DFD-R3: 518 vs. 1115, 730 vs. 564

[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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[518] Waypoint Mode Aircrafts vs. [1115] Allow parasite compatibility with mutation logic

Fight 2

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[730] TS Missile feature[Image include] vs. [564] Mission Progression only allows one side

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:
#518 has 0 support in the community ranking so far, while #1115 has some supporters and also appears more useful to me.

support #1115
kill #518
EDIT: ok it seems it has 0 votes because its duplicate got all the votes. I still think #1115 is more useful (I rarely use waypoints), so my voting remains unchanged.


Fight 2:
Under the assumption that #730 tries to request the return of the Firestorm tag Splits=y/n (and possibly others, not sure right now), I support it 'cause additional possibilities for weapons are always nice. Also, #564 is only useful for those who want to make singleplayer campaigns with changing sides, so I believe the number of people benefitting from #564 would be much lower.
Thus

support #730
kill #564

[Deformat]

1115.I support it simply because looks like having some use, in comparison to 518.

Also, I support 564. The other one can be achieved to a similar degree to what TI did.

[Blade]

518, it is related to the guard area feature which will almost certainly make it though and so will likely be eaiser for the developer to implement along side that than the edge case mutation+parasite combo. It will likely also please more people.

730 can't be replicated the same way TI did it since the request is asking for the functionality TI uses! 564 as requested I don't really support, as I mention on the issue, the ability for sides to define the sidebar (and in future the eva according to the tracker) just needs extending to reload it on SP map load rather than just when rulesmd.ini is read and it can be faked perfectly. So 730 I support I guess.

[Nighthawk]

Not commenting on fight one, there's little there for me to argue for or against.

For fight two:
The Cyborg Reaper's missile logic can be emulated to a reasonable extent in the game as it is. Both Ren and Worminator have posted comments to this effect on the tracker's issue.

As for my own issue, as I've said before I have no objections to Blade's suggested implementation either, where Ares' countries and sides flags can be read from map files so the UI and EVA can be changed. It still accomplishes the same thing from the player's point of view. An example would probably help. My own use of this was going to be in a tutorial campaign, where you would have one mission as each side to instruct you on things specific to their side. Currently, such a thing is not possible, as you get a scenario error, and must keep the side constant for all missions in that campaign. I'm sure other campaign makers would have more inventive uses for this, e.g. The Project mod which puts RA2's campaign into YR.

As such, my stance is support #564, kill #730.

[MRMIdAS]

[1115] much as i like waypoints for aircraft, i think it'll go further to exposing just how dumb the AI is when using them, chestburster win.

[564] removes a stupid limit on campaign.

[Beowulf]

Support #518. While #1115 is a great idea, aircraft extension is far better in terms of improving their usability and the gameplay.

Kill #564. FAKE IT. #730 is restoring removed Tiberian Sun logic, which was stupidly removed. I like it a hell of a lot more than 'using a different side in mission progression.' Because really, how many people will actually make use of it? I surmise that more people will use #730 since it's easier to implement and more fucking useful.

[Blade]

Problem is Beowulf is that 564 currently can't be faked because the tags needed, although implemented for rulesmd.ini, aren't read or loaded/reloaded per single player map.

[Beowulf]

You sure about that? I recall a few people saying that it was possible with the Ares tags. Even if you can't, I don't feel it's useful enough to 'win out' over restoring a perfectly good Tiberian Sun logic.

[Lt Albrecht]

Support #518. While #1115 is a great idea, aircraft extension is far better in terms of improving their usability and the gameplay.

Indeed. Although I can think of a usage case or 2 for #1115 I can't think of a non-usage case for #518! Even if you just play vanilla YR with Ares, it's an improvement. I consider it a bugfx TBH...

[mt.]

Fight 1:

#1115
Kill this.

#518
Save this.

Reason: Waypoints are pretty useful for aircraft, often more so than other units. Anti air typically has more range or so than anti ground weapons, and so aircraft often do need good management to thread through defences. Not to mention they can simply patrol for defence or such. Facehuggers and Chestbursters do sound fun, but I don't see the place for that in most mods, and I can't see how this would be used for anything more than 1 special unit. Where on the contrary waypoints for aircraft can be used... for just about any aircraft. So my support goes with 518.

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Fight 2:

#564
Kill this.

#730
Save this.

Reason: Many mods don't even have full campaigns, let alone ones which will need a side change. It sort of runs contrary to the whole idea of campaign, which is usually about one side's rise to power or war or such.
All in all I can't see this used much at all, if used then only on a few missions. Restoring the reaper logic is great though, its a nice visual effect which has potential for use in any missile weapon, or even other things such as flak. Something I know I would use. Therefore, the "Missile Feature" is the neat feature I support.

[Renegade]

Administrative Notice:

Since the last post in this discussion was four days ago, it is assumed to be over. We will proceed to judgement.

[AlexB]

Fight 1
The aircraft waypoint mode would allow all gamers to do more. Coordinate the path aircraft will fly to attack, maybe even to return. This doesn't just affect mods but the original game also. It is a so much bigger issue than mind-control parasites.

Fight 2
The Reaper missile logic was never part of the RA2 engine as it was a Firestorm addition in another branch. Thus this feature needs to be written from scratch. And it has its use cases.

The side changing logic would also be nice to have, but even if it's there, how many people intend to use it? It's not a bad feature, the missile logic is just more useful to the general public.

[Renegade]

Fight 1

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Aircraft were significantly neutered in the stock game - not being able to attack airborn targets was annoying, but their movement is just plain stupid.
#518 will, once more, make aircraft far more useful than they were before, and the changes made for it may even help implementing #349, which is the number one community supported feature right now.

With #1115, on the other hand, I'm still not sure that was properly coded in the first place. I strongly feel that this should be doable in Ares already, and the fact that the submitter never replied back to me hasn't weakened that feeling.
If anybody wants to try this in the future and has trouble getting it to work, we can open a thread here on the forums and discuss possible ways to do it. Should it transpire that, with all the potential workarounds, there's no way to fake this, we can look into it again.

Kill: #1115
Support: #518

Fight 2

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I do think #730 can be reasonably emulated, but to be frank, I simply don't think many people are going to use #564. The number of people doing single player maps alone is small. The number of people doing single player campaigns is even smaller. The number of people doing single player campaigns for specific mods is even smaller than that. And the number of people doing single player campaigns for specific, Ares-based mods with alternating sides during mission progression is going to be minuscule.

Yes, there might be one or two people doing it simply for the novelty factor. But it's never going to see as much use as #730 will see, by far.
Single player campaigns are a niche, it's as simple as that.

Kill: #564
Support: #730