Spring RTS Engine

Das Bruce · Post by **Das Bruce** » 19 Dec 2005, 02:28

Odd that the topic of a World War 1 mod has come up - over the past week or so I've been brainstorming and doing some preliminary research and conceptual development on just such a mod.

[warning: thread hijack] [don't feel confident enough to start a new thread!]

Here's some ideas that I've come up with:

1) The importance of supply. It cannot be empasized enough how important supply is on the battlefield - and this factor is all but ignored in Spring. Here's how I'd make supply work. Ordinarily, all units have quite slow fire rates. Supply trucks would be built at specially designated factories. These supply trucks would automatically slowly lose HP over time. Supply trucks would increase the fire rate by a factor of 3 or 4 of all units within a certain radius. (Well, strictly speaking, decrease the reload time by that factor). Thus, it would become important to continually build supply trucks and have a clear and open route on which to send them to the front. Just as in real world war, finding the enemy's supply lines and interdicting and destroying his supplies will be an important tactic to use, as an unsupplied soldier is essentially worth 1/4 or 1/3 the value of a supplied soldier.

Of course, a lot of practical questions are raised: can a unit be made to automatically lose 1 HP per 5 seconds or whatever? Can a unit alter other units' reload rate within a certain radius?

2) Railroads. People walk slowly; armies move even more slowly; supplies move slowly. Railroads were necessary to move large numbers of soldiers and supplies to the front. Here's how I'd work it: a segment of railroad is a building. There would be a unit - the railroad car - which would move only on railroads, and would move very quickly. This unit would be able to transport many soldiers, or one artillery gun, or one supply truck. Rail units - not only transport trains but rail guns, supply trains, etc - would be build at a rail station, which would be connected to the railroad.

Some more questions raised by this: can a unit be made to ONLY move on top of a building? Can a transport unit carry more than one other unit?

3) Poison gas. This was of course widely used as the war went on. It was usually shot through artillery shells at enemy positions. Now, we could simulate it by making gas artillery shoot gas shells that instantly kill any soldiers that aren't gas-mask-equipped - but then you'd have to deal with equipping soldiers with gas masks, which isn't really possible unless you have gas mask soldiers be entirely new units, which would be screwy because you'd be forced to rebuild your entire army once the opponent builds gas artillery. So how I'd do it is make a gas artillery attack simply spread "poison gas" over an area, and all movement rates within the area would be cut in four - effectively immobilizing the units within an area. The poison gas would dissipate within a time. After all, movement inside chemical gear is extremely restricted, and chemical gear DOES make you move slower...

Questions: Is such an attack possible?

4) Trenches. Maybe make it so that all foot soldiers can build something like the current DTs? The soldiers would be able to shoot over the "entrenchments" at enemy soldiers. Soldiers would shoot plasma projectiles that lose height as they go farther, I guess, so that these "entrenchments" make it necessary for attackers to get closer to you while you can still shoot at them from normal distance.

Questions: Well, as far as I can tell, this at least is very doable.

FLOZi · Post by **FLOZi** » 19 Dec 2005, 02:42

1. While this might be possible with some very heavy scripting, the micro involved would lead to no one ever playing your mod.

2. Perhaps if rails were a buiulding with a yardmap open in the middle, of course, a train could leave the end of a rail in such a case.

3. No.

4. Yes.

Das Bruce · Post by **Das Bruce** » 19 Dec 2005, 02:44

You coudl then build end buildings that build the train units.

Felix the Cat · Post by **Felix the Cat** » 19 Dec 2005, 03:07

FLOZi wrote:1. While this might be possible with some very heavy scripting, the micro involved would lead to no one ever playing your mod.

Micro? I'd actually think it would be about as far from micro as you can get...

1. Build a supply-truck-factory.

2. Set supply-truck-factory to build supply trucks on an infinite queue.

3. Set supply-truck-factory rally point just behind your front line.

4. Move rally point as necessary. End or interrupt production as necessary.

No more micro than, say, killing a Commander with a group of Thuds, or effectively managing a rush-raid to get the most out of it...

On point 2... maybe if the train had zero tolerance for slope and all maps had slight bumpiness the train wouldn't move off of the end of the rail line?

Point 3... Is it the area of effect portion or the slowing of units portion that is the limiting factor here? Or both? Any other ideas for modeling the effects of poison gas?

FLOZi · Post by **FLOZi** » 19 Dec 2005, 03:22

you wouldn't want to have trucks being produced constantly... only when the previous one is about to run out.

edit: both parts of the poison. Again with heavy scripting the moverate might be possible once there is support for setting unit speed (which there might already be) but weapons act instantly.

Felix the Cat · Post by **Felix the Cat** » 19 Dec 2005, 03:51

FLOZi wrote:you wouldn't want to have trucks being produced constantly... only when the previous one is about to run out.

edit: both parts of the poison. Again with heavy scripting the moverate might be possible once there is support for setting unit speed (which there might already be) but weapons act instantly.

Got it on the poison. Thanks for the help - back to the drawing board on that.

