fatherbushido

Reducing armor is actually not really different as reducing health.

Following another topic about the abstraction of resources. Basically: - food: something to produce human units, some related technologies, some related structures. - wood: a basic resource to produce basic weapons/tools, basic structure, basic technologies. - stone: a resource to produce advanced structures, advanced technologies. - metal: a resource to produce advanced weapons/tools, advanced technologies. I am not sure that all military units should cost metal in fact. That seems less evident than some other points. For structures costing food, I could imagine some specific cases, but indeed some seems removable. I wrote that before looking at some design docs. Let's paste an old public version from the wiki:

The difficulty is not adding it, it's adding it cleverly. For example I don't feel it's something interesting for projectiles (or in this case I wouldn't display any statistics to the player in the gui).

I like the way it is formulated. Thanks.

One can't disagree. It's actually hard to reflect some physical reality in a consistent way (without making things complex).

Yes that's the first difference we can make, though not everybody agree with the range scale. I often saw suggested bow > sling > javelin You suggest sling > bow > javelin? Do you?

Yes it makes sense as it refers to the different nature of those weapons. I always wonder if it's better to focus on the weapon or on the unit role. It's more or less the same idea then. Bonuses against low armored unit finally. Nuking the crush part seems consensual then. Any reason for the metal cost? (Is it to reflect the fact there was use of metalic projectile? or because it fits in the DE gameplay? or anything else?) @Nescio used metal for all units iirc in 0abc.

Thanks for those informative inputs. Does it also emphasize there were specialized slingers and casual slingers? Anyone has an input about Macedonian armies? (Battle of Gaugamela for example)

That's an interesting idea. It's simple and actually add something. That needs to be dig a bit. I would keep it for melee weapon as projectile weapon has already some sources of randomness. (Let's discuss about it in another topic if needed).

That's an overdebated topic. # crush damage The idea was to give it a crush damage to make it a bit different from javeliners and archers. It seems right now that it was not really a good idea: - strange in gameplay: we can use slingers to destroy building but not javeliners nor archers for ranged units, nor heavy weaponed melee units. - strange in visual appearance (aka realism): same reason as above - strange at history: here I should be corrected but I have in mind that there were specialized slingers or javeliners but also a large amount of warrior just throwing what they have. So basically it's a bit exagerated to make slingers and javeliners so different. Independantly of a specific 0ad alpha version or whatever, who think we should really remove that. # stone cost Just because it launches stone, it costs stone. That's fine but sounds weird on another side (the stone resource is just an abstraction). I never succeed to figure out what to think here. # ideas ? Should it be someting different from javeliners and how? I guess the question is mostly relevant for civ which have both units in their unit schema.

One thing which is not possible anymore is to have terrain movement cost handled by the pathfinder. So if ever you succeed to do something which slow or boost speed of entities, your units will still take a path which doesn't take that into account when automatically tasked.

Yes. Open simulation/data/pathfinder.xml and change the Clearance here: <ship> <Obstructions>pathfinding</Obstructions> <MinWaterDepth>1</MinWaterDepth> <Clearance>10.0</Clearance> </ship> Something like 5.0 But the main issue with boat is that their model have a big length / width ratio.

Answer in pm, it's already too much off topic and I guess we are the only ones interested in that. Nice hippo btw.

I would I like consistency too, I guess that's why I discuss about that with you. I would recommend <food>200.0</food> <wood>50.0</wood> and even (if needed) <food>200.0</food> <wood>0.0</wood> About rP22408 that should have been discussed as in recomanding exactly the converse of removing trailing zeros for modifications. As I said above the argument is different for templates and modifications but it's about the same kind of issues.

@wowgetoffyourcellphone Pehraps you can make the [DE] battle simulation map a skirmishes one? I could test more civs on it then? If it is dedicated to a given geographical zone, just ignore that EDIT: we would need some skirmish replacers for champs too

Nobody discussed that with you but having the trailing zeros is interesting. As in some coding language, you know the type of the data you manipulate just by looking at them. It can appears as a matter of taste (and I thought that 4 years ago) but I don't think that anymore nor for the json modifications, nor for the xml entity templates (though the arguments are different).

That sounds a good idea as now the first selected anim is an anim that almost no unit have. Nice! In some files it's not needed (some riders and things like that). I got a maximal list.

Sure. For the elephant, the case is slightly different, I'd be interested to share our thoughts on another topic. Indeed, at least for the citizen soldiers. I think more of using other stats (spread, range - even the melee one, prepare and repeat attack time) and also adding other features. The armor stats are also underused (at least not how they could be used). The game dev started in 2003 (?), it switched to open source around 2010 (?). With mainly the first design ideas (and basically a decision to stuck to that which is a good thing), then a lot of more ideas and design and changes (that's also a good thing). Around the alpha16, there was that gameplay (actually more a balance) branch which was merged. Then nothing changed anymore. I will still think it's recent from historic point of view! Kardakes and the stoa's guys were just randomly threw in the game because there weren't anything new since a while... Let's open that thread!

Yes that's what I had in mind.

In that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francisca we can see what can appear like an historical source.

Axes can be used as a melee weapon or as a projectile (or to cut wood). I don't know if it was used (massively) in the antiquity as a projectile. It could be challenging to have such a projectile animation. If that's easy it's even better then. It could be used for mods for example.

I totally agree. My personal taste is the second approach (in fact now it's to not use any of those stats) but I finally bent for something close to the first one (I could explain why but off topic). There are a lot of other stats, features to use (even without bonus). It's something recent. It was just the merge of the experimental gameplay branch of that time https://trac.wildfiregames.com/changeset/15713#file143. There are forks and mods where it is easy to commit! We can't disagree! Thanks for the input. Properly done (something like in 0abc), it makes sense: if spearmen and pikemen are differents, axemen should be too. Yes! In my opinion what we call a spearman or an hoplite in game is just an abstraction (I It sounds also a bad idea for a clear classic RTS gameplay to introduce or to generalize mulitple weapons for a unit (as in getting a brown soup with all ingredients mixed). Proper history tooltips or docs would help. OK, I just saw https://code.wildfiregames.com/D1354 about that.

That discussion occured sometimes. One of the best solution I found was that one: https://wildfiregames.com/forum/index.php?/topic/24734-damage-and-armour-types/&tab=comments#comment-360402

Thanks for the input, it's always nice to read you! Introducing a new attack type is obviously seducing but it is something that I think should be avoided : if you need to add one damage type, you need to add one more... But what you mentioned is something which could be done without.

(On the vid above, there is obviously a bias, the role of a unit should not be defined in a unit vs unit basis.)