NEW Damage model proposal

Might be interesting for the realistic idea (damaged things behave worse), but I think this is for an entirely different game.

What I think must be balanced really careful in ZK is the exponential behavior of resources (whoever has more can produce more)/army size and this would probably worsen that effect. I think the damage model proposed here would make games even more one sided/decided earlier when one side gathers larger army that can shut any opposition.

every raider war is now between differently shaped masses of bolas, the game.

Steel_Blue

quote: every raider war is now between differently shaped masses of bolas, the game.

no. the damage model makes 50% slow at 0% hp. So its barely affecting gameplay the bolas style when most units have like 75% hp all the time with minor slow damage (12%).


Sprung

quote: quote: So we woulnt have situation where theres 5% hp left fleet of tanks destroying glaives like fresh out of factory. Why? That situation is actually great because it means heavier units have different attrition dynamics.

Thats the whole point of the new damage model.

To have gameplay more organic. To not have sharp cutoff where pair dante's at 20%hp wreak havoc on fresh units like nothing happened. To have a flock of glaives that were hit at 20%hp not as quick as fresh out of factory around a tank. We can make that thing nonlinear by for example

extra slow penalty% = (damage%^2) / 2

so the extra slow sets in heavy damage only, while minor damage have no noticeable effect. Even with this, it would be more fun and organic to have the new damage model.

quote: quote: on gridded land it gets small auto heal (...) so it benefits early eco Why? Early eco already lets you snowball.

The self healing in this model is really cosmetic, and further nerfed to be dependent on distance, and further nerfed, to be dependent on eco power. At formulas provided were talking at 50hp/s heal on 5000hp commander only standing next to pylon that easily explodes at higher force, when we have 700e economy (so were talking at fully developed late game eco).

The early eco boost gives 100e grid the same healing ability of roughly 400e grid in linear model, on both sides. So we would have something like 30hp heal when standing next to pylon that blows up at force of tacnuk, so you can put those near your porc, but when it goes boom, it goes boom hard along with your porc. At max pylon distance we have 1hp heal...

So its barely noticeable, and doesnt snowball. Also we can further nef its use by doing cube falloff

( distance from pylon + epsylon / pylon distance ) ^ 3

to have realistic falloff of cube per distance like in realworld radio signal. in this model we can go and have 10% heal at 700E grid on pylon explosion zone.

This model is good, it doesnt snowball.

quote: quote: first it scratches paint, then it gets rust (...) maybe throw a geometry shader slight seeded random deform, so geometry bends slightly when unit gets hit Sounds good, awaiting patches.

Im currently in middle of something big. (making pitch for aero corpo for shit i was polishing over last few years), but take me to your shaders and i might implement it, since that patch is something minor. As long as shaders are normal, since i tried couple years back to look at lua code and i couldnt even.

Interesting idea that might work.. but only in a rookstoo-meta, not the existing community's meta.

So, like in regard to the damage model, where
extra slow penalty% = (damage%^2) / 2
Or somethign like that, I would like what admins have to say since i have no clue where is what in the devtree of zk,
I tried to browse devtree of zk, i hope its this
https://github.com/ZeroK-RTS/Zero-K
to see where the shaders live. Dunno if i found shaders proper, or lua shader interface, so i could do minor patch to how units are rendered giving them scarred scraped paint to bare metal, and rust look.
A shader doc on topdown structure of zk shaders, which is where, would be appreciated.

I feel this requires more research and experimentation before it is implemented. Perhaps you could gather smalls groups of people and play matches like this and then question them on how happy they are with the game. I feel that it could be a good idea but needs more refinement. Also you would have to consider the meta of factories. In conclusion you should: Conduct surveys on how many people would be happy with this and how happy they would be. Perhaps alter some of the mechanics to suit more to zero-k. Make sure units stay mostly the same and don't change meta.

I do feel the current meta should be altered, feels this would be a drastic change though, and upheave many of the original tactics.

quote: What I mean is make sure every unit has a function.

This is exactly what the current meta is. What makes you think otherwise?

Right, so a completely different game. I'm all for making changes that force a change in meta-play, but this idea doesn't seem like the correct path there.

If we want to be completely realistic we need to add ammo too.