Human structure auto repair

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Viech
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Human structure auto repair

Post by Viech »

Currently, the only reason we consider to keep something like the defense computer is its auto repair ability. Let's first discuss if we really want it and why we (don't) want it.

I'm in favor of auto repair:

Forcing humans to repair during ongoing attacks is something that can easily lead to a slippery slope. From my experience, the best possible defense aginst a rush or continuous attacks is leaving your base and engaging the enemy waves while they approach. Letting a group of enemies inside your base is a bad idea most of the time. While aliens don't have any other option than defending the base by combat (apart from rebuilding, which both teams can do), humans often chose to repair stuff instead, making it much harder for them to push back. This is true at any point in the match, so this would be an argument to allow some means of auto repair from the start.

Another reason for human auto repair is that it gives aliens an incentive to attack in groups as this allows a greater amount of damage in a shorter time. A single sniper or a marauder that zaps until it dies and then returns to the smoking structures will be less powerful. From our experience in the summer tournament, weakening individual attackers on both teams seems desireable.

If we want auto repair, there is a number of possibilities for it:

  • Giving human structures a default fixed auto repair, just like alien structures (but not necessarily as strong).

  • Giving human structures an auto repair with a strength related to the spare power in the area.

  • Giving humans a repair structure like the defense computer.

  • Giving humans a bot bay structure, that hosts one or more bots that leave it to repair one structure at a time. It would respawn inside the structure for free after some time when it dies.

  • Allowing humans to build such a bot directly for a number of build points.

My opinion:

Giving human structures a default fixed auto repair.

This is the easiest but most boring approach. It would take a chance to have another difference between the teams from us.

Giving human structures an auto repair with a strength related to the spare power in the area.

This is definitely more fun than the former approach. It has a number of pros and cons associated to it:

One advantage is that it adds an amount of tactical depth: In order to increase the repair abilities (up to a maximum), a team would need to build repeaters, which serve as a weak point, since their explosion does severe damage to players and buildables in range. This could make human building more interesting just by utilitizing the current set of structures.

One disadvantage is that forwards will generally have a low repair rate as their structures usually run at minimum power while the reactor area would have good repair abilities. I'm not sure if the latter really is a disadvantage but I certainly want forwards to be strong.

Giving humans a repair structure like the defense computer.

This certainly works and I think I favor this approach. The design principle of not having healing effects and buffs provided by structures stack (see gameplay roadmap, 2.2.1.2) should definitely apply here. The range should also be smaller than that of the defense computer, so that you 1) still want to place multiple structures to get a good repair coverage and 2) have to balance your wish for auto repair against the power limitations of an area, again introducing the decision whether you should place a repeater or not.

Giving humans a bot bay structure.

This is really nice in theory, but I think that the effort of implementation and the amount of problems related to the bot AI might not be worth the trouble just yet. If we introduce a repair structure as in the former approach, it might be wise to add a small bot bay to it, that isn't really recognizable as such as long as we don't have an actual bot coming out of it. We would prevent this from stacking by having structures be repaired by one bot at a time.

Allowing humans to build such a bot directly for a number of build points.

I find this equally fun and I guess if we do introduce the bot bay, it would be nice to allow a single bot to be built for a lower price. (We could allow constructing bots from the start of the match and unlock the bot bay later on.)

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JOURNEYMAN
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Re: Human structure auto repair

Post by JOURNEYMAN »

Combine #2 and #3.
Giving human structures an auto repair with a strength related to the spare power in the area.
Giving humans a repair structure like the defense computer.

Build a defense computer and make the repair rate related to the available power in the area.

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Viech
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Re: Human structure auto repair

Post by Viech »

JOURNEYMAN wrote:

Build a defense computer and make the repair rate related to the available power in the area.

I think that is too much of an annoyance to builders. The presence of a repair station should lead to repair being done. It's not fun if the newly built repair station draws so much power that it's effectively unfunctional. For forwarding, this also means two extra structures are necessary to get a decent repair rate up.

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janev
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Re: Human structure auto repair

Post by janev »

The bot bay could pump out repairdrones that do not move but instead latch on to the individual buildings. The bots could be destoyed easily and take a while to regenerate. That way you do not have problems with the ai.

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Re: Human structure auto repair

Post by kangz »

The bot idea is really cool but the implementation might be too difficult for now, especially with the bots branch not merged...

