DFD: 773 vs. 461, 295 vs. 556

[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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[0000773] Armor for walls vs. [0000461] Hold fire

Fight 2

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[0000295] Various Voxel-related settings vs. [0000556] Drain weapon with ranged weapon dont work

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, 17.07.2010.

[Darkstorm]

Fight 1

As for the first two issues, they both are relatively trivial.

Issue 1: I'm gonna go for armor for walls on this one, then you can make some walls better than others. Thus actually have armored walls, and make something like Allied walls cheaper but weaker.

Issue 2: The hold fire ability seems too much like Age of Empires, not that that is a bad thing, but it doesn't seem too useful.

Support: [0000773] Armor for walls
Kill: [0000461] Hold fire

Fight 2

The next issues are more useful, but kind of confusing

Issue 1: I'm gonna go for ranged drain weapons since it opens up possibilities, I don't quite get the other one.

Issue 2: It seems that all he's asking for is just a way to specific turrets so it makes it easier to mix and match turrets. That just sounds like laziness IMO. The second part is about specifying a damaged image. Which seems a little better but not anything great.

Support: [0000556] Drain weapon with ranged weapon don't work
Kill: [0000295] Various Voxel-related settings


Yeah, I made a template for when I post about these now.

[Blade]

461 looks the better of the two to me in the first fight even though being able to set a weapons versus against a wall would be a nice feature, the porposal as laid out in the request sounds poorly thought out.

556 would be more useful IMO since there is no way to hack around the rang of a drain weapon, though maybe there would be a lot of demand for the damanged voxel eyecandy amongst modders, who knows. The stuff about turrets is pointless as its rare to see a mod with turrets swapped around apart from what most consider "n00b" mods.

[WoRmINaToR]

FIGHT 1:
Issue 461 definitely wins for me here. The ability to dynamically change an individual unit's ability to passively acquire targets would be amazing for mods that make extensive use of stealth and similar features as my mod has. The current implementation unfortunately restricts us to always auto-target or never auto target. Also, this seems to be much easier to code because, as said in the issue, the "Ambush" mission could be modified to perfectly suit this role. On the other hand, while issue 773 would be nice, coding the ability to give object properties to overlay types could prove tricky.

Support 461, kill 773

FIGHT 2:

This one is a tough decision TBH, it really boils down to choosing what would unlock many different options for really interesting and cool looking units, and choosing what's easy: a simple hardcode fix. I honestly think this is a very bad matchup because they are both very important issues. Improving hardcoded logics is always good, but multiple turret logic has been something the community has wanted for quite some time. Choosing one or the other is in this case rather unfair.

However, unfortunately, one must die, and I have to say honestly I think the artsy turret stuff is just a bit more important to me. This has been a long desired feature for myself and for several other modders I have spoken to. I have honestly never seen anyone express an honest desire to make a ranged drain weapon, and few mods I see even make use of the existing drain logic. Whether this is because of the range limitation I cannot say for certain, but I have a feeling that expanding the turret logic would affect vastly more mods in vastly more instances than ranged drain weapons would.

So, that said, Support Issue 295, kill 556.

[MRMIdAS]

[0000773] would be handy, it'd (hopefully) stop stuff like a Battle Fortress attacking walls with its machine gun, not doing any damage.

[0000556] A ranged drain weapon could be useful for parasite style units, as well as a possible "hacker" logic.

[Darkstorm]

I feel like an idiot now, I forgot the only use of armor on walls would be preventing attacking on walls. In that case I'd say:

Support: [0000461] Hold fire
Kill: [0000773] Armor for walls

Changed from my other post above.

[Beowulf]

Kill #773. Walls are a passive defense, and not game breakers in most cases. If you want a wall to have more armor, change the fucking Strength rating. There's no great mystery here. This is rather pointless since the use case is so severely limited that it begs the question of why.

As noted, I support #461. The use case is a little more flexible (IE; stealth units) and definitely lends itself to more strategic gameplay factors. With a balanced stealth unit logic implementation, this would definitely work much more favorably than wall armor.

