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OpenRA: Red Alert, Command and Conquer, Dune 2000, Rebuilt for the Modern Era

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Re: OpenRA: Red Alert, Command and Conquer, Dune 2000, Rebuilt for the Modern Era

#41

Post by dragontamer »

jbay808 wrote: post #39
dragontamer wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

C&C is a clear counterexample however: all units can be selected as a group. That is to say: pathfinding was fast enough that it clearly wasn't a problem in C&C. But they clearly wanted to nerf infantry-based death balls. And boy oh boy, are infantry-death balls nerfed. An occasional infantry unit still finds its uses in C&C. They're incredibly cheap after all, and tanks have a difficult job killing infantry with the…

I find that scattering rocket soldiers randomly about the map and one's base is a far better and cheaper anti-air defense than building dedicated SAM sites. A small investment makes aircraft almost useless. But I'm pretty inexperienced at the game.

Advance Wars has a very similar unit composition to C&C units: rocket troops are cheap and can effectively damage tanks (while rifle infantry are even cheaper and go 1-to-1 vs rocket troops).

Advance Wars has a bit of a rocket-troop deathball problem however. Rocket troops are so cheap and effective, that large masses of rockets overpower any possible opposition.

Its clear to me that C&C had designed the "instant kill squish" effect to mitigate this problem. Maybe in playtesting, they tried it out and realized that rocket troops are just too powerful. A singular unit that truly does everything at very, very cheap prices.

Re: OpenRA: Red Alert, Command and Conquer, Dune 2000, Rebuilt for the Modern Era

#42

Post by Ericson2314 »

hjek wrote: post #30
Ericson2314 wrote: post #28

Also check out https://github.com/TheAssemblyArmada/Vanilla-Conquer which is a modernization of the original code (!), rather than a rewrite with liberties.

How's the network code?

I'm not sure, I haven't had the time I wanted to catch up like I used to in the binary patching days.

Re: OpenRA: Red Alert, Command and Conquer, Dune 2000, Rebuilt for the Modern Era

#44

Post by X6S1x6Okd1st »

dragontamer wrote: post #4

Something to note about the 90s-era is that the "death ball" of cheap units was *aggressively* mitigated in almost all strategy games. * Civilization 1, 2, and 3 had "stacks", but if you kill one unit in the stack, you kill ALL units in the stack. As such, "death balls" were incredibly fragile, one well placed attack kills the whole stack. * Command and Conquer has infantry, which get rolled over and instant-killed b…

Do you have a source for the 12-unit cap being a game shaping design decision?

Re: OpenRA: Red Alert, Command and Conquer, Dune 2000, Rebuilt for the Modern Era

#45

Post by munk-a »

dragontamer wrote: post #4

Something to note about the 90s-era is that the "death ball" of cheap units was *aggressively* mitigated in almost all strategy games. * Civilization 1, 2, and 3 had "stacks", but if you kill one unit in the stack, you kill ALL units in the stack. As such, "death balls" were incredibly fragile, one well placed attack kills the whole stack. * Command and Conquer has infantry, which get rolled over and instant-killed b…

My Civ 3 pikeman has something important it wants to say to that tank of yours.

Re: OpenRA: Red Alert, Command and Conquer, Dune 2000, Rebuilt for the Modern Era

#47

Post by TameAntelope »

dragontamer wrote: post #8
systemvoltage wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s a “death ball”?

A situation that arises rather often in Axis and Allies, Civ4, Starcraft 2. It results because of math. To defeat 100 units of equal strength requires *more* than 100 units (!!!). Take for example 100 Zealots (Starcraft / Starcraft 2 melee unit). If you send 1-Zealot vs the 100 Zealots, it will die before it deals much damage. In fact, even if you send 10 Zealots vs 100 Zealots, the 10-Zealots will almost certainly d…

Personally, I disagree about the death-ball buildup being un-fun, and it's only really a thing with Protoss (or it was when I cared about SC2), and that's because you had some relatively immobile units that needed protection.

Re: OpenRA: Red Alert, Command and Conquer, Dune 2000, Rebuilt for the Modern Era

#48

Post by munk-a »

jtolmar wrote: post #37
systemvoltage wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s a “death ball”?

A large group of units, generally with ranged attacks, where the most effective positioning is clumping them up into a ball. They hit a certain tipping point where fewer and fewer things work to counter them. If both sides have a death ball, then the smaller one loses by a bigger margin the larger the death balls get. In a made up but typical RTS, one swordsman beats an archer, ten archers are an even match for ten s…

Most games will counter this effect with area of effect damage. AoE has onagers for this purpose - which can easily deal immense damage to clumped and unaware archers - SC2 actually gives a lot of units AoE which is what prevents marine deathballs from being nearly as strong as they might otherwise be. 10 zealots and a clossus vs. twenty marines will be a pretty one-sided fight that will get more extreme the higher the numbers go.

Re: OpenRA: Red Alert, Command and Conquer, Dune 2000, Rebuilt for the Modern Era

#50

Post by munk-a »

Aachen wrote: post #12
systemvoltage wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s a “death ball”?

It's kind of clear from context, but still this is the first I hear the term (as someone who played those games) and DDG also doesn't come up with anything useful (top result, for example, is about some item in Dragon Ball). So I was also wondering if I got it right, especially when there's a hundred non-jargon and equally concise ways to say that, e.g. 'large group'. To me this seems like a valid question.

AoE2 also uses this term extensively especially within the context of ranger infantry. A clump of forty arbs will chew through the armor of even intended counters (like knights).

One of the more interesting applications of this term I've seen is in TW WH2 (Total War: Warhammer 2) where a faction like Vampire Counts gets a lot of utility out of death-balling even trash tier units like skeleton warriors - so that opponent infantry and cavalry gets mired in the mass of unit collisions to make it easier to get a clean spell targeting off. I think the term is pretty well established at this point as evidenced by the derivative usages that are now popping up.

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