AlexB
08.08.2010, 16:36:42
Fight 1
I'm going for the Parasite Mutation here. You named a few reasons to fix that so I'll spend some time to explain why the AllowedToStartInMultiplayer thing is not a good proposal.
There is no control over which units get picked when the game still tries to respect the start unit count in the multiplayer dialog. Should infantry always come first and then the tanks? Some infantry weigths more than tanks, thus it should come later in that queue.
Only checking that flag when the game randomly selected a unit and counting what's already present would not help to balance, either. Some would get a unit, other players may not.
A better way would be to define the starting units per [Country] like Paradrops.Types and ParaDrops.Num and from that list placing units until N start units are selected. That would be deterministic and thus remove the randomness altogether. But this has other issues like two GIs being stronger than two Conscripts. But with a little more thinking this might be overcome.
Fight 2
Changing the way the Iron Curtain works is easy. But to partially reduce damage, large parts of the game would have to be rewritten. The game won't consider IC'd units attackable. Some other major logics do this, too. Mind Control, Chronosphere, Temporal weapons, ordinary weapon damage and lots more, for example. This would turn the game inside out.
There is no problem extending a SW to not affect units or not. The problem is, as Renegade already pointed out, the game makes the assumption IC'd things are indestructible and changing that would take the Iron Curtain out of the Iron Curtain.
Spawn logic.
I'm going for the Parasite Mutation here. You named a few reasons to fix that so I'll spend some time to explain why the AllowedToStartInMultiplayer thing is not a good proposal.
There is no control over which units get picked when the game still tries to respect the start unit count in the multiplayer dialog. Should infantry always come first and then the tanks? Some infantry weigths more than tanks, thus it should come later in that queue.
Only checking that flag when the game randomly selected a unit and counting what's already present would not help to balance, either. Some would get a unit, other players may not.
A better way would be to define the starting units per [Country] like Paradrops.Types and ParaDrops.Num and from that list placing units until N start units are selected. That would be deterministic and thus remove the randomness altogether. But this has other issues like two GIs being stronger than two Conscripts. But with a little more thinking this might be overcome.
Fight 2
Changing the way the Iron Curtain works is easy. But to partially reduce damage, large parts of the game would have to be rewritten. The game won't consider IC'd units attackable. Some other major logics do this, too. Mind Control, Chronosphere, Temporal weapons, ordinary weapon damage and lots more, for example. This would turn the game inside out.
There is no problem extending a SW to not affect units or not. The problem is, as Renegade already pointed out, the game makes the assumption IC'd things are indestructible and changing that would take the Iron Curtain out of the Iron Curtain.
Spawn logic.