Something that isn’t yet in the game, and might be good for infantry, is the diea of camoflage. maybe a purely-infantry option, a module that goes into the slots for armor or shields, but means that unit is camoflaged instead. it could make that unit harder to spot, when enemies are selecting targets, and would toggle off for a period of a few seconds when that unit opened fire. Maybe it could be combined with a new ‘no weapon’ option to prevent them giving away their position.
On the plus side, obviously it means infantry might make it through the map without being hit, on the minus side, it means zero armor, and also means that they would (to be effective) lose all offensive capability. If balanced, it could be quite interesting. It could possibly be extremely heavy, effectively making camoflaged units forced to move slowly (to repserve their camo status), although that might not be intuitive?
Not because I personally want it more than camouflaged units, but rather because the demand is (or seems?) high, and even professional reviewers criticised that the tanks just don’t feel… tanky enough.
And this IS Gratuitous TANK Battle after all, isn’t it?
[size=85]Memento: All of this post is to be read with a happy, sympathic and friendly voice in your head. I love the game! I’m just giving my thoughts on how to make it even better. [/size]
First, yes, Camoflage would be awesome - anything that adds to the already amazing amount of detail already in the game will ultimately make the game better.
however I do think the concerns that Elric has and that also I can see more people have as well, are important.
Given it should (he says, naively) be quick & easy to add, just throw it into the game and lets see how it works. Certainly something to make infantry a viable attacking option would be nice, and camouflage is probably easier than APCs
The biggest issue is that camouflage works best on static troops; I guess the answer is to make it reduce the range of attacks against them, rather than make them non-attackable. That would also prevent people sneak-winning an entire attack.
Camouflaged snipers… that could be an interesting unit.
Sounds like intresting idea. But to defer to earlier post tanks with multiple weapons first or maybe infantry in form combat engineers with some form special abilty like mined adjacent path or one womping attk on turret or other impacement
multiple weapons is probably 10x the workload requried to do something like camo units, otherwise it would be no contest.
Another idea I’ve been toying with for ages is defining a ‘safe-zone’ behind heavy ta ks where infantry get a big cover bonus, which mirrors real life a bit, although to be useful in gameplay terms it would have to extend quite a distance, and I wonder if it would look weird, for a gun right next to some guy effectively doing half damage because there was a tank in front of him…?
I think your prospect of doing the easier things first is a very good idea, and probably
would get more of what you may want of several things into the game quicker.
After the initial rush and you are satisfied it is good for 1.0, then you can go back
to the more elaborate and complicated things you feel might be best.
Rather than an automagic deadzone (erm, alivezone) behind tanks, just implement proper line-of-sight on laser and fast moving projectile attacks.
Big tank between gun and man? Cover! No tanks in the way? Die!
Ideally you’d do the same for turrets too, where small turrets can’t fire machine guns through big ones. Sadly that would probably just make missiles even more attractive, which isn’t a boost they need
I guess some code could do an approximation where if the tank is between the gun and the infantry, and the infantry are within the deadzone, then they get the protection. It might not be too bad. Like most thing with simulations, the ‘hard’ code isn’t as much of a problem as reliably and clearly getting the idea accross to the player.
A related issue might be to address the way in which units move into empty tiles. Right now the tank in front of infantry has to really get moving along before the infantry shuffle forwards, whereas if I could fix that, and have them hug the vehicle in front, then it would probably look and work more sensibly…?
maybe just have heavy tanks dragging along a buff zone…
if you can’t quite show it, bottom line you can just add one of those symbols with support buildings (maybe a shield or a sandbag) on top of the infantry
I was thinking more crudely of the size of the vehicle. Large tanks/mechs give more cover than small ones. That two large tanks have different levels of armour is less relevant than that the bullets just go straight over the little tank.
Of course, if you’re being really nasty, large mechs would give less cover as the bullets would go between their legs
I don’t think it is a bad idea to have tanks give some cover as the infantry is really very squishy.
If you are looking for a historical perspective though, U.S. Army studies after WW2 showed that tanks effectively provided no cover. It appears that any actual cover benefit they may have conferred was more than offset by the amount of fire they drew…
