DFD: 496 vs. 322, 768 vs. 475

[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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[0000496] Gen/ZH Drone assistent vs. [0000322] Restore NonVehicle= function

Fight 2

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[0000768] Immune to a type of damage vs. [0000475] Allow Factory= to have multipul entries

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.

[reaperrr]

Fight 1:
Drones are kinda cool in Generals, but I imagine they would be tricky to implement.
NonVehicle is probably easier to implement, and has its uses as well.
Hm, I think I'll say kill #496, support #322. But tbh, I think both of them aren't interesting/useful enough to survive DFD up till the end.

Fight 2:
#768 only makes some sense if combined with randomized damage IMO, then it could be used for a "critical hit/lucky shot" system. #475 sounds troublesome to implement and may not be all that useful, but doesn't rely on another feature to be of use.
Hm, I like the basic idea of #768 more and random damage has survived the 1st round so I vote kill #475, but I think what I said about the issues in fight 1 applies here as well.

[Beowulf]

#496 has a feature around that would emulate this anyway so kick it from the DFD. Support #322 since it should just be fixed. We don't need new logic around, just fix what exists.

Between #475 and #768, neither is all that great. I can see the merit behind each, but it doesn't seem like either is really... worth much. However, I'll pick #475. Combination factories would be something awesome for TCs and we need a little of that in Ares. #768 can be done with Custom Armor Types anyway.

[mt.]

Fight 1

I'm not interested in either of these, but since 496 somewhat overlaps with spawning I suppose I support 322 like Fen said.

Fight 2

Pfft, 475 is totally a duplicate of 728, is it not?

In any case I like 475 more than 768. A conyard producing units has a great appeal to me, as does airports making infantry or vehicles (rocketeers and jumpjet vehicles).

[Blade]

I support 322 over 496 because there are already plenty of spawn requests. NonVehicle in TS had a number of useful features to it but I'm sure there is already a request in the tracker about the hijacker aspect. It already prevents the hijacking as far as my limited testing has shown depite claims to the contrary, but it has lost the ability to prevent a carryall from picking it up as far as I understand. I've also seen talk of it preventing healing from repair vehicles but I've not observed that personally. The way I see it, Organic=yes seems to have replaced some of the nonvehicle functions so here is the breakdown I'd like if it doesn't already work this way...

Organic=yes, cannot carryall, cannot hijack, cannot repair (at all)... pretty much what NonVehicle was in TS.
NonVehicle=yes, cannot hijack (it already does this), no other feature.
CanCarryall=no, cannot carryall, no other feature.

[MRMIdAS]

while I am in support of both features, [0000496] seems the better of the 2, although it is related once again, to slave logic, I'd like to have repair drones around warfactories, or even have neutral repair structures dotted around maps.

[0000475] gets my vote, as the other issue has a workaround made possible by ares already.

[Nighthawk]

For fight one:
I do like the idea of drones. However, I think there's a tutorial somewhere on the Guild's forums for a workaround for this using gattling logic and a spawn weapon, and I think it actually works. That said, drones would be an interesting addition to the game, and would be of some assistance to those who want to bring more Generals gameplay into RA2 (for whatever reason).

However, the second issue is addressing quite a serious bug. If something has NonVehicle=yes, that's meant to tell the game "I may be coded as a vehicle, but I'm not really a vehicle,", so it's kind of silly then when your vehicle hijacker, despite the presence of this tag on it, is capable of hijacking your 1 foot tall Terror Drone. It would also be somewhat silly for your Carryall unit to be able to pick up a Dolphin. However, I think a better method of implementation would be separate tags controlling hijackability (if that's a word) and whether the unit can be lifted by a carryall unit.

So given that it's an irritating bug against a feature that already has a workaround, my stance is support #342, kill #496.


For fight two:
The first issue is asking for a way for weapons to be ineffective if their damage is below a certain threshold. Now, I can see why such a feature would be handy, but new ArmorTypes can already accomplish this. This is merely a time-saver for those who don't want to add verses to several weapons at once.

The second issue, on the other hand, is quite an interesting expansion of already existing logic. I'm sure there are modders in the past who have wanted that magic Barracks/War Factory combo, or a ConYard that also trains infantry, or a proper War Factory/Aircraft Factory combo, or indeed any mix of the four. That said, I'm wondering how it would work with the likes of exit and spawn points, and how controlling rally points would work if you mix Infantry, Vehicle and/or AircraftType factories.

Despite its flaws, I'm warming more to the idea of multiple factories than a simpler armour system, so therefore my stance is support #475, kill #768.

[Renegade]

Administrative Notice:

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

[AlexB]

Fight 1
Drones are just some kind of slaves that run or fly around and do stuff. Yet another issue. Let's wait for the real Slaves logic enhancement and not just for a special case like repairing.

Issue 322 names many issues all centering around NonVehicles. I concur that existing logic should be fixed first. Whether this is done by different flags for hijacking, lifting, repair or chronoporting (organics are killed by the Chronosphere), by having a Weight and Size check or whatever isn't that important, as long as it's working as expected.

Fight 2
Custom verses could indeed be used to create a similar effect. Weapons delivering less than X damage just get new 0% custom verses. Still it would be nice to define it on the unit, as it is a property of the specific unit and not the weapons. And it would reduce the number of places that need to be edited to achieve that effect.

I elect the multiple Factory= issue as it is soemthing new for C&C. There might be some problems to solve like the exit path, but all in all it seems like a fresh idea.

[Renegade]

Fight 1

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Oh look...more spawn requests. How novel and exciting.
The drone logic should be doable through the Slave/Bodyguard logic once it's implemented, while NonVehicle's failure creates issues with other, already usable functionality. Therefore, the latter is more important.

Kill: #496
Support: #322

Fight 2

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Looking through the issues to judge, I immediately recognized multiple Factory=s per building as something I had commented on before - turns out, it has a duplicate which got some more interest.
To quote myself from there:

How do you propose dealing with the inevitable conflicts?
Like, say, a GI and a Grizzly being done at the same time?
Or a spy infiltrating the building?

I do consider multiple Factory=s per building a stupid idea that does nothing but conjure up unnecessary complications - unfortunately, #768 is even worse.

Therefore, I'll go with

Kill: #768
Support: #475

and hope #475 dies along the way.



Since this mirrors Alex's judgement, this is the result.