DFD: 494 vs. 217, 935 vs. 555

[Renegade]

DFD: Daily Feature Deathmatch

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The Cruel Fight For Implementation

This is a Daily Feature Deathmatch post. If you are unfamiliar with the background of this event, please read the announcement, the adjustment and the schedule.

Fight 1

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[0000494] FireDir vs. [0000217] Allow Superweapons be related to infantry and units

Fight 2

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[0000935] BurstDelay improvement vs. [0000555] Speed for damage spread

After the fight is over, two of these issues will be suspended, while the other two move on to the next round.
Remember that the coders will not take part in the discussion, so make your arguments complete, concise and convincing - when it's over, it's over.

Part of that is clearly marking what outcome you support for which issue.
There should be no ambiguity in the issue you're talking about, and it should be clear what outcome you support. Feel free to put your stance in bold, and use simple terminology like "kill #69" or "I want #42 to survive".
This use of simple terminology should be part of a larger argumentation - if this is all your post consists of, it will be ignored. We are interested in argumentations and details to consider, not votes.

A decision will be made either way, a lack of discussion will not cause all issues to live.

Be friendly, be civil, be logical.
You are allowed to try to deconstruct the arguments of those arguing against your candidate, but remember that they don't make the call - there is really no point in getting personal.

The discussion should be contained in this thread, argumentations elsewhere will be ignored, but you are allowed to transfer and adapt points made elsewhere in the past.

We want a good, clean fight.
Let's get it on!

These fights are largely automatically generated - if an issue turns out to be unfit for combat, it will be disqualified and the opponent will go into the queue.

[Beowulf]

Kill #217. It just feels silly. Balance is up to the modder, I know, but the idea is kinda stupid. How does an infantry cause a superweapon? It might be interesting attached to, say, Boris and his Flare gun but otherwise, it's just kinda dumb. I support #494 because it's at least somewhat interesting, although not a whole lot better.

Between #935 and #555, I like #555 a little better. A slowed warhead damage tag would be a neat effect since DelayKill assumes the objects have to die; this does not and I like that. I'm sure some will disagree but oh well. I like #555.

[Blade]

Fight 2 I would support the expansion of burst delay since its already in the game and just need to be allowed on different techno types. I agree with the argument in the comments against the spread damage delay that it will be hard to notice and thus not giving much benefit for the effort.

[MRMIdAS]

out of two meh issues, I support [0000494] as I think more people would be able to use the logic.

[0000555] gets my vote, as it could be used well with superweapons like the nuclear missile, and psychic dominator, even the Ion Cannon, to create a cool looking shockwave effect.

[Nighthawk]

For fight one:
Controlling the specific firing direction sounds like something that could come in handy. An example I could think of could be for map-specific tech structures that can only fire in one direction. Only issue I see is whether the game's compass follows the isometric layout - it'd look a bit odd if it didn't.

As for the second issue. While I'm generally a fan of super weapon additions, I'm failing to see a lot of merits to this one, at least on InfantryTypes. As Beowulf says, the only real use of super weapons on infantry could be with Boris and an airstrike. In all other cases, InfantryTypes tend to die too easily and too quickly to be of much use as super weapon bases. That said, I can see a bit more use for super weapons on vehicles, especially if modders tend to go down the emerging "epic unit" road. However, I don't see it getting heavy use out of people if implemented.

Therefore, my stance is support #494, kill #217.


For fight two:
BurstDelay expansion sounds quite good to me. Modders could make, as the original poster mentions, structures akin to Generals' Patriot Missile Battery, which slowly fires a stream of missiles before pausing. It would give modders greater control over the behaviour of their structure's weaponry. As for infantry, well, I'm not sure what cases it would be used on there, but it couldn't go amiss to let InfantryTypes use it as well.

Edit: In fact, there might be a case for restoring its old FS functionality. In Firestorm, BurstDelay was a flag on WeaponTypes, not TechnoTypes. Might allow more customisation for things with more than one weapon.

As for the second issue, it's a nice idea in theory, but as Renegade was saying in the comments on that issue, the game's calculation of this would mean the implementation would be rather odd. You'd need to use abnormally low numbers to get any kind of noticeable effect. And anyway, doesn't the DelayKill logic cover this slightly?

As such, my stance is support #935, kill #555.

[Renegade]

Administrative Notice:

Given that there have been no new posts for almost three days, it is assumed this discussion is finished; we will proceed to consider the arguments.

[AlexB]

Fight 1
Super weapons on infantry are a great way to achieve... well, stuff. For some super weapons like Airstrikes or Psychic Reveal this might make sense.

A tank that can only fire northward would be a great tactical asset indeed. Even if the enemy captured it, he won't be able to shoot at you. Unless you're on the map's upper border. But still... yes. Ok, for tech structures or pre-placed map cannons that are protecting a narrow valley this makes sense. If you got behind them, you can capture them easily. You could create the cannons as seen in RA3 on the large platforms in the sea. FireDir.

Fight 2
Delayed damage spread might work with some kind of state machine that remembers which units are to hit when. Then there wouldn't even be a performance hit. The valid value range should not be the limiting factor as it is easily possible to invert SpreadRate to SpreadDelay as an AnnoySumo proposed. The values would be nice little integers then.

Patriot style burst looks cool and powerful. It might not be as easy to actually restore the functionality as RA2 and FS are branches of the same engine and they might not share this bit.

I can't make out a winner by arguments. Both issues are ok and both propose valid expansions of existing game logic. Bare numbers indicate the BurstDelay is wanted more, here and in the tracker.

[Renegade]

Fight 1

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The tech building cannon argument is the only one for FireDir that I find convincing - overall, the functionality seems rather stupid to me. Contrary to others in this fight, I can very much imagine SWs on infantry - in the realm of fantasy, in Warcraft-like scenarios. Having a shaman conjure up a lightning storm, or a dark magician spawn an evil golem makes perfect sense, and the latter has been done in multiple RTSs.
And some warship carrying an EMP super weapon to attack the enemy seems perfectly fine as well.
Besides, you're all thinking in terms of YR's multi-minute-loading, super-strong super weapons.
What stops me from creating a 1-minute-loading, doubly-strong ion-cannon-like SW, and making that the "primary weapon" of a hacker?
Just because something is using the "super weapon" systems doesn't mean it actually has to be "super" ingame.

Given that no really new logic is required, either, I'd suspect it to be easier to implement as well.

Therefore, I support the SWs.

Kill: #494
Support: #217

Fight 2

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While the underlying issue of #555 is understandable, the proposed feature, as it is presented, is just silly. Issue #993, after generalization, would be more flexible for this kind of stuff.

While I find the argumentation for #935 to be rather silly ("Yay! We could have a missile battery that could do everything it can already do right now...only slower!"), generalizing existing functionality for increased flexibility makes sense and should be easier to do.

Kill: #555
Support: #935

[DCoder]

Why do I think #217 is nothing but a generalized Type=Fire? Nonetheless, support #217.
Support #935.

[Renegade]

Result:

Survivors: #217 and #935.