Local damage?

[Pithlit]

Will there be local damage to larger units, so you can kill weapons or tracks of tanks (intentionally or planned) so they are immobile until repaired by an engineer.
Or is you land a critical hit ( artillery or stormhammer missiles anyone) on the talos leg, its an instant kill?

mhh, the possibilities

[Poo Bear]

It would be nice if units with multiple weapons can have some of those weapons blown off by glancing hits. A smoking mangled side gun on a still functional tank would look sweet.

[Stormlock]

I recall Dune for the Genesis actually had this function on the seige tanks; after taking some damage, they'd only fire from one of their two cannons. Not that anyone in their right mind would use a seige tank in that game fior very long.

[Degraine]

The Behir, a third party unit for TA, had 'battle damage' scripting, although I found it to be a bit buggy. Supposedly its arms would reappear once you repaired it to 90%, but I was left with stumps. Not to mention the arms got blown off if the enemy fired so much as a cap gun at them...

I agree, impaired functionality for units that are heavily damaged would be extremely cool. Another nice 'realistic' addition to a game that already has quite a few. A suggestion, though: Don't make it too prone to kicking in.

One question though - If normal infantry can be healed by medics (who're also trained to repair their armour somehow...), how will mechanised troops be repaired? For the self-sufficiency freaks like myself, will there be any self-repair modules that can be bolted onto vehicles?

[Johnh]

Homeworld 2 also incorporated battle damage. In fact, you could tell your fighters to attack the capitol chip module on the mothership, or attack the ion cannons on the Higaraan battleship (a definate must, as those ion cannons HURT). You could also take out the hyper-space module, temporarily denying a player access to a quick escape.

[Poo Bear]

[Degraine]

[Poo Bear]

Initially we were thinking wouldn't it be cool if you could start with a blank slate and totally define the squad any way you want. As time went on it became clear to me that this would be very confusing for people, at least in the early stages although it might still be a cool advanced feature. So it changed into something more sophisticated we call "templates".

When you want a new squad you select the template type infantry, scouts, artillery, etc. The template enforces certain constraints on what you can do to make it easier to create a squad that fits a specific role and is easy to handle. It also creates an initial squad setup so you can play straight away without doing anything more.

So if you want an infantry squad:
1. it always has to have 6->10 people.
2. they have some compulsory and optional weapons that fit what standard cheap infantry should be using i.e. you wont be able to give them sniper rifles or exotic heavy weapons.
3. they must take a light wheeled vehicle or a light tracked vehicle.
4. they way you set up the vehicle defines the maximum size of the squad i.e. if you don't put a lot of equipment in the truck you can get more people in it.
5. the equipment available for the vehicle is what you would expect on an APC i.e. light weapons, basic armour and comms gear.
6. you always have on seargant
7. you can take one medic
8. you can take one engineer
9. etc

So yes the infantry always have their own vehicles of some description and automatically use them.

[icarus]

[Degraine]

Not quite what I meant. Unless you're saying an engineer in an infantry squad can repair an artillery piece in another squad. Which is logical of course, but for some reason I'd pegged inter-squad stuff like that as being too complex.

*fails another intelligence roll*

So, only one engineer per squad? No 'Engineers' template for creating a dedicated vehicle support squad?

[Poo Bear]

There is a specific squad type called "logistics" that I think this comes under, logistics squads augment men and machines. Logistics consists of supply trucks, medics and engineers. So if don't want to dilute your fighting squads with medics and engineers you can have a dedicated squad of them safe in the rear keeping the artillery company.

squad types:
infantry - cheap + weak
scouts - snipers and artillery spotters
artillery - cannon
assault - tanks
special - radar
logistics - supplies

[BluePhoenix]

[icarus]

usualy in the army engener means someone who builds briges, digs trenches, and removes (or places) landmines

[Poo Bear]

I think "engineers" is a quite suitable term to use:

In the UK they are called the "royal engineers", in the US they are called the "US army corp of engineers". Their role is to blow up enemy structures, build defences, keep the army moving, defuse enemy defences, lay mines and fix everything. Sounds about right.

http://www.army.mod.uk/royalengineers/careers/combat/index.htm

[icarus]

exactly an engenear has nouthing to do whith the matnince of veacles