Bug #895357 (allow-units-aircraft-carrier-style-attacks-to-gain-... : Bugs : Ares

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DCoder DCoder (dcoder1337) wrote on 2010-02-15:

#1

I'd like that change, but I can see some people being against it. So I think I'll have to make this behaviour optional.

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Marshall (m-edward) wrote on 2010-02-15:

#2

Fine, but should be optional.

EDIT:
DCoder beat me to it.

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Renegade (renegade) wrote on 2010-02-15:

#3

While I understand the request (which, by the way, has the wrong value for Reproducibility...one would think after years, the layout was clear), I'm not sure I agree with it.

On what grounds would the carrier get experience for the aircraft's kills? It doesn't do anything! Would it have elite experience in doing absolutely nothing while a plane starts? Or have veteran refuelers?

Even if you accept that, the unit itself isn't really in combat. A tank having better armor and greater range after taking part in X battles somewhat makes sense...but the carrier never directly takes part in battles. It's not the carrier that kills stuff, it's the fighters.

So yeah...technical side of the request is understood and acknowledged - but the reasoning needs work. Why should the carrier be rewarded for kills it didn't make?

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Teleros (teleros) wrote on 2010-02-15:

#4

For the Aircraft Carrier to gain veterancy is simple logic: a carrier isn't just a floating platform for fighters to land on. They're typically packed full of support staff, command & control equipment, blah blah blah, and all of this will get used every time the fighters on board go out on a sortie. The more sorties that happen, the more experienced the crew will be with handling them.

As far as the logic itself is concerned though, imagine say a modern-era RA2 mod that has a Predator UAV control truck or something. The UAVs are robots, but its their controllers back in the truck who'll gain experience, regardless of whether or not their current UAV is shot down. This can also be applied to any other remotely-operated machine in a mod.

However... what benefits will you be giving the Carrier as a result of its promotion? Yeah I know +ROF +armour etc can be done, and you can have ElitePrimary weapons etc too, but what about (say):

-Fighters being spawned at the same veterancy level as the Carrier
-An extra fighter / ammo slot
-Different fighters spawned when elite compared to normal

You may not want to add in any of those, but it's something to consider if there's going to be an overhaul of spawning units like the Carrier.

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Renegade (renegade) wrote on 2010-02-15:

#5

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...I already addressed your first paragraph in my original post, with that exact argumentation. What kind of veterancy would it gain? Elite plane refuelers?

The fact that an Aircraft Carrier has the quickest refueling in the fleet doesn't extend the Carrier's spotting range, nor does it improve its armor.

And while your Predator example makes a tad more sense, you then run straight into the limitations of the engine - it's not each individual pilot that's gaining experience, it's the truck as a whole. Which, in turn, brings us back to the original question: Why should the truck driver see further, or the truck get better armor, just because a dude in the trailer rocks at remote-controlling a robot plane?
Not to mention that I'm pretty sure not all Predators are equal. Sure, I've never flown one, but I'd assume it does make a difference whether you control Predator A, B or C, just like every car you drive is slightly different, no matter if they're the same make.

In fact, your very own suggestions violate your own examples: If you take the flight deck crew or the remote controllers as the basis for Carrier veterancy, why would new pilots/fighters be spawned with the same experience level? It's not the pilot that was in 10 combat situations, it was the Chief Refuelist. Oh, sorry - Elite Chief Refuelist.

And the extra fighter leads right back to my original question: Why would the fact that your Carrier crew has 1000+ hours experience in refueling Harriers magically extend the Carrier's hangar?

Different fighters when elite is the one thing that even remotely makes sense, but you end up in weird situation regarding veterancy transfer - if you do argue that the Carrier gains elite status due to its insane experience refueling airplanes, then you must, in turn, accept that the new pilots would not have that experience, since they only just arrived. As such, you'd have an elite aircraft carrier sending normal fighters.

All in all, I think this suggestion subverts the design of the system. The whole point of spawning fighters is that those fighters are independent from the carrier. That's why the carrier doesn't take damage when the fighters die, that's why they respawn without cost, that's why they operate independent from the carrier.
Making the carrier gain something from the behavior of the fighters breaks that independence. Suddenly, the carrier is no longer a launch base for independent units which take up the fight, suddenly, the fighters are extensions of the carrier, linked through some magical bond.
And yet, despite the fact that the positive aspects of the fighters' behavior magically transmit back to the carrier, the negative ones don't. Hitting a fighter doesn't do anything to the carrier.
So basically, you can just park a carrier somewhere and spam the enemy with planes until the carrier is elite - no danger, no harm done.
Sure, you can do that in the normal game, too - but in the normal game, you don't get a benefit from it. If you send 100 fighters, and they all get shot down, you're right back where you started with the carrier. If veterancy magically transmits, all you have to do is wait long enough - even ...

