Balancing Infantry and Armor in an RTS

I'm not. In reality the only real repairs you can't do to mechanized forces are rebuilding catastrophic kills. Been that way since the Second World War.

Ah, I seem to have been misunderstood. HP damage is permanent unless repaired by a mechanic unit. World Of Tanks doesn't have healers and functions more like a very slow FPS so hp is permanent until the end of the match. However, modules will field repair automatically. Each module has its own hp which when damaged below a certain point disables the module, and then it automagically begins healing itself (based on crew stats) until it functions again.

I happen to think it's a really neat health system, hence why I reference it. That and I think it would be brutal to integrate their armor deflection system.

Yeah, that'd be overcomplicated, and being able to score a (temporary) mobility kill on a tank should be possible. Really, just factoring in treads as modules would probably be nice on its own (leave out the ammo rack for sure, though, because random (even if rare) insta-kills on tanks are kinda bullshit in an RTS. Perhaps AT dudes should also get a first strike (as in only if they get the first shot and they aren't joining within a 180 degree arc of already engaged units) module damage chance bonus to roughly simulate an ambush.

I also think that the same logic I'm talking about for walls should apply to structures.

Well, the main thing that happens when you get a hit to the ammo rack is it does 150% damage and it cripples your reload speed.

Now, the thing with structures is that I think infantry that can close should get to use explosives on a structure. Throwing grenades through windows and wiring it up with C4 are good ways to use infantry against buildings, as opposed to shooting it with M16s until it burns down.

Well, I like to think that every bullet fired hits some gas line, and every round is an incendiary round.

@Deboss: But they can't do that because everyone knows that dude with a grenade is a separate unit and only hero units get C4. More seriously, I'd accept the grenades against smaller defensive structures, but I don't see them doing much to larger buildings, especially since frag grenades are primarily anti-personnel weapons. As for the C4? With how that's treated in games, it's probably better left as the domain of hero units or other specialists.

True, but that's because it's usually an "instant detonation" type of thing. Maybe you need to occupy a building for several minutes (RL equivalent time, any time dilation can be accounted for) and then you get it as an option.

Was playing some Ages of War 2, when it occurred to me how prevalent rock-paper-scissors is, and how often it doesn't work.

Monobattles, a SC II mod, is a 4v4 set up where everyone picks or is randomly assigned a single unit, and said unit is the only unit that can be made, aside from worker units, and Queens. Units like Brood Lords allow the creation of lower units, like Corruptors, but said lower unit cannot attack.

Can a balanced RTS be made based of the concept of a team where each member only gets one unit?

I don't think so. Not unless there's exactly one unit in the entire game or the sides are naught but Cosmetically Different Sides. There's also a mod for Battle For Wesnoth in which everyone gets to build exactly one kind of unit. Whoever picks second/last (unless everyone does random) is at a huge advantage, with the most hilariously one-sided match being Dwarvish Ulfserkers (Ulfserkers only have a melee attack with berserk, which forces battle for thirty rounds of combat or until one party is dead) vs. Dark Mages (only have ranged attacks, rather squishy)

One of the things is that when you don't have Cosmetically Different Sides, balance is usually done such that sides are balanced against each other, not that units are balanced against each other.

edited 5th Mar '12 9:39:26 AM by Balmung

^^ I don't think so. After all, real militaries don't go "You General are in control of the Infantry divisions, you get all the riflemen, you General are in control of the attack helo squadrons you get all the Apaches, and you General are in control of all the Abrams tanks". (The Soviets tried something interesting separating some branches further such as Soviet Anti-aircraft divisions, yes they existed separate from Red Army divisions and the Soviet Air Force, a stark separation from the ADA brigades of NATO which were integrated into Army/Air Force groups.)

Basically, it boils down to a specific player may become horrendously useless in many matches since he has no alternative. For instance why would you as the Siege Tank commander even bother playing if there's a Banshee player and your AA teammate sucks/isn't there?

Well, yes, there's a bit of dependence. Sometimes, if yu're really unlucky, you may get an oppoent whose has a unit that none of your team can hit. Still fun.

Having to frequently depend on people you don't pick is generally something I'd like to avoid in any game I play ever.

