Machine gun / Autocannon Discussion

[DanielOR]

Doc J - or move them off a sniping position...  I was thinking, if you can't kill a sniper, at least shove them off the roof, giving troups time to close in...

Sirg - alien without a brain was a joke, really.  But they may very well have no single vulunrable brain.  Place it in the chest cavity and it becomes much more resiliant.  if Ortnoks are bread for war, that is not an unexpected solution.  


* WARNING! Science stuff according to Dan *

Effects of impact...  

Projectile (say, .50 cal bullet):  It can either go thourgh a target, making a hole (think NATO .223 round on belly) but retaining a lot of it's energy or be stopped, not make a hole, but then you have an inelastic collision, i.e. almost all momentum and energy is transfered to the target (think .357 magnum or a .45 - stopping power, baby!).  If alien armor protects the alien, we are in case B, no hole, momentum absorbed.  Now, if alien was a solid chunk of diamond, straight conservation of momentum: m_bullet * v_bullet = M_target * V_target.  If target is 10 times heavier than the bullet, it will acquire the velocity 1/10th that of a bullet, in same direction.  
If the armor does not absorb the bullet but only behaves like a super-hard shell, that is what we are dealing with.  Alien flies back.  Now, soft alien tissue must be in contact with the armor.  Which means that a shockwave will propagate from point of impat on in.  This is what happens these days with a human wearing armor - huge bruises, broken ribs, in extreme cases - ruptured organs, even if there is no hole.  The armor destributes the imact.  Instead of a piercing needle, the hit is like with a sledgehammer or a cement bag.  The alien armor may try to do a few things at once - "eat" some of the transfered energy by having a plate the shatters - thus taking some of the energy.  May also have a gel-like layer, which absorbs momentum and the shockwave gets redirected throughout the armor itself, not the tissue.  So, the "hard shell - shatter plate - soft absorbing lining - hard shell" design might help to reduce both the point impact and tissue damage.  but still - momentum is conserved.  Even if the organs are not liquified, significant enough momentum will shove the alien back.

Explotion: the flying pieces, for the most part, behave as bullets and we need not look at them.  The shockwave, however, is a different story.  In a nuke, btw, it is the shockwave, not the heat nor radiation that do the most immediate damage.  It is the good old compressed air.  The shockwave, in short, is the area of very high pressure traveling fast away from the center.  The farther from center, the weaker the wave (falls as 1 / distance^3).  This one need not be destributed by the armor - it affects every surface that the wavefront touches.  It just transfers momentum, a solid wall of air.  That feels like a cocrete wall.  Again, the super-duper armor may keep the organs from liquifying, but being tosseed about is prety much mandatory.  

[TrashMan]

So durable enemies  that take teamwork to dispatch are arcade-y.  And running around blowing everyone else up with a rocket launcher isn't. 

No, it isn't. Because a rocket launcher isn't a anti-personal weapon in the first place. It's a anti-armor weapon.
Basicely, like using a tank cannon to hunt deers.

Anything human-sized and organic, regardless of the armor, should be killed or GRUESOMELY injured if it gets a direct hit with a rocket launcher. Alien veichles, now, for them it would make sense to be able to withstand far more punishment.

[Sophisanmus]

I think the crux of this is the "regardless of the armor" argument.  Their armor is their protection, and one of the key reasons they are nearly unmatched by human forces.  Light alien armor is, well, light, but their heavy suits likely approach the modern tank in durability value.  This durability extends to the wearer, if it did not, then the aliens would not pose the threat they do.  Hell, the fact that PHALANX has to research the armor to even figure out how it works belies that the armor is extremely advanced and effective.  Their armor is exactly why an 5-alien landing party is a threat to national security.  Well, that and weapons that outclass human heavy weapons.  Though considering that their armor is designed to protect from those far-advanced weapons, a basic concussive explosion is not going to rend their heavy gunners in two.

[Surrealistik]

Completely agree that the rocket launcher should do substantially more damage. I've set the damage value to 300 in my game personally.

Further, an instantly (or close to it) lethal rocket launcher would not defeat the fundamental concept of arms advancement and alien superiority, because it hosts a number of very serious disadvantages; the launcher requires both hands to hold and fire, it's a sizable weapon with huge units of ammunition that yield one shot each, and it requires reloading after each use.

[Glaucus]

Because the laws of physics say there is no possible way an autocannon/minigun will ever be an effective infantry weapon, unlike a good reliable machine gun.

Regards,
Winter

This is a silly argument given the number of things already in the game or that will be implemented in the game that defy the laws of physics... Faster than light travel and psychic powers to name 2.

In my opinion the decision to include or exclude something, like weapon ideas, should not be based on real world physics. The decision should be based on game play, such as "does the idea add something interesting to game play?". In this case, I don't think that the autocannon adds anything new or interesting to game play. In fact, I think that there are already too many weapon choices.