...I already addressed your first paragraph in my original post, with that exact argumentation. What kind of veterancy would it gain? Elite plane refuelers?

The fact that an Aircraft Carrier has the quickest refueling in the fleet doesn't extend the Carrier's spotting range, nor does it improve its armor.

And while your Predator example makes a tad more sense, you then run straight into the limitations of the engine - it's not each individual pilot that's gaining experience, it's the truck as a whole. Which, in turn, brings us back to the original question: Why should the truck driver see further, or the truck get better armor, just because a dude in the trailer rocks at remote-controlling a robot plane?
Not to mention that I'm pretty sure not all Predators are equal. Sure, I've never flown one, but I'd assume it does make a difference whether you control Predator A, B or C, just like every car you drive is slightly different, no matter if they're the same make.

In fact, your very own suggestions violate your own examples: If you take the flight deck crew or the remote controllers as the basis for Carrier veterancy, why would new pilots/fighters be spawned with the same experience level? It's not the pilot that was in 10 combat situations, it was the Chief Refuelist. Oh, sorry - Elite Chief Refuelist.

And the extra fighter leads right back to my original question: Why would the fact that your Carrier crew has 1000+ hours experience in refueling Harriers magically extend the Carrier's hangar?

Different fighters when elite is the one thing that even remotely makes sense, but you end up in weird situation regarding veterancy transfer - if you do argue that the Carrier gains elite status due to its insane experience refueling airplanes, then you must, in turn, accept that the new pilots would not have that experience, since they only just arrived. As such, you'd have an elite aircraft carrier sending normal fighters.

All in all, I think this suggestion subverts the design of the system. The whole point of spawning fighters is that those fighters are independent from the carrier. That's why the carrier doesn't take damage when the fighters die, that's why they respawn without cost, that's why they operate independent from the carrier.
Making the carrier gain something from the behavior of the fighters breaks that independence. Suddenly, the carrier is no longer a launch base for independent units which take up the fight, suddenly, the fighters are extensions of the carrier, linked through some magical bond.
And yet, despite the fact that the positive aspects of the fighters' behavior magically transmit back to the carrier, the negative ones don't. Hitting a fighter doesn't do anything to the carrier.
So basically, you can just park a carrier somewhere and spam the enemy with planes until the carrier is elite - no danger, no harm done.
Sure, you can do that in the normal game, too - but in the normal game, you don't get a benefit from it. If you send 100 fighters, and they all get shot down, you're right back where you started with the carrier. If veterancy magically transmits, all you have to do is wait long enough - even if no one ever fires a shot, if enough dead airplanes tumble down on unsuspecting troopers, ultimately, the carrier will gain veterancy.

Way to fuck balance in the ass.

There are only two ways - either the fighters are independent from the carrier, or they aren't. Selectively only transferring experience back from the spawnees back to the spawner makes no sense at all and breaks balance.

Hell, in fact, if you think about it, even the whole flight deck crew example is utter bullshit: If the flight deck crew gained experience from what happened to it, then the flight deck crew wouldn't gain experience from some random pilot shooting a target the flight deck crew can't see, it'd gain experience from every start and landing they do - in other words, the flight deck crew would actually gain more experience from the fighters dying than from them succeeding, because dead spawnees trigger new spawnees.

None of these examples make any sense.

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EVA-251 (eva-251) wrote on 2010-02-16:

#6

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"While I understand the request (which, by the way, has the wrong value for Reproducibility...one would think after years, the layout was clear), I'm not sure I agree with it."
This is a minor mistake on my end that I realized after posted the issue. However, I don't really see an option for me to correct this.

"On what grounds would the carrier get experience for the aircraft's kills? It doesn't do anything! Would it have elite experience in doing absolutely nothing while a plane starts? Or have veteran refuelers?"
I personally don't understand why you are arguing a point like this. In an old game like Yuri's Revenge, it should be accepted that gameplay trumps realism. (especially in a game where there are laser tanks, bald mind-controlling Russians and whores with Colt .45s that somehow outrange assault rifles)

"Even if you accept that, the unit itself isn't really in combat. A tank having better armor and greater range after taking part in X battles somewhat makes sense...but the carrier never directly takes part in battles. It's not the carrier that kills stuff, it's the fighters."
Hardly. Just because you have fought 10 battles and your tank has survived, it isn't as if your tank's gun suddenly could withstand the pressures involved in firing more powerful rounds with greater ranges or withstand significantly more damage. (especially with battlefield upgrades, which is realistically limited to sandbags, poor weld-on plating or replacement ERA plates)

"Making the carrier gain something from the behavior of the fighters breaks that independence. Suddenly, the carrier is no longer a launch base for independent units which take up the fight, suddenly, the fighters are extensions of the carrier, linked through some magical bond."
In all actuality, Fighters are an extension of the Carrier, just as the Carrier is an extension of that player's naval power.

