techs I don't like capturing

[technocrat]

Remove capture buildings it breaks the balance!

Edited April 12, 2016 by feneur
Removed unnecessary profanity

[sanderd17]

How can a feature that is available for both parties break the balance?

A feature like that can be annoying (make a game too slow or too fast, cause too much micro, ...), or it may make the attack or defense easier or harder. But if it's available to all players, it can't unbalance the game.

[feneur]

Split this discussion out into its own thread as it wasn't related to the other topic.

[causative]

I think capturing is good because it makes it somewhat easier to attack.  0AD is a game where it's too easy to defend.  Static defenses in other RTS games such as Starcraft 2 are not nearly as powerful or durable as the defenses in 0AD.

[technocrat]

I think capturing is craziness and useless
The enemy captures the structure faster than enemy can kill.

[causative]

It's realistic to be able to capture faster than destroy.  Which takes longer, using a sword to knock a house flat, or using a sword to evict the current occupants?  Completely destroying a house (or castle, or tower, or any other building) using just swords or pikes actually makes no sense and was never done in medieval combat.

In my opinion, capturing should even be much faster than it is now, so that it can be used effectively by normal units and not just champions.

[sideburns]

Throwing out a mechanism such as capturing buildings just because you don't like the way it's currently implemented isn't a good way to improve the game.  If you don't like how capturing buildings works, how about making some constructive suggestions about improving it?

And, in answer to Causative, with the exceptions of walls, gates and towers, buildings were generally destroyed after they'd been captured, because trying to tear down a house in the middle of combat was an easy way to get killed.

[causative]

Even walls, gates, and towers generally were not fully destroyed during combat.  Even a battering ram would just breach the gate or open a hole in the wall, not destroy the entire wall.  And even once you've captured a stone fortification how are you going to destroy it?  It's not easy to disassemble a huge pile of stone.  It takes a lot of workers a lot of time.  Not something you'd do in the heat of battle.

The main way buildings would be destroyed in combat would be to burn them, if they were wooden buildings.  Aside from that they were occupied, not destroyed.

[Palaxin]

1 hour ago, causative said:

The main way buildings would be destroyed in combat would be to burn them, if they were wooden buildings.  Aside from that they were occupied, not destroyed.

I think a burning mechanism similar to the one in Stronghold Crusader would be a nice addition to the game. Fire (causing damage over time) should spread between wooden structures placed closely together. As a consequence, you would have to be much more careful when planning your city...

Edited April 12, 2016 by Palaxin

[Mr.Monkey]

I want to keep this short and concise:

• Capturing adds a whole other level to the game-play, strategies are more complex, games are more diverse and overall it makes things more fun
• Capturing is NOT overpowered, neither is it underpowered, it is a situational feature, meaning it is really good in some situations and really bad in others, never will I ever only use capturing, in fact the way I play I still destroy most buildings instead of capturing.
• As many people have pointed out it is more historically accurate
• It has buffed things that needed to be buffed (Walls for example were rarely used before capturing), and nerfed other things that needed to be *cough* Yodhas *cough*. So if anything it has balanced the game a bit more.

TL;DR In my opinion capturing is just fine, and unless someone can bring up a specific point on why it is not I cannot really see what is wrong with it.

Edited April 13, 2016 by Mr.Monkey

[Zeta1127]

If capturing wasn't the default action, I would like it a lot more, since I am pretty certain capturing just allows you to use a structure as if it was your structure, instead of letting you train the other civilization's units.

[Mr.Monkey]

I personally do not see the problem with having to hold Ctrl to destroy instead of capture, many people have complained about this, however i don't find it being such a big deal

[Lion.Kanzen]

6 hours ago, Palaxin said:

I think a burning mechanism similar to the one in Stronghold Crusader would be a nice addition to the game. Fire (causing damage over time) should spread between wooden structures placed closely together. As a consequence, you would have to be much more careful when planning your city...

I like that, can be easy to implement ?

[feneur]

The main reason why capture was made the default is to make sure people are aware of it. Which will be the default in the end remains to be decided.

[Palaxin]

8 hours ago, Lion.Kanzen said:

I like that, can be easy to implement ?

I don't want to go too far off-topic, so I made a proposal here. Probably it's not too difficult for the devs to implement this.

