fatherbushido

I don't request a subforum about special units, it's just a topic about that without any other purpose to speak of that in a generic way It seems the post above was posted in the wrong topic, am I wrong?

I hope everyone enjoyed it. I would congrat those who got all the refs. Hehe good point, I didn't know

Well some news. After 6 months of hard work, it was the time to have a real life meeting. So we met during 3 days in Molvania at our own expenses. We had profitable discussions and spend also a lot of times to code. It was also the moment for us to discuss about our recent new contributors. Among them, I would cite Richard and Eric, or our Nvidia gpu expert Benedict (he could become our future community manager), Donald Ervin who will write some docs, Brian and Dennis who will help us on the c part of the code (they are currently busy writing a book), or Alex who plan to help us on the AI but currently busy to learn many things. The last day, we take a good dinner based on pizzas, garlic and cheese sandwiches and last but not least pork and beans. We kept the tarte flambée for after our STK game. We was really exhausted and took some rest watching Escape from New York. The end scene, the fact that one of our dev have removed thousand lines of dead code and perhaps some fermented beverage led us to take a decision: we had to fork our own fork. We are proud to announce that the name of our meta fork is Spoon AD.

Other: U+1F374

black_cloak Those Thracian guys armed with Rhomphaia Wikipedia knowledge as entry point :-) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thracians The weapon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhomphaia The clothing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thracian_clothing (is black cloak the good name?) The battle of Pydna https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Pydna (Are Black cloaks mainly the clothes wear during 3rd Macedonian war between mace and rome?)

Thorakites wikipedia is a good entry point https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorakitai For that one there are interesting things to do, current vanilla 0ad missed it a bit.

While reading old irc logs from 2010-2011, I read ideas about having different path of "upgrading" soldiers depending of the civ. I don't quote but that idea (from "Mythos") was: for example: - cart upgrades by ethnicity - pers upgrades Infantry and Cavalry separately - greek upgrade by unit type (spearmen, javeliners, ...) - celt, iber upgrade by weapons (sword, spear, ...) There are things like that in DE mod and there was also in WFG 0ad before almost all was flatten in the blacksmith. Let's talk.

Thureophoros I won't paste book so let's use wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thyreophoroi - Is it an improved peltast? - Was it used by spart, mace, athen, sele, ptol? - For which civ was it considered as a merc? - How to include that compared to peltast? - Is there a point to have that hellenic actor compared to the ptol ones?

Yeah the use as special starting structure sounds good (more or less what it was planned at some time).

Zegema beach vacations were cancelled. Stay tuned ;-)

"stoas units" from left to right Thureophoros, Thorakites and Thacian "Black Cloak" armed with the Rhomphaia. Thureophoros from left to right "Mercenary champions" from stoas and basic, advanced, elite ptol mercenaries javelinist. Thacian "Black Cloak" rhomphaia men from left to right "Mercenary champions" from stoas and basic, advanced, elite seleucids mercenaries "swordmen"

Yeah we kinda agree, that's what classes are for. But there is a difference between the "first wave" of special buildings (the ones in design docs) and the "second wave" (the ones used in the DE manner - placed on the map and giving a bonus). But well we can first focus on the above stoas? Why those models? History? Wrong "Royal" name? Purpose? ...

Special can perhaps have interest has a class. I quote an old description of special buildings: "The following structures are unique to the individual factions, and have unique abilities and features." (that's not really helpful here but well it's said.)

What did you do in 0abc? (I want to discuss of those things in a generic way, not related to a specific mod or release).

