DFD: 564 vs. 275, 732 vs. 331

[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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[0000564] Mission Progression only allows one side vs. [0000275] Allow "THETEAM" cheat code to affect multiplayer/single player

Fight 2

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[0000732] CnC Gen Troop Crawler vs. [0000331] SpawnDock

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:
#564 is only somewhat useful for mods with singleplayer missions (obviously), and even then it's mostly a cosmetical nice-to-have, since the main complaint is about the side-bar and EVA voice staying the same.

#275 is a small, nice and interesting feature. It would allow for a hidden "crazy fun" mode in an otherwise serious mod, for example.
Kill #564, support #275.


Fight 2:
I want #732 to survive, something like a pre-filled battle fortress would be nice.

[Beowulf]

Support #275. It would be fun to utilize.

Support #732. Preloaded transports are awesome. It would SERIOUSLY help the AI with transport teams. Eliminate the loading process and have them run off somewhere and dump their cargo. The AI would end up with empty transports possibly, but just have them charge in as fodder. xD

[mt.]

Fight 1

Support 564. This is nice when you have a campaign reason for it, or say side evolution such as Yuri starting off as Soviet.

Kill the "cheat code" 275, I don't find myself liking the uses. Why can't you make it a gamemode?

Fight 2

Support 732. IFVs starting with GGIs, Battlefortresses starting with GGIs, blackhawks starting with SEALS, even an amphibious transport preloaded with an MCV for quick expansion. I like these ideas and I'm sure modders can come up with much, much more.

Kill 331, even though I like it, I don't find it as useful as 732.

[RandomNutjob]

I support 564, as for other I'll wait to see what's done with regards to 331 and 359

331 gets my vote over Crawler BUT as the two issues [331 and 359] are so alike depending on what happens will affect my voting

EDIT: The difference between 331 and 359 has been made known to me and thus I retract the above statement on them being "the same" - my vote here remains for 331

[Blade]

The mission progression thing is pretty close to being implemented already as you can change the sidebar and in future the eva in rulesmd.ini as part of the allowing more sides feature. Just need for that to be read and honoured during single player map load and you can perfectly fake having changed to another side right there. To do it where the side actually changes would involve changing the way mapselmd.ini is handled and I imagine is more work than this way. THETEAM thing is just a nice little easteregg that could be turned into mod eastereggs and I'd hate to see it win out over more deserving features when its not really ever going to be core to someones mod.

[MRMIdAS]

[0000564] would be a lot of help to some campaign designers, removes an unnecessary limitation too.

[0000732] allowing transports to start fully loaded would be good, and hopefully, not overly difficult to implement

[Nighthawk]

For fight one:
Given that I'm the original submitter of #564, it's probably fairly obvious which one I'll go for, but anyway.

Campaigns are somewhat hindered by this limitation. Say you wanted to have a mission as the Allies, followed by a mission as the Soviets, or even some custom side of your own. Well, in the current game, that can't be done. The side must remain the same for all missions in that campaign. Given that campaigns are meant to put across the story of a mod, it basically limits the modder in how they're allowed to do that. However, as Blade has already mentioned, fully switching sides between missions isn't a complete necessity - instead, the logic can be emulated by simply allowing the new sides/countries flags to be read from map INI sections, thus making it appear to the player that the side has changed.

As for the second issue, I'm not sure I see the benefits of it. Easter eggs are fun and all that, but I find it hard to think of any reasons why an easter egg feature that will probably go very under-utilised should win out over a campaign-breaking bug. How many people made use of the THETEAM thing when it was around in TS? Personally, I only ever used it once to see what it was, then never touched it again, nor even considered incorporating it into a mod. If people want to make strange additions, why not just use a game mode? Does it just not have the same dramatic effect?

As you can probably tell, my stance is support #564, kill #265.


As for fight two:
The first issue sounds quite interesting - building pre-loaded transports could be quite handy for those mods that rely heavily on infantry usage. Additionally, it would have some added benefits when combined with the Operator logic. However, are Taskforces really the best method of implementing it?

