WC2 vs WC3 style transports?

[spiritplumber]

I was experimenting with subunits and did something mildly interesting -- as you know, the placeholder for a Kilrathi civilian cargo ship is a Pakthan model that carries two big cargo containers in its "claw". I was watching a naval battle when suddenly someone decided to shoot at this ship, blew up one of the cargo containers, and cargo spilled out! This is pretty cool, but it can only be done with modular cargo ships like in WC3 and beyond. So, do we want those?

[smbarbour]

Pinata ships!

[spiritplumber]

I implemented this for kicks with the WC1-style drayman... if you shoot at it just right, the cargo hold will blow up independently from the rest of the ship, and cargo will spill out. It's pretty neat. It also lets you notice that the Diligent is just a Drayman chassis with a different cargo module

[chuck_starchaser]

That sounds outstanding! Any chance that spilled space cargo could be sold as what it is, instead of as "space salvage"?

[spiritplumber]

Upgrades get sold as space salvage, the rest gets sold as it is.

[masteroforion]

nice feature. does it work the other way round as well? Can you destroy the non-cargo section of the ship and tractor in the cargo compartment, if your ship is large enough?

[mat_yarrow]

Wow! This could be the first step towards a unit or ship with truly modular construction -- destroyable engines ,radar/sensors , etc. and the possibility for new types of missions ( the target/bounty may be on a particular subunit that must be destroyed or tractored in, otherwise it is lost if the entire ship is destroyed ) Although implementing it would take a lot of effort, maybe more than is feasible.

[chuck_starchaser]

Indeed this is getting interesting. And perhaps you may have noticed in another thread spiritplumber also got destroyable turrets to work. I have this idea in my head that in VS there's such thing as sub-unit targeting; --don't know whether I read about it, or dreamt it. In any case, I too would like to see more of this stuff, and more taylorable weapons also.
In Masters of Orion II, if you haven't played it, there was a planet called Orion, usually near the center of the galactic map; and the first player to grab it got some key technologies. But the planet was guarded by a very tough ship to beat. But there was a trick to beating that ship pretty early in the game:
Once you researched a special missile that homed into the engines of the enemy ship, you were all set: There were missile modifiers, such as speed enhancements, ECCM and extra armor. The idea was to design a few tough and fast ships that would move ahead first and get the guardian's attention. Then about 10 jolly roger ships full of missiles. Half the missiles in each ship you'd make them conventional except for speed enhancement and extra armor. The other half of the missiles were the engine homing type, and you'd give them NO extra speed, but yes to ECCM. So, the cheap and tough missiles would arrive first and occupy all the ECM, point defense beams and anti-missile missiles, and they'd be immediately followed by big waves of engine homing missiles with ECCM. Far less than needed to seriously damage the guardian in general, but enough to make the engines explode, and with them the rest of the ship.
With sub-units, it will be a natural step to have sub-unit specific weapons, and then battle tactics could get really interesting.

[mkruer]

This for me is sooo 5yrs ago.

Any who. The major problem is not the logic behind, what gets destroyed, and by what and what are the consequences, but rather it requires a radically different thinking in model design. For capital ships that have turrets its fairly easy because each turret is its own object. Also for most capital ship, they are already broken up into subunits. The really problem arises with smaller ships like fighters. No one (almost no one) is willing to place that much detail into a small craft.

[spiritplumber]

Tie Fighter had this and did a great job of it... I think it's WAY too hard to do as it stands though, on the grounds that WC designs usually aren't very modular at all. I suppose it could be done on a case by case basis (shield generator for large objects such as bases, for example). I mostly did subunits because they were there.

To try it out, use the battle royale batch file in WCU over Priv 1.1 (where you get to fly the steltek drone), spawn some capships, and strafe their turrets going inside their shield -- one steltek drone salvo should get even a big turret.

The best way to get subunits with a normal ship is with missiles, I find... use FF missile and the B key to target subunits. Also works with asteroid fields.

A thing I didn't care for in WC3 (largely fixed in WC4 due to tighter scripting) was that when you destroyed a capship's escort and enough turrets to create a blind spot, the capship would mostly sit there and take it -- its movements were usually scripted. I try to avoid that in the battle AI.

[klauss]

I always thought that the best way to do that for small ships, was to specify 3D coordinates of critical systems, and a chance to hit them (modelling size). Then, when a weapon hit occurs, damage the closest system. That wouldn't be hard for anyone. Modellers would simply specify a set of 3D points (hey, if they won't do that, how lazy are they!) and to which systems the map. The engine would just load that from units.csv, I guess, and use it for damage allocation. Right now, system damage allocation is based on the weapon hit's angle (relative to the forward vector), which kind of makes sense, in a very simplified way.

[mat_yarrow]

The fix for the destroyable turrets, the "salvo" script being worked on by klauss, the cargo-spawning modular subunits - these could be used by the marine units that are launched by the shuttles. I was thinking of the possibility that the arms of the marines could be implemented as turrets, something that was done in an old Robotech mod for Homeworld. Although, modeling it would be a tricky proposition.

[spiritplumber]

Tricky indeed... I do have infantry but it's just "small craft" really.

However, about modular transports... check this out, this is the tanker version of the WC3 kat transport being blown up in two halves:

http://spiritplumber.dynip.com/wcu/

[crouton]

Maybe if we restrict subunitized models to capships at this point? That way, we don't get bogged down redoing fighter ships. If we like the way the capships turned out and the other tasks are complete, more time can then be focused on fighter-level ships and infantry/shuttles/etc.

[spiritplumber]

Agreed with... For now, see if you like the screenies. The temporary class names for those ships are Dorkathra and Draymaster, both are available in transport and tanker flavors.