Forged Alliance Forever

Re: Ballistic behaviour of the Tactical Missile

2016-04-14T19:41:30+02:00

Thanks, I'll give it a go anyway out of sheer curiosity.

Statistics: Posted by RocketRooster — 14 Apr 2016, 19:41

Re: Ballistic behaviour of the Tactical Missile

2016-04-14T18:31:51+02:00

not the slightest clue. i haven't run retail fa in years.

in theory nothing stops it from working though.

Statistics: Posted by Exotic_Retard — 14 Apr 2016, 18:31

Re: Ballistic behaviour of the Tactical Missile

2016-04-14T18:30:38+02:00

i haven't ask zock, but as a member of balance team, i still think no change are required.
If there is tons of abuse of it in the future, we will maybe think of an appropriate change.
I see it as a feature that can be used from time to time when the occasion happens, with enough knowledge to recognize the situation, and react with the speed required. I find it difficult to abuse (even if possible).

I think the less change we make, the better.

tldr : it's a feature, that can create some nice micro, and can't really be abuse. If it happens to be abuse some change may/will be done.

Statistics: Posted by keyser — 14 Apr 2016, 18:30

Re: Ballistic behaviour of the Tactical Missile

2016-04-14T16:52:42+02:00

Quick question, will the attached mod work with retail FA?

Statistics: Posted by RocketRooster — 14 Apr 2016, 16:52

Re: Ballistic behaviour of the Tactical Missile

2016-04-14T15:09:29+02:00

Exotic_Retard wrote:
in any case here is the mod to try out, for whoever sane enough to do so.

Pillar of society!

Statistics: Posted by RocketRooster — 14 Apr 2016, 15:09

Re: Ballistic behaviour of the Tactical Missile

2016-04-14T15:04:39+02:00

JaggedAppliance wrote:
Except for aeon tmd which you can shoot over
Exotic_Retard wrote:yes indeed, that is just cancer which is long overdue for a fix anyway, (no prizes for saying where its already fixed)

Ok, i will say it. i will say it!
Fixed in Equilibrium

Statistics: Posted by Ithilis_Quo — 14 Apr 2016, 15:04

Re: Ballistic behaviour of the Tactical Missile

2016-04-14T14:50:16+02:00

JaggedAppliance wrote:
Except for aeon tmd which you can shoot over

yes indeed, that is just cancer which is long overdue for a fix anyway, (no prizes for saying where its already fixed)

in any case, i was bored enough to make a test mod of this!
only the uef stationary tml for now, it goes up then down and doesnt fly over aeon tmd in most cases (fun fact: unchanged tml can be abused properly used to fly over it as well, so i dont see too much difference there)

was it a good change? maybe.
i didn't spend too much time on it, and i contradicted myself and made tmls fly higher up, so you can shoot over mountains with them better
certainly is different, but then again it doesn't bring much drawback or benefit, so i guess this change is not super important. overall i would say this is a kinda nerf even to tml. they take longer to travel in that final approach where its more likely to be shot down.

in any case here is the mod to try out, for whoever sane enough to do so.

Statistics: Posted by Exotic_Retard — 14 Apr 2016, 14:50

Re: Ballistic behaviour of the Tactical Missile

2016-04-14T14:38:26+02:00

Exotic_Retard wrote:
luckily tmd performs well when tml are high up, so we should not be facing this issue.

Except for aeon tmd which you can shoot over

Statistics: Posted by JaggedAppliance — 14 Apr 2016, 14:38

Re: Ballistic behaviour of the Tactical Missile

2016-04-14T12:30:30+02:00

the dip doesnt have to be very high at the end at all. since the area (volume? xD) tmd operates in is a sphere, we want to keep tml flying as close to their original height as possible. luckily tmd performs well when tml are high up, so we should not be facing this issue.

i have written code very similar to this in the past, (for seraphim mml) and an almost identical function exists for all tmls. when i have time i could make this, and it will end up in a mod where it can be tried out.

Statistics: Posted by Exotic_Retard — 14 Apr 2016, 12:30

Re: Ballistic behaviour of the Tactical Missile

2016-04-14T12:23:47+02:00

Thanks, E_R. It's great to know that stuff can be fixed if there's enough hands in the air.

The image I had was of, I think it's the Harpoon missile, that has a terminal pop-up phase. So generally the tac missile will follow a normal trajectory as now, so that it will not be so high that it cannot be affected by cruisers and the like along the middle of its flight path, but at the final approach it pops up parabolically and down again. At least, close enough to the target so that any TMDs can still do their job but once it pops up, it uses a large enough parabolic radius so that stuff around the target doesn't affect the downward trajectory.

