Raider who defuses blasting charges

Started by obuw, November 20, 2013, 07:45:14 AM

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obuw

I was reading another thread where people complain about blasting charges making things too easy. That's when this idea came to mind:

Perhaps some advanced raider groups can have scouts / engineers / bomb experts (whatever you want to call them) who move ahead of the group, and if they spot a blasting charge they signal the nearby raiders to stop, so they can defuse the charge first.

That way you need to at least put blasting charges within line of sight of turrets or defenders so you can shoot at the guy trying to defuse the charge. Or alternatively you can try to take out their defusers with snipers before they make it to your base.

Galileus

A blasting charges field + sniper and you're back to square one. Not to mention for that idea to be effective in any way they would need to defuse the charges from range and immediately - in other words, just pop them off while they walk over them completely ignoring them. And if you have that, just go on and remove blasting charges, because they are completely useless.

Charging blasts are simply too powerful right now, and there is no going around it. If raiders are to address them as a threat, they need to be able to shut them off completely on spot and without detonating them - in other words ignore them completely. Otherwise there is the ability to force them to drop roof over their heads by detonating a line of blasting charges or force them to sit and defuse them while turrets and snipers eat them up.

obuw

Well, it all depends on how complicated Tynan wants to make the AI regarding blasting charges. It can be made so once the engineer spots the blasting charge, the other raiders avoid it even if the engineer is dead. The engineer would take 2-3 seconds to defuse it. If there are no engineers left, they could send a regular raider to try to defuse it (takes twice as long, 50-90% chance to set it off instead). It could be made so  if you kill someone while they are defusing a charge, the charge blows up automatically.

Of course if you place two dozen blasting charges all over the place you'll still wipe out the raiders. But it won't be very cost effective hitting 1 raider at a time compared to using 2 charges to kill 10+ raiders.

Galileus

Get 2 charges in front, next to another, while engineer defuses one, second blows him up. Done.

Get 2-3 snipers in range, set front charges to tie engineers, done.

For all the work that has to be done - forcing player to make some spacing to get the same results? Not a good trade.

obuw

1- You assume there will only be one engineer.
2- Even in the perfect "I thought of everything" scenario, you will be wasting several blasting charges and / or micromanaging snipers to get rid of engineers before you can use more blasting charges to thin the herd. As opposed to right now where you can use 2 charges to kill 10+ raiders with 100% certainty.

Would making them harder but still possible to use effectively be a bad thing? Judging by your tone you just want them removed and you aren't open to negotiation. (I'm picturing you with a stern look on your face saying "We don't negotiate with blasting charges!" right now. ;D)

deadbeat88

I dont think its a good feature.

-considering there are many 'raiders'  that would defuse the bombs all at once, placing turrets in range would make things A LOT easier for colonists.
-if we consider the idea of a raider sacrificing itself to detonate a pack of bombs, would it be really likely to happen in reality? I dont think so. its possible yes, but we are talking about selfish raiders here.
-if we consider the idea of no defenses in range, they(raiders) will still get stuck in open field where there are no walls,plants to hide to while reaching the bomb.
-So, this idea WILL limit the bomb placing, but thats all it can do.

-having mention things above, it will be just unnecessary code in the program.
Whatever you do, don't do it!

Galileus

Quote from: obuw on November 20, 2013, 11:12:45 AM
1- You assume there will only be one engineer.
2- Even in the perfect "I thought of everything" scenario, you will be wasting several blasting charges and / or micromanaging snipers to get rid of engineers before you can use more blasting charges to thin the herd. As opposed to right now where you can use 2 charges to kill 10+ raiders with 100% certainty.

Scenario 1: Place as many as you want. Do 20 two-packs of mines. You are sure you're getting your money back, because these explode only if they catch an engineer. Then detonate all rest on the remaining pack of raiders.
Scenario 2: Spend few seconds more per raid and few more blasting charges to get that 100% ensured deck wipe. I wouldn't call that an improvement.

As Deadbeat mentioned, all it does is slow down the extermination of raiders for a second or two. It's an empty weight in code. You can just ramp up the cost of the charges and you get much more effect for your time.