Between #295 and #556, each has their own appeal. I have to support towards #556 though since I'm a bigger fan of weapon extensions than I am of most other things. The voxel setting additions would be nice, but would likely to prove to be a nightmare and wouldn't see a whole lot of use since it would require a lot of work to make "damage states" for every fucking voxel in the game and it's entirely useless for anyone who uses SHP vehicles. The multiple turrets would be nice, but multiples don't function and that would be required in the process, which would just add to the complexity.

[¥R M0dd€r]

Fight1:
[0000773] could be nice, there is many types of walls that 3d/2d artists have made, exemple wood wall made by ArgCmdr could have wood armor, and be burned by flame weapons fast(flame weapon should have like 300% vs wood)
[0000461] is very nice for stealth units
I like both, but I support #461

Fight2:
Both are good
[0000295]...yeah, the idea is cool but I cant think of a way it is useful, other than apply it to a battle ships, but who expect mig eater can make one?
[0000556], it was either pd or VK that tried to fix this, I dont remeber but that person faild, it didnt work. However I think this feature is very useful.
This one is easy, support #556

[Striker]

1) I support #461, because I think it will be more game breaking than defining armour on walls. Holding fire to prevent stealthed or long-range units to reveal themselves is an impressive tactic addition.
2) I support #556, because I am interested in new weapon features.

[AlexB]

Fight 1
Having walls respect armor types would affect cell spread, because that just applies damage un-versed or destroys the wall completely. This would not change the gameplay that much, it rather seems like a small issue. Of course flame throwers would burn through wooden fences quite easily and bunker buster missiles would make concrete walls look bad. It won't allow new tactics.

The hold fire mode would be a cool addition as it does allow new tactics. You could dump stealth/mirage tanks somewhere on the ore fields and let them attack by switching to attack mode. Or have artilleries stationed without running into the risk they will reveal themselves just because a rifle soldier wants to collect a crate. Or have stealth tanks sneak into an enemy base without trying to attack the next unit it sees. Sounds way better.

Fight 2
Looks like most people are preferring weapon expansions instead of graphics stuff this time. Both issues are good and deranged voxel tanks would look awesome. Of course not every modder will use them (and most mods should only use a subset of Ares features) but not everyone will have a hacker unit, either. I'd really like to see damaged voxels made by the skillfull graphics wizards, but today I'm going for the drain range.

[Renegade]

Fight 1

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I concur with Worm's, Beowulf's and Striker's argumentations here.
While, yes, particularly the example with the wood "walls" and flame throwers is a good one, ultimately, what Beo said stands: If you want to change a wall's resistance, just change the Strength value. Yes, it's primitive, but it has worked for almost a decade by now, and unit stances will enable far greater tactical variety than slightly changed walls will.

Kill #773
Support #461

Fight 2

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TurretAnim= on tanks is pure laziness. While it may be a valid request, investing hours of coding just so somebody doesn't have to copy & rename 4 files in less than a minute seems disproportionate.
Multiple turret voxels is a pretty silly request...multiple turret voxels for use with what? In order to make use of those, you need support for multiple turrets in the first place. We don't have that. That's request #510, to be discussed next week. Therefore, this part of this request is worthless.
Damaged voxel...a nice idea, and practical for a quick overview of the state of the force.
Spawn-dependent turret...neat little thing, but nothing more.

So yeah...half of the request is worthless from the start, and while the last part is kinda neat, it's not exactly a game-changing über-feature.

I would be interested in having this for the damaged voxels, since I do think that would add a lot to the atmosphere of the game - especially considering buildings already have a damaged state, and that damaged vehicles smoke anyway. Given that there must be an existing check to trigger the latter, it should be easy enough to hook into that and add voxel-changing code.

Unfortunately, it has the same problem any graphics issue has: It would need new voxels, and those are hard to come by for such a specific case. It's also not just damage voxels - there are a bunch of other issues mashed into the request.

Unhardcoding of drain weapons, on the other hand, is a clear, simple, small change that has direct effects on gameplay and can be used by all modders without further prerequisites.

Given that Alex specifically mentioned damaged voxels as well, I will vote to kill the crappy voxel mashup request, but spin off of the good parts as low-priority issues to be done in the undetermined future.

Kill #295
Support #556

[Renegade]

Result:

Fight 1

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Loser #773
Victor #461

Fight 2

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Loser #295
Victor #556