DFD: 741 vs. 427, 661 vs. 650

[AlexB]

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 and the schedule.

Fight 1

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[0000741] Helicopter tilt vs. [0000427] Country Multiplier exclusion

Fight 2

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[0000661] Allow Units (and others) to have the tag FactoryType= vs. [0000650] 8 facing wakes for water travel

By the end of the 48 hour period, 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".
A decision will be made either way, so 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!

End: ~ 19:00, 14.07.2010.

[Darkstorm]

Personally, I don't see Helicopter tilt looking very good in RA2 with the bulky voxels, and I'd go exclusions since it helps people balance powerful units.

Support 427. Kill 741.

Now the next one is obvious for me, its the wake. It may be a simple graphic improvement but the alternate seems really weird to me, unless your having an aircraft carrier producing aircraft or something I don't see any real value in it.

Support 650. Kill 661.

[MRMIdAS]

[0000427] seems the most useful of 2 meh issues.
[0000661] could be used for a halo wars style elephant, although it may require re-enabling of the kennel hack.

[Aro]

Keep 0000427 and 0000661. They're more useful features than their opponents and that's what matters in the long run.

Whilst tilting helicopters and more dynamic water wakes are good for additional eye candy, they're not exactly features that would attract new modders or even make veteran modders sit on the edge of their seats. Additional eye-candy is a definite must for Ares, but in my opinion game-play is the most important priority which is why I am in full support of 0000427 and 0000661, 0000661 for example would be a great addition for completely changing the way the game is played (No, not like C&C4 so don't start that crap on me, like something that isn't C&C which is what Total Conversions are supposed to be).

So yeah, In full support of the game-play factors this time, not the eye-candy factors.

[Deformat]

Keep 0000427 and 0000661. They're more useful features than their opponents and that's what matters in the long run.

[Lt Albrecht]

Alex, post some actual arguments or go away. Ren said in the first post this thing was based on arguing the case not "more people want this"...

[Renegade]

This is an easy one.

Fight 1

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I have wanted PitchAngle to work on VehicleType-helicopters for the longest time, and the country multiplier exclusion utterly defeats the purpose of the logic - what's the point in having a country-wide change of stats if it's not really country-wide?
Either you want country X to have stat bonus Y, or not. If you only want the bonus for select units, you can always make country-specific clones (to go with the clone faction's usual line of argumentation).

There were exactly two valid attempts at finding a supporting argument for #427: "it helps people balance powerful units" and "eye-candy is a definite must for Ares, but in my opinion game-play is the most important priority".
While the former is obviously true, the argument is valid for any issue allowing the modder to selectively change unit stats, and thus isn't a strong argument for this particular issue. Nevertheless, it is valid. However, as pointed out above, the same effect can be achieved by placing ForbiddenHouses on the powerful unit and creating a more expensive RequiredHouses clone to balance out the bonus.
As said, a valid argument per se, but not a particularly strong one, and since there are easy, established workarounds to achieve an almost indistinguishably similar effect, it doesn't sway me.

While the second "argument" is a valid position about priorities, and, in general, I would agree, in this particular instance, the proposed gameplay-changer is, in my opinion, pointless, defeating the purpose of the system, and standing against a particular kind of eye candy I want.
So yeah...while, in general, gameplay should be more important, this time, eye candy wins out.

Kill #427
Support #741

Fight 2

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My opinion on #661 is still the latest comment on the issue on the tracker - to quote some representative lines:

So basically, we would enable 12 new production cases, only half of which would be used anyway, and of that used half, only a third of which could not be faked.

Ultimately, we'd be doing this solely so some people could do InfantryType -> InfantryType and InfantryType -> BuildingType factories.

While "0000661 for example would be a great addition for completely changing the way the game is played" is obviously true, it's also a pretty generic throw-away line that is true for countless requests in the tracker and in this contest.
Yesterday's building land on water can also be used to "completely chang[e] the way the game is played".
The only offer of a usage scenario for this particular issue is "a halo wars style elephant", and even that is qualified by the potential need for additional logic.

So while yes, potentially, theoretically, maybe, this issue could enable over 9000 new and unique ways to play the game, neither this discussion nor the comments on the tracker have convinced me that this logic is in high demand or all that useful in the majority of cases. (Quite the opposite on the tracker, actually.)

#650, on the other hand, has a very clear, very limited usage case, SMIFFGIG already linked a shot of how it could look like in use, and I suspect it should be comparatively easy to code.

So yeah. Simple to do, easy to use eye candy, or a web of unused potential usage cases, exit point, rally point and primary factory headaches with no real proposed usage case that justifies such a giant change.
Did I mention the choice is simple?

Kill #661
Support #650

[AlexB]

Fight 1
Balancing units would be better if it would not rely on lots of INI code duplication. Less code, less possible errors (ok, some people are able to fail nonetheless). I prefer the helicopter tilt as is is a nice optical gimmick. Surely, the country multiplier exception will slip into Ares somehow, but it doesn't solve an imminent bug.

Fight 2
I don't like Crawlers. I don't like the idea of aircraft to produce infantry. It's weird when a tank produces other tanks. But the possibility for an aircraft carrier to produce its own aircraft would be great. Or a tank that produces infantry or drones. The wake correction seems indeed more straight-forward but it does not change any aspect of the game. So, i vote for the Factory= stuff.

[DCoder]

What Ren said.

hah, not "what Alex said" as it usually ends up.

[Renegade]

Result:
[0000427] Country Multiplier exclusion and [0000661] Allow Units (and others) to have the tag FactoryType= die.