Game Design, Programming and running a one-man games business…

Repair bonuses and how they should work

cliffski

I’m dithering a bit about how some of the ‘support’ units in Gratuitous Tank Battles should work.

Right now, you have dedicated command vehicles and buildings, and repair vehicle and buildings. The command ones give a rate-of-fire bonus to every unit in range, and repair units reduce the damage that units take.

I’m not happy with either of these. The main problem is they just aren’t intuitive enough. What would you expect them to do? I assume you would guess command units give a boost to accuracy (like spotters or radar would) and repair units actively repair damage done over time.

I changed from repairing, to reducing damage because the ambulance module and hospital ones (for infantry) were useless, because the minute infantry got injured, they probably shortly afterwards got killed, so the modules were rubbish.

I guess with infantry, I could apply a damage reduction, and have repair modules (for vehicles and turrets) work differently (actively repairing damage done, at regular intervals). That makes more sense right?

That still leaves command units. Would a hit-chance modifier possibly be overpowered? Maybe… it obviously needs balancing like crazy, but I suspect it makes more sense than a rate of fire unit.

And even as I type this, I wonder if if would make more sense to have a new type of deployment slot on maps, one which can *only* be filled by a support unit. It might make for some more interesting tactics and map design. Ho hum…

10 thoughts on Repair bonuses and how they should work

  1. “I guess with infantry, I could apply a damage reduction”

    Yea, keeping that sounds better than trying to do a restoring effect. Perhaps changing the name from ambulance to something more appropriate to damage reduction?

    “and have repair modules (for vehicles and turrets) work differently (actively repairing damage done, at regular intervals).”

    If they’re useful, it’d be great to have those available. Perhaps it would be good to have both the existing vehicle-damage-preventers and the new vehicle-repairers?

    “That still leaves command units. Would a hit-chance modifier possibly be overpowered?”

    Possibly, I have no way of knowing at this point :) You could put in both that and some rate-of-fire buffing units and wait until some enterprising player makes some giant spreadsheet simulator to optimize their dps, etc, and then just rejigger the numbers so the results are equal ;) (… kidding, mostly)

    “I wonder if if would make more sense to have a new type of deployment slot on maps, one which can *only* be filled by a support unit. It might make for some more interesting tactics and map design.”

    That would indeed expand the potential for interesting scenario design. To the extent that two or more choices pull from the same budget(s), some players will min/max the dickens out of it and eventually start complaining that “choice 1 is optimal, therefore I never use choice 2”. If, however, there’s some segment of their resources that can _only_ be used on choice 2, then their challenge is figuring out how to use those units (or whatever) to their maximum effectiveness rather than worrying as much about how their usefulness compares to the usefulness of other units.

    But it can also annoy players.

  2. Would it be better to change the ambulance to a ‘remote small shield emitter’? Now it makes more sense that units it protects take less damage (and leaves room for gratuitous shield effects).

  3. inded, I thought a lot about a shield generator, although I’d like to keep a lot more of the tech in WW1/WW2 eras than it currently is, it’s a bit too laser-dominated.

  4. Regarding infantry/ambulance, how about either a chance of a casualty ‘coming back’, or as long as the infantry unit (assuming they are modeled as such) exists in range, the individual infantrymen are replenished at ?

    As for command, any of the above make sense to me. Command is logistics and command/control – any efficiency boost makes sense, unless you wanted to break ‘command’ down into a generic command ‘controller’ module (allowing the others) then specific boosts, allowing for either general or specialized command units?

  5. Maybe combine the support/command units? Make them kind of like rolling mini-support barracks? I mean, it’s not really grounded in perfect reality but hey it’s your game and could be neat.

  6. Instead of repair units, you could portray them as jammer units; they make enemy fire less accurate, fire interceptor shots at incoming artillery, etc. Arguably the time frame of an encounter is too short for repairing units.

  7. I think a combination of the 2 would be good. Not only reduce incoming damage, if that unit isn’t under fire for a bit of time (how likely?) then they can heal to full (or even heal past full to 150% like a medic in TF2 can do)

  8. I really like the idea that was suggested about troops being healed , something like as soon as a troop dies the medic van could let out two medics that heal him up. You could have a slider to decide when the medics come out i.e until there are 10 or more dead troops? Something like that could also be used for the repair trucks, little robots or mechanics hop out when a freindly unit is down to a certain amount of health, these guys could either be very good at repairing and be vulnrable to enemy fire or have the repair truck deploy a temporary shield and not be so good at repairing?

  9. Backing away a bit, what having an ambulance corps (etc.) actually did was not reduce *immediate* damage, but decrease the rate at which experienced troops attrit out of units permanently (and thereby need to be replaced with green troops); there’s also a morale boost effect from knowing you’ve got support. Logical game implementations might include a bonus to whatever you’re using as a morale factor, or if you don’t have one a small bonus to various stats; and more significantly a reduction in the points lost when a unit is lost. Depending on how unit costs works, that could be a discount on replacement units, a bonus to the quality level of replacement units, a score factor adjustment, or the like.

    As far as command goes, there are obvious small bonus to accuracy, rate of fire, whatever your morale system is, etc. A more interesting take is to actually implement C&C limitations; command units might logically enable or significantly improve indirect fire (whether classical long-tube artillery, mortars, etc. or more improvisational sorts of things such as having currently unengaged walking tanks fire over the heads of infantry to engage problems in another “lane”). Depending on how you finally handle line of sight and fog of war, command units could be one of the important ways you pushed back the fog.

    At a different level, what if the sort of literal commands you, the player, could give to your normal units varied depending on whether they were within radius of a command unit? Perhaps turrets would have to be set from a very limited set of target priorities (biggest, closest, most hurt, etc.) on construction by default, but having a command unit nearby would allow you to change their programming during play, or unlocked more complex behaviors.

  10. What I immediately thought of with command and control was coordinating and directing fire…could they be enabled to assess the damage to opposing units, and change targets for units in range to finish them off? Or, let’s say you set some opposing unit as a priority…could units within command radius speed up or slow down to ensure maximum time on target? That sort of thing.

    I do also like Muramir’s ideas.

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