Spring RTS Engine

I know there will be some other who may disagrea... but the MODMAKERS... ie the guys who would use it can use these features:

Unit limits:
Controlled via a variable in the FBI file. Having considered this prior to all the drama I know some issues that may exist and this patch will need a lot of things looked into. Like controlling production while someone has it qued via repeat tag. Etc. However, this feature will be usefull for some mods.

Under water speeds
If a unit is underwater capable it moves TERRIBLY slow in water. we as modders need a new tag to control speed for underwater movement. Or if you could give us a tag that says the unit does not need to slowdown in water.

Under water projectiles
They move slow, this needs to be corrected. If the projectile is a underwater weapon there is no reason to dampen it's speed.

Unit secondary/tertiary speed
Controlled via script this would give moders a great tool in that we can set conditions for units to either move faster or slower depending on conditions met.

istargetingupgrade
This is a needed tag for mods that don't want auto fire on radar blips. In OTA we had to build a targeting facility. However, because I like the radar auto targeting, there needs to be a way to keep the current behavior also. So if it is ok can that be specified in the mod.tdf. A tag in there like: "usestargeting facility" would probably be fine.

"upgrade the targeting so that units shoot at things on radar like at things seen by that unit."

Before you non-moders reply:
These are not arbitrary requests they are request that I have seen many times by moders. So please, trolls do not derail this thread. These are things that people who actually make the content you are playing need. They need them for reasons that odds are you will not understand until it is used.

So regardless of what some of you think, wait and see what we use them for. I know you may be aprehensious about unit limits but we are asking for features to EXPAND the gamplay for you. So have some faith.

Nice list. The water speeds is something that would make it a fair bit easier to work out water units - I understand that water slows things down, but at least let us control how much, if at all, the unit slows down.

There is already a tag "istargetingupgrade" (as you likely know, but I'll explain for the benefit of other readers), which makes firing at radar blips more accurate. How much more accurate, I have no idea.

Being able to disable radar targeting would be very nice though - the way radar works in 1944 right now, only planes are visible to it. However, we don't want the 88s to start firing at the planes before they can see them.

On the subject of radar, how difficult would it be to implement a system similar to the shields, where you can define which units are picked up by what radars (water units, air units, tanks, infantry..whatever), how accurate the targeting of the blips is, which things can jam which type of radar, ect. A bitfield set up similar to the shields would be ideal. This would also solve the radar/sonar jamming issue.

Nemo wrote:On the subject of radar, how difficult would it be to implement a system similar to the shields, where you can define which units are picked up by what radars (water units, air units, tanks, infantry..whatever), how accurate the targeting of the blips is, which things can jam which type of radar, ect. A bitfield set up similar to the shields would be ideal. This would also solve the radar/sonar jamming issue.

Speaking from the perspective of a player, that would be cool beyond words.

As would the rest of smoth's ideas. It's not just modders that want these things - us ordinary schmucks that just like having a nice game of "blow shit up" now and then do too!

Secondary, tertiary speeds seems unlikely. They attempted to do something along these lines in a previous version but found that it borked something. That's why you can't have a unit stop moving while firing, etc... which would be really cool.

"Under water speeds
If a unit is underwater capable it moves TERRIBLY slow in water. we as modders need a new tag to control speed for underwater movement. Or if you could give us a tag that says the unit does not need to slowdown in water. "

I don't think I understand this point correctly... can't you just increase a weapon's velocity/accel/whatever if you intend for it to be fired underwater?

I strongly agree with the underwater unit speeds though. If there could be an optional multiplier for unit speed when underwater, that'd be ideal. For instance, some units might logically move faster when under/in water.

I am glad to see that my assumption about other moders was also right.

Caydr on the underwater weapons, I have a few units that have an above and below water weapon with the same speed. The underwater weapon travels slower.

Sooo... who is willing to code some of there things?

NOiZE wrote:Sooo... who is willing to code some of there things?

Constructive as always

smoth wrote:Caydr on the underwater weapons, I have a few units that have an above and below water weapon with the same speed. The underwater weapon travels slower.

Huh, didn't even know that was possible, or at least haven't seen it in action recently that I can remember. If you're up to some scripting, you could always have one weapon that only fires when the target is underwater. Like, have two weapons on a unit, one standard, one for underwater which moves much faster. Weapon 1 has onlytargetcategory=abovewater, and 2 has belowwater. Then you script so they cannot fire simultaneously...

A lot of work, but if you absolutely MUST have this feature right now, it'd do the trick I think. Check with Z, there might be a way in the script itself to just check whether the unit is underwater or not. That way it'd work for amphibious as well.

caydr, it is already so....

I have a few units that have an above and below water weapon with the same speed.

The underwater weapon travels slower.

I played your mod. :\. the units that I was talking about have been in gundam annihilation prior to 1.0 which was almost a half a year ago. I made a huge deal about it and was very excited.

Anyway, point is that the underwater weapon should not HAVE TO HAVE a high speed to offset the underwater slowdown. It is an underwater weapon, if I want it to move slower I will set it thus. As it stands this is unwanted behavior.

Exactly which projectiles move slower underwater?

jcnossen wrote:Exactly which projectiles move slower underwater?

All of them unless I'm mistaken.

*bump

I can say again, unified weaponclasses ftw!!!

Not that I have the slightest idea of whether it'd work the way I want it or not... >_>

JC.. erm what do you mean which projectiles.. there is only one sort of projectile that moves underwater and that is a missile weapon (erm torpedo)... This unfortunately means that the amount of land to water, water to land weapons you can make is limited to none...

Apparently torpedo weapons only track whilst in the water and dont really even aim right either.. im not positive on the code here but basically wed need a whole lot more control on water weapons than we have.. as it stands depthcharges of the WW 1/2 variety are not possible, you cant even appropriate this in some dirty fashion all we have are torpedoes.. just torpedoes.

Fanger wrote:... This unfortunately means that the amount of land to water, water to land weapons you can make is limited to none...

Is this strictly true? AA has a land-based depthcharge launcher structure that can attack subs...

True, but it only works because depthcharges work as bombs to an extent, and can be dropped from a certain height into water. I don't think they can have a startvelocity.

Any and all weapons that work underwater, or from out of water to underwater.. are torpedoes, and thus all have to be missiles.. they have a start/max velocity as all missiles due, however unlike missiles they dont track until they have reached the water.. or at least dont seem to.. this means that you cant have a anti water weapon that would say land on the water above the target and then go down.. or at least close to it.. water weapons need to be looked at again...

THEY are all torpedoes, there are no "depthcharge" weapons they are just torpedoes with cosmetic differences..

As for unit limits, I think that would be best handled with generalizations of the resource system, for example including the creation of "instantaneous" resources similar to Starcraft's "Supply". With the possibility of defining multiple resources, you can implement a "unit limit" for each unit class, but then you can also include buildings to expand the limits for various classes, aggregate classes into a single "supply concept, etc.

But I'm neither a coder nor modder, so I should mind my own business. I'm just trying to think of the most generally useful way to implement that feature.

Smoths original idea was akin to the limits in say... C&C Series, so only one instance of a certain unit (the Mammoth MkII from TS or Tanya from RA/2 for example) could exist ever on the battlefield.

There is a lot that goes into this though such as dealing with queues, repeat orders and the like.

controlling unit limits via a 3rd resources is not really what we want.. although that would be nice too, it would be easier to simply add in a moddable global unit limit,.. however smoth would like to have unique named units for his mod that would be limited to 1, not really doable via resources system, and I would like to limit stuff as well.. not everything mind you but a few units could use it to allow me to radjust other values on them..