As for the second issue, this basically sounds like a more limited version of the FreeUnit expansion in the other DFD... and yet it also sounds like basically things like V3 rocket ammo should be purchasable from the sidebar? I can maybe see some uses for it, but it's a bit of a roundabout method. This sounds very Generals-inspired, but people keep forgetting that, unlike Generals, YR lacks the contextual command bar that Generals throws at you. Where would this rocket ammo go? Coding-wise, they're AircraftTypes, thus would be in the Vehicles tab, but wouldn't that look a bit out of place?

Given that the FreeUnit logic expansion could cover the same as the second issue, and more, and that I prefer the idea of the first issue, my stance is support #732, kill #331.

[Lt Albrecht]

#564 is useful if you're doing a campaign otherwise no. #275 allows on/off chrono monkeys with n00k banannas and laser eyes or on/off 'classic' mode where every unit is all-remap or whatever. Sounds fun IMO, sorry nighthawk.

#732 would allow you to stramline the use of AI and player infantry. Say I want to get a few platoons of mechanised (vehicle mounted) infantry, as it's the best way to get a balanced loadout of firepower to a location. So in vanilla I select 6 APCs, 12 Rocket soldiers, 6 Snipers and 18 GI/rifles. Then I painstakingly load them and... wait the battle finished 15 minutes ago and my enemy just destroyed my base. Damn!

Whereas with #732 *clicks 'Loaded APC' button 6 times* *does something else* *send them in!*. People should not lose because they have un-necessary micromanagement forced upon them, people should lose because they played badly.

Then we have #331... Last time I played a game with this mechanic it was a 3D Age of Empires knock-off that went from the middle ages to WWII. You had to manually buy V1s/V2s and it was really bloody irritating.

[Orac]

#275 sounds like a useful addition for map/campaign testing, but doesn't seem that useful otherwise. #564 seems much more useful in the greater scheme of things - could have some implications for campaign mapping, so I support 564, despite it being a close call.

[Renegade]

Administrative Notice:

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

[Renegade]

Fight 1

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Oh look, another mission progression request. It truly is Duplicate Hour.

I have nothing against cheats in general, especially "fun" cheats like the ones in AoE, but in C&C, it's just wrong.
The game and those before it have been carefully cleansed of all cheats there may have been, with THETEAM remaining the only remnant, likely because it was just plain forgotten during crunch time.
More importantly, even if game cheats it weren't grossly against C&C tradition, introducing cheats into multiplayer, where the user not only cheats himself, but actually has the chance of conning unsuspecting users into giving him an unfair advantage, is just a no-no.
No matter how much the other side would first have to install the files, there are always morons and there are always assholes, and I refuse to potentially abet malevolent multiplayer cheaters.

Even if this request, through some weird chain of events, ends up in Ares, I will not assist with it in any way.

Then again, the majority seems to lean towards #564, so it's likely a moot point anyway.

Kill: #275
Support: #564


Fight 2

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While the Generals Troop Crawler request would certainly be practical ingame, SpawnDock sounds more interesting as a feature. It reminds me of Empire Earth's and Rise of Nation's airfields. It should make for great automated drone defense turrets, for example.

Alas, Nighthawk and Albrecht are right.
YR's engine isn't exactly made for that kind of feature, and pre-filled passenger vehicles would increase the probability the AI uses them properly.

Meh.

Kill: #331
Support: #732

[AlexB]

Fight 1
THETEAM codes was fun in TS and there are still some remainings in YR, but even if it's fun it's nothing for me. I have no problem if this gets implemented some day, but if I've got spare time I'd concentrate on other issues.

Campaigns on the other hand should be able to switch UI and EVA at will between missions. In TS: Firestorm Nod had no Cabal voices in the first mission as it was offline, and after Cabal went renegade (not you, Renegade ) Nod had to capture a GDI EVA unit and used it for all remaining missions. It would be really cool if mods like "The Project" could start with Soviet UI and switch to Yuri UI for the latter missions. Thus, campaigns and EVA/UI.

Fight 2
I concur with the majority to support the Troop Crawler issue here.

[Renegade]

Result:

As outlined above.