Question - What's the current position / plan?

hi,

first time poster so go easy

i was just wondering if there was any information available on what the current position of the mod is?

to be more specific what has or hasn't been decided?

i see the US docs are taking shape but i'm quite interested in mainstream buildable units that will be included for each faction and the general themes used to differentiate the 2.

i'd love to provide whatever suggestions or input i can but it's tricky when you don't quite know how far things have advanced and what has already been discussed and agreed.

hope this makes sense.

Other than that it will be US vs China, we really arent keeping anything set in stone. The doctrines we posted in the press release were completely changed around two days later for example, and on the Chinese side, we have most of the doctrines layed out in a basic sense, but nothing permanant really.
Basically, suggestions on everything (except saying it should be X vs Y because of Z reason, cause the factions are kinda there now) are welcome.

understood.

my knowledge of modern warfare currently is pretty limited but if i find time i might do some research and put some broad thoughts on paper and see what comes of it.

just some very basic gameplay questions:

- presumably the foundation of the game is the CoH engine so am i right in saying any type of action that is available now will be possible in the MC mod?
eg. ballistic weapons, nade toss, indirect fire trajectories, etc?

- are you thinking of or is there the scope for coding new combat dynamics into the Mod? say guided missles that can lock onto a painted target and counter systems like jammers or flares? i'm just using those as examples btw.

- will there be any on map controllable air units or will these all function like the current off map call ins?

- do you envisage MC having some sort of building / teching system like CoH or will it be more fixed order of battle like the Europe in Ruins mod?

- are you planning on using the pop cap and resource system in the same way it is now? if yes how many resources types will there be and have you decided what they are?

- coupled with that are you planning on taking across the sector, VP and capping system?

- are you planning on taking across some of the general CoH dynamics like: veterency, squad revival, health replenishment?

- is there scope for coding new general dynamics if we come up with some?

- are you planning on incorporating any auras in the game? (my main concern is the incentive it creates to blob).

- are you planning on getting a minimum set of troop types operational for each faction so play testing can start quickly and then build upon that or is the approach to complete one faction fully and then concentrate on the other?


some faction specific questions:

- am i right in saying the US faction will be centred around small numbers, high quality, high tech?

- whereas Chinese will be relatively lower tech, strength in numbers?

- have you set the size of the basic US marine squad? (i kinda see that as the yard stick for judging all other squad sizes upon)

- do you envisage the US marine unit to be a flexible unit and upgradable in a variety of ways? sort of like the space marine unit in DoW who's role varies depending on the heavy weapons it's upgraded with?

- by contrast do you see the chinese squads as more rigid with perhaps more specific squads for particular roles?


just as a side note, and please don't take this as a criticism but i was a little surprised that focus seems to have been put into the doctrines at this early stage.

i'm just throwing this out there but would it not be better to concentrate on the main stream units first and then add the docs later. i mean your initial play tests could be just on the vanilla factions and mainstream units and then at some later date add a doc at a time as and when available.

well that's about it and sorry if some of the questions seem a bit noobish. just trying to get up to speed that's all

yep

potentially, or we can try to simulate something like that if we feel the need, but so far its not planned

No controllable air as far as I can tell. I would like to implement something like that, but it is proving quite difficult, and after about 8 hours of trying, with getting a crash to desktop every time, I have given up for the time being

standard CoH, we will be preserving CoH gameplay as much as possible, just introducing new weapons, factions, doctrines, and stuff like that.

Yep, same resources at this point in time, as we feel there is no gameplay need to break this tried-and-true style.

Yep

We havent discussed any of those yet, but yes, they will be there

Possibly, depends on whether its possible

Blobs are straight from hell, if that answers your question

yep

yep

yep

nope, but probably 4-5 (currently in my test version its 3, but that would be difficult to balance for the obvious reasons)

That would be a decent analogy, we are thinking of either doing it that way, or having the special units be attatched, similar to how an officer is attatched

kinda, but not really

We started to go into the main teching first, but the focus shifted slowly during the design phase, the main reason more info on general teching hasnt been released is because we are running with several different plans, so we dont want to get people all upset when their pet plan doesnt actually come out with the release of the mod

Its fine

No controllable air as far as I can tell. I would like to implement something like that, but it is proving quite difficult, and after about 8 hours of trying, with getting a crash to desktop every time, I have given up for the time being

Well, not exactly. It IS possible to have flying units on the map, but the downside is that they can only follow the path of ground vehicles, so they're useless. If we could find a way around that, it probally is possible.

thanks for the update guys.

may i just throw some suggestions on the table in case they haven't been though of yet.