"And yet, despite the fact that the positive aspects of the fighters' behavior magically transmit back to the carrier, the negative ones don't. Hitting a fighter doesn't do anything to the carrier."
Yes, it does. Destroying an Aircraft Carrier's plane lowers the Carrier's damage per second for each plane lost.

"So basically, you can just park a carrier somewhere and spam the enemy with planes until the carrier is elite - no danger, no harm done."
I don't mean to be rude but this isn't your concern. This is a player tactic that can be regulated by existing tags, and as such, is a concern more for the modder using such a feature. For example, the Aircraft Carriers of my mod cost 6000 and VeterancyRatio is 4. Destroying 24000 worth of units just to get one level of veterancy isn't exactly an easy task when you figure in resistance.

"Sure, you can do that in the normal game, too - but in the normal game, you don't get a benefit from it. If you send 100 fighters, and they all get shot down, you're right back where you started with the carrier. If veterancy magically transmits, all you have to do is wait long enough - even if no one ever fires a shot, if enough dead airplanes tumble down on unsuspecting troopers, ultimately, the carrier will gain veterancy."
Who says the pl...

"While I understand the request (which, by the way, has the wrong value for Reproducibility...one would think after years, the layout was clear), I'm not sure I agree with it."
This is a minor mistake on my end that I realized after posted the issue. However, I don't really see an option for me to correct this.

"On what grounds would the carrier get experience for the aircraft's kills? It doesn't do anything! Would it have elite experience in doing absolutely nothing while a plane starts? Or have veteran refuelers?"
I personally don't understand why you are arguing a point like this. In an old game like Yuri's Revenge, it should be accepted that gameplay trumps realism. (especially in a game where there are laser tanks, bald mind-controlling Russians and whores with Colt .45s that somehow outrange assault rifles)

"Even if you accept that, the unit itself isn't really in combat. A tank having better armor and greater range after taking part in X battles somewhat makes sense...but the carrier never directly takes part in battles. It's not the carrier that kills stuff, it's the fighters."
Hardly. Just because you have fought 10 battles and your tank has survived, it isn't as if your tank's gun suddenly could withstand the pressures involved in firing more powerful rounds with greater ranges or withstand significantly more damage. (especially with battlefield upgrades, which is realistically limited to sandbags, poor weld-on plating or replacement ERA plates)

"Making the carrier gain something from the behavior of the fighters breaks that independence. Suddenly, the carrier is no longer a launch base for independent units which take up the fight, suddenly, the fighters are extensions of the carrier, linked through some magical bond."
In all actuality, Fighters are an extension of the Carrier, just as the Carrier is an extension of that player's naval power.

"And yet, despite the fact that the positive aspects of the fighters' behavior magically transmit back to the carrier, the negative ones don't. Hitting a fighter doesn't do anything to the carrier."
Yes, it does. Destroying an Aircraft Carrier's plane lowers the Carrier's damage per second for each plane lost.

"So basically, you can just park a carrier somewhere and spam the enemy with planes until the carrier is elite - no danger, no harm done."
I don't mean to be rude but this isn't your concern. This is a player tactic that can be regulated by existing tags, and as such, is a concern more for the modder using such a feature. For example, the Aircraft Carriers of my mod cost 6000 and VeterancyRatio is 4. Destroying 24000 worth of units just to get one level of veterancy isn't exactly an easy task when you figure in resistance.

"Sure, you can do that in the normal game, too - but in the normal game, you don't get a benefit from it. If you send 100 fighters, and they all get shot down, you're right back where you started with the carrier. If veterancy magically transmits, all you have to do is wait long enough - even if no one ever fires a shot, if enough dead airplanes tumble down on unsuspecting troopers, ultimately, the carrier will gain veterancy."
Who says the planes should transfer veterancy upon death? But if they did, and let's use RA2 standards: killing 6000 worth of Conscripts or Flak Troopers with falling planes? Hardly a common or feasible tactic unless the modder makes them explode with the force of nukes or something, and then the responsibility again falls back to the modder to make sure this doesn't happen.