With the supply trucks: hmm. Maybe pack with the game a GroupAI that only produces a new supply truck when the old one has some arbitrary amount of HP left on it? Or maybe there is another way to simulate the effects of supply lines? The lines part is important - if there were just a supply truck that gives the supply bonus to units around it without the HP degradation associated, it wouldn't be a supply line and would thus be quite pointless.

Other ideas:
-The supply-truck-factory would probably only build one unit, the supply truck. Possibly have it so that it has 6 (or whatever) of the exact same unit, except with different build times? Probably better than the GroupAI idea. Allows customizeability (you can make longer build times for closer rally points and shorter build times for further rally points) while still giving that little edge to someone who decides to micromanage the production of supply trucks.
-The effect I'm trying to model is, of course, the effect of supply distribution on the ability to carry out operations. If the player could simply build a supply-truck-factory at his front line and set it to really long buildtime supply trucks, then it would be pointless, as there would be no supply line. However, I'd like for supply trucks to not have an uber-huge supply radius - and if supply-truck-factories were to be very expensive, this would be necessary. I want the supply-truck-factories to be relatively cheap. Maybe make them long-building but cheap, so that you wouldn't build one near the frontline unless there were a static front (in which case there is no reason not to let you build one there)? Maybe make the unit that builds the supply-truck-factory expensive and weak, so that you wouldn't want to risk it at the front lines? The former solution is what I'm leaning toward.

Okay. Now on to a completely different problem: the problem of how many sides there should be.

There's a tradition in TA mods, I think, to have multiple sides. Any mod without multiple sides might be looked upon as odd. However, I can't see what you'd need multiple sides for in a World War I mod.

And here I insert some clarification: I'm imagining a purely Western Front mod. I'd call it "The Trenches". So no need to worry about the Eastern Front, the Middle East, Africa, the Pacific, or any of the other areas. (Italy/Austria, on the other hand, could probably fit with the Trenches theme...)

So, if it's purely Western Front, why have multiple sides? They all had essentially the same stuff - machine guns, primitive tanks at the end, soldiers with rifles, flamethrowers, a variety of artillery. It would be pure chrome to have a Central Powers side and an Entente Powers side. But I sort of feel obligated to have them anyways.

That's enough for now. I'll get back when I have some more conceptual stuff - maybe a unit list to look forward to

!

edit. Just realized that Flozi may take my argument wrongly... Flozi, I really do appreciate your input and pointing out of flaws! If you care to do so, please continue! As you can see, it already led to some more brainstorming on my part as to how to reduce the micro.

FLOZi · Post by **FLOZi** » 19 Dec 2005, 04:01

British Tanks and German tanks were radically different designs... (and what about aircraft?!) but perhaps I'm just a realism nut. Depends if you want to fit into the AATA/TACW/WD trend or not.

In TACW I had supply trucks as static energy producers, (some of the resource structure models in AATA are oil trucks, too) but I see that you're trying to go for something with considerably more depth, a noble idea but I'm not convinced yet.

Having multiple trucks with different buildtimes would probably be somewhat bewildering.

smokingwreckage · Post by **smokingwreckage** » 19 Dec 2005, 12:18

How 'bout this: collapse the rail and supply thing thus: supply depots are like a nanotower, repairing nearby units (possible other effects) and can only be built connected to a building called "rail line" that is connected to the HQ via rail line or other supply depots.

To an extent every RTS models supply in that the further your troops are from the battlefield the longer it takes to reinforce your positions. Perhaps if units were very slow unless moving along rail line? WW1 tanks mostly couldn't move much faster than 7 KPH (4.6 MPH), a snail's crawl.

Supply trucks: if you made them buildable at the factory, you could just put one in the buildqueue and hit "repeat"....

Felix the Cat · Post by **Felix the Cat** » 19 Dec 2005, 17:57

smokingwreckage wrote:Supply trucks: if you made them buildable at the factory, you could just put one in the buildqueue and hit "repeat"....

The point is that it would require some micro: you wouldn't want a new truck to build until the old truck is about to expire.

Now, I'm not entirely convinced that that's a bad thing. If you want to sit there and micro your supply trucks at the expense of everything else - well, you'll have exceptionally efficient supply, that's for sure!

FLOZi · Post by **FLOZi** » 19 Dec 2005, 17:59

Well, I guess your troops spend most of the time standing around in trenches doing nothing, and your tanks will take forever to do anything.

May as well occupy yourself with something.

Andreask · Post by **Andreask** » 19 Dec 2005, 20:31

TA is already very much like WW 1 was.

Consider your mexes, powerplants and factories as the supply factor.
Your gun-emplacemnts and energy-weapons (bb etc) as the artillery.
And you can build trenches for you k-bots right now y putting dragonteeth around a hlt and a punisher et voila, entrenched forward positions.

Sure there are no trains and there is no gas, but, airtransports and area-of-effect weapons do the same jobs quite simlilarly, same with the heavy tanks.

Of course, evrything is a lot more moblie and dynamic as WW 1 was, at least until everyone porcs with lvl 2 defense-cannons, and we all know how boring that is.

