Dozerz (v4)

[KDR_11k]

I've made a test mod for an idea I had. It's called Dozerz and it's about dozers. To save me some typing, here's a copy and paste of the "manual":

Dozerz is a simple experimental mod. It relies on the thought that units have two ways of winning over each other, the one is rock paper scissors (one unit type counters another), the other is tactical use. In Dozerz I tried to make use of the latter.

There are two unit types, the flag and the dozer. The flag is your commander and builder, the dozer the fighter. Select the flag and let it build dozers, then send those dozers to the enemy. Dozers have a shield that blocks a lot of enemy shots but leaves the rear exposed and two weapons. By default the dozer will shoot an aimed laser at enemies, turn them on to make them shoot scattered bursts instead. Those don't damage shields and will hit the shield in a much larger radius but do a lot of damage quickly so they are devastating against dozers that are facing away from your units. Dozers can't hurt flags directly, they have to get close and self destruct (that has some range, the explosion graphic is much smaller than the actual area of effect) to hurt the flag. Currently it takes about 11 dozers to kill a flag. Self destruction does nothing to other dozers. A dozer can only shoot in a 90° arc in front of it.

The more dozers you have the slower your metal keeps coming so spamming gets slower the more dozers you have. Dozers are invulnerable for the first 7 seconds after being built.

All dozers can dgun which shoots a huge shot that explodes quite large. It takes 700 energy, 100 metal and deactivates the shield of the dozer for a short time. Don't use when you're under fire and use the scattershot to prevent your enemy from dgunning you.

Setting the flag to on makes artillery go down at its location, this will do quite some damage against dozers in the area but slowly wear
down your flag. Use it when your flag is under siege and you cannot produce a dozer because it gets shot down immediately. It forces the enemy to self destruct the dozers in the area or retreat them, while that won't help you if those self destructions kill your flag it will prevent him from pinning you down until his reinforcements arrive.

It's in the usual location.

Best played with commander ends game.

EDIT: Replaced manual text with the one from the new version.

[Day]

sounds interesting il have a go

[KDR_11k]

That match was quite helpful for deciding on improvements. Current changes I'll make for the next version:

- Less dozers (by cutting the ressource income down probably to 30 or so)
- Smaller shield against the laser, smaller shields make the scattershot too good so I'm adding a second shield that's larger and invisible that blocks the scattershot.
- Weaker shield since less dozers are in play (should come out as being about the same strength).
- Dozers twice as fast.
- Probably turning the flag into a factory so repeat build orders and rally points are more manageable.
- Fixing the fire arc, it's off to the side in the current version.

Another idea I'm playing with is letting Dozers fire a huge shot if they deactivate their shield for some time and for a large cost. This would be the equivalent of a grenade.

Ah, whatever, I took so long to type this I've already finished the next version doing all of these (available through the same download link). Since I'm not sure yet if the dgun is a good idea there are two variants, Dozerz and Dozerz Grenadiers, the latter includes the dgun. The dgun goes through shields (even if it didn't, the blast is big enough to kill the target anyway).

The whole thing is a metaphor for infantry combat, BTW. The shields are portable cover since Spring doesn't have cover. The laser is a rifle while the scattershot should work like a machinegun. In GINTA the shield would have been invisible and expose a small part of the hit sphere to frontal attacks while the rifle would be slightly inaccurate. I'm just too lazy to get GINTA done and I really want to know if this system works.

EDIT: Some thoughts about microing dguns:
- The unit ordered to dgun will shoot at the dgun target with its normal weapons between the order and the dgun shot. If you see an enemy deactivate his shield that's probably where he's aiming. You can change the dgun target before it fires, the time between the shield deactivation and the shot is independent of that, you can even stop the shot, it can be fired any time before the shield goes up again. Might be useful for making your enemy try to dodge a dgun shot you don't fire and quickly firing it elsewhere.
- The dgun is line-of-sight for some reason even though I set it to ballistic. If it targets a unit it will fly at unit height and if the target moves will not hit the ground at the target location.
- The dgun does not collide with friendlies, shooting it at one of your units allows it to exceed its range. It will travel in a straight line and on completely flat maps (like e.g. metal maps) it will stay at the right height to hit enemies.
- For some reason units won't try to get a clear line of fire when ordered to dgun a target behind an obstacle (e.g. hill).

[KDR_11k]

Some test games with the new version had "flag pins" where anything the flag built got shot immediately by the attacker which got boring pretty quickly since it was just waiting for the attacker to finish destroying the flag. The flag cannot be given any defenses since that would make it too hard to get units close for self-d but I've decided to give it a shield that drains a lot of energy and prevents you from using the dgun through that (though it won't shut down when you're out of energy). Should allow the flag to keep producing units even when under siege.

[KDR_11k]

I thought of something to fix the flag pins: A short period of invulnerability (5 seconds or so) for a dozer after it's built. One could still drive a dozer on the flag to prevent the unit from spawning, for that I could allow the flag to be set on fire which would damage everything in the area, including the flag. It'd force enemies to either retreat or self-d. Should the flag burn at all times (it wouldn't take damage then) so built dozers must be evacuated quickly and the area can be approached from multiple sides?

