worm rider mechanics

[davidlallen]

I don't worry about sandworms moving through rock terrain, what me bothers more is having sandworms inside a city (do they follow traffic rules? ).

Returning to the thread topic, I think the problem is *wormsign* moving through rock terrain. I had thought about making worms only able to move on ocean and coast. But when a worm is ridden, it stays above ground. This seems clear from the books, where the Fremen attack cities riding worms up till the last minute. So I gave the worms TerrainImpassable for hills and peaks only.

At one time I thought about having two worm units, one for ocean and one for land. It would be a little complicated to swap them when the worm randomly moves from one terrain to another. Here is a new suggestion. Instead of having a worm and worm rider unit, have an underground worm and an aboveground worm. The underground worm uses the current art (wormsign plus popup attack) and can only travel in ocean/coast. The aboveground worm would travel like a snake, and have two little dots on top representing the rider itself. Actually we could skip the dots. That is what would be displayed for any type of ridden worm. Even in the desert, a ridden worm would still use this model. That way the only time we might swap units is in case we have a mechanic to capture a worm; capturing would involve swapping from the underground worm to the aboveground one.

I don't think the aboveground one would have an attack, although maybe it should have a "trample" attack. Hm, need to think about that, if the attack fails the worm loses its nerve and goes back underground, or berserks and tramples other units on the way back to the desert.

 

[Deliverator]

The reason why I think all worms ridden or otherwise should only be ocean and coast is that from my point of view the 'land' areas represent the rocky worm safe areas in the books.

It is not going to be possible to make a worm graphic that looks good on both land and ocean as they are at different heights. And I think the worms moving through the land areas is just going to look wrong. My vote is they function as ships, the only issue is that all cities are considered to be coastal - so how do you stop landlocked worms...

 

[davidlallen]

The reason why I think all worms ridden or otherwise should only be ocean and coast is that from my point of view the 'land' areas represent the rocky worm safe areas in the books.

To me, the "hills" and "peaks" areas represent these rocky worm safe areas. But you raise a good implementation point, that a "ridden worm" graphic will not work on both ocean and land. Suppose we limit worms to ocean and coast. Then the majority of units will be unthreatened by worms. Only spice harvesters and workers building them; scouts crossing water; and amphibious assault stacks would be vulnerable.

That leaves us with how to create ridden worms. Building them in cities just feels wrong to me, even though several others have disagreed; but if they cannot move on land, how do they get from the city to the coast? We no longer have the concept of "coastal city".

I think we are a little stuck.

Let me suggest again my idea that Fremen foot units have a promotion "Worm Rider" which simply gives double move in coast/ocean. Since only selected units can ride worms anyway, the "galley" idea does not seem to really help.

 

[Deliverator]

Suppose we limit worms to ocean and coast. Then the majority of units will be unthreatened by worms.

On an Archipegalo map or any map with lots of islands, naval superiority counts for a lot. The worms can attack any unit on the edge of the land now. If the worm riders have this ability they'll still be able to do plenty of damage to units that stray to the edge of the island and to coastal cities.

With the build-WR-in-cities option you are abstracting away the capture part which I can live with, particularly if you think of Fremen cities as sietches. With the worm rider promotion you are abstracting to much away in my opinion. The only obstacles to this is your dislike of the idea (which I do empathise with) and the fact that we'd need to find a way to prevent worm riders being built in landlocked tiles.

 

[davidlallen]

The worms can attack any unit on the edge of the land now. If the worm riders have this ability they'll still be able to do plenty of damage to units that stray to the edge of the island and to coastal cities.

In the existing mod, the sandworms can go anywhere except hills and peaks, so they could do damage almost anywhere. If we make some class of units which is only ocean/coast, they cannot damage cities; think of vanilla triremes. If the worm rider is like a galley, then it can carry soldiers which can do an amphibious assault anywhere.

With the build-WR-in-cities option you are abstracting away the capture part which I can live with, particularly if you think of Fremen cities as sietches. With the worm rider promotion you are abstracting to much away in my opinion. The only obstacles to this is your dislike of the idea (which I do empathise with) and the fact that we'd need to find a way to prevent worm riders being built in landlocked tiles.