"Way to fuck balance in the ass."
Balance is the job of the modder.

"the flight deck crew would actually gain more experience from the fighters dying than from them succeeding, because dead spawnees trigger new spawnees."
Hardly true. If they get shot down and do no damage, no experience is gained. Modders can make it benefit the enemy by giving the Carrier planes a cost, so enemy AA units get promoted by shooting down the planes. Similarly, if the attack is successful and nothing is killed, no experience is gained. Not only that, the experience in a large-scale attack would be spread over several Carriers, thus reducing the rate of experience dramatically.

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Renegade (renegade) wrote on 2010-02-16:

#7

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You are dodging the question. I did not ask "How is that realistic?", I asked "On what grounds would the carrier get experience for the aircraft's kills?". The only one talking about realism so far is you

Building obvious straw men is not going to help you.

I see your cheap attempts to discard my comparison, and raise you fucking reality: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Improvised_vehicle_armour#Iraq
Improvements to existing military equipment by combat-experienced troops make sense. Magic improvements of an aircraft carrier, just because an independent entity miles away did an action the carrier couldn't even see, do not.

And yes, I am sure the carrier 100% shares the fighter's pain, the fighter's ammo comes straight from the carrier's cargo bay, and the pathfinding comes right from the carrier's control tower, because they're oh-so-symbiotic.
Oh, wait...

As for you weak attempt to conjure up an effect: I'm pretty sure HornetLauncher's Damage stays 1, and its ROF stays 150, no matter how many planes die. Because, as much as you may try to fight it, the carrier is an independent unit, and that is its weapon.
And even if it wasn't - that argument alone underlines my point. Because the fact of the matter is, fighters are independent units, not bullets. There is no fixed "damage per second" based on existing fighters. If I told the carrier to attack a unit on the next cell, I could probably gain a much higher rate of "damage per second" with only 2 fighters than I could with 3 fighters on a target 25 cells away.
Or are you now going to claim that losing a fighter, due to the magic, symbiotic bond between the fighter force and the carrier, suddenly causes a magic reduction of speed to the fighters, relative to the distance to the target and the size of the fighter force?
Did I mention that even with same-distance targets, with all three fighters, the supposed "damage per seconds" can vary greatly, depending on the path to the target, based on such fun questions as whether there are cliffs or cities in the way, or whether the carrier is moving or not?

If you're trying to make up bogus metrics to support your claims, at least do it less obviously.

And yes, it is my damn concern if Ares breaks game logics.

"This is a minor mistake on my end that I realized after posted the issue."
Ah, good to see you realize how silly your request was.

What?
Oh, you mean taking your statements out of context and giving a totally unrelated reply to them distorts their point?
Funny, who would've thought?

And, again, you're skirting the issue. Just as you can argue "but I maded them carriers ultra expensive!!!", I can ask "what if I make all that stuff less expensive?". The important point is not how long it takes, the important point is that it's possible, where it wasn't before.
Oh, and as for your attempt to modify your request on the fly - no dice. If you want all experience from fighter-kills to count for the carriers, then that automatically includes units killed by fighters' death weapons. After all, according to you, fighters are not independent units, but mere fancy bullets, right?

Of course your next point is fun. If you th...

You are dodging the question. I did not ask "How is that realistic?", I asked "On what grounds would the carrier get experience for the aircraft's kills?". The only one talking about realism so far is you

Building obvious straw men is not going to help you.

I see your cheap attempts to discard my comparison, and raise you fucking reality: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Improvised_vehicle_armour#Iraq
Improvements to existing military equipment by combat-experienced troops make sense. Magic improvements of an aircraft carrier, just because an independent entity miles away did an action the carrier couldn't even see, do not.

And yes, I am sure the carrier 100% shares the fighter's pain, the fighter's ammo comes straight from the carrier's cargo bay, and the pathfinding comes right from the carrier's control tower, because they're oh-so-symbiotic.
Oh, wait...

As for you weak attempt to conjure up an effect: I'm pretty sure HornetLauncher's Damage stays 1, and its ROF stays 150, no matter how many planes die. Because, as much as you may try to fight it, the carrier is an independent unit, and that is its weapon.
And even if it wasn't - that argument alone underlines my point. Because the fact of the matter is, fighters are independent units, not bullets. There is no fixed "damage per second" based on existing fighters. If I told the carrier to attack a unit on the next cell, I could probably gain a much higher rate of "damage per second" with only 2 fighters than I could with 3 fighters on a target 25 cells away.
Or are you now going to claim that losing a fighter, due to the magic, symbiotic bond between the fighter force and the carrier, suddenly causes a magic reduction of speed to the fighters, relative to the distance to the target and the size of the fighter force?
Did I mention that even with same-distance targets, with all three fighters, the supposed "damage per seconds" can vary greatly, depending on the path to the target, based on such fun questions as whether there are cliffs or cities in the way, or whether the carrier is moving or not?

