Units exceeding their attributes

I would like to state my opinion to GPG, and get the opinion of others related to what they think about some of the gameplay mechanics that seemingly allow units to operate above and beyond their statistics.
3 things come to mind:
1) Formation 'catch-up' speed boost. Yes, the reason why Megaliths sometimes run faster than tanks. Why Aeon/UEF air can outrun your speed-upgraded Cybran air. This seems to apply, when you use a formation-move command, to any units that are left 'behind' or have a default slower move rate than other units in your group (don't know the details if someone knows that could explain). Why should any unit be able to ever move under it's own locomotion faster than it's 'Maximum Speed'. It's the maximum. By very definition the fastest it can go. If it can go faster just because it's chasing something, why can't it go that fast all the time?
2) Adaptor Shield Stacking. I don't know if I observe correctly, but it seems to be 85% of a projectile's damage is stripped from it the moment it hits any sheild. This means the second sheild only takes 15% damage, and the third about 2.25% damage, and the fourth sheild only takes one third of one percent damage.
Again, I am just speculating as to what actually happens, and I know I don't have it exact, but I think I have the idea right if anyone knows better please explain.
3) Extended Mobile Artillery range. Mobile artillery 'lead-off' their target, which is good, but have you ever seen them lead-off on an assault bot that is already at it's maximum range and running directly away? The artillery can almost double it's range by leading off to shoot targets that are moving quickly away from it. Again, like the first point, if the maximum range is clearly X, why can it shoot almost twice as far just because it is leading.

Now my opinions:
1) It makes no sense for a unit to go faster then it's stated Max Speed under it's own locomotion for any reason. They call it a maximum because it's a maximum. Unit's should not exceed their maximums while operating without clearly stated buffs from other units.
2) Way too overpowered once you get into the dozens with these things since they suck up so much damage for each other. Damage should not be mitigated for each sheild it goes through, but instead just the final damage the shell does when it explodes. So any sheilds under a sheild takes full damage instead of only 15%, but when the projectile finally lands it only does the small percentage damage as calculated now, so you still get the same initial protection from the units, but the sheilds fail a little easier when grouped.
3) Again, if the unit can shoot this far while leading off, why not all the time? I mean you could say 'it just can't target outside it's range even though it can shoot that far', but if the shells are *capable* of being launched that far, shouldn't I at least be able to ground fire from the same distance? Change it so that the shells can only lead-off to a maximum distance (their 'max range'), even if the unit will be outside their max range, the shell should fall short, and always explode within the red range ring.|||I'm inclined to agree with this thread.
Adding unintuitive elements to an RTS is a big no-no. For example, I wouldn't have even have known that any of these even existed if I didn't visit the forums. What you are doing is putting players at a severe disadvantage if they aren't aware of these subtle nuances, and since the game has no method of explaining of them, how would anybody know?
In addition to being extremely unintuitive, I fail to see how these design principles add to the game at all. Why should an Experimental ever go faster than its max speed or artillery shoot double it's normal range? Don't tack confusing things onto the game just because you want it to be more "accessible" to new players, because all you're doing is actually hurting them in the end.|||I agree, except w/adaptor shields. nerfing cybran? umad?|||Quote:|||I disagree with adapters, the cybran need something in the pre-experimental stage of the game that isn't week as hell.|||Hollowpoint, your observations are correct, although hardly new.
#1: I concur. This feature was probably implemented to make formations better, seeing how poorly formations performed in supcom 1. It was part of the unit movement overhall, but does add considerable imbalances and logical disconnects as you mention. However, it used to be much worse. I believe it used to be that the speed bonus was 50%, with brackmans clearly outrunning harvogs even. I think the maximum speed bonus has been reduced to 15%, although any bonus is too much. This is not an effective mechanic and I hope it does not carry into future titles.
#2: You are correct. You didn't mention the most important point, however, that no shield between the cannon and the shell's eventual impact point takes splash damage. In tests, I think it only took 3 adaptor shields to nullify all the damage done by a King Kryptor's main guns. Aeon shields perform similarly, reflecting or stripping damage from all shots. This mechanic, although somewhat flawed does appear to be largely balanced. Units that rely on splash damage for their effectiveness (ie, the King Kryptor) are largely negated by shields utilizing this mechanic but the balance impact on the game at large is accounted for by other factors. Notice that the parashield has 600 hp and the adaptor shield has only 140. The game is presently balanced with this shield mechanic, so I don't want it changed.... but I do hope that it is addressed differently in a future title as to be less confusing and imbalancing.