[KDR_11k]

New version adding defensive artillery to the flag (bombards the area) and 7 second invulnerability to new dozers. Dozers live longer now since weapon damage has been reduced. The Grenadiers variant has been replaced by the No Firestorm variant that removes the defensive artillery, the dgun is now standard issue for all dozers.

[rattle]

http://mitglied.lycos.de/KDR_11k/files/dozerz%202.7z -> 404
Working link: http://mitglied.lycos.de/KDR_11k/files/Dozerz%202.7z

[KDR_11k]

Ooops... Fixed

[AF]

screenshots?

And how about using Unknown-Files as the host? Much mroe reliable, and provides cookiebot access using !modlink

[rattle]

I think there aren't any screenshots neccessary at this point.

[Nemo]

KDR, have you had any success with limiting the shield's protection angle with a weapon main dir/maxangledif? I noticed that was in place for the main shield, but it didn't seem to work (at least with cursory testing).

If you have, and know how to make it work, I'd LOVE to hear it, since it would make tank combat much much easier to recreate. It would be possible to do it just by moving the shield centers around, but not as accurate as limiting the arcs, and would be prone to mis-hits.

[KDR_11k]

Nemo: Nope, that's just to make Spring turn the unit to face the enemy (the first weapon decides which arc the unit will keep exposed to the enemy). The shield is simply placed in front of the unit. I did the same in GINTA to handle the tank armor, problem is if you make shots too fast they might not notice that they hit the shield before they're within blast radius of the unit. In GINTA that meant occassional kills with one shot even through the frontal armor. May be tolerable for a realism mod since the damage a shot causes can vary in real life, too.

AF: I've put it on UF now, there should be a screenshot included but it doesn't show for me...

[KDR_11k]

Version 3 is now available on Unknown Files and the usual location. Except for a nerf to the firestorm the changes are mostly graphical since I've finally managed to make custom explosion generators work thanks to Nanoblobz.

[rattle]

Awww. You can do a lot of nice stuff with it.

About the firestorm thing:
Why don't you use a dummy weapon for the graphical firing effects and add a firepoint on the flag at some location not close to it instead. Then let the firepoint spin really fast around the flag's center and randomize it's location on the x- or z-axis while taking the minimum offset into account.
By detonating weapons on that point you could simulate artillery fire without having it hurt itself.I'm not sure though if empty objects do have origins so I dunno if it can spin around the center.
edit: Using 2 objects should work out just fine I guess.

If that doesn't work you'd have to use some sinus wave formula to calculate the position while randomizing the radius. Shouldn't be too difficult I think.

Just an idea I had while blowing my flag and blue blobs up.

[KDR_11k]

It's supposed to hurt itself, the firestorm should be a last resort defense if the enemy keeps killing all your units before they can do anything. Its cost is that your flag slowly takes damage.

[KDR_11k]

Hm, I got the scattershot to work perfectly for suppressive fire (which was its intended purpose all along):
Instead of randomly spreading shots that would occassionally hit through the shield due to the collision detection it's now two sweeping beams that pretty much kill anything they hit but since they're beam lasers don't fail to collide with the shield. A dozer firing that can be easily approached and destroyed as long as you keep your front towards it. Turn away and you get wiped in no time. I think since it works so fast now I can increase the turn rate of the dozers.

That'll probably be in the next version. Only problem is that the beam hits friendlies which means it will do area denial for both allies and opponents (and more effectively for allies since it goes through friendly shields) and there's not a damn thing I can do about it, all other weapon types either hit friendlies or tend to go through shields.

[KDR_11k]

Because it's fun I made a crappy looking explosion for the flag:

[rattle]

Turn it into a giant tear which drops to the ground instead...

[KDR_11k]

Version 4 is on UF now.

Changes:
- Replaced scattershot with sweeping beams that do the intended job much better without occassionally striking through the shield
- Dozer turn rate increased since the sweeping beams hit much faster and the flank doesn't need to be exposed as long for that to work
- Dozers can cloak now. They uncloak when they get even remotely close to an enemy but it approximately halves the distance at which a dozer can be spotted (especially when you count the shields being visible in the semi-dark aerial LOS). The sweeping beams make short work of cloaked dozers but cloaking allows ambushes.
- Shield recharge rate increased. Doesn't affect combat too much but lets dozers reach full shield strength after 10 seconds instead of 25
- Dgun range increased to match other weapon ranges. Should prevent dozers standing around shooting their normal weapons when ordered to shoot dgun at target outside of dgun range
- Dgun now collides with friendly units.
- Added custom explosion for the flag destruction and Dozer construction.
- Changed No Firestorm variant into Spawner variant

Spawner variant means you can build dozers in an area around the flag instead of the flag being a factory. Not sure how the cloaking will work out. Might need to drain energy so only a part of your force can be cloaked...

[1v0ry_k1ng]

should give dozers mine, radar, recon pole and sentry turret building abilities for added tactical fun