DFD: 400 vs. 976, 514 vs. 640

[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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[0000400] Add a CriticalWound system (see description for suggested implementation) vs. [0000976] Aircraft-specific reload times

Fight 2

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[0000514] Cloning and Genetic Defects vs. [0000640] AI Player Random Name Generator

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:
No-brainer to me, kill #400, support #976.

#400 does sound somewhat interesting, but it also sounds like something that a) will take quite some time to implement and b) won't really be used by many mods.

#976 otoh is something I reeeeally missed in RA1 and TS already: Because of how the game counts ammo, the Orca Bomber "officially" only had two ammo points, whereas the Harpy had 12, and consequently took 6 times (!) as long to reload. Same for MiG vs. Yak in RA1. No matter what value you set the global ReloadRate to, you end up either with aircraft that fire many weak shots that take too long to reload, or aircraft with few strong shots that reload too fast (or in worst case, both).
This should have been implemented by Westwood long ago, and I'd really like to see it implemented now.
Compared to #400 it's much more simple and straighforward, probably much easier to implement and would most likely see more wide-spread usage.


Fight 2:
Kill #514. I can't rule out the possibility that i just lack the imagination to see its usefulness, but since I can't and believe it's too complicated and of too limited usefulness I want this to die.
Support #640, it may be a purely cosmetical thing and somewhat pointless, but i believe it's one of these 'pointless' features that would actually be used by quite many (including myself, I guess).

[Beowulf]

Kill #400. The idea isn't bad, but it could probably be the same as a Leech-type weapon. I support #976 because I love aircraft. And it would lead to balance for heavy, bomber aircraft and quick precision strike craft.

Kill #514; feels kinda meh. #640 is good just for the humor factor.

[RandomNutjob]

Although torn on the 1st two I go for balancing reload rates [976], as for 2nd I pick 514 as I feel the latter is unnecessary but hey is no saying HAS to be in mods right

[eva-251]

Fight #1
Kill 400: This is a good idea, but all in all doesn't bring as much to the table as
Support 976: Being unable to customize aircraft reload times has been a bane of modders since TS. As I said in the original request- not all aircraft in mods are roughly the same thing like the Harrier/BEagle are in YR. Beowulf is correct. This allows for modders to better fine tune the balance of aircraft instead of just having "one ammo, tons of damage" or "useless due to huge reload time".

Fight #2
Kill 514: I can't see too many uses for it.
Support 640: Not exactly that great of a feature either, but for those who want to incorporate a little humor or flavor into their mod, this would be golden.

[MRMIdAS]

[0000400] gets my vote, although medics or hospitals should be able to heal critical wounds.

[0000514] is a good idea, and is superior to a pointless effect the vast bulk of players won't care about.

[Renegade]

Administrative Notice:

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

[Renegade]

Fight 1

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With four out of five commenters wanting #400 dead, with #976 having a very clear and narrow scope to fix an obvious issue, and with #400 being giant in its complexity in comparison, I will follow the general consensus of the discussion.

Kill: #400
Support: #976

Fight 2

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Support here seems to be more torn; #640 is a tricky feature, in that it is patently useless, but still kinda fun. It'll also probably be comparatively easy to implement.
#514, on the other hand, seems just plain useless, and complex to implement on top of it. It seems to involve a shitload of new flags, just to trigger a random explosion every once in a while. For an issue that's been in the system for almost one and a half years, it has also gathered practically no support or interest.
Overall, I don't think anyone would really miss #514 if it weren't implemented.

Kill: #514
Support: #640

[AlexB]

Fight 1
Ok, I thought the critical wound system would gather more support... I concur that the Aircraft reload rate system is just a freaking bad design decision and perhaps the naivest approach Westwood could have taken. Balancing aircraft is nearly impossible to do with the current system. The Aircraft reload rate issue is so mundane as being able to customise this per unit should be taken for granted.

Fight 2
Genetic defects are weird. Its use is marginal and it looks like it takes an awful load of time, tags and book keeping to do. Just to do random stuff. To balance cloning it might be easier to support InitialStrenght on cloned infantry. To have more fancy gimmicks, attach alpha spotlights to your tanks.

The computer player names issue sounds funny. I dislike the proposed way to define them. Instead [Country] should get a new tag, listing all names separated by commas. Then, the game can chose randomly from them.

[Renegade]

As such, the result is as above.