Adding support for directional resistances for A25?

[ChronA]

0 AD's design document contains a number of interesting gameplay concepts that have yet to be implemented. However, there hasn't been much public facing movement on that front since auras were introduced with Alpha 15, back in 2014. It is discouraging for those of us who were (are?) enthusiastic for an innovative, historically-grounded RTS and not just an open source retread of other prominent titles' gameplay.

I want to suggest that adding support for directionally-dependent attack resistance values in A25 would be relatively low hanging fruit, to demonstrate progress on the gameplay wish list. I was even going to offer to do the coding myself. Unfortunately, I am discovering that the damage-effect handing pipeling has undergone some radical revisions between A23 and A24. Most importantly, the code that defined the relationship between armor and damage-received seems to have been removed from its former residence in the Resistance (formerly Armor) component script. In fact I'm beginning to fear it is now hardcoded into the engine, which would put it beyond my meager abilities to manipulate.

Never-the-less, I think directional attack resistance remains one of the easiest gameplay features to support in terms of the simplicity of its mathematics and its decision tree implementation. Therefore I am putting out the question: what would it take to add support for directional attack resistance with Alpha 25? Particularly, what files need to be edited? Does anyone have any strong preferences on the kind of system to use?

Personally I think the best combination of simplicity and versatility would be to allow separate values for flank and rear armor to be defined in each resistance type in the unit template, plus fields to define the angles where the flanks and rear start. If any of these values are missing the algorithm should default back to using the main resistance value, ensuring innate compatibility with any projects that don't want to directional armor. I also don't think it is necessary or wise to implement the concept, beyond minimal support, in Alpha 25. One of this project's strengths is the active modding scene's ability to test new ideas. I would rely on them to determine the best ways to incorporate new features into gameplay and UI, just like you are doing with status effects. I'm hopeful we can get some interesting new gameplay from both these features diffusing back into the vanilla game in A26 and A27.

 

[Freagarach]

I had this partly supported.

See

and the discussion in the related differential. You can find the sought for relation in the "Attack"-helper script.

[ChronA]

2 hours ago, Freagarach said:

You can find the sought for relation in the "Attack"-helper script.

Oh!!! Wow do I feel stupid! Thanks. I forgot that the helper scripts were a thing. (I guess I'm still suffering from a bit of mental fog from recent fever -- Covid vaccine side effect.)

In that case I'll read through that thread you linked, then (unless something in there changes my mind) I'll draft up a pull request for you to debate.