiction.

Terminators and the Chaos equivalent are sent into the field via Deep Strike, which is essentially a unit drop. Also, anybody seen the Terran Demo Video for Starcraft II? Ghosts can call drop pods of Marines.

In DoW there's the orbital uplink or what it's called that you can load any infantry (except terminators which are teleported by the barracks IIRC) and mechs into and then move them with a drop pod to any spot you have LOS to.

KDR_11k wrote:In DoW there's the orbital uplink or what it's called that you can load any infantry (except terminators which are teleported by the barracks IIRC) and mechs into and then move them with a drop pod to any spot you have LOS to.

I wondered why the Orbital Uplink seemed so... well, not worth the wait. I was doin' it wrong!

KDR_11k wrote:In DoW there's the orbital uplink or what it's called that you can load any infantry (except terminators which are teleported by the barracks IIRC) and mechs into and then move them with a drop pod to any spot you have LOS to.

You could put terminators in an Orbital Relay, IIRC. I find it more fun drop-podding them than teleporting them, for no particular reason.

It would be interesting to try in spring with a drop pod that does damage when it lands. It always annoyed me in DOW that you can't drop a drop pod on top of infantry.

To be fair, if the infantry inside can survive the landing the infantry under it can probably, too.

KDR_11k wrote:To be fair, if the infantry inside can survive the landing the infantry under it can probably, too.

Nope. Crash harnesses and foam padding inside the pod. The infantry outside are basicly being hit by a large balistic shot (approximately the size of a C47 main body and about half as long.) coming in at a MINIMUM of the terminal velocity of gravity for that planet, and potentially still accelerating at minimum 9.81meters per second (No planet in WH40k has less gravity than earth. It's an interesting bit of fluff)

Remember that their decelleration cannot happen any slower than their body travels the entire length of the pod. Terminal velocity for that pod is probably pretty high