Edited April 13, 2016 by Palaxin

[jonbaer]

I think the capture is great, especially when it relates to capture on the opponents siege units (for example when they come with rams, and you can change the game w/ a single capture of those), but a few things I wish the capture had:

- On some captures you should be able to transfer the wealth of those items, I wish the drops were more distinct to that individual drop, so you can capture the resources.  This would change the dynamics and planning because some would be more valuable than others (it would be nice to have visual cues to this but understand it would be hard to do).

- Capture on structures should automatically convert opponents to your side, another thing I realize may be difficult to do.

[LordGood]

15 hours ago, Palaxin said:

I think a burning mechanism similar to the one in Stronghold Crusader would be a nice addition to the game. Fire (causing damage over time) should spread between wooden structures placed closely together. As a consequence, you would have to be much more careful when planning your city...

Please God no, punishing city building would be absurd in a game like this. Having your castle burn down was extremely frustrating in Stronghold. Burning individual buildings sounds feasible but fire spreading would be just cruel

[Palaxin]

2 hours ago, LordGood said:

Please God no, punishing city building would be absurd in a game like this. Having your castle burn down was extremely frustrating in Stronghold. Burning individual buildings sounds feasible but fire spreading would be just cruel

Of course a good balance needs to be found. In Stronghold fire spreading was definitely way too fast. I thought we could adjust it so the next building catches fire after perhaps 15 seconds. You would have plenty time to react then... Another way to limit the impact is that buildings stop burning after some time (after researching a certain tech for example) or to allow citizen soldiers to save your buildings with water buckets (would replace the repair command for burning structures). I think it should be possible to erase the fire with 10-15 units before it can take over other buildings.

[Dade]

The only problem I could see is players being able to destroy buildings with a single click, maybe there should be some delay even some extra when it's a captured building.

[causative]

Yeah, I think destroying your own building should be slower.  The issue with capturing is that if the opponent is alert, they will delete the building just before the capture bar reaches 50%.  So whether the capture actually succeeds only depends on whether the opponent is alert with good micro.  You can't forcefully capture a building if the opponent doesn't want you to.

Alternatively - instead of the building going down instantly, after you press to delete it, it simply starts taking damage over time as if a battering ram was working on it.  This would be cancelled if the building's capture bar goes below 50%.

[sanderd17]

I made such a slow-delete feature here (as a mod):

But so far didn't get any feedback on it. There are of course different ways to implement it: stop at 50% CP or not, make it possible to stop the destruction, how slow should the destruction be, ... But it would also be possible f.e. to require 90% CP, then players will be less eager to delete their structure. And thanks to things like territory regeneration, it shouldn't be a problem to let a building reach 90% when it's not under attack.

So if some want to test it (in single or multiplayer), go ahead.

[Mr.Monkey]

 

16 hours ago, Dade said:

The only problem I could see is players being able to destroy buildings with a single click, maybe there should be some delay even some extra when it's a captured building.

 

14 hours ago, causative said:

Yeah, I think destroying your own building should be slower.  The issue with capturing is that if the opponent is alert, they will delete the building just before the capture bar reaches 50%.  So whether the capture actually succeeds only depends on whether the opponent is alert with good micro.  You can't forcefully capture a building if the opponent doesn't want you to.

Alternatively - instead of the building going down instantly, after you press to delete it, it simply starts taking damage over time as if a battering ram was working on it.  This would be cancelled if the building's capture bar goes below 50%.

This is actually a pretty good idea, I am all for it, maybe not for all buildings, but for civic centres, fortresses and defence towers that would be awesome.

[Palaiogos]

For those people who don't like the capture feature, then maybe it could be toggled like C&C Generals Zero Hour you click the flag if you want to capture, and there is cool down time after you capture.

[X-Seti]

I do not see a problem with taking enemy buildings, default should really be destroy and control left click to takeover, however I'd only take over buildings if there was other armer / weapon tech /units to use.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

The new technology changes have make capturing more interesting. Thank to the team and contributor who got bug in the ear and inspired and wanted to make something happen quickly and efficiently. The next alpha reallly need to have some gameplay improvement and the tech change is a step in the right directions. 

 

In case some do not know, now you can research some of the techs from captured building. This is a cool development but will take some gameplay thinking and design to determine what should be allowed to be research and what not allowed. Right now, the tech trees of the civs are almost identical, but for mod like Delenda Est (and even the vanilla game if they code the civs to be more unique) it open a lot of possibility since the civs tech trees are so unique. It's a small, but exciting change that also makes Mercenary Camps nearly 100% feature complete (still a few minor bugs or changes need to).

Edited April 16, 2016 by wowgetoffyourcellphone