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Disintegrator

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FRrankLordOfTrolls
6 years ago
"Damage increase vs larger units"

Can anyone explain the math behind it, please?

Thanks
+1 / -0


EErankAdminAnarchid
6 years ago
Every 33 milliseconds the projectile spends inside the victim unit's collision volume, the full damage is applied.
+6 / -0
DErankChrissi007
6 years ago
Could you give an example? And how long does the projectile last inside the victims unit's collision volume, until it vanishes?
+0 / -0
DErankBrackman
6 years ago
So it is in discrete steps of 1200 for Ulti and 1400 for Com? And you have to calculate the geometry from the source code to know the damage? What do the components of collisionVolumeScales = [[x y z]] stand for in the cases of the different collisionVolumeTypes then? Or can you just assume that it oneshots everything but Banthapaladin/Detriment?
+0 / -0

AUrankAdminAquanim
6 years ago
(edited 6 years ago)
quote:
Or can you just assume that it oneshots everything but Paladin/Detriment?

This is probably a more useful way to think about the Dgun than making precise calculations. I feel like I have occasionally seen Ultimatum marginally fail to oneshot a Dante but I might have been dreaming.

The largest impact this mechanic has had on balance was when Paladin (then Bantha) had a surprisingly narrow hitbox and was thus more resistant to Ultimatum than was immediately apparent. This unintuitive interaction was fixed in 1.4.9.2 a year or two ago.
+0 / -0
USrank[I]amNot[null]Bla1
6 years ago
I love seeing players play too aggressively with their seemingly indestructible comm that kills my lesser units. All I have to do is cloak mine, walk up to it, press D, click on their comm, and free reclaim.
+2 / -0


AUrankAdminGoogleFrog
6 years ago
Also some people liked to report that disintegrator dealt very little damage against Jugglenaut. It turned out that they were shooting along the ground instead of aiming at the unit.
+0 / -0


USrank[GBC]1v0ry_k1ng
6 years ago
I dislike the semi random damage based on spring engine collisions, like the pyro it screeches jankiness . Why no fixed damage or damage based on target footprint size as a multiplier?
+2 / -0
DErankWeltenwind
6 years ago
Agree.
Disintegrator should 1-shot everything.

I am just not satisfied how many fleas you need to kill it if there is no annihilator around.
+1 / -0

GBrankAdminDeinFreund
6 years ago
I'd definitely prefer the fixed damage for ultimatums. The more FFA I play the less likely I am to use them. The dependence on unit size is also ridiculous. It's more cost effective to kill a Bantha with Scorpions than with Ultimatums, because it's so thin.

The balance should probably stay the same though, so 4-5 Ultis to kill a Detriment.

+2 / -0
DErankBrackman
6 years ago
Probably it deals randomly 1200 or 1400 damage more or less because whether the projectile is still inside the hitvolume is only checked every 33ms, so the number of times the projectile is inside the hitvolume during a check depends non-monotonically and non-continously in the distance to the target at the moment it is fired. I would say just give it a constant damage around 12000 to 14500 to save computation time for our brains and computers.
+0 / -0
USrankRenthrak
6 years ago
I suppose I'll be a dissenting voice in this one. Now, bear in mind that I'm one of those ancient people who played Total Annihilation back when it was a recent game, so I'm familiar with the effect of the original D-Gun.

While I don't have access to the damage calculations for the original, the effect was pretty straightforward. If the projectile touched a single pixel of the unit, the unit was destroyed. Functionally, if you could hit it, you could kill it, every time. Whether this was actually due to a massive fixed damage number, simple instant-death effect, or a huge number of damage ticks in a short period of time isn't something I can determine. The only limitation was that it consumed a ton of energy per shot.

The fact that ZK's D-Gun isn't a simple guaranteed-kill weapon is a feature that I like. Time spent in the target's contact volume is a pretty solid way to balance the offensive power, in my opinion, because it fundamentally makes it more dangerous to larger units while retaining a degree of skill in how and when it's fired to determine the actual result. If it were a flat damage calculation, then a poor shot that just clips the edge and a bullseye at center-mass would be functionally identical, and that just strikes me as a crude implementation for a modern game.

My opinion might be less solid if the D-Gun was a commander-only weapon, but with Ultimatums in the game, I feel like it's even more important to not have it as a one-shot gun. For something which seems to exist as much to be a hard-counter to super-heavy units as for any other reason, making it too easy to use would effectively make large units even less viable than the build time and cost have already done.

Maybe I'm a bit of a romantic for large robots, but when a giant strider enters a battle, I think it should be a major event, not just the cue to push the "I win" button and toss a few Ults at it then move on. It's really dependent on personality, but that holds true for many aspects of game design.
+2 / -0

AUrankSnuggleBass
6 years ago
I like the notion of the skill element, but it handles so clumsily it doesn't feel good. Same as skuttle kinda.

Disintegrators are high risk, high reward, high variance.

Things that are great about ulti:
- exciting to watch
- cutting through terrain is badass and has utility
- forces people to screen for them which makes the game a lot more interesting than spamming striders
- explodes on death :)
- is a counter to units that by design don't have many counters
- creative play such as that exhibited by shaman, can have you maximising damage to large units by shooting from above, one shotting paladin

Things that suck about ulti:
- default setting is fire at will. It's like the devs intend you to fail with it at first.
- slow shot feels clumsy and sometimes unexpected movements (that aren't intentional evasions) mess you up.
- targeting feels grubby. Success often hinges on you making shots when it's not intuitive how to make the shot work. If I click on the unit it's unclear whether it'll go for center of mass or the legs or what. This comes up often when I'm trying to disintegrate singu through terra. My ulti is in range and I know where the singu is so in my head I've met my victory condition. But then I can't get the damn thing to fire where I want to, opponent reacts, and it seems pretty random whether I get to kill the singu or not.
- energy cost on movement is another 'clumsy' multiplier

So I personally like the unit, but would like to see it more stable when you manage to get it to where it needs to be. If I get an ulti to within range of the target, unscouted, with enough energy to stay cloaked, having remembered to turn it to hold fire, and I click on the target, I feel as if it's not an unreasonable expectation for the target to die consistently.

To this end, I think reducing health in order to increase reliability would be a trade-off that maintains balance while facilitating the ulti's intended purpose.

I think scuttle needs similar treatment, maybe increase cost to make sure it kills anything big and slow that it clicks on that is not in defense range?
+1 / -0