Seismic

[Argh]

Colorblind, I've tried out the Seismic system, and am planning to put it into NanoBlobs. However, I have a wee problem: the radii of the objects seem to be gigantic! Reading through the available documentation about this, it appears that it uses some sort've default based on metal cost. However, setting it to a value doesn't work like I've come to expect from most values regarding area (i.e., radius defined by "pixels"). Instead, it appears to be a multiplier of that original default.

Could I get you to change it, so that if undefined, it reverts to your formula, but if defined, it used the standard Spring definitions, used just about everywhere else, for radius? I know it may seem like a minor request, and in truth it should be a breeze to code, but it's not minor in terms of impact on game design. Basically, the way it works now, if I have metal cost values that are very different from OTA's, or have really radical metal cost differences between units that should have similar "seismic footprints", then I have to backtrack through your formula and calculate it out for each unit to arrive at identical values, which is not exactly ideal.

For example, in NanoBlobs, the Springer and Knight are roughly "equal" units, in terms of overall combat strength, but the Knight costs half the Metal, because when balancing NanoBlobs, the Metal cost of the Knight vs. Workertime cost is a very important part of early game curving. I want them to have the same size of Seismic Signature. Another example is the SquareRook, the SpireRook, and the Demon. Similar in overall footprint size, I want the SpireRook to be slightly smaller than the other two, but I want the Square and Demon to be the same, so that players can spoof each other to some extent. Right now, working this out requires a good deal of trial and error.

Just a thought- I really like this feature otherwise.

[colorblind]

I didn't implement it, I think Yeha or SJ did. So you'll have to bug them about it :).

[PauloMorfeo]

Have you tries changing the "mass"? Maybe the seismic detection uses mass instead of Metal and since you can define "mass" independently of metal cost, it would solve your second problem.

[Yeha]

If there is no seismic signature defined it caluclates a default based on the mass (and if there is no mass defined it is calculated based on the metal cost).
The seismic signature is defined as how fast the seismic ring expand in spring unit per frame. One ping last 15 frames, so the size of the ring will be SeismicSignature*15.