Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Aces High General Discussion => Topic started by: bustr on July 02, 2017, 02:27:35 PM
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lunatic1,
There are 3 static bridges available in the objects list for the terrain editor. All three are stone arch type, two are in these screen shots. The third is like the center section except it is flat topped. That width of water is the smallest I can create.
I don't know what the requirements for using them in a Melee arena terrain are. I can set those objects to a structure type which means a near by field will have to own it. It will take .31 of 1000lb bomb to destroy it and it will be down for 45 minutes. The only thing I can think of doing with them is create a moat around the tank furball area on my new terrain and set two of these for each country. 45 minutes is a long time if the moat keeps players from getting 6000yds away to tower with kills or to escape with damage. Oh, and AP tank rounds will not destroy an object set as structure. We both know the first thing that will happen is these will be taken out just because and to greif people if I setup a moat. Trapping or denying access are the only purpose for using bridges. You start getting into the slippery slope area of a single finger salute dictates the fun of a whole group of people and they simply log off and tell Hitech they didn't pay him $15 to get screwed.
I will need guidance from Hitech on if he even wants these used on a Melee arena terrain. Maybe partial moats requiring a long drive around....who knows, I need input from Hitech before I screw with customer's fun.
(https://s20.postimg.org/d5o5rozv1/oceania117.jpg)
(https://s20.postimg.org/8v9hw3urx/oceania118.jpg)
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Using bridges in the main arena is fine. But they should be set to not destroyable.
HiTech
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HiTech has spoken, and I shall not ask for them again.
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Having the bridges none destructable, leaves some playing around. It still lends itself to a choke point for camping. If I make it fair, everyone drives around it and avoids going there. If I make it so you are forced to use it, people won't play. I can get a much narrower strip of water, about the width of the center section. This is a choke point type, a 500ft ravine. It is the narrowest ravine I can make, and above 500ft deep, the span gets wider and the bridges don't have long enough pilings to reach down. You see how I had raise the land just to get these three to span. The width of the ravine across the top is the limitation of the polygon mesh. If I try to make the ravine narrower across the top, it just auto fills raising up from the bottom. That's how I raised the area under the center section up high enough so the piers bedded into the ground.
I can probably do variations on this around the central tank town area since it's in a caldera only 700 feet above sea level. Make some kind of a pressure crack network that surrounds the central area. I want to revamp the center of the caldera using standard factory building objects instead of all that farmland with only huts now and again on it. I can already see a crack network radiating from the 7,000ft walls runoff canyons. Bottom some parts with water and others just that "V" notch with a bridge.
It's actually harder to make a combat area for tanks than it is for aircraft. Setting up airfields, ports and vBases are simple from an aircraft point of view. You need some place to take off from and land at while you follow the rules for distances between bases. Then the pilots go break everything or shoot other guys down. As the terrain builder you make sure the airfields are close enough to not bore your audience to death getting to the fight, the pilots will entertain themselves. GV's you have to consider how you are setting up those bases at the ground level so you keep the GVer engaged and not feeling like he's been turned into an easy target, or handing him the base without his working for it.
Bottom of the "V" notch ravine is 1ft above sea level. Testing this is going to be time consuming after I crack up the caldera plain and add bridges. All that strange stuff that might happen. Strange behavior just touching a bridge, I hope doesn't happen. Then simply getting there and thinking, this sucks big time what was I thinking..... :O
It's like when you have to visit every single field and up an airplane and a tank. Spawn every single spawn and drive to the town or base. And I also have to say hello to trees on purpose to balance their effect on tank drivers who need to bushwhack with open venues for running fast down them to the target. I learned from my first terrain that you find a tile pattern that works for GVs then duplicate it at every base. That's why on my first terrain spawning in has a very low incidence of landing in tree clumps or getting stuck in them. I spent a month laying down ideas and rejecting them after driving through them.
(https://s20.postimg.org/d881ej3il/oceania120.jpg)
Center island with a tank town.
(https://s20.postimg.org/hfuib0bkd/oceania111.jpg)
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Let's just talk about that bridge when we get to it....
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Already there, those screen captures are the proof the testing. Most of the work will be the crack system and visiting every square foot to touch it up and make sure vehicles can only pass by using the bridges.
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Crack system :rofl I would tell you that you need a break! Or that Crack is wack, but I can read tired! Creek system,yes :aok Keep up the good work SIR! The last terrain is a winner and much appreciated :rock
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Btw. I like the idea of bridges as choke points.
The reason I do not with them destructible, it it then makes it all to easy to stop an attack simply by blowing up the bridge. VS a point to fight over.
HiTech
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There was some experimenting with destroyable bridges in AvA a couple years back as I recall. I think it'd be a great addition to gameplay to keep. Perhaps have a bridge house that can be captured by 3 troops (a jeep) which will repair the bridge back to 100%.
So the object can be destroyed, repaired, and fought over...
Probably take too much to put in, but I think it'd be neat. :cheers:
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I have some ideas now to slow down sneaky GV's, and how to use the cracks to funnel lost GV's into the center tank combat pit if they decide to go down into the crack.
1\8 mile diameter brush, set elevation to -10ft, V notch crack with water sliver in the bottom to force a GVer to end sortie when he decides to drive in that part of the crack. Another thing I have to test with a derned GV....I don't like GVs by the way. I just want to keep GVers in the game, and testing terrain features for GV usability takes alot of time. It's blinking amazing what looks good and I think ingenious for GVs inside of the terrain editor, once I drive across it I have to kill hours of work and start over. And then Hitech may ask for changes during his inspection period to accept it into the Melee arena..... :furious
1. - The bridges work.
2. - I can make ravines for them with or without water in the bottom.
3. - I can make choke points for GVs without needing the bridge blown up.