Honestly, I'm okay with Cosmetically Different Sides, or the light version where the basic function is the same across the board, but special abilities make the difference (Sins Of A Solar Empire). I honestly think it makes sense for any 20 Minutes into the Future RTS and most futuristic ones where it features two factions of humanity. Physics is constant after all.

So, I was thinking about infantry vs armor a bit more, in particular how I would integrate a module style damage system. I would probably have "light" armor and "heavy" armor type modules on a tank, with appropriate thickness/toughness values, which would determine the type of damage (and effect) the module would take.

I'd probably put radio, optics, tracks/wheels, external equipment, fuel tanks, and smaller gun turrets on "light" which would be destroyable* by lighter weapons and low damage Splash Damage. Effects would be, respectively, ability to use "radio" abilities like call artillery strike or focus fire etc (I briefly toyed with removing the unit from player control), range penalty, movement, loss of equipment, speed penalty/chance of fire, can't use gun.

Behind heavy armor which would require the big guns, I'd put the equivalent of main heavy gun, turret control, engine block, ammo rack, and HP. Effect would be, again respectively, can't use gun, can't turn turret, can't move, reload penalty, health damage. This way, you can't just kill a tank by shooting its tracks out repeatedly.

I think it would also be good if you could add upgrades/design mods where you could add other stuff, but would cost you money for each tank they're added to. Like, I don't know, "redundant systems" moves radio and optics inside of heavy armor, reactive armor plates that can be added to tracks that give that module have an ability which makes them function as heavy armor of some kind for one hit until regenerated.

For design gameplay purposes, "heavy" and "light" armor would depend on vehicle class and player control, IE: you can choose to raise your armor thickness, but it costs additional resources and time to build the vehicle and it will move slightly slower.

Another idea that occurred was to rip off Halo's (or whoever's) regenerative system. Maybe instead of running out of ammo, they have a full magazine and then it regenerates over time? After all, most games seem to have infantry shooting in bursts, why not have them use a certain number of bursts at a time, and then have to undergo a longer cooldown as they're rearming? Tanks could function the same way, buildings could be constructed which speed up rearm time, and you could manually trigger it out of battle. It would certainly provide an interesting version Construct Additional Pylons where you don't die/can't build, you just can't shoot.

* Destroyed in this case would be a "damaged" module that repairs itself.

edited 10th Mar '12 2:54:11 AM by Deboss

^ Ammunition is best done that regenerative way if it is largely cosmetic e.g. infantry never run out of magazines/ammo belts/ammo even if the magazines in their rifles do have limited ammo.

You can tweak the settings in Weapon.ini in Command And Conquer Generals to achieve this very effect.

Meaning for single gun big gun units like tanks nothing truly changes for the big guns. But you can use it on various (often rapid fire) things to make it seem like there is an ammunition train/crew on the battlefield. For instance say you make a ZPU-4 Expy for a basic AA gun, let the ammo be in total for how much to simulate how much ammo per magazine per gun. (Unless you want to be weird and allow a quad AA gun to fire just one gun all the way dry. The ZSU-23-4 Shilka in reality can do that but it is ill advised and confers no real advantage.)

edited 10th Mar '12 5:59:04 AM by MajorTom

The main purpose of having regenerative ammo would be the same as regenerative health: forcing battles to take place in bursts, and to offer strategic benefits to baiting your opponents into pissing away ammunition.

Tanks are horribly vulnerable in close terrain, especially built up areas - the visibility from a buttoned down tank is very restricted. Give bonuses to infantry that close assault a tank, and negatives to the tank for being close assaulted - this will encourage tanks to stay away from buildings.

There is a scene in 'A Bridge too Far' where Hollywood History is showing the Brits as tea drinkering stick in the muds - A US officer is harranging Michael Caine (Vandeleur) to advance. He was quite right not to - he was being expected to drive his tanks into a town WITHOUT INFANTRY TO CLEAR THE BUILDINGS. That would have been suicide.

Infantry can't blow up buildings - forget C4 units against anything except pill boxes, and even then its a representation.

Real infantry combat is suppressing the enemy until you can get close in enough to close assault. Especially in towns.

Behind the scenes and various reports about Afghanistan and Iraq in the last 10 years paints an ugly picture that suppression tactics are woefully ineffective and way too expensive for a war of attrition.