If you're trying to make up bogus metrics to support your claims, at least do it less obviously.

And yes, it is my damn concern if Ares breaks game logics.

"This is a minor mistake on my end that I realized after posted the issue."
Ah, good to see you realize how silly your request was.

What?
Oh, you mean taking your statements out of context and giving a totally unrelated reply to them distorts their point?
Funny, who would've thought?

And, again, you're skirting the issue. Just as you can argue "but I maded them carriers ultra expensive!!!", I can ask "what if I make all that stuff less expensive?". The important point is not how long it takes, the important point is that it's possible, where it wasn't before.
Oh, and as for your attempt to modify your request on the fly - no dice. If you want all experience from fighter-kills to count for the carriers, then that automatically includes units killed by fighters' death weapons. After all, according to you, fighters are not independent units, but mere fancy bullets, right?

Of course your next point is fun. If you think that it doesn't matter what the patch coders do, since balance is 100% up to the modder, then I guess you won't have any objections if I go in and re-code things so all Soviet InfantryTypes have nuke warheads on their death weapons by default, will you?
After all, balance is up to the modder! If they don't like it, well, then they'll have to change it!
Come to think of it, I really dislike Sea Scorpions. I guess it doesn't matter if I just disable them and the Soviets have no naval AA, since, after all, balance is up to the modder, right?

Don't start with that bullshit. Just because modders could potentially fix any way in which we tip the balance, does not automatically mean that we should go around and fuck with the balance how ever we please, relying on the modders to fix it afterwards.
We are not VK, and we are not Westwood.

Aaaaaaand you either utterly failed to comprehend my last point, or you intentionally tried to distort it because you couldn't find a way to counter it. Given your track record (immediate straw men, out of context, mis-replied quotations), I'm inclined to believe the latter.
But just in case your skull really is too thick for it to get through, here's it again in simple terms:
- You has 1 fighter plane. It has guns.
- Fighter plane has 1 pilot. He has skill levels.
- You has 1 aircraft carrier. 
- Your carrier has flight deck crew. It has skill levels.
- Fighter plane starts. This is action flight deck crew does stuff in, so it gains experience.
- Fighter plane shoots thing. This is action pilot does stuff in, so he gains experience.
- Fighter plane lands. This is action flight deck crew does stuff in, so it gains experience.
Now if fighter gets shot down, the following happen:
- Fighter plane starts. This is action flight deck crew does stuff in, so it gains experience.
- Fighter gets shot down. Pilot dies. Only experience pilot gains is how ass flying through skull feels.
- Fighter plane starts. This is action flight deck crew does stuff in, so it gains experience.
- Fighter gets shot down. Pilot dies. 
- Fighter plane starts. This is action flight deck crew does stuff in, so it gains experience.
- Fighter gets shot down. Pilot dies. 
- Fighter plane starts. This is action flight deck crew does stuff in, so it gains experience.

...need I repeat this forever, or do you grasp what I'm saying? If one argues that the carrier is not a static object, but that there are people doing stuff on it as well, then their experience has to be evaluated based on what they do.
Since it's the carrier's "job" to start and land planes, it would logically gain more experience the more planes it starts and lands, just as the fighter, whose job it is to fight things, gets more experienced the more it fights things.
As such, logically, the carrier would actually gain more experience from the fighters dying rather than succeeding, because it'd mean it'd have to execute more starts (to replace the shot-down planes), which are repetitions of the activities that generate experience for it.

The carrier has no active part in the fighters shooting stuff.
The carrier's active parts are 1. Picking a target. 2. Starting planes. 3. Letting them land.
So if you want to argue on basis of the fact that the fighter planes/pilots are not the only ones involved in a carrier-based attacks, and that the carrier should logically gain experience from carrier-based attacks, then you have to face the fact that the carrier's involvement in the whole thing is entirely and completely independent from the fighter's success or even what it does, apart from starting and landing.

So, if you want to reply, how about you start by actually answering the question I asked, rather than building yet another straw man and skirting the issue:

On what grounds would the carrier get experience for the aircraft's kills?

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Teleros (teleros) wrote on 2010-02-16:

#8

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@Renegade
"...I already addressed your first paragraph in my original post, with that exact argumentation. What kind of veterancy would it gain? Elite plane refuelers?