With blasting charges as they are, your idea simply does not work. You need to fix them first, than anti-mine engineers may come to play. The idea itself is definitely worth a thought or two - it's simply not the solution for charging blasts problem.

Enjou

Here's a possibility - rather than defusing, what about jamming? If people could have a secondary piece of equipment, perhaps a Raider might have a piece of equipment that disables your ability to remotely trigger blasting charges and other such devices, so if you've made yourself a field of blasting charges the Raiders would try to stay within the jamming radius of other Raiders that have jammers.

Galileus

If jammers have only limited range, you can make a line of explosions.

If jammers work on whole map, you can take them down with snipers.

If jammers are kept under defence... removing blasting charges is faster and works the very same way. If raiders can just straight ignore mines, why have mines anyway?

obuw

Quote from: Galileus on November 20, 2013, 12:16:57 PM
Place as many as you want. Do 20 two-packs of mines. You are sure you're getting your money back, because these explode only if they catch an engineer. Then detonate all rest on the remaining pack of raiders.

Quote from: Galileus on November 20, 2013, 12:55:24 PM
If jammers have only limited range, you can make a line of explosions.

I don't get this line of reasoning. Do you think using 2 blasting charges to kill a single raider (and repeating for each raider) is cost effective? Is it worth the hassle? Isn't that the point a sensible player would decide to find a more effective method of dealing with the issue?

Quote from: Galileus on November 20, 2013, 12:55:24 PM
Get 2-3 snipers in range, set front charges to tie engineers, done.

If jammers work on whole map, you can take them down with snipers.

Why is this a bad thing? Using snipers to take out tactical targets before they reach the base, and letting the other defenses take care of the rest seems like a pretty good gameplay to me. Anything involving tactical decisions is a step up from what we have right now, wouldn't you agree?


PS. I never claimed that what I am proposing is *the* solution to the blasting charge problem. It could be *part of* the solution though. I just thought it could be a way to add a bit of depth to their use.


Expanding on the Jammer idea, raiders could have EMP grenades which they can use to disable blasting charges from a distance.

And before you consider saying "why have mines anyway if they will be useless?", remember that not every raider group would have engineers, or jammers, or emp grenades, or whatever Tynan may or may not decide to add.

Galileus

Eh, see, I think we have to agree to disagree here. I do not call "use one more sniper to win" a tactical choice. Tactical choices exist where there are options, and if you can nuke-kill everything on map on this one condition that you have a sniper - welp, there's no choice, really. I would call this situation exactly the same as it is now.

As I've said, this idea may be very interesting to explore, but it would to propose huge changes to blasting charges as well. This is what I try to point out.

Consider it like that: blasting charges right now are a nuke. You get one to work, you can make a chain reaction that kills everything. This is very basic view of the situation, but it works. So now how can raiders counter these mines? They need to make them useless - because if you get any use from them, all raiders die. And if raiders make mines useless, then you're left with useless mines. There is no place to manoeuvre in here - and this is the basic problem behind these minefields. Making them more expensive does not address the core of the problem - you give the player a one-hit-wondernuke and then take it away from him because "oops - you weren't supposed to be able to do that". This is a very bad situation and to address it you need to change this nuke into something else first.

And now on varying raids - there is a huge problem behind that, one that I talk about a lot, and will continue to. There is a learning curve to every game - some can be less forgiving and steep than others, but all of these need to follow one rule. You need to teach your player what tools he can use to fight back. In the end, you want him to struggle against challenges you put before him - but you want him to win. And here lies the problem. If you give player a tool that solves all his problems - namely nuke minefields - he'll happily use it. Then you take it away, and he is left with no plan whatsoever, he looses and he blames the game. And he is right to do so - the game failed to telegraph to him that he was doing something wrong. It comes out as huge and unfair difficulty spike. What you want to do is to give player mines that will help him out, but won't do all the work - so that in the end he is forced to explore other possibilities. Then at some point you take mines away - and the player might get wiped, sure. But the scenario is different - player then starts thinking "what if I did that differently? I do have that or that at my disposal after all!". If you get your player to think that - you can freely start crying from overflowing happiness, this is a huge success. This keeps your player in game and excited to try again, with different strategy. He knows what tools he has at his disposal and he is willing to play around with them. And this whole experience leaves him even better equipped to deal with future scenarios - he now know there is a possibility his mines will fail, and he needs to account for that. But probably the most important difference is how player feels after beating that challenge - if it was unfair he feels punished and beaten anyway; but if it was an exciting experience - he is even more immersed in your game and wants to play more and overcome more.