You need to set at leat 500 starting resources in that mode. (or it will be hard)

I'll try to be short and so not comprehensive. I open a related topic: https://wildfiregames.com/forum/index.php?/topic/25503-special-buildings-and-so-on/ At some point there were beautiful units introduced. They were possibly introduced as experience, for art experiment, for special purpose or whatever. Among them some stay in the atlas, some other were moved to some maps in special already placed building (the famous Thracian black cloaks https://wildfiregames.com/forum/index.php?/topic/16768-alpha-xi-laconia-is-it-winnable/&tab=comments#comment-256009 leading sometimes to questions https://wildfiregames.com/forum/index.php?/topic/18586-unit-recruitment/&tab=comments#comment-290393) and some were finally moved to the production queue list: - black_cloak, thureophoros, thorakites for spart, athen and mace - kardakes_hoplite, kardakes_skirmisher (I won't speak of issues with templates organization and things like that but) it seems that the design was not finished nor consistent. For example: - some are recruitable in a non military building - they are designed as champion mercenary (that's what I conclude) and sometimes trainable in phase 2, well that led to interesting things in games. Is that a good idea? - Are those 3 units black_cloak, thureophoros, thorakites really consistent? - The kardakes are mercenary champions and noted as such in the persian hall tooltip https://trac.wildfiregames.com/browser/ps/trunk/binaries/data/mods/public/simulation/templates/structures/pers_hall.xml but iirc there weren't mercenaries at all. So what? [...] --- Now let's talk!

I'll try to be short and so not comprehensive. I open a related topic: https://wildfiregames.com/forum/index.php?/topic/25504-special-units-and-so-on/ 1) Special structures in "normal game" A long time ago it was designed to have generic buildings but also civ specific special buildings. It's still present in design docs, fe: https://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/Civ%3A_Athenians#SPECIALSTRUCTURES. I have nothing to add from the gameplay or the art point of view. (From templates organization point of view, it's not always clear: they first inherited from the structure_special templates, then it went in all directions.) 2) Special structures already placed (in all or in some maps) Then came other such buildings. One example is "stoa" https://trac.wildfiregames.com/changeset/8341/ It seems the first intention was to put it in some scenario maps or perhaps all maps. See those beautiful screenshots https://wildfiregames.com/forum/index.php?/topic/13519-arcadia-ii/&do=findComment&comment=210809 There was the longhouse in the same spirit https://wildfiregames.com/forum/index.php?/topic/12669-simulation-progress/page/14/&tab=comments#comment-211206 There were other ideas the same spirit https://wildfiregames.com/forum/index.php?/topic/14955-the-alpha-7-preview-thread/&tab=comments#comment-222741 If I am not wrong, in the DE mod there was farther exploration of those ideas. (From templates organization point of view, I always wondered where those buildings should take place and how they should fit in inheritance tree.) 3) Mismatch and so on At a point where there were nothing really new, wfg moved some of those "atlas only" buildings to builder list. https://wildfiregames.com/forum/index.php?/topic/20289-atlas-only-structures/&tab=comments#comment-311954 and commited in https://trac.wildfiregames.com/changeset/18024 I won't comment history. It was a choice at a specific point in time. 4) Questions Stoa: there are still two stoa templates in the game. The one buildable by all civ in the game is called "royal stoa" which seems not accurate. https://wildfiregames.com/forum/index.php?/topic/21570-royal-stoa/&tab=comments#comment-325182 Moreover it is used on a military purpose. Shouldn't it be use as a civic or economic purpose? [...] -- Let's talk now.

I wanted to check a box in the survey but my choice wasn't here.

We could find in different places (docs, tooltips): "Since they are made of mud brick, Egyptian {foo} are free of cost, but are very weak."

As said above, time is resource.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYOnTjHMBFA (from DE 0.0.2 on WFG 0AD a0.23b)

It's completely different. UnitAI places unit at range (so taking into account obstruction of the target) (high cost). BuildingAI do a range query from center to center and fire all things in that range (low cost).

Obstruction shapes are used by the pathfinder. (If I am not wrong, they are only squares and moving units are just points (but they add their radius - clearance - to every obstruction)). So in that current problem it is used when UnitAI places a unit "at range". Footprints are mainly used for selection rings but also, in our case, for detecting attack collision. (They can be circular or rectangular.) (Then there is a difference for attacks performed by BuildingAI and the ones performed by UnitAI.)

Just to be clear, footprint != obstruction shape

No I don't. I will write the thing if you want.