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Old October 13, 2002, 13:06   #1
Blake
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Weapon/Armour types
Now, I *had* said that I dont like the idea of weapon armour types but I will withdraw that statement because I quite like them in warcraft3 and they are in virtually every RTS game including Red Alert.

If your not familliar the basic premise is we have weapon and armour (or unit) types, ie Infantry, Light, Heavy, Fortified and weapon types light, heavy, explosive.
Different types do different amounts of damage, light weapons are effective vs infantry light armour but ineffective vs heavy and fortified armour. Heavy weapons are effective vs light and heavy but ineffective vs infantry and fortified, explosive weapons are effective against everything except heavy armour.
That is more or less the model used in most RTS games.

Armour type is a combination of the actual ability for the armour to reduce damage, and luck, fortified armour (the type found on buildings) is all about reducing damage, shots bounce off it. But the relative ineffectiveness of heavy weapons vs infantry is to do with luck and overkill, it's hard to kill infantry with single, large, powerfull rounds.

Now note that combat will not be dueling like in Civ games, it'll either be on a combat map /battleboard like in MOO2 , HOMM etc or freeform on the main map (kinda like RTS games...), free form combat obviously means no distinct tile movement.

Possibilities:
In choosing the types we can be more realistic or more abstract, a realistic system would be Infantry, Light, Heavy, Concrete, an abstract might be Energy, Projectile. The difference is that with abstract it's not exactly clear why Projectile weapons do more damage to Energy armour and energy weapons are ineffective against energy armour, we could equally have chosen the oppisite and justify it in some way.
With realistic heavy weapons do bad damage against infantry becase they have trouble hitting person sized targets that like to lay in the mud, it cant be any other way.

Note that Warcraft3's type system is mostly realistic, the weapons are
Normal, Piercing, Siege
And the armours are:
Small (light), Normal, Large (heavy)
Piercing weapons, which are generally ranged units, do extra damage against "Large" class enemies, and less against "Small" this is due to the relative difficulty of hitting the targets and the "Broad side of the barn" effect, while normal (generally melee) weapons do extra damage against small, because whacking a wimpy little archer with a sword does quite some damage

But then again there are some more fancifull bits, siege weapons do less damage against small, this could be attributed to the difficulty of hitting a person with a large rock, but they also do splash damage.
It's actually for balance purposes.

And then we have this "Wolf Rider" unit which is an orc with a whopping great blade which does siege damage, it's because the unit is designed for destroying buildings, but has the side effect that when the rider hits a fragile little archer with this whoppin blade - it does virtually no damage. It's a quirk of the system.

Then we have "chaos" weapons which does full damage against all armour types and is against mostly used for balance purposes or to make uber strong units that cannot easily be countered.
And we have "hero" armour, piercing attacks do reduced damage against heros, but they should be no more difficult to hit than a normal person, you could invoke the "James Bond" effect (enemy always misses ) but again it's primarly for balance purposes.

Warcraft 3 is a superbly balanced game and seems to use the start with realistic, but dont sacrifice balance and playability for realism. So there is "Things that make ya go huh?!" but in the end it's very enjoyable and works.

Anyway a lot of random rambling in there....
So the subject of this thread is, what should the weapon and armour/unit types in StP be... general discussion of unit design is also appropriate.
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Old October 14, 2002, 07:15   #2
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WEAPON TYPES

normal (well you know NORMAL)

Piercing (effective against any armortypes like rovers/tanks/i dunno)

explosive (effective against infantry. barrage etc. etc. world war I)

projectile (buffed up piercing thingy. what this is is just some solid matrial slingshotted with high speeds against something so that is will melt. piercing weapons do the same. i even give you some numbers if you want from now a day armorpiercingweapons)

energy (isnt effected by normal armor, why dont ask, i have read something maybe will post the link)


ARMOR

none- (infantry- no damage reducing )

light- (infantry- planes- rover- little damage reducing

normal- (rovers- tanks- etc- first X% has to be destroyed before unit gets damage after that little damage reducing)

Heavy- (rover- tanks- etc- first X% has to be destroyed before unit gets damage after that fair damage reducing)

enegry- (everything???- fair damage reducing against enegry and projectile good damage reducing against rest. after X shots it is no more)



you have to see it like this the type of weapon used give a +modifier to the damage the type of armor give a -modifier to the damage. IF the armor matches the weapons. it is not totally okay because this is just rambeling but willl give something good some where this week
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Old October 15, 2002, 12:08   #3
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as i see it that are sort of armor.....i was thinking about types of armor.....if i am wrong please tell me because then i can give some other ideas but i was thinking the idea was for giving types of armor for coding...right?

btw Jb did you get the shielding ideas from pax imperia???
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Old October 16, 2002, 00:41   #4
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Hmmm maybe I should make a topic on Armour.

Some of the names are from Pax Imperia, but I was hoping to change the names of them yet still have the concept.
-J.B.-
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Old October 23, 2002, 05:33   #5
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Armor is of limited usefulness and always will be. Armor can only protect whatever equipment or body part it covers. It must be spread out, whereas the attack will naturally be concentrated on a limited area. Eventually the armorer is forced to concentrate on protecting a few vital areas, leaving other parts or angles of attack open.

Defense is defined more by the ability to deny the attacker the opportunity to concentrate fire on vulnerable targets. Current infantry can't hope to be impervious to strafing from 20mm+ guns on aircraft. Infantry can carry shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles that make approaching the infantry unit too dangerous for the attacking aircraft. Similar infantry weapons make armor more vulnerable to well-equipped infantry than vice versa. How much moreso when man-portable energy weapons are developed?

Vehicles must use their superior mobility to create the opportunity to attack and deny the enemy an opportunity to counterattack. Infantry must use their ability to disperse, hide, or use fortifications to the same effect. Body or vehicle armor is then of use only for stopping low energy shrapnel or limiting damage to turn a fatal wound into a survivable wound.
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Old October 23, 2002, 05:50   #6
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i dont like the idea that infantry and tanks/rovers can use the same kind of armor.......
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Old October 25, 2002, 01:39   #7
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Yeah, in the manual it says that Synth is 250mm thick, while Plasma or Silk is 520mm and Neutronium is 755mm!

"Sir, I would gladly attack the enemy position but this half meter of armor is too heavy for me to stand up."
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Old October 25, 2002, 08:30   #8
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so different kinds of armor for different kinds of unitS!
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