Remember the big fact that people said it took 50,000 rounds per kill in Vietnam because soldiers would just spray and pray on full auto? In Afghanistan the average is well over 100,000 rounds per kill revealing the major flaw in suppression tactics: We're expending ammo like nobody's business and achieving even fewer battlefield kills and woundings of the enemy.

That's going to change in infantry combat, it kinda already is since many militaries are beginning to really emphasize rifle marksmanship. (When I was at Ft Benning, they didn't want you to merely qualify on the M-16/M-4, they wanted you to shoot Expert.) Especially since Afghanistan disproved the thought that all warfare was just going to get closer and closer range speaking. (500+ meter range shooting for infantry has been very common over there. We haven't seen that kind of combat range that frequently since The Korean War or possibly World War Two.)

The point is, we cannot depend on making suppression and closing tactics the primary means of infantry especially since historically it's so rarely used (why use modern suppression tactics on a World War One battlefield?) and from a tactical standpoint it's likely to be obsoleted in the near future.

CO-IN is a different kind of combat, which is why suppression doesn't work. Insurgents aren't trying to hold ground.

Additionally actual "Winning the fire fight range" in non-Co In in 30 yards (1944) or 30 metres (1994). Im assuming a tank based RTS is more conventional warfare.

edited 11th Mar '12 12:09:10 PM by LastHussar

Which it is. We're just trying to brainstorm mechanics that don't end with either infantry taking minimal damage from tank fire or infantry being completely worthless. Hence the high level of urban fighting in most cases.

^ Remember we also have to make infantry fight intelligently. The days of a tank gun doing 10 damage to a 150 HP rifleman like seen in Red Alert 2 are over. Let the tank gun do full damage, just set up weapon gameplay like that of an FPS where accuracy and range matter more than simply how many tank shells can this guy take.

Part of what we need is for the game to make an accuracy check. If there's a clear shot against anything but infantry (provided you're not making a called shot), a standard RTS tank should have a perfect hit rate, though if there's subsystem damage, that may be dependent upon the accuracy roll (lower chance than any called shot). Buildings just get hit. Infantry die (hit), are suppressed (near miss, +def, -mobility, -att, -acc, minor damage), or take no damage (miss). AT dudes follow the same rules.

For infantry, though, assuming perfect accuracy in an RTS seems to work well enough (unless you have AT dudes making a called shot), though a suppression mechanic could be useful for heavier machine gun unis.

I think part of why they don't use the accuracy mechanics, though, is because it introduces luck, which many players don't like.

Also, what do you guys think for mechanics for medieval RTSs? I mean, honestly, I think basically Stronghold without the ability to knock down walls without siege engines would be pretty sweet.

edited 12th Mar '12 12:50:42 PM by Balmung

Not really. More having to do with complex programming and tinkering to get it just right.

And it's perfectly doable. Extremely early versions of Halo were an RTS with FPS like accuracy and that was 12 years ago.

Also luck has little bearing on whether it is good or not. In Command and Conquer Red Alert 2 and Yuri's Revenge the Soviet Flak Cannon and Flak Track were the best AA units in the game and they never had consistent damage output owing to being inaccurate. Sometimes you'd get a dead center hit and do the full 60 damage (RA 2 Flak Cannon), sometimes you'd get a practical miss and do the minimum mainly from splash. Yet they were far more effective than the devilishly intelligent Patriot Battery (thank you VHPScan=Strong!) and continuously More Dakka doing Gattling weapons.

Well, accuracy mechanics that are more than a weighted RNG would be good.

I think a more interesting one would be the ability to add time derivatives to it. Like, you could have something that's just come into range be harder to lock onto in addition to having to shoot at an accuracy penalty.

Also, I'd probably make the hitboxes size dependent.

What do you guys think of being able to modify your AI's aggro priorities like Gratuitous Space Battles does?

I'm honestly not a huge fan of medieval RTS's. Not sure why.

Was watching some Pro Monobattles. Good stuff.

Is BM (bad manners, like taunting, insulting, dancing, etc.) an appropriate tactic in casual play? Tournament-level play? Against the AI?

Personally, I think that BM is perfectly fine. If you let it get to you, your fault.

edited 13th Mar '12 6:06:39 AM by MetaSkipper

Agree. As long as you're not spamming a channel in a way that interferes with a UI, I don't care.