Questions regarding Armor Class

[vman456]

Hey guys, just a few things I'm wondering.

I'm a warhammer 40k table top fan and I am eager to make this game somewhat similar to the mechanics of that.

The first thing that popped in my mind was the armor saves. I know in this game vehicles have a chance to deflect incoming projectiles (AT shells), but I was wondering if you guys that use the community mod tools could tell me if infantry have armor class too or are they just limited to hit points?

If not, would I have to classify infantry units as vehicles so I could give them an armor save (is it possible to change infantry classification to vehicle?) ?

Obviously I need this feature for future modding purposes, not necessarily for the standard ww2 setting the game is set in.

I want there to be 3 factors when it comes to damaging/killing a unit.
1) Hitting - If your units hit the target
2) Armor Penetration - If your hit penetrated the enemy armor
3) Wounding - If the hit actually wounded the target and not just scratch his lag or whatever.

This is basically how it is in warhammer 40k.
Thanks for all responses!

[Mr. Bildo]

I think this thread (http://forums.relicnews.com/showthread.php?t=113305) is similiar to what you're asking...

--Mr. Bildo

[vman456]

No, not really. As far as I can tell from that thread, it's about what weapons can penetrate what armor. My post is about the following:

Let's assume the rolls are done on a d6
Boltgun has a penetration of 2 so let's say the enemy had an armor save of 3+ he would now need a 5+ on a d6 to deflect or absorb the hit, thus, dealing no damage.

And not:
bazooka can penetrate halftrack but not stug or whatever. I need a roll to determine whether the shot penetrates or not.

edit:

Rifles have penetration values of 1, 1, 1, 1, but I don't see them hurting Tigers... lol not even half tracks.

Okay, maybe I was wrong and it is a similar thread. But I may be misreading it. I saw that thread earlier but didn't read down far enough to see that.

So as far as I can tell, there's a penetration modifier for each weapon vs. each unit class? That's pretty good, but is there a way to actually increase the armor of one unit? So like, rangers have more armor than riflemen?

[Mr. Bildo]

...is there a way to actually increase the armor of one unit? So like, rangers have more armor than riflemen?

Eh.. sort of.

All units have a max hitpoints value. There isn't a separate property for armor.

In fact, if you look at how the allies m8 greyhound armor skirts upgrade works, all it does is increase the unit's max hitpoints.

Alternatively, you can adjust a weapons affect on a unit, simulating armor.

A wild idea that I might play with at some point would be to have a slot item for armor (think body armor). Through script, a certain number of hitpoints could be absorbed by the item, perhaps also reducing penetration. After the armor is "used up" it would go away as a slot item. I think that's totally possible.

--Mr. Bildo

[vman456]

hmm, so there's no way to actually create an "armor class"?

I thought that some vehicles had better armor than others, so wouldn't it be possible to classify infantry as vehicle units? In Warcraft 3, the editor allowed you to change a unit's classification but still keep its essential properties. e.g from vehicle to infantry.

[camo1018]

Reminds me of D&D series :).

Anyways, I don't think making an armor class for infantry is possible, in fact, I haven't seen any parameters that determines the deflection of an AT shell on a vehicle.

[shiremct]

I have a feeling what you are looking for resides in the critical tables, which are not interpretable right now in the current version of corsix'x editor. However, some of the things you want to do may be able to be done with the weapon_target tables, but I can't really think of how you could incorporate a die roll into that.

Example, you could take a rifleman entity and change its type_ext\type_target_weapon\ ____ fromt tp_infantry to tp_my_unit. Now you can adjust how accurate, damaging, and how much penetration is applyed to this unit frome each weapon. However, it doesnt do much good to alter a weapon's penetration to a certain unit if you cant mess with that units "armor" value, which exists somewhere, and i suspect it is in the criticals tables. You could still use this to alter a weapon's damage and accuracy towards any other unit individually however.

Edit:
Maybe I lied... i just checked some of the small arms, and the values do infact work out that there may NOT be any sort of armor at all, only alterations based on weapon_target tables to penetration. I'm still wondering where to look for what and how likely an entity can deflect various oncoming projectiles... but that could be as simple as a value that sets a percent of penetrating shots and the game only allowing weapons that use an actual projectile to be deflected.

[vman456]

Aww, I was getting excited after reading the first bit and then I nearly had a heart attack when I read the edit portion. :(

Thanks for all the information guys, but does anyone know if it's possible to mod in such a thing? I think it's a really important factor for certain mods. For example, a warhammer 40k mod :P, you can't expect all weapons to always penetrate a space marine's power armour XD

[shiremct]

You can still make a small-arm weapon not always penetrate the SM armor, just follow a similar strategy of setting up a new target_weapon type for them and altering the penetration value. Rather than drop it to 1*.001 like many small arms are to tanks, you could take it to something like 1*0.75 or something similar. You can still make them have some resistant value to small-arms, I just don't know how you would incorporate a die roll.

[vman456]

Just to clear it up, I haven't downloaded the community tools, I plan on waiting for the official set, no offense to corsix or any of you folk it really is fantastic that you're all modding straight away. I just don't want to have to learn one thing then switch to another.

