Crawling bombs in XTA and AA

[Caydr]

Hi, I have a question... I need a concensus on what the best way of handling crawling bombs with Spring's physics engine is.

1) Like XTA does - one blows, they all blow

2) Like AA does - one blows, the rest fly away at ridiculous rate (this is broken, so...)

3) Like AA does, only with crawling bomb mass set for something really high so that they won't fly when one explodes. The downside of this is that they won't be loadable into transports anymore - but maybe that's a good thing?

4) Just set their shockwave to be tiny and inconsequential.

Or, make your own suggestion.

[Min3mat]

transporting self propelled bombs always seemed werid to me

[Decimator]

I'd say make them non-transportable, then add a kamikaze aircraft to fill the gap.

[Dragon45]

Loading up crawling bombs on Atlases and then flying them over enemy positions is a classic TA strategy. Don't eliminate it for the sake of convenience.


And the XTA way is best.

[zwzsg]

I really enjoy typing .cheat .nocost, setting a factory to build +oo crawling bombs, with an exit point on some interesting part of the map, and when many have massed, set ONE to self destruct, and watch the explosion propagate like a fuse, moving backward the thread of crawling bomb until it reaches and blow up the factory, terraforming the map on its path.

Don't take away that little pleasure from me.

[aGorm]

You know what that looks like zwzsg... teh spider things out of the film version of "lost in space". Not exactly a great movie, but teh spiders ruled... and so do those bombs.

aGorm

[FireCrack]

eh... sure you're not thinking of "red planet"

Either way, i'm also for chain reactions..

[Targ Collective]

Add really heavy armour to them so that they are...

A: more difficult to destroy, making them more usable.

B: Able to take a few bombs going off right next to them, preventing too much of a chain reaction.

The shockwave size isn't the issue, it's the shockwave damage. Give it a big range, but a really dense 'well' of damage that rapidly gets weaker the further away it is from the target.

Add a custom formation AI so that they can be properly spread out. Eventually incorporate this as their default behaviour.

The damage would have to be carefully balanced. Maybe you could give the damage its own class so that crawling bombs only suffer a percentage of crawling bomb damage, while everything else gets full whack. Or something.

The Collective

[Maelstrom]

They are already strong enough. If you make then to strong, they will be to good. Right now they are useful for defence (A few of them around your base work like mobile mines) and suprise attacks as they come swarming out of water. They are already quite strong, as three of them took about half of the health off my goliath (they were using them as defence). Then his merl swarm finished it off. If you make a spread out stream of them coming out of the water, they are unstoppable (without torpedo launchers or subs). Also having them non-transportable would suck. This is a really funny tactic to employ, and I would really miss it if it was removed.

[Kuroneko]

I remember a game of AA where my enemy sent a swarm of crawling bombs at my base via water. My Adv Torpedo launcher fired a shot, made contact, and killed one....the resulting shockwave through crawling bombs all over my base...

Surpise attack indeed. :)

[Targ Collective]

A custom formation AI would make them very powerful. But is that neccessarily a bad thing? It just means we need a specialist Crawling Bomb defence, again, not neccessarily bad. I reckon keeping a squad of Gunships in reserve would do it already.

Extra armour is not neccessary if they take less damage from their own blasts. Hey, it's not neccessary if they're spread out. They've come a long way since the 4WD woodchopper in Uberhack...

The Collective

[Maelstrom]

umm these were in OTA from the start. the 4WD UH things came from these, not the other way round.

Anyways, if your to lazy to spread the bombs out yourself, you deserve to have them blow up in your face! I mean its not that hard to make them walk appart. Although using them to launch the other bug into the enemy's base is always fun

[SwiftSpear]

Shockwave is handled with a damage multipler isn't it? So wouldn't setting the mass of the CB to just below that which a carrier can handle, and at the same time setting a special damage trigger on crawling bombs do very little damage to eachother work to effectively move the current "I THROW YOU THE FUCK OUT OF THE MAP" potential of them?

