Possible Naval Overhaul

[Alpha975]

Also, traditionally, a tiny update:

New details for the prow of the roman 5.

[Stan`]

Well all you say could be part of a mod actually If it's good enough it might even be merged into the game. I really like most of your ideas.

Nice screenshot

[Lion.Kanzen]

Yeah I haven't idea when was the last time I was see Enrique , here.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

Rigging: It would be a shame to lose such a big canvas for player color, but on the other hand you are right that ships fought with their rigging stow in bottom of ship, not flying aloft. Rigging does obscure thing too. In the end I would vote for the rigging to be gone completely, or... if rigging remain it lowers and flies dynamical when ship tasked over long distance, like how land units fall into column formation automaticcally when task to move long ways. Same concept for ship rigging.

For ship size and battle size, I think it would be good to think of dozens rather than a hundred. In old Age of Empire some death matches could have 100+ ship in either armada shootng at each other. This was epic (as in large scale), but things are more complicated now because we have tje techniques to make them more interesting than just parking 100 ships across from 100 enemy ships and trading ballista blows. I think the scale of ship in the game currently is fine. If the game does go toward battalion system for soldiers, then each ship could garrison 1 battalion, and by type of battalion you can customize the ship. Melee infantry battalion gives you better boarding ability (or unlock boarding) and more resistance to boarding. Ranged infantry obviously gives the ship more range projectile. Garrison a ballista battalion and you get ballista rocks throwing. I think cavalry should be garrisonable, but they add nothing to the ship's ability.

For boarding to be good enough, the game neeeds to allow units to walk on wall and ship or anywhere they are garrison. That way battalion of trrops can fight each other on board the ships.

Ramming should be very simple to do. Many game with this ability make it too difficult. In a game like 0 A.D. when there are dozens of things the player must keep track of, any new feature must reduce management or be easy to manage and carry out. The effectiveness of a ramming maneuver can be determine by the impact point and all that, but the actual input of the player to initiate ramming should be simple.

[Alpha975]

Thank you very much Yeah, I'm pretty sure one will not get all details right on the first try, so an iterative process with testing and refinement should be employed, until the players like it

Oh yea, that is a great idea: just determine rigging based on the distance the ships have to travel. For for voting that would be option D

Hm, yea garrisioning siege engines. Here we have the problem that if we allow the player to garrision artillery and it attacking enemy ships, somebody will just take the biggest ship and load it up with ballistas, while the ship itself only has deckspace for, let's say, 2 large artillery pieces. This would also make the player evade the dilemma of choosing between archery towers, boarding equipment or artillery on the ships.

Perhaps a way out would be, to indeed allow garrison of artillery, but make it block the slot for the other equiment that could be placed in it.

The advantages would be that the only thing modelling wise for this would be to place an empty for the place of the artillery, automatic inclusion of all updates to artillery-pieces (including all balancing) and the historical possibility to unload the artillery.

Actually, I like that idea

Oh yeah: color-schemes Some of the ships of antiquity were painted really beautifully. I was planing to have the player-colors as the colors of the stripes on the side of the ships. Historically, white was a very popular color for ships and in the roman navy, red and blue were the traditional colors. So I guess ships will become pretty colorful

Also, traditionally, a tiny update:

Additional attachment points for ropes for rigging and equiment in the front of the roman 5:

Tiny details improved at the back of the ship (bronze holder for flag-signal-post and wooden beam for holding the landing-ramps in place):

Also, medium quality roman anchor for later baking (looks like at the time wooden anchors with lead weights were the standard for the roman navy):

Edited October 3, 2015 by Alpha975

[Stan`]

Btw we have visible garisonning so we could force the balistas to be visible and limit their number by two

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

Btw we have visible garisonning so we could force the balistas to be visible and limit their number by two

Could extend code for VisibleGarrisonPoint element in templates to include Class restriction per garrison point.

Something like this

  <GarrisonHolder>    <Max>5</Max>    <EjectHealth>0.1</EjectHealth>    <EjectClassesOnDestroy datatype="tokens">Unit</EjectClassesOnDestroy>    <BuffHeal>0</BuffHeal>    <LoadingRange>2</LoadingRange>    <VisibleGarrisonPoints>      <Archer1>        <X>0</X><Y>11.5</Y><Z>0</Z>      </Archer1>      <Archer2>        <X>8</X><Y>11.5</Y><Z>0</Z>      </Archer2>      <Archer3>        <X>-8</X><Y>11.5</Y><Z>0</Z>      </Archer3>      <Archer4>        <X>4</X><Y>11.5</Y><Z>0</Z>      </Archer4>      <Archer5>        <X>-4</X><Y>11.5</Y><Z>0</Z>      </Archer5>    </VisibleGarrisonPoints>  </GarrisonHolder>