The fact that an Aircraft Carrier has the quickest refueling in the fleet doesn't extend the Carrier's spotting range, nor does it improve its armor."
Obviously the precise bonuses you apply to the unit can vary, my point was that at least some of the people on a Carrier would be expected to gain experience. How about faster firing / refueling / replacement of fighters?

"And while your Predator example makes a tad more sense, you then run straight into the limitations of the engine - it's not each individual pilot that's gaining experience, it's the truck as a whole. Which, in turn, brings us back to the original question: Why should the truck driver see further, or the truck get better armor, just because a dude in the trailer rocks at remote-controlling a robot plane?"
Why should a Grizzly Tank crew see further, or drive faster, just because the gunner's been blowing stuff up? A higher ROF, better armour or new shells (ie, weapon) I could understand. Point is, the same argument applies to a lot of the veterancy bonuses in RA2, but yes, it is a game.

"In fact, your very own suggestions violate your own examples: If you take the flight deck crew or the remote controllers as the basis for Carrier veterancy, why would new pilots/fighters be spawned with the same experience level? It's not the pilot that was in 10 combat situations, it was the Chief Refuelist. Oh, sorry - Elite Chief Refuelist.

And the extra fighter leads right back to my original question: Why would the fact that your Carrier crew has 1000+ hours experience in refueling Harriers magically extend the Carrier's hangar?"
Evidently there are plenty of efficiencies to be made in how the fighters are launched :P . Or the Carrier is a RA3 UAV-launching one (with regards to the spawning of elite fighters).

"Different fighters when elite is the one thing that even remotely makes sense, but you end up in weird situation regarding veterancy transfer - if you do argue that the Carrier gains elite status due to its insane experience refueling airplanes, then you must, in turn, accept that the new pilots would not have that experience, since they only just arrived. As such, you'd have an elite aircraft carrier sending normal fighters."
That's fine, I was throwing out ideas for bonuses this might give (and drawing attention to the fact that this probably wouldn't be as simple as just letting the Carrier gain in veterancy levels).

*Snip*
"Way to fuck balance in the ass."
Given that Ares is being dveloped to help people mod the game in the first place, that these changes would be optional (ie, even if the Carrier always gains veterancy, just don't give it an ElitePrimary or w/e), so what?
If you wanted to avoid screwing up the balance though, perhaps link the Carrier's veterancy to the damage done by its fighters (kinda like how V3 or Dreadnought missiles promote the spawning unit, although yes I know they're not comparable otherwise).

"Hell, in fact, if you think about it, even the whole flight deck ...

@Renegade
"...I already addressed your first paragraph in my original post, with that exact argumentation. What kind of veterancy would it gain? Elite plane refuelers?

The fact that an Aircraft Carrier has the quickest refueling in the fleet doesn't extend the Carrier's spotting range, nor does it improve its armor."
Obviously the precise bonuses you apply to the unit can vary, my point was that at least some of the people on a Carrier would be expected to gain experience. How about faster firing / refueling / replacement of fighters?

"And while your Predator example makes a tad more sense, you then run straight into the limitations of the engine - it's not each individual pilot that's gaining experience, it's the truck as a whole. Which, in turn, brings us back to the original question: Why should the truck driver see further, or the truck get better armor, just because a dude in the trailer rocks at remote-controlling a robot plane?"
Why should a Grizzly Tank crew see further, or drive faster, just because the gunner's been blowing stuff up? A higher ROF, better armour or new shells (ie, weapon) I could understand. Point is, the same argument applies to a lot of the veterancy bonuses in RA2, but yes, it is a game.

"In fact, your very own suggestions violate your own examples: If you take the flight deck crew or the remote controllers as the basis for Carrier veterancy, why would new pilots/fighters be spawned with the same experience level? It's not the pilot that was in 10 combat situations, it was the Chief Refuelist. Oh, sorry - Elite Chief Refuelist.

And the extra fighter leads right back to my original question: Why would the fact that your Carrier crew has 1000+ hours experience in refueling Harriers magically extend the Carrier's hangar?"
Evidently there are plenty of efficiencies to be made in how the fighters are launched :P . Or the Carrier is a RA3 UAV-launching one (with regards to the spawning of elite fighters).

"Different fighters when elite is the one thing that even remotely makes sense, but you end up in weird situation regarding veterancy transfer - if you do argue that the Carrier gains elite status due to its insane experience refueling airplanes, then you must, in turn, accept that the new pilots would not have that experience, since they only just arrived. As such, you'd have an elite aircraft carrier sending normal fighters."
That's fine, I was throwing out ideas for bonuses this might give (and drawing attention to the fact that this probably wouldn't be as simple as just letting the Carrier gain in veterancy levels).