#2 seems interesting but it makes the mechanics even more complex and we want forward bases to be strong against a lone player. So I'd go for something like #3 that sounds ok. However you'll want to make the radius of the healing aura limited (probably). May I suggest that we plot "bases" or buildings on the minimap as long as a circle that represents the healing aura. (this would make it very visual for players)

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Viech
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Re: Human structure auto repair

Post by Viech »

kangz wrote:

May I suggest that we plot "bases" or buildings on the minimap as long as a circle that represents the healing aura. (this would make it very visual for players)

I'm totally in favor of giving the minimap a lot of features in the future. One requirement would be autogenerated maps though (e.g. visualizing navmeshes). I'm certain that pre-built minimaps won't prevail. (I spent over half an hour to generate one for parpax, which was rather straightforward due to the simple two layer layout. On yoycto I simply failed and gave up after an hour.)

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Ishq
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Re: Human structure auto repair

Post by Ishq »

kangz wrote:

The bot idea is really cool but the implementation might be too difficult for now, especially with the bots branch not merged...

#2 seems interesting but it makes the mechanics even more complex and we want forward bases to be strong against a lone player. So I'd go for something like #3 that sounds ok. However you'll want to make the radius of the healing aura limited (probably). May I suggest that we plot "bases" or buildings on the minimap as long as a circle that represents the healing aura. (this would make it very visual for players)

The bots need not necessarily be functional and could merely be a visual effect, like the bugs in the hive.

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JOURNEYMAN
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Re: Human structure auto repair

Post by JOURNEYMAN »

Viech wrote:
JOURNEYMAN wrote:

Build a defense computer and make the repair rate related to the available power in the area.

I think that is too much of an annoyance to builders. The presence of a repair station should lead to repair being done. It's not fun if the newly built repair station draws so much power that it's effectively unfunctional. For forwarding, this also means two extra structures are necessary to get a decent repair rate up.

The DCC probably doesn't have to draw too much power. It could draw a lot less power than other structures. I'm sure the power requirement can be adjusted for balancing purposes. One of the things that differentiate the humans from the aliens is that the alien structures heal themselves over time while the humans need either a separate structure that repairs other buildings or a builder making repairs manually. This makes the game play a little different for each team. I think that feature should be kept.

Ok, so I just had an idea, may be someone else already suggested this. What about only one DCC to be built at any given time, and allow the repeaters to act as the extension of that DCC? And the repeaters repair any buildings within its power field. Being the only DCC, it would have to have higher BP and power requirement, along with higher HP, so naturally it would have to be built within the RC power field. This would make the DCC a valuable target for the aliens to take out. Also, may be the base attack warning can be confined to the area where the actual DCC is present and not the outpost.

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Viech
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Re: Human structure auto repair

Post by Viech »

JOURNEYMAN wrote:

One of the things that differentiate the humans from the aliens is that the alien structures heal themselves over time while the humans need either a separate structure that repairs other buildings or a builder making repairs manually. This makes the game play a little different for each team. I think that feature should be kept.

I agree.

JOURNEYMAN wrote:

The DCC probably doesn't have to draw too much power. It could draw a lot less power than other structures. I'm sure the power requirement can be adjusted for balancing purposes.

Still, if the repair structure itself will be limited by power and its effect will also be limited by power and that's some bad design in my opinion. It is neither fun nor simple. It would make the power system more complex without adding much depth. (I already dislike the idea of linking repair strength to power because it is a potentially unintuitive bloating of the power system. Having a repair structure that draws far less power for no apparent reason doesn't make it any better.)

JOURNEYMAN wrote:

Ok, so I just had an idea, may be someone else already suggested this. What about only one DCC to be built at any given time, and allow the repeaters to act as the extension of that DCC? And the repeaters repair any buildings within its power field. Being the only DCC, it would have to have higher BP and power requirement, along with higher HP, so naturally it would have to be built within the RC power field. This would make the DCC a valuable target for the aliens to take out. Also, may be the base attack warning can be confined to the area where the actual DCC is present and not the outpost.

Not too fond of this either. It is too much of a complication for something that is as simple as regenerating buildable health. I'd prefer a solution that can be expressed in a short sentence.

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janev
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Re: Human structure auto repair

Post by janev »

Couldn't you have a repairdrone add-on for buildables? Think of a person with a hat on vs a person with a hat off. The hat being the repairdrone.

Once a building with a drone drops below a certain % of hp the repairdrone dies. The drone must be rebuilt before autorepair continues. You could alternatively allow the drones to be directly killable although that might create problems with hit detection.

To not make things too easy in the early stages, the builder would have to manually create the repairdrones. (You might even make it so that the builder can't repair anything himself, instead forcing the drones to do repairs). Later on you could have a structure that pumps them out automatically to free the builders up for more important tasks.

I do not like the idea of tying repairs to power. It'll end up too complicated and piss people off.

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