i have a lot of ideas, but unfortunately i think none of them will be in the game .heres one more:

structures will work better if max health, and worser if they dont have much(slower upgrading, worser chambers efects, etc...)
= ok / + =bad

Interesting.

At first glance, I'd have to say no due to the extra complexity. For example, Sensory chambers not working at fully cloak? Also, this could cause a huge layer of babysitting to check to make sure every RT is at full health and working up to full potential.

I'll grant you that it could make the gameplay very interesting since now dying with the RT in the red has immediate damage to the opposing team instead of hoping someone else comes along to finish the job, and healers and welders will become much more commonplace.

So, I'll withhold my decision for now, but I'm leaning towards a no.

hmm... didnt thought about cloak
i think cloak malfunction would work like this:
costs more time to cloak and the range is minor
and silence, aliens would do randomly step sounds(more if red health):
alien runs 10 m: 4 steps(sound)
alien walks(shift) 2 steps
i hope that fixes my error

and red RT's:
people would have to think fast if they save the rt or recycle it, giving the game a slightly emotion

Think this is a great idea. Increases realism.
Should effect buildings and players alike.
But it should be carefully balanced.

Example for rt:
green health (100-75) nominal
yellow (74-25) increasing res gather punishment, exponential, so its low in the beginning and starts to increase at the end
red (24-1) res gather punishment continues to increase with a max penalty of say 2/3. (rt gathers 1/3 of nominal)
And recycle should give less res/be slower when rt is low on health.
And similar ideology on other buildings/players, with different types of effects.

This way its not a MAJOR gameplay element (for buildings), but if a team wants to perform 100% it will need pay more attention to building health. This may lead to balancing manpower between checking buildings to battling the other team.

For players it is ofc much more sensitive, so maybe they should get extra little effect. But defect abilities as health goes down sounds genius! (like the silence defect)
Maybe some abilities would improve as a survival tactic? Say cloak is faster on a damaged aliens when it stands still, but is defective while it moves.
Heal could be more effective on aliens with low health, and then the heal effect decreases as the health goes up. Like a bonus to heal for low health lifeforms. Same with regen.
Fades could burn energy a little faster and have increased max speed and acceleration at low health. This can both hurt and help the fade.


A nice little 'graph', it WAS fun to make!
X axis is rt health
Y axis is res/time in %
100 |________________________________x___x___x__
090 |_____________________x_____________________
080 |______________x____________________________
070 |__________x________________________________
060 |_______x___________________________________
050 |____x______________________________________
040 |__x________________________________________
030 |_x_________________________________________
020 |___________________________________________
010 |___________________________________________
000 |O1O|O2O|O3O|O4O|O5O|O6O|O7O|O8O|O9O|100|

I consider this particular penalty curve a pretty small threat to team eco. One interesting thought is: with the rec penalty i mentioned, the alien (or marine) team would in some cases benefit from keeping the rt at minimal health instead of killing it. And this adds more thought/planning/strategy to the game, which im all for.

Cool graph :]

however i dont like the idea. farrrr too frustrating for marines. it could work with aliens, as their buildings self heal, however i dont think its necessary. generally when a building gets hurt, its gets hurt all the way and dies. rarely do important buildings sit on a low % for a long time.

I agree.

Was it really necessary to correct my punctuation and grammar?!

Always.

But seriously, let locallyunscene have his fun. You just sound like a ###### for calling him out on it.

Well if its so frustrating, then they'll just leave the rt alone, and the alien team will have a slight advantage because of it.
Dont see much differense between my idea and recapturing. Yes it will require more work to go with welder than without, later that welder could be used on marines, most comms never give out any until mid game. In the latest ns1 they added map indication of rt's under attack, why even bother with saving an rt if its frustrating, some teams dont do it, they get a disadvantage.
Personally i try to def rt's as much as possible (if im close), and if i have a welder i weld them, called teamwork, but true, few bother with it. So my idea gives a reason to bother...

Say we skip the rt penalty. I still strongly think the other base buildings should, for the sake of realism, have function penalties when damaged. Examples:
obs could have: reduced radius, delay on decloak, less updates per second when tracking units
ip: longer time
armory (little harder): longer for ammo/heal, less ammo/heal, delay on wep spawn
Basically take what the building does, and reduce that.

This is the kind of thing that should get playtested to see how it works out.

And give some opinions on the other suggestions in this topic. Instead of only the rt one by me. While you're at it, give more thorough responses. Try helping make an idea work instead of posting "one-liners" where "your highness approves or disapproves" .


(im not being an aggressive forum kiddie or any cr*p like that, just writing down my thoughts as they come to me)
/w

I like the idea, it adds an interesting aspect of realism. However I don't think it would be very practical to implement.

Has there ever been an RTS that used the idea? I'm sure some have thought of it, but I don't see this concept applied anywhere.