*Snip*
"Way to fuck balance in the ass."
Given that Ares is being dveloped to help people mod the game in the first place, that these changes would be optional (ie, even if the Carrier always gains veterancy, just don't give it an ElitePrimary or w/e), so what?
If you wanted to avoid screwing up the balance though, perhaps link the Carrier's veterancy to the damage done by its fighters (kinda like how V3 or Dreadnought missiles promote the spawning unit, although yes I know they're not comparable otherwise).

"Hell, in fact, if you think about it, even the whole flight deck crew example is utter bullshit: If the flight deck crew gained experience from what happened to it, then the flight deck crew wouldn't gain experience from some random pilot shooting a target the flight deck crew can't see, it'd gain experience from every start and landing they do - in other words, the flight deck crew would actually gain more experience from the fighters dying than from them succeeding, because dead spawnees trigger new spawnees."
Because returning fighters never talk to the flight deck crew either. Oh wait :P .

@EVA-251
"I don't mean to be rude but this isn't your concern. This is a player tactic that can be regulated by existing tags, and as such, is a concern more for the modder using such a feature. For example, the Aircraft Carriers of my mod cost 6000 and VeterancyRatio is 4. Destroying 24000 worth of units just to get one level of veterancy isn't exactly an easy task when you figure in resistance.
He meant "spam fighters even if they don't kill anything". However, an easy fix (easier than my suggestion above about linking Carrier veterancy to damage done) would be a very long replacement time for lost fighters. Sure you can spam 'em, but it'll take an age to level up if you're losing fighters all the time.

@Renegade
"You are dodging the question. I did not ask "How is that realistic?", I asked "On what grounds would the carrier get experience for the aircraft's kills?".
Does it honestly matter? Yes, we're using the Aircraft Carrier as an example here because it's a well-known one from regular RA2. Not all spawner units will be like it, and assuming this logic is implemented, it's up to the modder as to whether or not to use this veterancy system for their spawning units.

"Magic improvements of an aircraft carrier, just because an independent entity miles away did an action the carrier couldn't even see, do not."
Who needs line of sight when you've got wireless radio, after-action reports, ready room chats, briefings etc. For example though, let's just say you have an ElitePrimary weapon with +10 range compared to the normal version, and that's your only veterancy bonus to the Carrier. Sure, you could argue that the fighters could've flown that far on day one, but it also takes an experienced and confident commander to authorise his fighters to risk running on fumes like that, and only his fighters successful past attacks (here I'm using my idea for Carrier veterancy being linked to damage done, to stop wasteful spam) would give him the confidence to do so, whatever is superiors might like.

"And yes, it is my damn concern if Ares breaks game logics."
Perhaps because of the Aircraft Carrier example, you're thinking too much about the logic from a basic RA2 point of view, when Ares is supposed to be helping modders. Let's shut up about Aircraft Carriers for a moment and talk about Warhammer 40,000 Tyranids, because I want something like them in my sci-fi mod. Rather than use artillery, my Generic Hive Mind Bio-Monsters use large organisms that grow small flying creatures inside that lob acid at the enemy, and which are controlled by an extension of the overall hive mind in the large organism. As it sees its flying minions succeed (or indeed, fail miserably, even) against the Generic Psychotic Robots' anti-air lasers, the large organism begins to undergo mutations so as to optimise itself for the task in hand. It may even grow additional armour plates so it can launch from closer to the enemy's position, or survive attacks from enemy raiders.
Suddenly, the spawned units are in a symbiotic relationship with their spawner. And whilst the example is extremely silly, it does I hope make the point.

"Of course your next point is fun. If you think that it doesn't matter what the patch coders do, since balance is 100% up to the modder, then I guess you won't have any objections if I go in and re-code things so all Soviet InfantryTypes have nuke warheads on their death weapons by default, will you?"
Don't be silly.
1. How the Carrier gains veterancy will affect this a lot, if it's only from kills by the fighters then it will be less noticeable in regular RA2 games than if it can just spam fighters regardless and gain levels.
2. As I understand it, the existing rulesmd.ini will have to undergo lots of changes to make it Ares-compatible. There are two easy options here you can do to preserve the Carrier as it exists currently:
2a. Trainable=no
2b i. VeteranAbilities= ;STRONGER,FIREPOWER,ROF,SIGHT,FASTER
2b ii. EliteAbilities= ;SELF_HEAL,STRONGER,FIREPOWER,ROF
Both of those two lines are the only benefits a Carrier gets from veterancy levels at present (including, I might add, running over a water crate). Is tacking "Trainable=no" to the end of the Carrier's code really so hard to accomplish? True, it will deny a player those upgrades listed under (2b), but how many players DO send a carrier chasing around after naval crates to level up anyway?
3. How is this going to be coded anyway? Couldn't an "Allow.Combat.Veterancy=yes/no" tag be used to enable this logic in the first place? Or indeed, if you decide to code it as enabled by default, then "Disable.Combat.Veterancy=yes/no" ?