Statistics: Posted by RocketRooster — 14 Apr 2016, 12:23

Re: Ballistic behaviour of the Tactical Missile

2016-04-14T11:52:11+02:00

first of all, welcome to faf!

just in case you didnt know yet, we have a wiki for your faf related questions:
http://wiki.faforever.com/index.php?title=Main_Page

and now onto the topic at hand: what you say is perfectly possible, in fact it is already being dome by tml to some degree! we just need to tweak the numbers in the script for it.

the real issue is that its very difficult to say what sort of impacts this would have. since these are tmls, we are lucky that changes here are relatively localized.
by increasing the arc we also increase the time it takes to get to its target on its final approach (actually we can change that too, but lets look at the more interesting option)
what this would mean is that tmd also has more time to shoot it down. interestingly there is actually an issue that is solved with this change, so thats cool.
for stationary targets there is not much difference if there is no tmd, after all we are taking about the time of an extra couple of ticks here.
for mobile targets it might make a slight difference, making them a little harder to hit, but again very small difference.
oh and lets not forget that tml sometimes hits terrain and stuff as well, and this would minimise that. could be viewed as a bad thing potentially, but in most cases i guess its good

overall i would say this could be a nice and elegant change which solves not only this issue(or w.e. you call it : D) but also the tmd groundfire abuse bug (or at least it helps)

Statistics: Posted by Exotic_Retard — 14 Apr 2016, 11:52

Re: Ballistic behaviour of the Tactical Missile

2016-04-14T11:48:09+02:00

Hi Blackster, thanks for the welcome.

Statistics: Posted by RocketRooster — 14 Apr 2016, 11:48

Re: Ballistic behaviour of the Tactical Missile

2016-04-14T11:19:06+02:00

Hey Ryan,

welcome to FAF, and thanks for you elaborate comment.

RocketRooster wrote:
An argument can be made that it is unsporting and beardy gameplay, since it is arguably against the spirit of the game to abuse a game mechanic to nullify your opponent's advantage at that point in the game.

Spot on. However, some will prolly argue it's in line with the spirit of the game *shrug*
Anyway, since the other thread was locked, I'll leave it at that.

RocketRooster wrote:
Since we can agree that they must be able impact unbuilt structures, would a suitable compromise not be to change the "ballistic" behaviour of the missile so that it travels in a higher arc and descends vertically onto the target in the same way that nukes do?

I think the Sera ACU TML flew in such an arc - and, thus, it was hard to hit with TMD, if I remember correctly. So, I may be wrong, but I think changing the arc could result in some problems. Imo just announcing this is not a welcome behavior would be enough - no need for changes in game mechanis. But anway, according to the latest thread the current status is considered fine (though I would prefer hearing that from the balance team, not just one moderator/some players).

Statistics: Posted by --- — 14 Apr 2016, 11:19

Ballistic behaviour of the Tactical Missile

2016-04-14T07:07:15+02:00

Greetings guys,

This is my first post on this forum, and I'd like to open proceedings by expressing my admiration and respect for everyone who has laboured to keep Supcom alive. As an old-school coffin dodger, I love Total Annihilation and we can probably all agree that Supreme Commander is an object of beauty in so many ways.

This thread was inspired by the (now locked) thread about whether uncompleted shield spam to block incoming tac missiles represents an exploit. I don't want this thread to be a continuation of that one, it was locked for good reason. I do however think that it is a pity since the discussion could be valuable. Please do not continue with the faeces flinging, save it for the battlefield, guys.

I'd like to point out that I've never played FAF online, only retail FA with my two lads during our rare LAN sessions when they visit. They are still unable to beat me even when teaming up Youth and talent are no match for age and treachery , but please keep in mind that I'm the quintessential newbie if I say something that is obvious bollocks in the scope of FAF.

Anyway, I digress.

Is it an exploit to block with unbuilt structure spam? My personal opinion is that it isn't, for the very good reason stated by others that it is entirely sensible and desirable to be able to destroy structures that are under construction. It is also very often the case that it is entirely unintentional that the unbuilt shield will block the tac missile, since obviously shields are built to protect structures and whether the shield is unbuilt or not is a matter of timing, pure and simple.

That said, in the cast referenced in the other thread, it is patently obvious that the aim of spamming up the shields was not to have a working shield, but to have a means of nullifying an (expensive) tactical missile at little cost to the opponent being targeted.

An argument can be made that it is unsporting and beardy gameplay, since it is arguably against the spirit of the game to abuse a game mechanic to nullify your opponent's advantage at that point in the game. Granted, it takes skill and the presence of a T2 engineer, but it also takes skill to be prescient enough to antipate the eventual arrival of tactical missiles knocking at the door of the resource you want to protect, and in any case that same T2 engy should have been building TMD. So it boils down to having been outplayed in that microcosmic battle and resorting to a cheap trick to nullify the disadvantage. But that's my opinion and really it's an entirely different topic and I don't want to get embroiled into a debate about it or have the thread descend into chaos because of it.

Nevertheless, it is clearly a sore point for some (I would personally be annoyed if it was done against me but it wouldn't be a game breaker, flaming plasma victory will be sought one way or the other). To that end, I'd like to talk about the behaviour of the missile itself.

Since we can agree that they must be able impact unbuilt structures, would a suitable compromise not be to change the "ballistic" behaviour of the missile so that it travels in a higher arc and descends vertically onto the target in the same way that nukes do? In this way, you get the best of both worlds - that T2 mex, or fatboy being built, can be targeted effectively and spamming up blocking structures becomes ineffective. Some tuning of the projectile speed might be necessary to keep the effective time to target the same.

But maybe I'm also getting ahead of myself. Is this modification even possible to do in the first place? Also, what other unforseen effects would this have? For example, suitable terrain would block TMs as it stands now, and utilising the terrain to your advantage is clearly A Good Thing.

Any insights from you lot would be very welcome

Thank you!
Ryan

Statistics: Posted by RocketRooster — 14 Apr 2016, 07:07