Veterency - i think in many ways the original vet system in vCoH was the wrong way around. the US has always placed a high regard on providing new recruits with a high standard of basic training via the boot camp approach. in this sense i think the US vet should have been 'bought'.

Germany on the other hand gained valuable experience through operational manoeuvres and combat exposure via the annexation of neighbooring countries and ultimately the invasion of Poland. so in this sense the WM vet should have been earned.

for MC i would go with this approach where the US vet is bought via a ' US kkc' equivalent and the Chinese is earnt through combat representing the border skirmishes they've been involved with in Asia over the decades as a pseudo 'training ground'.

Upgrades - i think it would be fitting with the flexible yet self supporting nature of the US troops to keep upgrades specific to the unit. so in a sense like the PE where the US player can select how each squad is upgraded, tech / tier pre-reqs satisfied of course.

to differentiate keep the Chinese upgrades more global. i think this may work in well with the veterancy above. since the Chinese vet is earnt they have no need for a kkc. instead replace this with a building where the global upgrades can be researched (this is actually more in line with other RTS's but would be a unique system for CoH).

make the upgrade benefits small but wide ranging. some examples might be:

Resilience: +5% HP increase for all infantry
Fanaticism: -10% received suppression for all infantry
Night vision: +10% sight increase for all armour

add levels of upgrade on top of that for stacking benefits as well perhaps.

Tiering - assuming for the Chinese:

T1 = Infantry and anti inf support teams
T2 = Infantry and support team based AT / AA
T3 = Light vehicles
T4 = Armour

i think a 'diamond' approach might work well (without a separate tech cost so just purchasing the building attains the tier like US and PE now):

Level 1 = T1
Level 2 = T2 and T3
Level 3 = T4

T1 is a pre-req for T2 and T3.
Either T2 or T3 is required for T4.

So example combination examples are:

T1 - T2 - T4
T1 - T3 - T4
T1 - T2 - T3 - T4
T1 - T3 - T2 - T4

this means the Chinese can choose whether they want to go for inf based AT and AA or skip and move straight up to light vehicles to provide more mobile forms of AI / AT / AA. to balance i'd suggest the T3 building be slightly more expense fuel wise than the T2.

also if the US have a more linear teching system it means the Chinese could attain T4 slightly earlier which might be a good counter balance as presumably the US T4 vehicles will generally outperform the Chinese counterparts.

any just some thoughts. let me know what you think.

No controllable air as far as I can tell. I would like to implement something like that, but it is proving quite difficult, and after about 8 hours of trying, with getting a crash to desktop every time, I have given up for the time being

Well, not exactly. It IS possible to have flying units on the map, but the downside is that they can only follow the path of ground vehicles, so they're useless. If we could find a way around that, it probally is possible.

Heres an idea.
Like the Donut air support plane, could you call in a general area where and air unit would strike? And when you select a new location it moves from the old one?
If you could buy aerial units with upgrades that give you this off map support then it would technically be a controllable air unit.

i like your suggestions a lot Yojimbo. Sounds very logical and would fits together quite well. I'll make sure to discuss about it =)
Thx for your time.

Yeah, they're nice. But maybe changing night vision to thermal vision? Would look kinda funny using night vision in the middle of the day.

fair point. i was just thinking up some examples off the top of my head but you're right, perhaps a more generic description that encompassed both thermal and light intensified vision may be more appropriate.

thanks Onkelsam, i hope the suggestions are found useful.

i really like to get more involved on the design aspect of the game as i've got plenty more suggestions but i'm afraid i'm not particularly technie when it comes to modelling or skinning as such.

should i put forward an application to map perhaps or can i submit an application for inclusion on the design team?

If you really want to be a mapper, then you are welcome. DeadKennyIsDead has set your mask to NDA, so you just have to confirm you accept the NDA and will be masked as a mapper then.

Catch me over Skype if you have further questions.

that's great, i'll do it straight away. many thanks.

[edit] ok i posted the Accepted thread in the NDA sub-forum. is this the right place to do it? is there anything else i need to do? [edit]

It's now just a matter of time till that post counter jumps from 6 to 60 to 600