Well, let's keep looking. I can think of a variant mechanic which uses capture; but the problem is that the AI looking to make an organized amphibious assault won't find it. Suppose we give Fremen foot units a Thumper promotion. As these units are walking around in the coast/ocean, they attract worms. If/when one comes, it gets automatically captured, and then all the units in the stack get a desert double move promotion for five turns. From the AI standpoint, it would send out groups of foot units normally but they would arrive at their destination unexpectedly fast.

Perhaps this would be good enough for early game and for raiding, and when the AI tries to set up amphibious assault it should be using hovers anyway. What do you think?

 

[koma13]

That leaves us with how to create ridden worms. Building them in cities just feels wrong to me, even though several others have disagreed; but if they cannot move on land, how do they get from the city to the coast? We no longer have the concept of "coastal city".

I think we are a little stuck.

Try setting sandworm rider to domain sea, set bCanMoveAllTerrain to false and make sure unit isn't allowed to enter any terrain except deep desert and desert waste. Maniac suggested something like that when we had problems with the all terrain transporter. Unit should be spawned in next terrain possible (desert waste). This is similar to the situation where you have units in foreign territory and borders are closed.

Then the majority of units will be unthreatened by worms. Only spice harvesters and workers building them; scouts crossing water; and amphibious assault stacks would be vulnerable.

Somewhere on my todo list I want to make possible that you can harvest spice outside your territory. We could move all spice to deep desert. This is where the sandworm should be a threat, not next to your city.

 

[davidlallen]

Unit should be spawned in next terrain possible (desert waste). This is similar to the situation where you have units in foreign territory and borders are closed.

So the newly built unit teleports to the nearest available terrain. Since it is no longer in the city, does the amphibious assault AI still treat it as an available transport?

 

[koma13]

I think ai will send empty transporters to next reachable city. There ai will use it as usual. Hm... doesn't make much sense.

EDIT: Wait... isnt that exactly what we want: a sandworm is spawned in the desert and then brought to nearest city for mounting/loading?

 

[Ahriman]

I would vote for worms that are strictly naval units. You never see worms actually going onto non-sand land masses and attacking cities. Worms should be transports and naval superiority units; you should still have to use infantry to actually attack and take cities. Easily done if you have enough city-raider promotion infantry.

If you keep them as going anywhere except hills and rocks, at least make them unable to enter tiles with the aquifer improvmeent (can you make them unable to enter tiles with fresh water access?).

I don't understand the gain from "spawning" Fremen controlled worms or whatever over just building them. The flavor gain is very small.

Why are there no longer coastal cities? Is that easy to put things back in without messing up trade routes?

 

[davidlallen]

Why are there no longer coastal cities? Is that easy to put things back in without messing up trade routes?

In order to make all terrain transports work, we made several changes to the sdk. This allows ocean transports using the flag "Can Move On All Terrain" to travel on land, and to be built in landlocked cities. As further background, the AI will make amphibious assaults using all terrain ocean transports; but if you give it all terrain land transport, it will not use that as any kind of transport. This capability was worked out in the original dev thread in late May.

One of the specific changes was to make the function "Is City Coastal" always return true, so that landlocked cities will build these all terrain transports. If we undo that then you can only build hovercraft in cities on the edge of the desert, which is undesirable.

If you keep them as going anywhere except hills and rocks, at least make them unable to enter tiles with the aquifer improvmeent (can you make them unable to enter tiles with fresh water access?).

That is a good point, independent of the rest of the discussion. I will add that.

Wait... isnt that exactly what we want: a sandworm is spawned in the desert and then brought to nearest city for mounting/loading?

What you proposed is that sandworms should not be allowed to move on land. So the unit is built in the city, but it is on invalid terrain so it teleports to the coast. Now it *can't get back* to the city because it is not allowed on land. So I do not think the AI would use that for amphibious assaults.

I think we all agree on one point, which is, the AI must be able to use worms for amphibious assaults. I have given one proposal which will allow at least early game assaults by Fremen, and it includes a capture mechanism:

Suppose we give Fremen foot units a Thumper promotion. As these units are walking around in the coast/ocean, they attract worms. If/when one comes, it gets automatically captured, and then all the units in the stack get a desert double move promotion for five turns. From the AI standpoint, it would send out groups of foot units normally but they would arrive at their destination unexpectedly fast.