[Targ Collective]

Oh. Oh well... As far as the spreading out is concerned there were those who said the same about TAHook when it first came out (and even today). Yet now an advanced form of that is a Spring standard. Implement it at it will be used.

Sorry SwiftSpear, I don't follow you.

The Collective

[SwiftSpear]

Currently how hard an explosion throws a unit is handled by taking the shockwave variable and multiplying it by the damage variable. I'm guessing that special damage for a unit group would cause the shockwave variable to multiply by the special damage figure rather then the master damage feature. Therefore if you explode a crawling bomb with it's very high shockwave next to another crawling bomb with a very low special damage figure then it should throw the other bomb a very short distance. If it doesn't work that way then I guess you're just out of luck for applying small shockwaves to certain units without making thier masses extreamly heavy.

[Targ Collective]

Nah, I'm talking straight damage rather than shockwaves now. I think. Shockwaves and damage are seperate values as far as I know, but I could be wrong. Even if they aren't there are ways around.

[SwiftSpear]

Nah, I'm talking straight damage rather than shockwaves now. I think. Shockwaves and damage are seperate values as far as I know, but I could be wrong. Even if they aren't there are ways around.

Dude, read my post again. You just generallized exactly what I was describing in detail, and then tacked the word "nah" onto the beginning. Just because it really pisses me off that you apparently don't understand I will describe it in even more detail.

Shockwaves and damage are kindof seperate values. You don't have a shockwave number and a damage number, you have a damage number that is multiplied by the shockwave multiplier to get the shockwave application for the unit. This is done so units that don't take alot of damage (on the fringe of the explosion) don't get thrown out of the map like units in the center do. Explosions already calculate a damage sphere, why make it do those calculations again for shockwave?

the problem with crawling bombs in AA is that they either throw eachother out of the map or blow eachother up instantly. The plan is to make them so they don't blow eachother up so that they can't be stopped by simply shooting one out, but that isn't working because if you shoot one out all the others get thrown out of the map anyways. They need to have small shockwaves so they don't toss eachother. The other problem is that since mass is used to determine how far and hard the units are thrown, crawling bombs using default damage with thier shockwave multipliers need to eather choose between doing no shockwave effect to all units so they don't blast eachother around, or being way to heavy for transport aircraft to lift off (since transport aircraft use mass as thier determining factor for weather or not they can lift a unit). I'm politely asking cadyr weather special damage (DAMAGE CrawlingBombArmor=99{ crawling_bomb_explosion = 1})figures are used when calculating shockwaves the way they are when calculating damage. If so there is no need to sacrifice realism, blowupism, or transportationality. Simply make the crawling bombs do virtually no damage to eachother and then the shockwave multiplyer will multiply by a very low number, and thus your crawling bombs need to not be changed at all to work properly. However, if shockwave is always multiplyed by the master damage, even when a armor class damage figure is in effect, then the special damage solution cannot work.

[Targ Collective]

Oh, I see. Sorry... I obviously misinterpreted you.

But I did say something to this effect a ways back. It would make sense for the crawling bomb to take less damge from it's own kind, as they were designed to be used in groups.

The shockwaves could also have a different equasion geared specifically around the crawling bomb; ie crawlerdamage*shockwavemulti -crawlbombadjust = shockwave. That was what I meant by 'ways around'.

Oh, and SwiftSpear? Try not to get so het up... people do misinterpret sometimes.

The Collective

[SwiftSpear]

The shockwaves could also have a different equasion geared specifically around the crawling bomb; ie crawlerdamage*shockwavemulti -crawlbombadjust = shockwave. That was what I meant by 'ways around'.

Unfortunately that is not currently possible... which is the whole point of this poll in the first place. Also this is why the new modscript environment would be a total godsend, because potentially modders would be able to write code like that right into thier scripts. Right now they can't though.

[Forboding Angel]

Heavy mass, more armor perhaps?

Also, the crawlers should be tealth so that they have a prayer of suprising your opponent.