A WW 1 mod that would stick to the real events as close as possible would be incredibly boring to play.

During real wars, the interesting action takes place on the soldier/squad-lvl and on the political lvl, both of which are under-represented in TA as well as in most other RTS-Games.

You play RTS at the Colonel-lvl of an army, which would actually be quite boring, if it was oriented towards real-life behavior, that is why every RTS features a combination of army-branches, positions and often enough eras of technology, even if the player only sees one style, i.e. futuristic or WW 1.

Felix the Cat · Post by **Felix the Cat** » 19 Dec 2005, 21:22

Andreask wrote:TA is already very much like WW 1 was.

Yeah, we all know about those Brawler rushes in World War I!

I can see your point, but I'd point out that the things that are shared between TA:Spring and World War 1 are also shared with World War 2, Korea, the 1st Gulf War, etc. - essentially, they are aspects of modern convetional warfare.

However, TA:Spring shares more with WW2 than anything else in that it models armored maneuver warfare, whilst WW1 on the Western Front after Winter 1914 was largely static warfare.

While I respect your opinion, I disagree that it would be boring to play. It may seem boring to you, but it does not seem boring to me. However, I'm sure I play quite a few games that would be boring to you but interesting to me, and vice versa!

And I disagree on the soldier/squad level and political level being the only interesting parts of warfare. I primarily study the operational level of warfare, that is, individually battles and campaigns - the technical definition of "operational" being "combat at a scale exceeding that in which the differing ranges of direct-fire weapons are significant, but below that at which economic decisions are made". It's between tactical and strategic - if you can't smell the smoke, then it isn't really tactical; if you don't control economic, political, etc. aspects of your nation, then it isn't strategic.

I would point out that TA:Spring, and indeed most RTSs, deemphasize the operational in favor of the tactical scale, with production and other aspects of the strategic fitted to the tactical scale. I'd love to see mods for TA:Spring that act at the operational scale - where you can't simulate, say, a clash between a platoon of the Soviet Army and a platoon of the German Army, but you can simulate the entire battle of Kursk (involving several thousand tanks) or indeed all of Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of Russia in World War 2.

But I digress from this thread.

TA 3D · Post by **TA 3D** » 19 Dec 2005, 23:36

Just a little something to add. Inoder to impliment railroads, you would have to create a spline type of object that can only be used by a train. It is something that has to be hardcoded into the engine, because all atemps to add it as a little feature would be in vain. It also requires special pathfinding so that it follows it's intended path only.

Zoombie · Post by **Zoombie** » 20 Dec 2005, 04:08

a WWI FPS would be fun. An RTS would be even better

Das Bruce · Post by **Das Bruce** » 20 Dec 2005, 04:16

Theres a ww1 mod for hl2, I forget the name.

Felix the Cat · Post by **Felix the Cat** » 20 Dec 2005, 04:17

TA 3D wrote:Just a little something to add. Inoder to impliment railroads, you would have to create a spline type of object that can only be used by a train. It is something that has to be hardcoded into the engine, because all atemps to add it as a little feature would be in vain. It also requires special pathfinding so that it follows it's intended path only.

Do you think the combination of FLOZi's basic idea with my refinement would work for railroads? A railroad segment is a yardmap with the open "building" space in the middle, trains are built at end "stations", and trains have ZERO tolerance for slope, therefore, if every map on which The Trenches were to be played had slight bumps/rolls/slope all over, the train would be unable to move off? Of course, this limits railroads to only being built in (relatively) flat areas - a limitation that I'm more than willing to live with.

maestro · Post by **maestro** » 20 Dec 2005, 04:20

I remember daniel from Tafansite make a train....
basically a unit that cant turn.... combine that with map 'railroad' features...
I know this is imprefect but....

Felix the Cat · Post by **Felix the Cat** » 20 Dec 2005, 06:41

Das Bruce wrote:Theres a ww1 mod for hl2, I forget the name.

World War I mod for HL1 was called "The Trenches". No relation to this proposal, really, no relation!

yuritch · Post by **yuritch** » 20 Dec 2005, 07:34

Railroads will be difficult to implement without engine support.
First of all, trains CAN turn, but they require suitably shaped tracks for that. If a train will be made that cannot turn then we are stuck with straight line railroads.
Second, wouldn't using yardmaps for rails make them impassable for all other ground units? Rails should be a special kind of feature, not a building.
But if engine would support railroads, that would be great not only for this mod (trains were important in many 19-th - 20-th century conflicts both as most efficient ground transport and most powerful fast-moving ground combat unit). Then such things as Battle Isle 2 (3) mods come to mind...

Andreask · Post by **Andreask** » 21 Dec 2005, 00:16

Speaking of Battle Isle, have you seen http://www.battle-planet.de ?

Its a persistent world made from the Battle Isle Engine and played by sending played turns via E-Mail to a few administrators in charge of the project.
The offline Client for the game, called Advanced Strategic Command (ASC), also features a single player campaign.