#3: The extended range is an effect that applies to all weapons that lead. The effect is only most pronounced in mobile artillery because of the slow shot speed and high arc, which means the shell spends a very long time in the air, which allows the target to move a great distance between launch and impact. Further, this bug is not new to supcom 2 as it was (and still is) present in supcom 1. You can try it out if you want. This problem can be solved, but would require a different approach to how weapons are designed and coded into the game.
That is to say, weapon ranges in supcom 2 are arbitrarily set. Given the simulation of projectiles, however, there's no reason this needs to be the case: Weapons can be legitimately limited through the weapon's intrinsic capabilities. In coding my balance mod, for example, I transformed the Cybran Tech 3 mobile heavily artillery into into a torpedo artillery, I called it the "Torpeduchet". In the unit's blueprint, I told the weapon it had a range of (for example) 100 and a muzzle velocity of 20. I told it that it could attack any submarine unit, which means all units on the water that have parts under the water (ie, subs, ships, non-hovering amphibious units). This means that it would attack any water unit, and aim it's weapon based upon the acceleration of gravity and the velocity of 20.
However, in the blueprint for the projectile, I set the maximum velocity to be 17. Thusly, as soon as the torpeduchet fired, the speed of the torpedo dropped immediately to 17. The game calculated the shot and it landed short of the target, only travelling about 90% of the way before dropping into the water and "swimming" the rest of the way to the target (because the projectile was homing). This gave the torpeduchet's weapon the intrinsic inability to be effective again ships near the coast, because the torpedo would fall onto land, destroying itself. This is an example of an intrinsic limitation of a weapon.
To intrinsically limit the maximum range of a weapon, many factors come into play and it largely depends on the target and the nature of the target and projectile. For example, any projectile that homes in on the target (ie, tracks it) and is fired from a weapon attacking an air unit is only limited in range by the projectile's speed, acceleration and lifetime. A projectile with 2 lifetime, 2 speed and 2 acceleration will never exceed an effective range of 8. (As the projectile falls from the sky, it may inadvertently impact a ground target further away.) However, if the weapon's arbitrarily limited to a range of 5, you will see it fire only at units withing 5 range, but it may hit units that are further away due to the intrinsic capabilities of the projectile being greater.
For projectiles that don't track, accelerate, swim, fly, or have immunity to gravity, ie just about every tank shell in supcom 1 and 2, range is constrained by turret height, turret pitch and muzzle velocity (assuming it is equal to or lower than the maximum projectile speed, which as I explained with the torpeduchet, is not necessarily the case, but usually is). Turret height is a sum of terrain (high ground versus low ground) and the where the cannon is located on the unit (ie, how far off the ground). Turret pitch is how far up (or down) the turret is capable of aiming. Not counting for air resistance (because supcom doesn't), a turret pitch of 45 degrees ensures maximum range, unless you're shooting at targets with a greater height than the cannon.
A turret with 0 height and 0 maximum pitch is useless because the shell will always impact the ground immediately upon leaving the cannon, unless the tank is on a slope facing uphill. A turret with 0 pitch and infinite speed (such as a beam/laser) can have potentially infinite range.... and just about every combination in-between. This is why arbitrary range limitations are imposed: To make the game easier to develop and balance. The range rings in supcoms 1 and 2 are based upon the unit weapons' arbitrary limits, not their intrinsic limits. (Note: A unit will not fire at a target within range if it doesn't think it can hit. This can be demonstrated by, for example, giving the Uef tech 1 tank (striker) a weapons range of 100,000. The muzzle velocity simply isn't high enough to reach that range under any in-game condition (although it could theoretically fire at a target at that range if it were on an impossibly high wall and firing at a target far below it.)
For example, if you've played the UEF campaign (in supcom 2), you'll not that the range upgrade used to increase the range of the UEF ACU's weapon by 100%. In supcom 1, there was an upgrade that increased it (IIRC) 25%. In both of these cases, if weapons were intrinsically limited, more than a single coded value would have to change to increase the range of the weapon... and programmers would have to re-calculate the necessary pitch/velocity/etc parameters to ensure maximum range. It would be a huge hassle.
Further, units don't simply fire at the ground where a target is (except the MML and a few others, which do not track or lead, but instead "fire at target location"). The targeting system actually tries to aim the cannon at a specific bone on the target's unit model. If you'll recall the "feet wet" bug, it used to be impossible to attack amphibious units that were partially submerged. This problem was (partially) corrected by enabling units to target the weapon bones. If the weapon bone it out of the water, it can fire its weapon. If the weapon bone it out of the water, it can be targeted by other weapons. Thus, the work around became if the weapon bone can fire its weapon, it can be targeted by other weapons. Before this "fix", only certain bones on unit models could be targeted and, in the case of the Galactic Collossus, with it's weapon being located at the very top of the unit, the weapon could remain above water while all the targetable bones remained underneath.
