DFD-R3: 237 vs. 925, 1003 vs. 378

[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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[237] The ability to disable or enable countries via game modes vs. [925] Remap for Overly types

Fight 2

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[1003] menu.ini / Multiple Campaign Lists vs. [378] Random Damage

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.

[Deformat]

925. I don't know how many mods will enable new factions via game modes+implementation issues?...overlay thing tho could use a optional tag which could make stuff a bit more interesting.
378.Random damage can be used, other games do use it, so I don't see why wouldn't it be used? Tho I say that it would be nice to have something like:

Damage=300
RandomDamage=Yes
MinRandomDamage=100

And it will have different values between 100 and 300.

[Blade]

I'll go for 237, you may have a desire to disable say Yuri in some modes (if you make a classic RA2 mode for example) or enable a special side for an "advanced" battle mode (think CannisRules with the high tech units mode also having an extra country with its own specialisation). What other overlay besides walls are people likely to want remappable and if as suggested they already work, what justification is there for this to go forward?

I don't care much for the random damage suggestions, unless you have really small (and thus likely unnoticeable) range of damages you run the risk of stupid situations where a gi can kill or do significant damage to a heavy tank in one shot. To reduce the chances of that you would need weightings against certain armour types that affect the damage range distribution probabilities. So you start getting complicated to balance the whole thing when the versus effectiveness values account for supposed effectiveness anyhow. About the only RA2 themed use I can really think would need it is a chaos tank that fires some quantum disrupter that might do loads of damage or relatively little depending on how lucky you are. I already argued against what is essentially a duplicate of 1003 with unlockable campaigns and while it isn't what I'd prefer to see (the already defeated mission selection map screen) its better than nothing and certainly I'd rather see it than random damage.

[Nighthawk]

For fight one:
I'm definitely more a fan of the first issue. Many mods implement a "classic RA2" mode, and the presence of Yuri always gets in the way of this. Additionally, it could make sense if you've done something like a Generals-esque country system where each country has certain special advantages instead of a simple extra unit, limiting the choice to certain countries so as not to harm your game mode. It could also be used to implement a game mode involving certain countries that aren't even part of your normal gameplay. For example, a game mode in which you have every country addition (or none at all), limiting the country choices to simply "Allies", "Soviets" or "Yuri" rather than having pointless identical countries cluttering the menu.

The only usage case I can see for the second issue is remapped walls. While it's a nice thing to see, it's a very limited scope of use. The first issue gives you a lot more options to play around with in mods.

Therefore, my stance is support #237, kill #925.

I only really want to comment on fight one for this DFD, neither of the issues in the other fight are something I would make use of (especially considering one of the issues is a more complicated version of something I already requested).

[reaperrr]

For fight one:
I'm definitely more a fan of the first issue. Many mods implement a "classic RA2" mode, and the presence of Yuri always gets in the way of this. Additionally, it could make sense if you've done something like a Generals-esque country system where each country has certain special advantages instead of a simple extra unit, limiting the choice to certain countries so as not to harm your game mode. It could also be used to implement a game mode involving certain countries that aren't even part of your normal gameplay. For example, a game mode in which you have every country addition (or none at all), limiting the country choices to simply "Allies", "Soviets" or "Yuri" rather than having pointless identical countries cluttering the menu.

The only usage case I can see for the second issue is remapped walls. While it's a nice thing to see, it's a very limited scope of use. The first issue gives you a lot more options to play around with in mods.

Therefore, my stance is support #237, kill #925.

Agreed.

Fight 2
Well neither sounds particularly useful, but personally I'd rather use Random Damage, so I'll vote accordingly.
The more I think about it, the more I consider my above statement totally wrong. Random Damage is useful, very much so in fact. On top of the advantages mentioned by some others here, there's some more:

In RA2/YR you can't have missiles that are tracking and at the same time somewhat inaccurate.
And before anyone says something like "but a missile that is tracking and inaccurate at the same time is a contradiction", go play MechCommander 1/2. Even if the missiles hit the target, they don't usually hit the same spot of the target all the time, so the effective damage isn't always the same either. That's another thing #378 would be useful for, simulating slight inaccuracy for tracking projectiles.
Also, in MC1/2 a lucky hit to the cockpit could kill a Mech, that's where the CriticalHit would come in handy.

Yeah, a BattleTech mod would definitely benefit a lot from this feature...

At the same time, #1003 doesn't add much to the game, has no effect on gameplay, and - this is crucial in my eyes - looks like something that only a very limited number of people would use.

support #378
kill #1003

[MRMIdAS]

out of 2 features i probably won't use, i suspect more people will use [925] as there is art using this already available.

[1003] is a worthy campaign extension.

[Beowulf]

Support #925. Would be nice to see a tiny bit of eyecandy support in Ares as well. #237 has a little bit of merit, but I don't see it being used all that heavily. Same with #925 to be honest, but there exist a few overlay graphics that remap already and it would be handy to use them without ridiculous issues that render them useless.

