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Aircraft & Vehicle Armor


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I think it would be a good addition to the game. After Wolf armor has been researched, an option for Large-scale Alloy Fabrication. The description would something along the lines of this, "After observing the success of Wolf armor on personnel units, or technicians have designed to test out the same concept on a larger scale". After that, research would be available for the individual vehicle. The different shells would be equipable in the same manner armor is for soldiers. Armored vehicles would of course be more durable, but slower (in the case of land vehicle, a lower AP)

Edited by ChAnKoEr
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They go down in one shot because they haven't been balanced yet.

Nothing has really.

Once you can start to research better armour you also research a better hull to put it on.

That is where the newer, better vehicles and aircraft come into it.

I am not really adverse to the idea of upgrades but it needs to be carefully planned so that it doesn't impact on the higher tech vehicles which we haven't seen yet.

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I agree, they'll need to get balance to where they want it before they start adding too much on top of it.

Though vehicle armor should be easy to implement, assuming the code for vehicle-mods isn't too complex. There needn't be new animations or anything, as painted armor looks pretty much the same no matter what it's made of.

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They go down in one shot because they haven't been balanced yet.

Nothing has really.

Once you can start to research better armour you also research a better hull to put it on.

That is where the newer, better vehicles and aircraft come into it.

I am not really adverse to the idea of upgrades but it needs to be carefully planned so that it doesn't impact on the higher tech vehicles which we haven't seen yet.

^^

This.

It's also why I get a bit twitchy when I see threads pop up like "Starting weapons need to be better!" or "Mig needs improving!" as balancing should not ever be done until you've got the majority of items up and running in the game.

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I agree, they'll need to get balance to where they want it before they start adding too much on top of it.

Though vehicle armor should be easy to implement, assuming the code for vehicle-mods isn't too complex. There needn't be new animations or anything, as painted armor looks pretty much the same no matter what it's made of.

Takes about 15 seconds to open the xml file and tweak the stats. Anyone can do it. My favorite is deleting all pre-reqs in the researches file so that I can have lasers and wolf at the start,

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Though vehicle armor should be easy to implement, assuming the code for vehicle-mods isn't too complex.

There is no code for vehicle mods other than a weapon selection field in the vehicle screen.

The reason is that there are no vehicle modifications.

Something would need to be added to incorporate this.

Having said that it should be reasonably straightforward.

A second drop down menu with currently selected armour types for example, same as in the soldier screen.

I don't expect Chris to be interested in doing it but he may get the functionality added for modders to play with later if you ask him nicely.

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I'd prefere if vehicles werent upgradable with the exception for weapons. Just switch to a new model instead of trying to breathe life into an old outdated piece of crap.

They can't generate enough art assets as it is to get everything they want into the game, and adding whole new vehicles would be quite an undertaking. If they can keep it useful by updating the armor and all that, then it makes vehicles viable to use over more of the course of the game.

I mean I hear that you can put a scatter laser on the armored car now. Why would you do this? The scatter laser isn't that viable over long distances, and by time you've got lasers the aliens have plasma rifles and heavy plasma that would annihilate your armored car in one shot. It's not like they're going to miss it. An armor upgrade is the only way a new weapons package makes any real sense.

Well okay, there is the caveat that they might rebalance the vehicles and it might actually be quite sturdy in the future. I could see it being worth the time and money to upgrade the gun, then, though it would have to be quite sturdy for it to be preferable over a cheap soldier with a rocket launcher.

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It is a straight upgrade of the machine gun and the tank armour will not be like tissue paper in the final game.

It isn't balanced yet (I am going to make a macro of that) so judging how things will play out is difficult I know but adding new features to try and balance things that can just as easily be done by tweaking data in the xml files is a waste of resources.

The other vehicles are already planned (and I would assume at least some of the artwork is already done) so being able to change to a new vehicle is not much of an undertaking at all, dev wise.

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They can't generate enough art assets as it is to get everything they want into the game, and adding whole new vehicles would be quite an undertaking. If they can keep it useful by updating the armor and all that, then it makes vehicles viable to use over more of the course of the game.
The vehicles are already done for the most part. They just aren't in the alpha build because Chris is holding them back.
It is a straight upgrade of the machine gun and the tank armour will not be like tissue paper in the final game.

It isn't balanced yet (I am going to make a macro of that) so judging how things will play out is difficult I know but adding new features to try and balance things that can just as easily be done by tweaking data in the xml files is a waste of resources.

The other vehicles are already planned (and I would assume at least some of the artwork is already done) so being able to change to a new vehicle is not much of an undertaking at all, dev wise.

What Gauddlike said ^^

Edited by Gorlom
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Gauddlike, check out these for your balance macro pleasure: I can haz balance?

I can haz balance moar?

Someone else almost did it...

Extra point for use of mechs ;)

I am hoping Chris will manage to get his coder to add the ability to use vehicle upgrades though.

It would make many modders happy.

Simple things like an upgrade box that chooses from a list, that list could have a number of options you can set like armour resists, accuracy bonus, AP bonus or whatever so you could add whatever upgrades you wanted.

Adding the possibility to have a flag in the xml that determines if a unit gains experience or not would also be nice.

Edited by Gauddlike
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In the real world, aircraft armor is a huge detriment to payload and range while not really making aircraft more survivable, as the amount of armor needed to stop explosives would be too heavy to even fly (think Abrams tank). That's why almost no planes are built out of anything tougher than aluminum... in fact the only plane I would consider even slightly armored is an A-10, and then only the cockpit. That said, since F-17s can take several direct hits already anyways, you could just choose to buck reality. It could be explained by alien alloys, after all.

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Yeah a coating of a certain material might slightly increase resistance to the alien version of plasma weapons.

Replacing the craft skin with a light but tougher alien alloy etc.

Armoured plates around the more delicate components, again made out of light alien alloys.

You could even say the armour is incredibly heavy but the power of your new anti-grav system and Alenium engines compensates for it.

Like a cross between the Abrams and the DeLorian from back to the future 2 :P

The options are there to use if you don't mind stepping out into sci-fi territory.

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