Structure Cutting
Radix
Join Date: 2005-01-10 Member: 34654Members, Constellation
Join Date: 2005-01-10 Member: 34654Members, Constellation
It's basically the idea of the "star & gun" game at the county fair. You get a gun with 25 BB's and try to shoot out a red star that's been painted on a small white piece of paper. People initially will try to cover the star in BB's, but it's more effective to shoot around the star effectively cutting it out of the paper and winning a prize.
Could this idea be effectively applied to alien resource towers and/or hives, so that you could either attack the hive's "vital areas" or attempt to cut it down. Cutting it down would be faster, but wouldn't actually damage it in any serious way (faster healing) but it <i>would</i> be a greater threat if it was done quickly.
Otherwise you could just attack a structure normally and try to beat its HP with weapons.
I'm obviously not advocating for locational damage on players, but I think it might be a fun mechanic for structures, making them a little more interesting to deal with.
Could this idea be effectively applied to alien resource towers and/or hives, so that you could either attack the hive's "vital areas" or attempt to cut it down. Cutting it down would be faster, but wouldn't actually damage it in any serious way (faster healing) but it <i>would</i> be a greater threat if it was done quickly.
Otherwise you could just attack a structure normally and try to beat its HP with weapons.
I'm obviously not advocating for locational damage on players, but I think it might be a fun mechanic for structures, making them a little more interesting to deal with.
Comments
Well, actually, i can give a quite more interesting way, to describe the same, by utilizing one of my Games for reference:
StarTrek:bridgeCommander, where you could litereally Cut-away Parts of your enemy's Ships, like the Warp-Engines, rendering the enemy unable to escape, that way, you could cut away - for example the head of an Offense-Tower, dealing quite some damage, without totally destroying it. then the remains might be able to regenerate the top-part, letting ir regain full attack-capability.
Or an Marine-Restower, missing one leg, barely standing ontop of the resnode, needing some repairs.
That could be counted like Damage-Models, rendering the actual damage quite visible on the battlefield.
Personally, I love it. Deus Ex did a fun system where injury affected the character performance. Take too many shots to the arms, you couldn't fire a gun accurately, or eventually at all, due to lack of arms. Injure your legs? Hope you like crawling around the level. Granted it also suffered from the problem that healing instantly restored all functionality perfectly to these limbs, but we'll ignore that for now and blame it on nanotechnology, which does EVERYTHING in the future.
Anyways, I'm not sure how to implement it to structures in a FPS shooter. Never really seen it. I mean, if we consider an enemy base as one giant entity then yes you prioritize which buildings to take down to deny specific and context-related abilities (like the PG/Obs/AA in NS), but as for parts of a building I haven't seen much. I imagine it would have specific hitbox regions which would respond differently to tell you you're hitting it, or perhaps you have to use something special, like Knifing or welding a certain area instead of the usual wholesale bullet fest. Just say it has very good padding that can take bullets, but is weak against directly sustained force. Kinda like flak jackets in modern day. What they'd do is beyond me. Someone wittier and less sleep depped come up with something. Spawn timer? Spawn with less health? Bleed out? Siphon/leak res? Stop healing ability withing radius (Alien Hive)?
+ damage models.
I vote Yes.
or, well, the post didnt seem to be advocating locational damage so much as independent 'pieces' for the building - independently taking damage, that is, the health bar would indicate the 'overall health'; so you might shoot things or slash at things in a certain order, or just blast the hell out of it. (first post explains it better than i do, not sure why i even bothered actually.. just wanted to make the distinction that it wasn't 'locational damage for structures' - one spot does more damage than another) add damage models to this and we have ourselves a winner.
QFT <img src="http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/style_images/1/folder_post_icons/icon5.gif" border="0" class="linked-image" />
And static defenses are terrible anyway.
who does that and eather way it sounds like a good ide gives rines a reason to crouch behind a alien rt and attack the stem.
There are a fair number of circumstances where attacking the stem isn't feasible, especially under pressure:
Powersub Junction
Cargo (Tanith)
Temperature Control
Cargo (Hive Node)
etc.
There's not always an opportunity to attack the stem. You can't cut something from 30 feet away if your gun's spray is dealing half the damage to the body - at that point shooting the body for raw damage is more effective since it won't re-heal as fast in this example.
As Radix said, the idea was in regards to killing the structure, not disabling it. His idea makes things more interesting.
While we're at it, why not make healing/repairing structures quicker when you heal/weld the right (damaged) spots, rather than just "anywhere"? (repairing "anywhere" would work too, it'd just be a bit slower - kind of like the counterpart to the 'brute force' attacking)
vote yes