Technical support > Feature Requests
Revise Initial Base Layout
Sophisanmus:
I just grabbed the win 2.3 off the betasite, I see spawns for humans in the Command Center, Quarters, Hospital (!); alien spawns are in the Large Hangar (only?), Large UFO Hangar, UFO Hangar, and Entrance. A couple other facilities, however, have entrances the aliens don't use: Radar and Workshop. Also, the hangar "under construction" maps seems to have fewer alien start points, when it would seem such a wide-open area would attract more visitors.
As far as I can tell, specific objects can be set as destructible. These cannot be employed en-mass, as many environment objects which normally span many spaces would have to be divided up and individually set as destructible. Individual doors, however, seem to me within the scope of possibility. Now, altering alien behavior to breach doors, especially with adequate backup, seems to me to be the real challenge. The control interface might be as simple as having a space marked for some sort of trigger, if the actor is on the correct team.
A thought I had with regards to base defense; the more troops available at a base while under attack, the more likely you are to have soldiers spawning in the Command Center. More soldiers would allow for larger shifts, and fewer would be caught sleeping.
Surrealistik:
I completely disagree with the Command Centre being a spawn point at all for reasons mentioned earlier. Being an extremely important facility, it should be placed far from the frontlines of any base defense. As I've stated, selectable spawning points would be ideal, and reasonable.
That said, it is true that modifying the AI to account for blast doors would probably prove the most difficult change to exact. When assessing obstacles to the feature's implimentation, I was thinking about the internal ones as opposed to external implications, and required revisions. Specific to the raw implimentation of blast doors themselves though, the creation of an elegant, polished and intuitive control interface does seem to be the most problematic aspect.
Sophisanmus:
Hmm, good point about the Command Center thing. Though, really, most of the facilities are senstive. Unfortunately I don't think selective spawn points is an option. Instead, though, your team could be spawned randomly throughout the base, and then given a few turns to get into position before the aliens arrive? That way the aliens can be spawned randomly, while still allowing the player to position his defenders. I think delayed spawning should be possible; there was some talk of it in the form of reinforcements some time ago. If the invading UFO is not detected before landing, there would be less delay and such.
The primary problem I see in implementing defensive structures is the lack of space. If the grid were to be increased to 6x6, or some other method of expanding base size at player expense, these may become more viable. Looking at the base battlescape pieces, I can see why building down may be out of the question. Now, if there was a way to implement "in-between" pieces, tiny hallway modifications that fit between the base rooms, there could be a way to implement some static measures. Security doors, cameras, motion alarms, and maybe some sentry guns of some sort. I can kinda see it all being arranged in an overhead map, with clickables for the doors (supposedly controlled by the base commander from the Command Center, though still only toggleable once per round to prevent abuse).
Now, if there were some way to implement a function where losing control of your Command Center could result in losing control and benefits of these defenses...
TroubleMaker:
--- Quote from: DanielOR on July 17, 2008, 06:10:16 pm ---Blast doors may be hard to implement - given that right now there are no doors at all.
...
The idea is a reasonable one, just not sure if it folds well into the current engine.
--- End quote ---
Simplest approach: blast door is the suddenly appearing wall, which have less hitpoints than other, main walls.
In terms of the game, it may be just a kind of elevating platform (why we have only one broken elevator in "Bunker" mission?), very narrow platform. It may occupy (in fact) entire square ("enforced walls one square in thickness, around every single sector"), but be drawn as a fraction of square.
As I remember, vertically moving platforms were already implemented in ancient DOOM-2.
As to control interface, it may be a specific square inside command center. Then the defense tactics could look like: aftfer emergency closure of BDs, all but one defenders reaching their emergency positions and prepare. One remaining soldier (self-claimed "base commander") receives a reports of another ones and enters the "special square" for simultaneous opening of BDs when defenders are ready.
Mayhem:
--- Quote from: geever on July 16, 2008, 07:46:07 pm ---1. You can disable autobuild and set up your initial base as you want! (This is also a "cheat", because these buildings will be set up in no time, but whatever you build later - or to the autobuilded they will take days as usual.)
--- End quote ---
I tried this in my newly downloaded 2.3, and it did not supply me with an entrance, nor the option to build one. Since some buildings have "entrance" as one of their pre-reqs, whilst I was able to build a base, very little worked. (Power-plant has an "entrance" pre-req, and if it doesn't work it has a knock-on effect on those installations requiring the power plant)
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version