Now, can we all calm down and approach this from a more sensible perspective? Regardless of what you, EVA-251 or I think of gameplay logic Renegade, the real question should be whether or not this will get used much, and thus what sort of priority it should have. Any thoughts from the other reporters & testers here?

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DCoder DCoder (dcoder1337) wrote on 2010-02-16:

#9

I'd like that change, but I can see some people being against it. So I think I'll have to make this behaviour optional.
Unless someone has a good reason not to implement this, I'll just make

[carrier]
Spawn.ExperienceFromSpawns=int ; defaults to 0, sets how much experience (0 - none, 100 - all) from the spawns' kills is carried over to the owner
Spawn.ExperienceToSpawns=int ; defaults to 0, sets how much experience from spawner gets carried over to the spawns in addition to their own xp

and call it a day.

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EVA-251 (eva-251) wrote on 2010-02-16:

#10

That would work perfectly, DCoder.

@Renegade-
Out of curiosity, you mention "magic" and "symbiotic" relationships a good deal. Where exactly do you get this from?

But leaving that aside, I don't really want to get into an argument because I see it becoming uncivil very fast and very easily. This is just a suggestion that I felt could be helpful to others and myself and nothing more. It was an excellent feature in Red Alert 3 that helped balance it with the other capital ships and I figured it could be useful for some in their RA2 modding endeavors.

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Renegade (renegade) wrote on 2010-02-16:

#11

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"[...] How about faster firing / refueling / replacement of fighters?"
...that would make sense in context, but, afaik, not be controllable through veterancy.

"Why should a Grizzly Tank crew see further, or drive faster, just because the gunner's been blowing stuff up?"
Because with increasing experience, all of them become more used to combat terrain, and thus capable of identifying things early. How often do you need to say "a strange shape moving with 30 km/h", and then meet an enemy tank 10 minutes later, until you make the connection and just identify that thing as a faraway enemy tank?
And drive faster is connected to that - if the driver is experienced in the terrain, has seen all the potential pitfalls and knows how to avoid them, naturally he'll be more confident to put the pedal to the metal.

The same is not true for, say, a Predator control truck - just because the pilot in the back may have seen the entire area from above doesn't mean the truck driver has even been in the area before.

"Evidently there are plenty of efficiencies to be made in how the fighters are launched :P"
Yes. But how many of those are created by shooting enemy targets miles away?
"This is Echo-3, report enemy barracks destroyed." "Yay, thanks to that experience, we can now refuel planes faster!"
It doesn't make sense.

Your post-snip-paragraph is pretty much what we've been talking about the entire time, so...yeah. My answer shall be everything I said in this thread so far.

"Because returning fighters never talk to the flight deck crew either. Oh wait :P ."
Because the returning fighters' tales of destruction make the flight deck crew so much more efficient.
Oh, wait...

"Does it honestly matter?"
Yes, it does matter - if he uses the Carrier as an example of how, and I quote, "[t]his should be changed", then it does matter if his suggestion even makes sense for the Carrier or not.
Had he wanted to argue on basis of a tentacled symbiote-monster from space, he could have done so. He didn't. Instead, he insisted this change should be done to "improve" the Carrier.
It's his choice of example, not mine. It's not my fault it's a crappy example.

"Who needs line of sight when you've got wireless radio, after-action reports, ready room chats, briefings etc. [...]"
Your example is well-crafted, but...contrived, to say the least.
There's a whole bunch of things that don't make sense, but a simple example in the same realism-sphere shows how little sense it makes: I can happily get my Carrier promoted by doing 1-3 cell attacks.
If the entire combat experience of the commander was in short-range attacks that leave the fuel tanks 90% filled, why exactly would having done many of them encourage him to allow them to do a mission that runs them down to 5%?
...and why exactly would this experience be coupled to destruction?
Logically, if his fear was just if they could come back or not, any long-range flights, combat or not, should strengthen his confidence.

"Perhaps because of the Aircraft Carrier example, you're thinking too much about the logic from a basic RA2 point of view, when Ares is supposed to be helping modders."
For one, fallac...