Please, I am begging any one who plays a game that is steeped in science fiction & fantasy (being that it is allowed to break physical laws of the universe if it wants to), do not bring realism into it, it will only bring about frustration and "make work" style of play.

Now, if you want something to be not so far fetched as to break your suspension of disbelief aka "believability", IMHO, that is fair game. I really want NS2 to try to be a stylistic (as opposed to realistic) as possible because IMHO, games that are stylistic with stand the test of time.

Wondering what I am talking about? Well, I don't bat an eye at games like Team Fortress 2, Freedom Force, XIII or Mario Bros, even though they are totally off the wall, since they didn't aim for realistic, their art and even game play choices never seem out of place, but games that aim for "realistic", like say Rainbow Six (not Vegas), well, every time a new game comes out that looks and plays more realistic, it seems to tarnish the experience of the older game upon replay.

Maybe I am not explaining myself well, but I really hope you listen when I say style+gameplay > believable > real-ism.

Valid point, but I don't think NS2 will take the stylistic route, nor does a stylistic approach suit it, imo.

edit: but wait, what's this got to do with structure malfunction? i don't really like the idea myself. makes things too complex.

I just noticed "it adds realism" being brought up, so I thought I would point out my opinion on what that means for a game in the short term (frustration) and long term (other games being more "real").

Sometimes it seems like gamers exchange the word realism for believability, as in suspension of disbelief, so it may just be a lack of communicating the idea well. Often it seems folks don't know there is a difference, so it confuses things, especially when we are discussing Intellectual Property that could be labeled science fiction/fantasy.

Basicly, IMHO, if you support the malfunction idea because of "realism", please don't. But if you support it because you think it would add something fun to the gameplay, sure, that's your opinion and I have no problem with that.

On the subject of it being Natural Selection being stylistic, well, IMHO the Kharaa and the approach to the Marine tech is pretty stylistic. Stylistic doesn't have to mean cartoon-ish, cell shaded ... it just needs to take an approach that is a flight of fantasy, that it doesn't demand of the viewer "This is like or trying to be reality!" NS1 being stylistic is one of the reasons I think it pushed the HL1 engine so hard, there were plenty of mods trying to be realistic to some degree already. Its stylistic approach did and in the NS2 concepts still does stand out to me.

so.. if you get slashed in the eye region... half of your screen goes black? ;p

it would be interesting, but hideously complex to balance to a point even close to acceptable

maybe it can be a server-side mod for fun servers or something?

Uh, well no I don't think it was stylistic, I think it took a very realistic approach, as most sci-fi titles do (with the exception of say Star Wars [better classed as science fantasy], and Kaiba [you have got to watch this] and other animations, etc.).

But as you say, it's more about 'suspension of disbelief' but not just that, as it pertains to 'realism'. I'd call it 'realism within the context' (if everyone can fly in your world, then why not), or you might call it 'internal consistency'.

So the problem with your argument is... Despite this being a 'flight of fancy', it is based on our world (universe) - just several hundred years in the future - so you'd think the same laws of physics would apply, magic doesn't exist, and people would continue to (attempt to) be reasonable (often meaning they'd choose function over form).

...

Structure malfunction, however, is one example of where realism hurts gameplay fun.

Sounds like a great idea! That would make the marines need to weld the structures to keep them alive.

I remember in the Command & Conquer games (for sure in Red Alert 1) that the Power Station would drop in capacity with damage. Although I think it was in steps. Like full power / half power / death.

As for the idea I'd say no for most buildings. Perhaps this would be interesting for specific building. I'm generally against the idea of modifying effective radius or speed or cloaking being affected. Whatever effect that damage has of the functionality of the building should have clear visual clue. Otherwise it will be harder for new people to learn that something is wrong with the building at that it wasn't lag or a hack.

Aside from the building having a damaged model with sparks coming out and stuff. The function of that building must clearly show deficiency.

The only example I can think of is not even a good one. Say your sensor tower gets baldy damaged, then the sensor benefits would start to flicker on and off, perhaps with some static effect. However the way the sensor pings work in NS would make it hard to recognize flickering. And I don't see exactly how the static effect could be animated in there. I hope my point is clear though.

go0d idea

i remeber it being continuous in c&c-ra, cos i remember that while repairing a power plant the total power increased all the time in small steps

In Empires there's a class ability for Scouts that they can sabotage a building, reducing it to half health and causing some effect, such as all who spawn from a sabotaged barracks start with half health, or the res towers only give half as much res.

I still think it's adding in too much detail on a strictly RTS aspect. If implemented, make sure it doesn't cause disastrous damage. Max (close to dead) damage maybe 1/3 efficiency at the most. Also, the big question is how other buildings will be changed, such as turret factories, assuming they're kept in.