If mines would help you - instead of doing the work for you - raiders could have a partial counter. One that would make your mines less useful, but still helping. This keeps both ends of the bargain good - player have a useful tool on his hand, but he can't use it to one-hit-kill any raid. And even if raiders do turn off mines completely? Well, you had other measures anyway, just need to rely on them a bit more this one time.

Basically before you can try to fix the balance behind minefields, you need to change the minefields first. Raiders defusing mines? Sounds great to me, it's definitely an idea worth considering - BUT - only if you can answer the most important question. What would need to change in mines to let them work better? How would you balance them, and then how would that work with anti-mine raiders?

There was a mine problem in old Tribes game. There they made sure mines need to be placed on a flat surface (could be translated to diggable ground) and if placed too close to each other they detonate. Now, that would be a starting point... but I'm going to leave the rest to you, munch on that idea ;)

obuw

Ah good old tribes. It's a shame T:A couldn't live up to the original's memory.  :( 

But back to the topic... Sure, having to place mines farther apart, or making it so a mine doesn't explode if it's destroyed (so no chain reactions) could probably remedy part of the issue.

Some raider groups could wear flak jackets, protecting them from explosions (and some could wear bulletproof vests that protect from gunfire).

They could also be reworked completely, and could require wiring with a lever a colonist needs to pull to activate them. With research available for an alternate wireless version (with limited wireless range), that is vulnerable to jamming. Heck you could even have routers and access points to expand the range of the wireless signals, and then make other wireless gadgets that use the same infrastructure. Oh I'm going off topic again. :P

Galileus

Ah, there we go! Not only new ideas how to address the problem as a whole, but also ideas that then can be branched out and used for other elements ;) Now you see why I am such a gigantic pain in the arse!

Also, yeah... T:A was real good for a time, at least on the side of the barricade that was occupied by players who wanted to play it like Tribes is supposed to be played. But that didn't last long. Hell, you could write a whole book on "What NOT to do as a game designer" using only T:A as an example. My favourite was rewarding only defensive players with free accolades, and then pulling out public K:D ratios. As a dedicated in-your-face offence, you can imagine how happy I was with that decision ;) Eh, PUBs in T:A were pretty meh from the start, and they only wend downhill from there.

Ford_Prefect

#13
Idea 1:  How about the raiders have a spotter/s that have a % chance to spot a mine.  When they do, they or other raiders will use gernades/rocket launcers/etc to detonate the mine from a distance, or alternativly avoid it.

Idea 2:  Make them landmines.  That blow up raiders and citizens if they step on them.  (citizens will know to avoid them, unless they are very tired and unlucky :-D ). 

deadbeat88

Quote from: Ford_Prefect on November 20, 2013, 02:48:28 PM
Idea 1:  How about the raiders have a spotter/s that have a % chance to spot a mine.  When they do, they or other raiders will use gernades/rocket launcers/etc to detonate the mine from a distance, or alternativly avoid it.
again. does not solve a problem. I can fill the entire map with blasting charges, especially the landing area. its cost-effective since guns cost around 800-1300 per piece.

great idea though, for colonist feature, that is. I hate running into a boomrat when my colonist only hast 19hp after raid, or muffalo ganging up on my poor con artist/courtesan who cant even punch.

Quote
Idea 2:  Make them landmines.  That blow up raiders and citizens if they step on them.  (citizens will know to avoid them, unless they are very tired and unlucky :-D ).
now this i like, + immune to damage(does not need repair). dont care if it would cost 1000mt each as long has it has wide destructive radius. Add the friendly-fire in that package too. :D
Whatever you do, don't do it!