Extended to this

  <GarrisonHolder>    <Max>10</Max>    <EjectHealth>0.1</EjectHealth>    <EjectClassesOnDestroy datatype="tokens">Unit</EjectClassesOnDestroy>    <BuffHeal>0</BuffHeal>    <LoadingRange>2</LoadingRange>    <VisibleGarrisonPoints>      <Archer1>        <Classes datatype="tokens">Infantry+Ranged Infantry+Hero</Classes>	<X>0</X><Y>11.5</Y><Z>0</Z>      </Archer1>      <Archer2>        <Classes datatype="tokens">Infantry+Ranged</Classes>	<X>8</X><Y>11.5</Y><Z>0</Z>      </Archer2>      <Archer3>        <Classes datatype="tokens">Infantry+Ranged</Classes>	<X>-8</X><Y>11.5</Y><Z>0</Z>      </Archer3>      <Catapult1>        <Classes datatype="tokens">Siege+Ranged</Classes>	<X>4</X><Y>11.5</Y><Z>0</Z>      </Catapult1>      <Catapult2>        <Classes datatype="tokens">Siege+Ranged</Classes>	<X>-4</X><Y>11.5</Y><Z>0</Z>      </Catapult2>    </VisibleGarrisonPoints>  </GarrisonHolder>

^This ship has 10 possible garrison, but only 5 spots on the deck. 3 spots for ranged infantry (1 of the spot for ranged infantry OR infantry heroes, probably back at helm or up at bow). Two spots designate for ranged siege weaponries.

This also needed for Fortress and other building where garrison show on battlement. Right now there is no way to prevent cavalry or elephants or chariot and other unit from showing up on the top of a Fortress. Please programmer team.

Edited October 5, 2015 by wowgetoffyourcellphone

[Lion.Kanzen]

You must open a ticket about that Wowgetoffyourcellphone

[Alpha975]

This is an awesome idea, indeed

Looking very much forward to it! This might be just the thing we need!

[Stan`]

I created http://trac.wildfiregames.com/ticket/3488 Maybe I will have time to look into it for A20. Feel free to take it if you know how to do it

[Stan`]

For all of those that want to try it I submitted a working patch

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

For all of those that want to try it I submitted a working patch

Trac is down?

[Stan`]

Yes all Philip's server seems to be down ...

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

Yes all Philip's server seems to be down ...

Hmmm, toomuch to bear for 1 man.

Edited October 20, 2015 by wowgetoffyourcellphone

[Stan`]

Trac is back up.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

For all of those that want to try it I submitted a working patch

Hmm, I think it would be better to not have restricted class. Think about it: If I just want archers then I have to restrict everything except archers. Should be allowed classes instead IMHO (because those would probably be smaller subset), unless you have good reason to do it that way and I'm not thinking through.

Edited October 21, 2015 by wowgetoffyourcellphone

[Stan`]

Well cavalry archer for instance will go on the wall if you allow archers...

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

Well cavalry archer for instance will go on the wall if you allow archers...

Allow Infantry+Archer. Elswhere in template schema there is this kind of thing (I think in auras and maybe some other place too?).

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

I created http://trac.wildfiregames.com/ticket/3488 Maybe I will have time to look into it for A20. Feel free to take it if you know how to do it

For all of those that want to try it I submitted a working patch

Your latest patch work perfect as described! Only 4 more thing to make garrison point work perfect, in this order:

1. Selection ring must be at feet (or at prop coordinate, whichever) instead of on ground.

2. Unit garrison on top wall gate should not prevent passage of unit (or keep door open). Unit obstruction should be ignore.

3. Maybe remove silhouette for visiblegarrison units on parapet.

4. Select wall or fortress you see the visiblegarrison troop health bars too.

Edited October 22, 2015 by wowgetoffyourcellphone

[Stan`]

1. I might look into that.

2. http://trac.wildfiregames.com/ticket/2679 I asked sanderd17 about this, and this is really complex

3. Just edit the template_turret and remove silhouette

4. I don't know much about that too, I guess it could be done.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

Just edit the template_turret and remove silhouette

I don't know what template_turret is.

[Stan`]

It's an XML file in simulation/templates

[Stan`]

@wowgetoffyourcellphone could you try the attached patch for visible garrisonning ?

3488.16.diff

Edited December 25, 2016 by stanislas69

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

10 hours ago, stanislas69 said:

@wowgetoffyourcellphone could you try the attached patch for visible garrisonning ?

3488.16.diff

This patch work very good.  It is a good first step. Would be worth to commit this and then change behavior later after testing.

 

What behavior I think can probably be:

 

All units when garrisoned will garrison inside.

If you want your ranged infantry to go up to the battlements, click the "Reinforce Battlements" button. There's also a "Retreat Inside" button to re-hide the units.

If you want to restock the battlements with fresh ranged infantry after some of have be kill, click the Reinforce Battlements button again. Maybe also have a auto-reinforce button -- kind of like autoqueue in AoM.

 

ADDITIONAL ENHANCEMENT:

1. can set default behavior in the options menu -- hide when garrisoned, or auto-reinforce battlements. can set default stance in options menu too -- like in age of mythology -- but that's a different thing.

2. A new garrison hotkey can adjust the garrison behavior on the fly.

3. Visual enhancement: The selection ring should be at their feet, not on the ground.

4. Vsiual enhancement: Units on battlements don't show silhouette, but this can be debated, gameplay may trump.

 

Of course, none of these suggestions and anhancements have to stop the patch from being commit right now, unless coder find some code problems. You guys should try iterating on this feature and see what makes sense to you as you go forward with it.

 

 

Edited December 26, 2016 by wowgetoffyourcellphone