Friday Facts #345 - Unit group collision mask & Artillery shell particle

[Hiladdar]

Hmm sorry but the pathfinding works incorrect in my eyes.

Why not let the water biters take the shortcut over water in the mixed group?

Tactically that does not make sense. A unit, would stay together and use a path based on the most slowest / least mobile element of the unit. In military operations a unit, say a battalion task force will be giving one movement route and mission. At the military echelon which fights using battalions, the entire battalion task force is managed as one unit. A battalion task force is made up of company task forces, and each company task force will have it's own route and mission to support the battalion task force and is managed by different echelon of command. I can go on, but for the most part, biters are animals, with some sort of herd mentality.

In order do what you propose, to have half the unit take one route and a second half of the unit take a second route would require to split the unit into two units, designate a second assembly area, calculate the pathing for both new units, move the two units, then merge the two units back into into one unit. The other way to program that is to have some sub-units making up a unit. That would require some sort of recursive code incorporated into biter movement algorithm.

The other question then is how far do we go down this rabbit hole, do we include over-watch and bounding over watch-tactical movement techniques for units and sub units. What about phase lines, multiple assembly areas, alternate assembly area, axis of advance and attack, different operational techniques, such as flanking verses envelopment vs frontal attacks, faints, screening attacks and so on.

All of that would be much more CPU intensive, and require program and testing limited resources. This functionality would make for a good be a mod, or a DLC component in the future. Right now, Factorio manages biters, either as individuals are as a unit, but I don't know if it has the capability of having units within units.

I do agree with you that there is room for improvement and enhancement, but for release 1.0 I am fine with what is proposed in the this FF, especially since this focus of this game is design and construction, verses combat.

Hiladdar

[jaggmann]

Why not have biters have the ability to pass over water at a rate of half speed or quarter speed depending on the type of biter .
There should be a mode of play alternative in that there are additional personnel .The biters attack the personnel and not the factory components .Each section of the factory is dependent on the presence of the personnel to operate .If personnel are killed that section becomes in operative until they are replaced .Additional personnel are dropped over the field of play , out in the biter world .They need to be rescued and incorporated for the factory to expand .This could also be tied to research .New personnel ,additional research capability .There would be initial tools for the player to use for rescue .APC or helicopter .Defensive weapons could be toned down so that biters could gain more insertion .

[seePyou]

Hmm sorry but the pathfinding works incorrect in my eyes.

Why not let the water biters take the shortcut over water in the mixed group?

If all bitters attack at the same time then the damage dealt is bigger, so it's better for them to join and attack together instead of attacking one by one.
Moreover I think that finding path for one group is faster then finding almost the same path for two separated groups, but this is not a case when one of the group can fly and another cannot.

Exactly that! Group moves together as units split are units less strong.
Do you want the bitters to come at you one at a time, and spread apart? Or do you want them all to be together and attack?
Obviously you want the first, as we all do, but group movement is more dangerous for us, so that's how they move.

[seePyou]

It would be pretty cool if the ejected shell was an actual item, like a used nuclear fuel cell, with a recipe to re-use it to make a new shell out of fewer materials.

That would work only if the shell casings were smelted down to be recycled. Shell casings are not directly used again to load a new propellant and projectile.

[Squelch]

I like it.
Re Pathing:
The take away from this is that the mask is no longer hard coded, so any or all of the above additional suggestions made become entirely feasible. What is proposed as vanilla seem totally on point otherwise.

Re Spent cases
I was of the same opinion as St_Vitruvius that artillery used caseless munitions. However, the added details of the ejection does confer something more involved. I do agree with the comments on timing of the ejection, and was expecting the casing to be ejected at the beginning of forward stroke of the breech.

[Hanakocz]

Now just fix the pathing through obstacles and we are set

Unit groups fail to attack obstacles while biters bound to nests do just happily...

[conn11]

But I do know of guns working without casings! Most large caliber naval guns don't /didn't use casings, but worked by stuffing bags of cordite, nitrocellulose or similar behind the grenade. I actually thought that was how the arty turret was designed to work..

Description of the Dreadnought: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BL_12-i ... _naval_gun

Video of the 16" main guns of the Iowa Class battleships
https://youtu.be/0OmOQs0ziSU

That‘s not the case for more modern naval guns or smaller caliber field howitzers (like 105mm).
As example:

Mk45 with 127mm
or
AK130 with (little suprising) 130mm

So casings aren‘t missplaced with artillery, although a little bit more delay before ejecting spent cartridges would be nice.

[FuzzyOne]

Nice work on both the group pathfinding and arty casing ejection.

However, could we have the shadow of the shell itself appear that it comes from the end of the barrel and not from the middle of the base of the gun? It seems weird that the shell casts a shadow while it is in the barrel.

Oh and yes a delay on the casing ejection would be sweet.

Keep up the great polishing work!

[seltha]

Did anyone else notice that the shell went off on a slightly different angle to the direction that the gun was facing, or is that just my CDO?

[Saiph]

Please add a flying biters

Only if we can research and manufacture fly spray!