Why not tweak the machine gun stats instead of replacing it with the autocannon?

[TrashMan]

Not to mention that argument is not correct, but this thread currently deals with high-power anti-armor weapons vs. aliens in armor.

Their armor is exactly why an 5-alien landing party is a threat to national security.

Don't you even realise how silly this statement is? Armor being really amazing and all, durable, light, etc... OK. But to this extent? Common sense and physics kinda go against it.
Even with just standard lighter weapons several humans can throw an amazing ammount of force at an alien. Action and reaction. The size, weight and power requirements of an armor limit it's defensive capabilities.
After all, those alien armor don't have some magical shields powered by miniature fusion reactors.

At the end of the day this IS a game, so the heaviest of aliens surviving a rocket hit - oooooooook, I can swallow that. But it should be barely alive after that. Like 95% health lost.

[sirg]

So durable enemies  that take teamwork to dispatch are arcade-y.  And running around blowing everyone else up with a rocket launcher isn't. 

There isn't such a thing as "durable enemies" unless you want to take out the realism from the game. You can't just hit someone (even an alien) with a rocket, and expect to behave the same way, the only difference being in lost hit points. That's arcade. When you shoot bitmap sprites with rockets and bullets until their hitpoints reach 0.

On the other hand, in a more realistic game you have entities which are affected by splash damage, critical hits, or get crippled. I'm not sure what the devs have decided, but I'm against enemies which are only a sum of moving hitpoints. Any hit should affect the target in a way and it's ability to fight. Ofc, you might have hits which are absorbed by armor or deflected, but I'm not talking about those.

In X-Com, aliens could panic or get crippled. They dumped their weapons and ran or froze in terror.

More options you have to kill or impair your enemy = more tactics, more varied gameplay, more lifespan for the game.

[Sophisanmus]

Any hit should affect the target in a way and it's ability to fight.

I agree wholeheartedly.  That effect, however, should not be death in all circumstances.  Stages of damage.  Penalties, penalties, penalties.  Reduced accuracy, reduced movement, reduced reactions, gradual health loss, increased future damage, forcible relocation, confusion, panic, unconsciousness.  I want to see the effects of these weapons wearing down the aliens, taking them apart.  I do not want to see the heavy aliens going down from an HE rocket.  An AT direct hit, maybe, but not an HE.  That is a human anti-infantry weapon, and the aliens are supposed to be sufficiently advanced that human anti-infantry weapons are ineffective by our standards.  Instant death would qualify as "still effective".

[BTAxis]

Soldiers already are penalized for being injured. A soldier with less than 50% health gets an accuracy penalty.

Don't expect anything more sophisticated than that, though.

[blondandy]

in case anyone is interested the equations used. (and plots of the curves as gifs) are here

http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=1922164&group_id=157793&atid=805244

the mind stat helps soldiers cope with wounds better.

[Sophisanmus]

I would hope that sometime farther down the road there are additional hit-based penalties, applied like... badges, for lack of a better term, incurred by sufficiently damaging hits.  Some could be removed or downgraded in the field with the proper medical equipment, but most would need to be removed by a hospital visit, with resultant 'out of commission' time (for surgery/recovery).  Multiple grades: superficial (minor bleeding, mostly healable on-field), severe (bleeding, reducible on-field, needs surgery), and permanent (surgery + stat loss to be re-trained/limb loss and need for bionics).  Of course, farther down the road, if time and code permit.

[BTAxis]

And if it's desirable. I for one believe including stuff like that isn't in the game's best interest.

[Sophisanmus]

Yes, you'd have to take a hard look at whether it would add significantly to the gameplay.  With X-COM, their limb-based damage penalties were nice in theory, but in practice stuff died too fast for penalties to have much impact on the game.  Now, if UFO:AI's heavy-armor and 2x2 actors are sufficiently durable for their appearance times, it may add to the battlefield feel of the game.  On the other hand, if durability is to high, it becomes more of a Tactics RPG instead of a TB squad-strategy.

[Surrealistik]

Fatal wounds and bleeding should definitely be featured at the very least, as not only would these add realism, but they'd also give the medikit a valuable use should it (understandably) lose its capacity to act as miraculous lay on hands. Limb specific injuries might be interesting, but they probably wouldn't have much bearing on gameplay until the heavier armours are used due to most wounds being outright terminal without adequate protection, thus making these injuries a low priority addition.

[Mayhem]

There was a NATA study, IIRC in the 90s that indicated that, in fact, in the heat of battle, any wound that was sufficient to measurably degrade your performance generally took you straight out of the fight.

***

It would be nice, however, to have soldiers that were taken out of the fight not automatically be dead.  Some sort of negative damage threshold, perhaps, that until they reached they would remain alive but KO'd. 

That would give another use for field medics - not keeping a wounded comrade in battle, but stabilising them to ensure they survive for the next battle.