Is there any objection to this? We do not have any art for "ridden worm" anyway, but if we had it, the appearance and disappearance of the promotion can trigger switching to this unit art.

 

[Deliverator]

Is it not possible to alter the SDK to have a truly coastal cities type that controls whether cities can build naval units? Having something like the promotion you describe which means the AI only uses it accidentally doesn't seem ideal.

 

[davidlallen]

Is it not possible to alter the SDK to have a truly coastal cities type that controls whether cities can build naval units? Having something like the promotion you describe which means the AI only uses it accidentally doesn't seem ideal.

Having the AI use it accidentally is better than not at all. To me, building a worm in a coastal city is just as un-theme-like as building it in a city far from the desert. I will probably try out my solution to see how it plays, but if we can all agree on another solution which the AI will succeed with, that would be fine also.

 

[Ahriman]

Building them in a non-coastal city and teleporting them to the coast seems ok, but slightly confusing to the player.

Can you not create two separate types of coastal city; all cities count as one type, and genuinely coastal cities count as the other.

I think it would be much simpler to give Fremen the ability to move faster in deserts rather than actually trying to attract the barbarian worm units.
I'd abstract from the process of capturing worms.

 

[Deliverator]

david, in your promotion idea, can the promotion (and associated graphic change) be triggered simply by moving onto a coast tile?

 

[davidlallen]

david, in your promotion idea, can the promotion (and associated graphic change) be triggered simply by moving onto a coast tile?

That is an interesting idea. Sort of like Clark Kent stepping into a phone booth. The good news is that there is a python hook I have used before for when a unit moves into a square. The bad news is, now we are verging into the area where python runtime *could* become a problem since that function is called large number of times per turn. It may be a good idea to *lose* the promotion upon stepping into any land plot, but I could go either way on *gaining* the promotion (stepping on coast, or actually attracting a worm).

I will try these out, hopefully this weekend.

 

[koma13]

Hmm, I lost trail a little bit. What are you guys actually trying to achieve? You want to have sandworms to be limited to desert only but in the same time having amphibious assaults?

 

[davidlallen]

We are trying to agree on a way for worm rider units to be created. There are at least four possibilities.

1. Build in cities. I "absolutely hate" the idea. Plus it has implementation problems if the worm can only move in sand.
2. I locally implemented a method the AI will never figure out; dropping a thumper unit.
3. I have proposed a new method where worms get captured sort of by accident as fremen units walk in the desert.
4. Deliverator has proposed a variant of #3 where worms magically appear as a fremen unit steps on the coast.

In #3 and #4 the worm appears as a variant graphic associated with a "double move in desert" promotion. We don't have the graphic, but we could.

 

[koma13]

Well, if you want to use the worm as a transport you have to give it access to cities, else it will never load units.

 

[Lord Tirian]

4. Deliverator has proposed a variant of #3 where worms magically appear as a fremen unit steps on the coast.

By the way, Planetfall has some mechanic allowing land units to walk on water - and the interesting bit: Whenever they are on water, another unit graphic (a transport boat) appears next to them, similar to the way siege towers appear during attacks on cities.

You may be able to copy that bit and restrict it to the fremen/certain units, so a worm is "attached" to the graphic. If the worm is big enough, you won't really notice that the worm unit is just next to the unit.

But I have no clue how Maniac pulled that off, you'll have to ask him (or dig through Planetfall - but that would probably take way more time).

Cheers, LT.

 

[davidlallen]

Well, if you want to use the worm as a transport you have to give it access to cities, else it will never load units.

That is true. But it would only transport fremen foot units anyway. If those units get fast desert movement by a magic promotion with graphics, we do not need the worm to go to a city.

By the way, Planetfall has some mechanic allowing land units to walk on water - and the interesting bit: Whenever they are on water, another unit graphic (a transport boat) appears next to them, similar to the way siege towers appear during attacks on cities.

We are using some of the planetfall code for that. More specifically, Maniac explained his changes, and Koma implemented something almost identical. It does not create the siege tower effect, but the rest is the same.