Exp. & Rank Mechanisms Section 2

Stratadrake on Acuracy / Exp.
* QUOTE:
 * "bottom line, can any of you tell me, for sure, that the damage stat for a weapon goes up with veterancy?"


 * This is easily researched:


 * 1 - Build two combat units.


 * 2 - Use Debug Mode Ctrl+E to analyze current HP of the unit.


 * 3 - Hit it with one or two shots from a weapon


 * 4 - Analyze current HP of the unit again to get damage caused.


 * Accuracy modifiers, if there are any, are also easily researched:


 * 1 - Create a unit with -1 armor plating -- it will suffer only 1 pt. damage per hit.


 * 2 - Create a weapon with a salvo size of 100 shots and a significant salvo reload time.


 * 3 - Fire a full salvo of rounds into the unit


 * 4 - Damage inflicted = approximate accuracy %.

Willis's POV

 * Well I know it says that "experience" makes a difference..


 * but I would like to see a noticeable difference.


 * On a fair battle field (IE your not facing like 5 Dragons against 100 bugs) I'd think 10-20 units killed is a very strong number.


 * Well besides some smart figuring so a person cannot do like my prior battle comparision and unregularly give a unit experience. . . have a unit with an above-average experience level, get a noticeable boost of abilties.

RBL-4NiK8r POV

 * Well in multiplayer it was or would be very hard to get 512 kills with one unit to get a Hero, when even in a very long game the most kills you might be getting total is that many. For the most part you never saw most of your units go past Green even if you tried to keep them alive in multiplayer, and with the idea of taking the unit limit up over 100 the odds are even more so against one unit becomming better over another, with the way the ranking stands now.


 * I think for this to work in multiplayer it would have to be something simple, like for every 10 kills a unit makes they get better in some areas like Strata pointed out by 1% so by the time you got to 100 kills they would be 10% better then a Green unit. As it is that might be even to many to go up in rank, if you look at a Fighter Pilot they only needed 5 kills to become an ACE, and that in it self was never easy. So if this was based on 5 kills per 1% increase in rank a Hero would be 20% better at 100 kills.


 * Right now I cant say what would be better, my game playing tells me that if you have some kind of ranking system that happens sooner then later, your going to want to keep them units alive, but even if you start with a T1 game and it makes it to T3 odds are your not going to get more then 25 kills per unit so any boost to a units rank might even have to go around that low. I will get into things that should be inceased on my next post, but I got a cold right now and need some sleep.

Rman Jack on Friendly-Fire
* QUOTE (Willis):


 * "Well I know it says that experience makes a difference. . but I would like to see a noticeable difference.


 * On a fair battle field (IE your not facing like 5 Dragons against 100 bugs) I'd think 10-20 units killed is a very strong number.


 * Well besides some smart figuring so a person cannot do like my prior battle comparision and unregularly give a unit experience. . . have a unit with an above-average experience level, get a noticeable boost of abilties."


 * Rman: That reminds me.....


 * "Friendly Fire" CAN happen but should entail penalties (FF of Units vs Units or Structs or Emplacements).


 * As in - whatever boons are gained in combat against the enemy will be diminished (as in loss of rank) through FF..


 * (If commited by the unranked there is surely nothing gained.)


 * This of course raises the issue of auto targeting / fireing of arty or IF emplacements.


 * An ON-OFF Toggle would help but I think FF penalities would have to be restricted to unit fire only.

Kage on Friendly-Fire

 * artillery firing into a friendly platoon is as much an issue as people winging their friends with rifle rounds


 * if we're going to modify the engine, it wont be tough to make it so that sensors are "smarter" so that they don't call in artillery right on top of friendlies - the only exception would be to have a commander order in the artillery with some sort of "force artillery" command that would be added to the commander's menu.


 * Rman: Point taken, your right.

Stratadrake on RPG / RTS Exp. Schema

 * QUOTE: (Willis)
 * "Well I know it says that experience makes a difference. . but I would like to see a noticeable difference."


