Vokarya's Workshop: Units

[Rezca]

Sounds good to me but shouldn't we make biological missile stronger? It's supposed to be a dangerous weapon I think but right now I've built it only a couple of times.

Before the standard missiles were boosted in strength, the bio-missiles were the only ones I ever really built because of the collateral damage they could inflict. Often it wasn't really enough because of the low strength they had, but I still built them more than regular missiles.

I feel they could benefit from having their strength raised somewhat yes.

 

[Vokarya]

Sounds good to me but shouldn't we make biological missile stronger? It's supposed to be a dangerous weapon I think but right now I've built it only a couple of times.

We could raise them a little, but I'd prefer to increasing both strength and collateral damage than just focusing on outright strength. That will keep them different from other missiles.

I also had another thought. Do we actually need to keep Biological Weapons as a separate unit class? I think we could reclassify the Biological Warfare Missile as a Missile, reclassify the BBM and Plague Bringer as Doomsday units, and change the Anti-Biological Warfare promotion to a HAZMAT promotion that reduces collateral damage and gives a small bonus against missiles in general. The current Anti-Biological Warfare promotion doesn't seem to do anything against the BBM in testing; a unit with or without the promotion took about the same damage. BBM and Plague Bringer use the Nuke mechanics rather than the air strike mechanics.

 

[<Nexus>]

Then I think you want the Dropship. The PAI, as it is implemented, is a "first-generation" mecha unit that can be built with very-near-future technology; Automated Vehicles is in the first column of the Transhuman Era. So this unit is heavily armed but not the fastest (speed 2, compared to speed 3 for a lot of other Transhuman units), winding up somewhere between a tank and a siege unit.

I wouldn't consider PAI a mech unit.
Powered exoskeleton is armor for infantry.
Mechs are walking tanks with a driver.

 

[Vokarya]

Here is something else I discovered. There is almost no mechanical difference between the Early Fighter, Jet Fighter, and Stealth unit combat classes. There are a few promotions that are not available to the Early Fighters, but I don't think it makes that much of a difference. I can understand drawing a difference between Fighters and Bombers; it allows us to give Fighters a strength bonus against Bombers without increasing their strength against interception, so Fighters are excellent anti-Bomber units.

What I don't think we need are a lot of sub-unit types that don't matter at all to actual gameplay. I already got rid of the Clone and Robot types, I'm going to get rid of Biological Warfare, and I would like to merge all of Early Fighter, Fighter, and Stealth together under the Fighter label.

 

[aggri1]

merge all of Early Fighter, Fighter, and Stealth together under the Fighter label.

Yay! I support.

Also, anyone have a link to an explanation of how interception and air combat works in AnD?

 

[Vokarya]

I did some more looking. We don't really need the Early Bombers category either. The only difference is that more-advanced fighters, starting with the Jet Fighter, get +100% vs. Early Bombers, and only +50% vs. Bombers (and no bonus vs. other Stealth-class units).

But the strongest unit in the Early Bomber class is the Early Bomber with a Strength of 40. The weakest unit that was getting the +100% is the Jet Fighter, which is Strength 54. Even with only +50% from class bonuses, that is still Strength 81 for the Jet Fighter vs. 40 for the Early Bomber, better than 2 to 1 in the Jet Fighter's favor. 100% would be unnecessary.

So we can consolidate the air units down to two classes: Fighters and Bombers. SR-71 can be classified as a Bomber, even though it can't really bomb; it only has Strength 1, so if it gets intercepted, it dies. It's actually like the A-Bomb.

There are enough differences between Fighters and Bombers that I'm willing to keep the two groups separate, but we don't need to be more specific than that.

 

[Noyyau]

Makes sense, and makes it easier to see air units in the civilopedia (when viewing unit classes)

 

[GreedyManul]

Speaking of unit type consolidation, the wheeled/tracked/dreadnought unit distinction could be condesced back into "armored units" too. The difference between wheeled and tracked units is simply the means they move (wheels are fast, but tracks are simply better for treacherous terrain), and dreadnought units are just super tanks.

 

[nionios]

So we can consolidate the air units down to two classes: Fighters and Bombers. SR-71 can be classified as a Bomber, even though it can't really bomb; it only has Strength 1, so if it gets intercepted, it dies. It's actually like the A-Bomb.

By the way,does anybody have experienced interception during a recon mission?The in game purpose of SR-71 is only reconnaisance.
Also there's an aircraft promotion(I can't remember its name) which gives +1 operational range and -15%(or -10) strength.That promotion is supposed to give aircrafts extended range with the drawback of reducing air power but in the case of SR-71 you get only benefits because its strength doesn't matter.
IMHO it would be wiser if that promotion reduced its evasion capability instead of strength.Also this could apply to all aircrafts.

 

[Vokarya]

Speaking of unit type consolidation, the wheeled/tracked/dreadnought unit distinction could be condesced back into "armored units" too. The difference between wheeled and tracked units is simply the means they move (wheels are fast, but tracks are simply better for treacherous terrain), and dreadnought units are just super tanks.

There's actually more nuance to the wheeled/tracked/dreadnought distinction than one might think. I went through and found several differences between these types, mostly in promotion access.

