Alpha Centauri 2

Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri & Alien Crossfire => Modding => Topic started by: Alpha Centauri Bear on January 04, 2023, 04:59:35 AM

Title: Artillery duel
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on January 04, 2023, 04:59:35 AM

Artillery duel is an interesting feature but, as any newly introduced ones, is somewhat not well thought through.

One thing about it is that it sounds from description and intention as a symmetric fight. I.e. it does not matter who initiates the battle both units will use their attack value in combat resolution.
Yet, it is not entirely symmetrical. The battle happens at the defender tile and all relevant combat bonuses/penalties are applied to this tile. Specifically, sensor and base defense (no terrain bonuses in artillery duel). Meaning these bonuses may be applied or not applied depending on who initiates the combat.
Simple example is artillery unit at base behind PD. If it initiates the artillery duel it does not get PD defensive bonus. If opponent initiates the duel - it does.

Question.
Do you want to keep this as is or to make artillery duel entirely symmetrical with all bonuses applied regardless of initiated party?

Title: Re: Artillery duel
Post by: Vidsek on January 04, 2023, 09:07:39 PM

  If you want the in-game mechanics to have even a vague resemblance to RL, a protected unit should always have that protection.   

  How is the damage for each exchange calculated?  Simultaneous as though they both fire before the other's shell arrives, or turn based with the first to
fire having it's damage-delt applied to the second before the second fires?

  In RL, the one that fires first has a chance of damaging or destroying the other before the other gets it's first shot off.  After that, it's a matter of
who can reload faster and how accurate they are.  If the rate of fire is simplified to be the same for all units, the first to fire will be first in all exchanges
and have a slight advantage that way.  Don't know what it would take to code the behavior in, and whether folks would like giving an advantage to the
one that fires first.  Giving a faster rate of fire to more elite units could also open a can of (mind)worms.

Title: Re: Artillery duel
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on January 08, 2023, 07:08:08 PM

I don't care about resemblance to RL and nobody does. This is a regular game, not a simulator.

Artillery duel is computed same way as melee combat with only exception that attacker uses offense value for its strength calculation.
1. "Strength" value is computed for both parties taking unit strengths and all other modifiers into accounts. Modifiers (terrain, base, sensor, etc.) are applied to defender tile.
2. Every combat round dice are rolled to understand which party wins based on their relative strengths from #1 above.
3. Loser receive damage based on combat type, reactor, opponent firepower, etc. In WTP the variable damage is disabled and each round damage is exactly 10%.

The above makes precise sense to attack-defend situation when say defender is behind the perimeter. Indeed, it makes no sense for attacker to receive PD bonus if they attack out of behind the PD since they are getting out of it for attack.
For artillery duel, though, nobody is getting out anywhere as each unit uses long range fire capability. So shooting from within PD should bring some benefits. Unfortunately, it is difficult to implement and that is probably why original designers did not. I have already tried giving attacker base defense bonus and it worked. However, what to do with sensors? Should they apply to defender tile only or attacker and defender? If latter then what to do if party has sensor bonus on both own and opponent tiles? Count just one, both, sum, average?
I am thinking about giving sensor bonus for own tile since both parties are attacking other tile and defending at their tile and vanilla sensor primarily was given for defense advantage.

Title: Re: Artillery duel
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on January 09, 2023, 06:10:30 PM

Another interesting fact about artillery duel.
It honors corresponding base defensive facilities but ignores bunker. Not sure if this is by design or it just happened to be like that.

Title: Re: Artillery duel
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on January 11, 2023, 09:02:51 PM

I think I know what to do with it.

In Civ attack/defense unit strength meant a strength with which unit fights while attacking/defending. Meaning certain unit may perform well attacking but poorly defending and other unit could be an opposite.
SMACX didn't change the meaning of this values but changed their names to weapon/armor instead. This is a bad choice of words as it completely screws up people mind. Now they are asking how non combat unit can win the combat by armor solely???

Let me force your mind to think about this values as they were originally invented.
Weapon = not an item but the ability of the whole unit to perform well attacking.
Armor = not an item but the ability of the whole unit to perform well defending.

Which means that actually armor is the combination of all items (weapons, armors, abilities) and measures normally used in defense, etc.

With above in mind, I don't see special need to substitute defending artillery armor with weapon. It should normally use armor value for defense as in any other type of combat.

So here are proposed changes. Along with other standardizations and simplifications I had in mind.

• All combat types use attacker weapon vs. defender armor value to resolve relative strength. This is also true for interceptor scrambling as in this case interceptor attacks bomber to protect units.
• All combat types use defender tile to compute their location related bonuses: sensor, base, terrain, etc.
• All combat types use sensor bonus at defender tile. In WTP sensor also benefits attacker and works on sea.
• Conventional combat always applies terrain and base defensive bonuses. That applies to artillery duel as well which would be a difference from vanilla.
• Psi combat does not apply terrain terrain and base defensive bonuses including bunker (which is a terrain improvement). The only bonus applicable to psi combat is base intrinsic defense.
• Artillery duel rules are same regardless of realm (land vs. land, sea vs. sea, land vs. sea). Land guns do not have bonus over sea ones. Land vs. sea artillery duel goes to the death as any other.