Building placement, damage and garrison

[System Error Message]

Hi, while looking for a game thats graphically nice and playable for linux i found 0.a.d and tried it. Graphics reminds me of AOE3 although i think it would be better to have the buildings on larger grids a bit like the older AOE games and would make it easier when building walls. I do hope it is planned to include damage for buildings where pieces of a building/ship can fall off or get blown away like in AOE3 or black and white 2.

Without a larger grid for placing buildings it is extremely hard to block paths using walls. I also hope there will be gates too.

I'd also like to know is there a method of calculating the additional attack provided by garrison? In AOE2 the additional number of arrows/damage done by a building is calculated from what units are garrisoned i.e. workers will add a little, archers will add a lot while melee units do not contribute.

I was also expecting ships with archers onboard to fire more arrows and also attack from the side as well instead of just the front but neither happened.

Overall i think 0.a.d would be a very nice game once it is finished.

[historic_bruno]

Graphics reminds me of AOE3 although i think it would be better to have the buildings on larger grids a bit like the older AOE games and would make it easier when building walls.

Have you tried Alpha 10? It has a new wall placement system which is very easy to use. Prior to that, they had to be placed individually. All you do is drag and drop, placing walls in a straight line connecting two or more points. It seems quite easy to use. We might add an optional snapping "grid" system for other buildings, for people who like a highly organized city

I do hope it is planned to include damage for buildings where pieces of a building/ship can fall off or get blown away like in AOE3 or black and white 2.

I don't think that will happen without a physics system which we certainly don't plan. That said, we will gradually add more eye candy for damage and destruction effects. It's low priority compared to completing gameplay features.

Without a larger grid for placing buildings it is extremely hard to block paths using walls. I also hope there will be gates too.

Can you give a more specific example, perhaps a screenshot of a difficult path for walls? Gates are now in SVN, so you'll definitely see those in Alpha 11

I'd also like to know is there a method of calculating the additional attack provided by garrison? In AOE2 the additional number of arrows/damage done by a building is calculated from what units are garrisoned i.e. workers will add a little, archers will add a lot while melee units do not contribute.

It looks like each infantry or ranged unit adds an arrow to the total count fired, which occurs over a two second period. I think whatever it does is not really correct and needs tweaking. Suggestions are welcome

I was also expecting ships with archers onboard to fire more arrows and also attack from the side as well instead of just the front but neither happened.

Yeah, naval combat really needs improvement, we plan to work on that for Part 1.

[Sonarpulse]

We might add an optional snapping "grid" system for other buildings, for people who like a highly organized city

That would please many OCD RTS fans, i think.

Edited July 15, 2012 by Sonarpulse

[Mythos_Ruler]

That would please many OCD RTS fans, i think.

Something like AOE3 would be good.... free placement, without a hard "grid", but buildings "snap" together when being placed close enough.

[Mythos_Ruler]

many ideas from AOE3 sounds good. like to see treasure guarians, choice monuments or allies, government mode.

and the posibily to train mercenary in trading post, that idea seduces my mind if 0ad implement that, i wuold train elephant mercenaries in some Africa Biome or India. XP

If capturing becomes implemented, it might be an easy thing to place Gaia "mercenary" buildings on the map for the players to capture and train mercs.

[WhiteTreePaladin]

Something like AOE3 would be good.... free placement, without a hard "grid", but buildings "snap" together when being placed close enough.

Either that or snapping to a grid would be good for me.

[Mythos_Ruler]

No snapping to a hard grid, please. Snapping to each other would be enough.

[leper]

We already have a function to detect/decide if we should snap to something (in GuiInterface.js). It could probably be extended (if needed) and with some additional code in gui/session/input.js we'd have snapping for more buildings.

Snapping is already used for wall construction.

Maybe someone should create a ticket with the simple keyword for that?

[Sonarpulse]

I think I would prefer a grid, you may want even spacing between buildings too. Maybe pressing a hotkey while you are placing the building would highlight a grid (made up of game tiles, I think they are about the right resolution), and the building would snap to that.

[System Error Message]

Tried the update, much faster and with new things. I would also like to suggest being able upgrade a longer section of a wall into a gate. And please make it possible to snap buildings. It makes it neater when building a city with stone walls. The new update makes walls easier to build. Being able to snap wall towers to obstacles would be great to make sure that the wall becomes an obstacle without having to build walls all over the place.

Would also like to suggest wall upgrades as well for stronger walls and able to turn a stone wall tower into a ballista tower(while losing ability to garrison). In total war games (even rome total war), Stone walls would have ballistas in them to protect against units and siege.

As for garrison i just realised that units dont heal like in AOE. Also in AOE2, only villagers and ranged units will contribute to the number of arrows a building would fire while garrisoned. So in AOE2 if you set the waypoint on itself and built a few trebuchets, it would contribute a lot of arrows to a castle. The stronger the ranged units to more arrows although there is a set max number of arrows for each building.

I would also like to suggest adding ballista attack to fortresses since it would follow history more accurately. Although historically catapults were mounted on fortresses but ballistas would be more practical if they were better against other siege units. Would like to know if the community would prefer that too.

I would also like to suggest ability to garrison units in barracks but they dont contribute to attack. Its a good way to surprise the enemy by keeping additional garrison in buildings. In AOE2 you could garrison units in other buildings if the waypoint was set on itself and set to train units than unload them when needed. It would also be less laggy if units were kept in garrison when they werent used and if the AI would do that too until they were needed.

[System Error Message]

I don't think that will happen without a physics system which we certainly don't plan. That said, we will gradually add more eye candy for damage and destruction effects. It's low priority compared to completing gameplay features.

AOE3 physics system was optional and a graphical feature. So while the buildings and ships can fall apart into different pieces, It was only graphical although some building animations were affected too such as windmills. If you have played it, if the sail of a ship fell off the ship would not slow in speed. It was only a graphical feature.

[historic_bruno]

Tried the update, much faster and with new things. I would also like to suggest being able upgrade a longer section of a wall into a gate.

This is already done and will be part of Alpha 11