[bullipatty]

I agree on most other that the shell looks reusable, so if a inserter pulls from the artillery it should be extracted instead or something.
I also agree that pathfinding is still not "correct". what if you actually mod "flying" biters, not "water" biters into the game? if you add the collisions together, would the flying biters be able to fly above the ground biters in the same group?

[Mur]

Shell looks sweet.

[St_Vitruvius]

But I do know of guns working without casings! Most large caliber naval guns don't /didn't use casings, but worked by stuffing bags of cordite, nitrocellulose or similar behind the grenade. I actually thought that was how the arty turret was designed to work..

Description of the Dreadnought: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BL_12-i ... _naval_gun

Video of the 16" main guns of the Iowa Class battleships
https://youtu.be/0OmOQs0ziSU

That‘s not the case for more modern naval guns or smaller caliber field howitzers (like 105mm).
As example:

Mk45 with 127mm
or
AK130 with (little suprising) 130mm

So casings aren‘t missplaced with artillery, although a little bit more delay before ejecting spent cartridges would be nice.

True, but I was consciously comparing to much larger caliber guns, as the barrel of the arty turret looks to be well above 200mm in diameter when compared to the size of the Engineer..

As I can't recall any modern examples of guns that big, I went for a comparison with similar size guns.. And most of those were/are caseless..

The larger the gun, the more difficult it gets to handle the ammunition, even using auto loaders/mechanics.

Irc, the British light gun, the 105mm uses a cased ammunition (we had them firing in our camp 10 years ago when I was deployed and saw them in action).

The Leopard 2, having a 120 mm gun, uses a semi caseless round, where only the bottom part of the case, with the primer, needs to be ejected..

I'm not American, so I don't have hands on experience, but as I understand it the US 155mm howitzer uses modular caseless or semi caseless propellant.

[conn11]

But I do know of guns working without casings! Most large caliber naval guns don't /didn't use casings, but worked by stuffing bags of cordite, nitrocellulose or similar behind the grenade. I actually thought that was how the arty turret was designed to work..
[...]

That‘s not the case for more modern naval guns or smaller caliber field howitzers (like 105mm).
[...]

So casings aren‘t missplaced with artillery, although a little bit more delay before ejecting spent cartridges would be nice.

True, but I was consciously comparing to much larger caliber guns, as the barrel of the arty turret looks to be well above 200mm in diameter when compared to the size of the Engineer..

As I can't recall any modern examples of guns that big, I went for a comparison with similar size guns.. And most of those were/are caseless..

The larger the gun, the more difficult it gets to handle the ammunition, even using auto loaders/mechanics.

Irc, the British light gun, the 105mm uses a cased ammunition (we had them firing in our camp 10 years ago when I was deployed and saw them in action).

The Leopard 2, having a 120 mm gun, uses a semi caseless round, where only the bottom part of the case, with the primer, needs to be ejected..

I'm not American, so I don't have hands on experience, but as I understand it the US 155mm howitzer uses modular caseless or semi caseless propellant.

As for anyting (landbased) above and including 120mm (especially for all true atillery pieces like self propelled and otherwise 155mm howitzers and bigger) I agree. They should all be caseless.

But the newly animated ejected cartridges are rather small wor the large bore of the artillery turret (and train). So that could be very well only the spent primer, with an hidding much more complicated mechanism. Or just creative liberty. Its after all a good looking animation, IMHO.

[jockeril]

Well I've said a hundred times before and I'll say it again - amazing! You guys are the best game developer and no wonder this game it one of the most popular games on steam, is well deserved because of those kind of attentions to details and the way you work with your community

Kudos !

BR,
Jockeril

[coppercoil]

In general, I like artillery shell particles, they add more immersion to the game, regardless of some possible inadequacy to real world guns. Once we load artillery shell in a single piece (not 1 projectile and 6 powder bags), ejected case looks logical. I just want to see some delay before case ejection, because it is not a pistol, it is a heavy and slow turret.

[Sargas]

Because of this FFF I'm a little bit confused. I thought that biters can't cross water. But in the FFF water biters were mentioned and shown. I just started a new world with a starting area nearly surrounded by water. I wanted to defend only the land bridges until I expand later. Will this be enough or do I have to surround my peninsula with a great wall of death and fire?

Thanks in advance.

[DanGio]

Because of this FFF I'm a little bit confused. I thought that biters can't cross water. But in the FFF water biters were mentioned and shown. I just started a new world with a starting area nearly surrounded by water. I wanted to defend only the land bridges until I expand later. Will this be enough or do I have to surround my peninsula with a great wall of death and fire?

Thanks in advance.

Water biters are part of a mod, you're safe

[Sargas]

Because of this FFF I'm a little bit confused. I thought that biters can't cross water. But in the FFF water biters were mentioned and shown. I just started a new world with a starting area nearly surrounded by water. I wanted to defend only the land bridges until I expand later. Will this be enough or do I have to surround my peninsula with a great wall of death and fire?

Thanks in advance.

Water biters are part of a mod, you're safe

Thanks!

[conn11]

Because of this FFF I'm a little bit confused. I thought that biters can't cross water. But in the FFF water biters were mentioned and shown.
[...]

Water biters are part of a mod, you're safe

Although Vanilla shallow water would be quite a nice addition, creating interesting scenarios.