 * I agree.


 * This is off-genre but related to the matter -- there's an RPG called "Legend of Legaia", and in its combat system (specifically, the magic system), your spells can accumulate exp., "level up" and become more powerful . . . unfortunately the rewards are miniscule...


 * a Lv.9 Fire spell for example won't inflict noticeably more damage than a Lv.1 Fire spell (it will, if only because of the caster's higher level/experience) but it will reduce the target's strength/firepower by 20%. TWENTY PERCENT!


 * C'mon, twenty percent means you can take five hits from an enemy instead of four, the difference is virtually invisible to the player given the inherent damage-randomization.


 * Back to the RTS genre, if the maximum difference between a Hero unit and a Rookie is that the hero can kill 5 enemies in the time it takes the rookie to kill 4, why go to all the effort of conserving units and gathering experience in the first place?


 * Now if the hero can kill 3 enemy units in the time it takes the rookie to kill two -- a 50% increase -- THAT is a noticeable difference in skill levels and desirable to have.

Willis on Defensive Exp.

 * Well I won't try to make some explination of logic behind it, but lets try considering defensive attributes.


 * Details of weapon specs and unit specs and etc would be hard to determain but all details voided... if it were to take a rookie unit 5 shots to be destroyed, turn the tables and have a Hero unit withstand 10 shots to be destroyed, thats quit the insentive to keep your units preserved.

Slye_Fox's POV

 * I think you should get rid of the kills bit and change it in to a more realistic method.


 * I think its quite annoying when a macheingun viper wheels defeats a heavy cannon dragon tracks and only gets 1 kill to show for it, in a win like that the smaller vehicle should get like 10 times that because of the size and power differance.


 * So I think it should be changed to a method involving cost differance and powwer(attack+deffence) differance.

Rman on Sly's POV

 * That's an excellent idea and should be entertained.


 * May even encourage Combined Arms against superior enemy units whose combat grouping deployment is lacking tactically.

Kage on Sly's POV

 * i agree with your thoughts, slye, to a point, but i think that's a bit of a westwoodian view - they simply use "cost" to determine their veterancy levels.


 * i don't even believe that we should use hp either - for example, you could sacrifice ten of your best units to take out some super enemy tank, and then some other player with a machinegun viper wheels comes by and takes one pot shot, and in getting the kill gets the experience.


 * what i specifically agree with you on is the kill - it's not like soldiers in rl could spend months in target practice and not gain any skill with a gun, but upon killing an enemy, develop a knack for it - it's simply practice.


 * however, the gunner is only one member of a tank crew, and unless we get a very very broken up and specific experience system (different experience levels for gunner, one for driver, one for tank commander, loader, etc), then all of the experience would have to be thrown into one stat.


 * i think a system that determines the amount of threat a given unit faces, and it's subsequent performance is what should be calculated to determine experience accumulation: if one of your tanks is facing a battalion of tanks, but it is not targeted by any of them, the immediate threat factor would be low, thus the experience accumulation would be low regardless of performance. if that entire tank battalion is attacking the afformentioned tank, but it performs poorly, the experience accumulation will be low (anyone can get shot at, and put their head between their legs - that doesn't mean you'll learn anything from it). however, if this tank is targeted by an enemy battalion, but survives and fought back well, it would gain a lot of experience.


 * note: what i mean by performance is simply striking the enemy and doing damage to them compared to the unit's theoretical maximum capacity for damage to an enemy (a succesful hit every time). for green units, this would be getting lucky.


 * also, if you're wondering how i suggest experience be accumulated, it would not be per kill, nor per hit - it would be continuous: when not in battle, the accumulation would be constantly 0, however, in battle, this rate of accumulation would change constantly.


 * and personally, i think getting rid of rank as an actual factor would be prudent - i recommend keeping rank just to give the player a general idea of the overall effectiveness, but not making it so combat effectivess goes up step by step.