Shiremct, I don't necessarily mean to incorporate a die roll, that was just an example. Besides, die rolls are just a different form to measure percentages, correct? Now when you saidI can make it resistant to small arms with the 1*.001, is that as a percentage to determine whether the hit is deflected/ignored or a reduction in damage? I want to make it so weapons don't ALWAYS penetrate armor but they have a chance to do so and when they do they score normal damage that their weapon has.

If anyone has played 40k table top they'd know what I'm getting at.

A clearer example:

-the following assumes that the weapon has landed a hit-
An ork has a 33% chance (represented as 0.33333~) to penetrate the space marines armor with his current weapon. If the space marine manages his armor save, damage is ignored and combat resumes as normal. If the space marine fails his armor save, he suffers damage.
And I want it possible so that different weapons have different armor penetration values. So let's say there's another ork and he has a bigger and badder weapon that can penetrate the marine's armor at 50% (represented as 0.5). And the same steps are followed as above.

What I don't want is:
Ork with slugga shoots space marine causing 3 (initial weapon damage) - 1 (space marine armor deduction) damage. This is the traditional form of role armor plays in most RTS games, such as starcraft. I want to escape from that and make it more realistic as the example noted above.

Thanks for all the responses so far guys.

edit:
If it is impossible to do in the current state, does the SCAR coding allow the use of variables (like in Warcraft 3) so that I could manually do this? It would be a tedious project to do it for every unit and weapon but if I must, I'll do it.

[shiremct]

To the best of my knowledge, you can indeed do exactly what you are wanting to. Unfortunetly, I think (again, to the best of my knowledge) that you will have to do it in the manner of altering every weapon for every enemy type.

This isnt nearly as bad in a TC type mod where you are making new weapons anyway, but its still a pain.

Edit:
In addition, you can make some weapons do their damage value or none at all (deflection) and make other weapons do a reduced amount of damage when deflected (a damage*% sort of thing)

[vman456]

Beautiful. That's more than I can ask for. I have enough spare time so that isn't an issue. I will gladly modify every weapon for every enemy if I must.

[vman456]

Alright instead of creating a new thread I'll just bring this one back for a bit.

So I decided to download the community tools this morning and it's pretty interesting, there's a lot more to the game than I had originally thought. Such as min. and max. reload time, this is really, really cool in my eyes. And there's a property to determine for how long a unit stays on fire? Awesome stuff.

Now in relevance to my mod, I need to create more "unit types".
As far as I can tell, I've only seen a few "infantry" classes.

Taking a look in weapon\allies\small arms\rifle\carbine.rgd (just an example)
Then looking at the target_table section I found the following that would classify as infantry:
tp_infantry
tp_infantry_airborne
tp_infantry_airborne_inflight
tp_infantry_heroic

etc.

Now my question is, can I create my own infantry unit type to associate certain units with? I ask this because in regarding this topic, I plan on making several different types of infantry units with different armor modifiers, and as far as I can tell; in this game all weapons penetrate infantry 100% of the time (because they have no armour, understandable for this setting, obviously).

So what I would need to do is create for example:
tp_infantry_armourclass_0
tp_infantry_armourclass_1
tp_infantry_armourclass_2

I can replace the existing ones with those, I know, but in case I run out I will need to create more.

Is this possible and how do I go about doing it? Thanks for the help!

And bilbo if you do read this, it's a damn shame your work was stolen, mocked, and not credited by someone with an IQ equal to that of a rubber ball (I've got one on my desk, popped in my mind...)

edit:
I think I figured out a way to do this. Just "add child" in the target_table and import the necessary values from the other tables and modify it to my liking, correct? Then I just go to the infantry.rgd and set their unit class to match the one I just created?

Am I right?

[shiremct]

Uh, i have no idea what you are talking about in your edit portion, but I just got off work and havent slept in more than 24 hours, so that doesnt count for much :/

With respect to your question, I do not know for certain, as I have yet to experiment in this direction. I had HOPED you could simply go to the type_target_weapon branch and add a new tp_such&such_unit.rgd file, then specifiy that type in the ebps\races\*race*\*unit*\type_ext\type_target_weapon\ _____<--Insert here. Then, add this new weapon_target entry to your new weapons. I would be happy to test it out for you if I were not so hungry and tired.

If you can, try it out and let me know,as I have been wanting to experiment with how easily it is to add various new types in several places within the games structure. If you don't get the chance to test it out or run into problems, i will try to do some brainstorming/testing tommorow after work.

[vman456]

With respect to your question, I do not know for certain, as I have yet to experiment in this direction. I had HOPED you could simply go to the type_target_weapon branch and add a new tp_such&such_unit.rgd file
That's basically what I was trying to say, I'm a little tired too XD

I would experiment with it but I'm about to sleep soon and my mod would not be easy to test it in a normal skirmish game against a CPU. I would need specific units to be made, or when the map editor is released I could hopefully just create custom maps with these units already spawned and nothing else.

For now I am only using the community tools to familiarize myself with the properties, tables, and etc. I am not going to be doing any actual modding until the official tools are released.

If you do test it, please post your findings. And thanks for all the help shiremct, I really appreciate it.