Wheeled

• Gets Flanking I, Guerrilla I from Nomad leader trait
• Tank, Main Battle Tank are +25% against
• Mech Infantry, Modern Armor, Hybrid Tank, Stealth Armor are +50% against
• Affected by Chemical I-II-III
• Can take Medic I-II-III, Air Defense I-II

Tracked

• Cannot take Sensors III
• AA Gun, AA Halftrack, Mobile SAM are -25% against
• Early Tank is -50% against
• Heavy Tank is +25% against

Dreadnought

• Gets XP from Control Center, not Military Base
• Bazooka, Antitank, Stealth Armor, Plasma Armor, Helicopter, Gunship, A-10 Thunderbolt, ACV, Bolter Infantry do not get bonuses
• Hybrid Gunship, Dropship reduced to +25%
• Not affected by Urban Tactics I, Napalm Bombs, Precision Bombing, Heat Seeking
• Affected by Urban Tactics III
• Cannot take Commando, Land Warrior line, Stealth line
• Can take Barrage I-II-III, City Raider III-IV, Combat AI 1.0-4.0, Global Awareness, Nanoids, Pinch III, Rapid Deployment I-II, Self-Destruct, Siege Master

Merging Tracked and Dreadnought would be easy, and rename the category back to Armored. Wheeled would probably have to be split up; I think Motorized Infantry would go to Gunpowder, Motorcycle and Jeep to Recon, Armored Car to Armored, and AA Gun, AA Halftrack, Mobile SAM to Siege (like Machine Gun).

I think it's doable.

 

[GreedyManul]

Sounds like a plan. I'm only pointing this out to help further reduce the unit category creep that plagues units, and if it doesn't make sense/breaks things, you don't have to include it.

 

[Vokarya]

Since we're talking about reducing unit classes, here are a couple more possibilities I noticed.

Missile and Doomsday: There is not much difference between these two, and the things you might expect to matter actually don't matter. Units as cargo is a function of the Special Unit type, not the Unit Combat type. Promotions also do not matter, as the Doomsday units all have a combat strength of 0 and therefore cannot get any promotions. The only difference that I could find is the Python code that is used for the Nuclear Protest event and the Nanite Defuser wonder. Both of these can destroy Doomsday units. We can identify nuke units with unit.nukeRange() > 0 and destroy them that way. We really don't need to check unit type.

Naval Units: We have five classes of naval units: Wooden, Steam, Diesel, Nuclear, and Submarines. I am not sure that the middle three add any distinction.

I want to keep the Wooden Ships distinction. The main two reasons for this are Asatru and the Maneuvering promotions. Ocean tiles have a movement cost of 2. Maneuvering I reduces this by 1, so wooden ships without Maneuvering move slowly over the ocean. It's also very difficult to get to 5 XP for Naval units before the mid-Renaissance, when Magellan's Voyage and especially Naval Academy come available. I think Feudal + Intolerant, or a settled Great General, is about the only way to get it. So while Caravels can explore the ocean starting in the late Medieval, they will not be quick about it.

All of the Industrial and later ships ignore terrain movement costs, so they don't need Maneuvering at all.

Asatru Monastery specifically gives XP only for Wooden Ships. I designed it that way to be similar to Monasteries that start to obsolete at Humanism before going totally obsolete when replaced by School or at Computers. Asatru Monastery loses part of its ability when Steamships replace Wooden Ships and the rest later on.

Submarine also has a use as a class, to let Destroyers get a bonus against the class without having to write out every single unit and to make Sonar work as a promotion.

But I'm not sure about the middle 3 classes; they only seem to benefit from the bonuses that later ships get against earlier ones.

 

[GreedyManul]

Agree on all ends. Merging missiles with nukes, and the steam/diesel/nuclear ships into 1 would be good.

Speaking of nukes, deleting the unused ones would be preferable and save more assets.

 

[Pepo]

I wouldn't remove them for the same reason of the submarines; newer ships getting bonus on older ones should help so that a damage battleship ships shouldn't be defeated by steam ships without taking heavy losses

 

[<Nexus>]

Agree on all ends. Merging missiles with nukes, and the steam/diesel/nuclear ships into 1 would be good.

Speaking of nukes, deleting the unused ones would be preferable and save more assets.

Some would like to use the YAM

 

[GreedyManul]

Some would like to use the YAM

If the AI can be taught to use it, then sure.

 

[Rezca]

Some would like to use the YAM

Perhaps it'd be better to split it off into an optional ModMod instead of keeping it in the base game? "The Moar Nukes Pack" or something

From the sounds of it, most people don't really seem to use the thing, so it's just sitting there taking up space when it might better benefit being an optional add-on (like your dinosaurs, and the extra leaders, and so on)

 

[45°38'N-13°47'E]

I remember that removing those additional nukes caused the game to crash, that's why they're still there.
As for merging nukes and missiles, don't tactical nukes have range 0 as a-bomb does? I'm not sure but I thought so.

 

[Vokarya]

I remember that removing those additional nukes caused the game to crash, that's why they're still there.

I think if you scrub the code properly for all the references to whatever you remove, the game shouldn't crash. I use Agent Ransack to find everything and then completely delete whatever is on my radar. I haven't seen any problems from anything I deleted.

As for merging nukes and missiles, don't tactical nukes have range 0 as a-bomb does? I'm not sure but I thought so.

It should have been range > -1. Nuclear weapons that hit one tile have iNukeRange 0. Units that can't nuke at all have iNukeRange -1.

 

[Vokarya]

Here is something else that has been on my radar.

We have four nuclear weapons in the Modern Era: Tactical Nuke (cheap, short-range); Nuclear Missile (medium cost, medium range); ICBM (expensive, immobile, unlimited range); and Hydrogen Bomb, which is even more expensive, but also has unlimited range and blast radius 2.

I'm not sure that having both unlimited range and radius 2 is a good thing. I think Hydrogen Bomb should have a fixed range of some type, so that it has to be transported closer to its target, and then could be a little less expensive. What do you think?