Transports: 1 Agreeable Change, 1 Debateable Change

[CocoaMoko]

Hello.

Let's talk about transports. I have two ideas regarding them. One I'm sure most will agree with, the other one would merit much discussion.

1) Transports need to drop at more consistent timing (without needless micro). Sometimes I want the transport to drop, and within 1 second of getting to the spot it pops the units on the ground and is off on it's merry way. Other times, it hovers for 3-4 seconds, often times dying. Whaaat. What exactly makes it do this?
I mean maybe the games engine is trying to find the ideal spot to drop them, but I think it should have more of a margin to drop within. I'd propose that they have a time limit on them, meaning if they hover above their drop point for more than one second, they just drop, even if they're like 0.01 m away from the drop point aha.

2) Now this one I think would be good if we receive enough input to find a way of doing this balanced.

But transports dying shouldn't necessary be a 1 hit kill for any unit it's carrying.
For most, yes. T1 and T2 units are generally lower in health and should die from the crash.

But what if, instead of automatically causing insta-death to anything on a transport, dropping from the transport just did a certain amount of damage. Like 12000 or more. It just seems a little ridiculous that (especially in universe) a unit with armor enough to have 180000 HP will die just because it's weak <2000hp transport got blown up.

If dropping from a transport did say 12000 damage, then T1 acus would die on getting shot down, but T2/T3 acus would survive, though with a massive chunk of health gone. It makes sense to me, for the object to fall and take damage instead of just arbitrarily blowing up because it's transport died.
The 12000 damage is merely an example though, but in principle I don't think an ACU dying in transport should mean instadeath.


And to tailgate on both of these suggestions, how nice would it be to have a panic button, press it and it either unloads and drops all units quickly, or drops them from the sky (not killing them this time of course).

Thoughts thoughts thoughts?

[snuffles]

+1 Do it.

If there's anything that makes dropships riskier than they already are, it's the unreliability of being unable to unload where there are clearly no visible impediments to unit placement.

[Golol]

if transports get blown up the units should receive a lot of damage (because of the explosion and an unconrtolled crash)
something like 8000 so only percies and bricks may survive.
This damage should ignore shields.
If the units get dropped by a panic button they only use health by falling.
Maybe usal units should lose 50% health and hovering units lose 25 % health. Im not sure about the hovering thing because it might be strong hover units :/. but it would be reasonable if hovering units get less damage when insta dropped by the transport.
That would be like a perfect possibility for nomads because they have a t4 transport and heavy hovering units .

[da_monstr]

I support this idea, especially considering that even a t3 acu getting shot down is an insta-death. While yes, you should not allow that to happen, instakill is a bit harsh.
Also , I remember I once had a mod installed that had a button for emergency drop, but I don't remember which one

[Flynn]

Also transports should be made 25% cheaper because at the moment it is just not worth it for the tactical advantage that they give. They cost so much energy that it is crippling to the economy before the 10 minute mark. Maybe the same costs as a bomber would be good, you just have to be careful that it does not make ghetto gunships too viable again.

[Zock]

Also transports should be made 25% cheaper because at the moment it is just not worth it for the tactical advantage that they give. They cost so much energy that it is crippling to the economy before the 10 minute mark. Maybe the same costs as a bomber would be good, you just have to be careful that it does not make ghetto gunships too viable again.

not true


Rest sounds interessting.

[CocoaMoko]

I was contemplating a percentage based damage system too before posting this, but I wanted to propose first the "flat-rate" damage idea hehe.

But I think that could work too. I was thinking moreso along the lines of losing 75% of a unit max-hp (so half health units die regardless).

Now it could be pretty game changing, say an enemy pushes 4 trannies over your line and then they get shot down. Now in the old game you'd feel safe and pretty accomplished, in this game well maybe they didn't reach all the way to their destination, but they're still on the ground. But if they're all at 25% health, you can still dispatch them easily.
It kind of adds to the epicness of the situation to me honestly hehe. Transports getting shot down, broken units fighting with the last bit of health they have left, chaos! Awesome!

That would also make a couple things more important, namely killing trannies early (perhaps having to send fighters into enemy territory to do so, risk/reward, yay), and what you shoot trannies down with. Similar to how it works now. If you shoot a tranny down with flak, the units it's carrying take damage from the flak. And now with SAM having AOE, the same can be said of it. This means that a base that's well defended with flak or SAM still won't get breached even by the weakened units, since they'll lose enough of their health for insta-death while still on the tranny.
This will make killing trannies with ground AA slightly more preferable to killing them with ASF, which I feel would be good.

If any of these changes go through, I would propose a slight decrease in tranny health to compensate.

I too feel tranny cost is fine.

[Wakke]

I support these ideas!

[MushrooMars]

The issue with Transports is that a ridiculously large portion of their code is stored in the source code, NOT the lua scripts. This is the reason you've never seen a mod with naval/land transports, or for that matter improved transport mechanics. It's just too hard to circumvent the massive limitation of not being able to modify transport code.

I'll look at it tomorrow, and my hopes are high, because I love sneaky Cybran engie drops, but I'm not expecting a whole ton of success.

[CocoaMoko]

Also , I remember I once had a mod installed that had a button for emergency drop, but I don't remember which one

Blackops had it in one of the older versions.

So we see there it definitely is possible to implement that at the very least. However, as Mushroo said, who knows how much we'll actually be able to modify transports based on the way they're coded.