This is important because, with multiple targetable bones on most units (and certainly on the largest units), many units will pick one at random to aim at. However, as we established previously, a unit will not fire at a target with it's range if it does not have enough turret pitch/muzzle velocity/etc to hit the target. Thus, intrinsically limiting the range of, say, the demolisher in supcom 2 against targets like rockhead tanks (which are low to the ground) would render the artillery unable to attack targets high above the ground (such as a king kryptor) at a similar maximum range.
TL;DR: THUSLY, WE CAN ASSUME THAT When forced between confusing weapons mechanics that are easy to program and confusing weapons mechanics that are hard to program, that GPG chose the former.|||#1 The alternatives are for the rest of the formation to move more slowly to allow units to catch up, or for formations to not work properly at all. Take your pick.

#3 Whilst Funkoff is correct in saying that weapons can be limited by their physical properties instead of arbitrary ranges, it's more complicated for every unit to calculate their ranges dynamically based on what their shots can actually hit.
So either range rings will be missing or inaccurate, or units will fire at targets that are out of range. I guess maybe in the future we'll have enough CPU speed for units to trace out the trajectory vs. the terrain before every shot, for every possible target, to see which ones are hittable.|||AdmiralZeech|||Hollowpoint and Funkoff.
That was excellent, great explanation.|||1). Having units move together in formation is required. Speeding up slow units to catch up with the formation is far less punishing than slowing down fast units to match the speed of the group.
2). By design. Remember that in SC1 only one shield at a time would take damage, making stacking even more effective.
3). This was found a couple weeks before SC2's release and it was too risky to fix. We traced it back to 2005, but it wasn't really noticeable on SC1/FA.|||Really? I was aware of it for ages; inspired my ballistic ranges mod.
I did find that one way to solve it was to disable the variable projectile speed nonsense, and enforce some appropriate firing arcs. If you stop artillery from aiming up to 45 degrees, then they'll never fire near that mathematical maximum range that they could now and in Sup1.|||Eric|||Eric|||In FA, all shields work like the UEF shields in SupCom2.|||Original Poster, back with more to say now:
1) I think the very best solution would be no speed bonus. Instead when you issue a formation-move order instead of trying to group up and move, they should retain roughly the formation they are in when given the order, and regroup into a 'proper formation' at the point where the order was given. If you put two fomation moves in a row they will regroup at the first in a proper formation, and move towards the second in formation at the speed of the slowest unit. If I want to move at my unit's full speed I will use regular move.
2) I like the way Adaptors work as well, but they are just far too effective at what they do sheild wise once you get them into large groups, and it is due to the stacking mechanic. Cap the stacking mechanic at 2 sheilds, so the most that will ever get mitigated is 97.75% of the damage and it wouldn't change their early game too much, but make the late game less (but still very, almost 98%!!) effective.
3) If it's easy to implement now, and definetly for future titles, before launching a weapon that leads-off a little check that says 'if where I am trying to lead-off to is out of my range radius, fire at the point at the edge of my firing radius that is closest' would be a great solution.|||Eric|||On the topic of Adaptor shields - what about removing health regen? I haven't looked closely, but I assume that at some point the unit's regen exceeds the damage being done to it.|||The shield regen isn't that big.|||No, the health regen.|||Health regen of adapters? It isn't that big either; and if you managed to take down their shields they should die really fast (Good luck on the getting shields down part though).|||X-Cubed|||I might have remembered wrong, or I might have been playing with campaign balance. I remember that in the campaign missions in vanilla, 2 T3 strat bombers could take down 3 layered shields by hitting all of them at the same time.
Oh, I think Eric is right as long as the attacks are normal attacks that hit the side of the shield. The only time when people referred to shield splash was with artillery/bomber units where the projectile would hit the top of the shields where they intersected and damage multiple shields at once.|||Eric|||I don't have much of an opinion on 1 or 2, but 3 is the best solution. What else do you want- a range ring, the enemy tank walks in, but my artillery won't fire even though it says it's in range? If you walk into the range ring, you get shot at. The rest is just a physical necessity.|||You know Z, it's funny how you write walls of text but your posts can be summed by usually the 1st sentence. Stop writing all that junk man.