Support #378. This is a really nice idea, which will play very well for accuracy-based weapons. Inaccurate is often really annoying and cumbersome to use since it doesn't make much of a difference on weapons firing at the same level and too much of one when firing up cliffs. Randomizing the damage between a set interval of possibilities is quite nifty. However, I don't like the critical hit aspect... this ain't Final Fantasy.

[Darkstorm]

Enabling and disabling a country via game modes would certainly be useful, more than remap walls IMO.

Now the Multiple campaign lists in a must, random damage seems like a poor excuse to not enable more campaigns. We're talking more than just a Yuri campaign, this would mean as many campaigns as you desire. Especially with the unlockable campaign feature. It is a must for Mental Omega, and for any Yuri campaign or total conversion (with campaigns) mod. Random damage seems not as useful as you guys think, it wouldn't be very noticeable unless the range is good sized and then it would be stupid to have it. Inaccuracy is a balance to range as I see it, either that or a way to get a good area of effect. I can't see random damage to balance anything, just a way to make combat a little more interesting.

[Blade]

Darkstorm, you haven't read the description of multi campaign list feature request. The Campaign list is already reimplemented in one of the branches if not in the trunk already so you can have as many as you want as is a 3rd and 4th campaign button for the normal campaign select screen. This request is for additional unlockable campaigns/campaign lists and is essentially a duplicate or superset of the other unlockable campaign request. Then again I don't care for random damage, consider it a waste of time and would rather this duplicate win than the other one (since unlocking campaigns is a nice touch as in C&C 3).

[Lt Albrecht]

Random damage would be good if used right. Blade's example is it used wrong. Using random damage correctly would be a stealthed sniper with a low ROF, random damage weapon with 0, (moderate) or instakill damages. Thus instead of becoming an infantry raping monster that can hide in the shadows and pick off all your valuable units one by one, each time he shoots there's a risk he'll have killed nothing and given himself away. Or a tank with random damages, either it only gets a glancing hit that bounces off, or it punches through the armour, instead of just doing x damage again and again and again...

[reaperrr]

Random damage would be good if used right. Blade's example is it used wrong. Using random damage correctly would be a stealthed sniper with a low ROF, random damage weapon with 0, (moderate) or instakill damages. Thus instead of becoming an infantry raping monster that can hide in the shadows and pick off all your valuable units one by one, each time he shoots there's a risk he'll have killed nothing and given himself away. Or a tank with random damages, either it only gets a glancing hit that bounces off, or it punches through the armour, instead of just doing x damage again and again and again...

It should be noted that these can also be achieved to some extend when the de-globalization of Ballistic.Scatter is implemented by giving the weapon's projectile a very low scatter value and low cell-spread.
Nevertheless, Ballistic.Scatter is influenced by height and range and doesn't work with some projectile types, so random damage would still be the better solution in such cases.

However, I don't like the critical hit aspect... this ain't Final Fantasy.

In my opinion, Ares' purpose should also be to add functionality that allows for a wider range of more unique mods. Maybe we'll see some Final Fantasy (or other RPG) mod some day?

[Lt Albrecht]

when the de-globalization of Ballistic.Scatter is implemented

I've been bugging D for this since 2008/9... I submitted it to the tracker and it just disappeared!

this ain't Final Fantasy.

Yes. This is War. And in war things rarely ever go by the formula!

[mt.]

Fight 1:

#925
Kill this.

#237
Save this.

Reason: Remap on overlays? Oh look, a cute little visual. I know whose walls these are all around my base. Great.
No, this really seems trivial and something I wouldn't use.
Gamemodes with countries enabled/disabled however... that definitely has its uses. Classic mode, or in some mashup mods you restrict who can face who, OR of course the easter eggs. Did I mention special types of maps? If you have a drastically different type of gameplay in a gamemode, or such it could be better to clone the country for it and make the changes, instead of making them in every single map INI for it. Countries control through gamemodes is something I would use, and something I support.

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Fight 2:

#1003
Kill this.

#378
Save this.

Reason: Random damage is just great. Snipers, artillery, hell you could put this on ANY weapon. Healing and repairs too, because the strength of objects doesn't necessarily go up linearly and constantly. Infantry battles too: this adds some good effect to firefights. All in all I can see tons of usages for this, and very many mods which can use this too.
As for the menu.ini/list request? It sounds like a whole lot of work for little results. Seems to me its just restricting the player choice. So, definetlly go Random Damage.

[DCoder]

I've been bugging D for BallisticScatter since 2008/9... I submitted it to the tracker and it just disappeared!

Learning to search helps. #0000253 #0000623

[Darkstorm]

Right... I knew that. I was just testing you.

Well then I still vote for the duplicate I guess, I really don't care for random damage.