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We have bridges in the AvA. The only issue I have with them is a sorting issue at the shoreline that makes that end of the bridge vanish while you try to drive off the bridge, or look at it from some overhead angles.
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Something I threw together, the cracks still need bridges and the ground needs some trees to give cover for GVs from long range shots. And I still have to put down an airfield, lay down GV spawns into the center and drive this monstrosity to see if it is even feasible. Hitech told me I can make my own tile object with factory buildings, I think I made the Waffle tank town object work here.
(https://s20.postimg.org/g4u6zlnyl/oceania123.jpg)
(https://s20.postimg.org/6bczmslu5/oceania124.jpg)
(https://s20.postimg.org/l61l0yvf1/oceania125.jpg)
(https://s20.postimg.org/ahxu24lfx/oceania126.jpg)
(https://s20.postimg.org/9d3rwqyz1/oceania127.jpg)
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The reason I do not with them destructible, it it then makes it all to easy to stop an attack simply by blowing up the bridge. VS a point to fight over.
HiTech
care to try that again?
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Could you have a map where some bridges are destoyable (one type) and others are not (another type)?
If so, you could have multiple bridges that cross a river to the town or field, with only 1 bridge that is indestructible. That way bombing bridges doesn't prevent movement, but does allow for creating an interesting choke point or two for the attacker or defender to focus on.
I love the idea of creating chokepoints for GVs, especially in approaches to towns and fields. This would create more realistic lines of communication to fight over, instead of the "run and hide in the forest" GV movement.
A good map design incorporating one or two fairly placed "only way into town" (indestructible bridges) at some fields could create interesting combats affecting both the attacker's tanks and M3s AND the defender's re-supplying M3s or GVs alike.
Just an idea...
<S>
KP
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As long as I can place 3 or 4 even 5 sections of bridge object end to end, I can make this work. The only way I can make bridge choke points is to make the tank town object an island and put water in the bottom of all the cracks to funnel GV's to them. I know everyone will sit on the rim and shoot across the tank town object to stay safe. I'll have to play with the spawns including one from each country from the next country island over. The ring is a 2 mile radius, helps to enable it when doing things like this.
(https://s20.postimg.org/73oudh4st/oceania129.jpg)
I got caught up in this today thinking it would be easy, I still have to do finishing work on all the cracks to get rid of the jaggies as much as possible and round over the top sharp edges to look organic. That big one at the bottom of the picture is the first and you can see the limitations of the polygon mesh. I will probably leave the final tree, farm land and clutter painting until I get a base laid down and some spawns so I can spawn out offline and drive around on the ground. Until you actually drive around on the ground over any idea you come up with for GV combat, all ideas are probably garbage with the best of intentions. The terrain editor work space just laughs at them.
I still have all these islands to build mountains on.
(https://s20.postimg.org/c3malfafh/oceania130.jpg)
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The reason I do not with them destructible, it it then makes it all to easy to stop an attack simply by blowing up the bridge. VS a point to fight over.
Seen "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" too much, this one has.
- oldman
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I don't see anyone else even trying, and you are seeing the limitations of the terrain editor by my posting screen shots from up close inside of the work space.
That's why I keep telling you guys to build your version of a good terrain. No terrain has 100% about it that makes 100% of the players happy. 98% won't do anything but tell you they don't like it in as many variations on a theme. Once I test this on the ground with a vehicle, I could decide to stamp it flat and start over again. But, that would be me starting over again with my own different idea. Imagine if I actually tried everyone's opinion of good, I'd never get something finished for all the testing on the ground and stamping it flat for the next opinion of what is good. But hey, at least I'm doing something, which makes it quicker for me because of this experience to scrub what doesn't work and throw up something else to test.
Building a terrain by committee is like 4 blind men feeling up an elephant, then describing it to the poor schmuck they hired to sculpt a statue of it for them.
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Using bridges in the main arena is fine. But they should be set to not destroyable.
HiTech
Booooo........ Why hiTech whyyyyy? sorry been drinking i read more... i see your point. I dont quite agree with it but its your choice none the less.
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I couldn't make the bridges work convincingly and stylistically with ground elevations that didn't have gentle slopes. This is the 4th or 5th time I've blown out the center of the furball\tankball island to restart. No one just slaps it together with a terrain and calls it good. All the player I've talked to who have built or build terrains go through the same process of building something then erasing it and starting over many times to make it work. Hitech says he like bridges that focus combat at a choke point, so I'll follow his suggestion. His observations on my last terrain helped make the terrain better than I settled for.
I stamped down a 10 mile diameter circle to 25ft. The caldera walls are 7,000ft while those cut faces at the perimeter of the 10 mile circle are 1800-2000ft tall. Each airfeild area has been stamped down to 500ft to reduce the long slope to the 25ft basin. I may just leave those 1800-2000ft walls as is and stylize as cliffs. I've seen rock formations like that in real life. The run off from the airfield I'll blend down from 500ft into 25ft in a smooth transition.
With the ground level around the TT object now at 25 ft, I should be able to create a better looking water system to place bridges over. Building a terrain is a super tanker full of surprises and failed assumptions load of work. Ideas at 25,000ft over the work space that look great very often suck at ground level for reason like it looks like crap, the polygon mesh doesn't want to let you have it, and the one that always trips you up. You misjudged the scale by a magnitude of 100. This is why I'll use part of the terrain I haven't touched yet and test a terrain feature to see if it fits my assumption. Like those bridges.... :O
Here is the blown out center of the island, and once again I have to sculpt in my assumptions about how it will work.
(https://s20.postimg.org/cv0nva5fx/oceania132.jpg)
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This is good enough to leave it for testing and finishing work after I get bases laid in and GV spawns on the terrain. Had a thought that those water ways would work out for LVT and PT. That has to wait until I can test the bridges and see if the opening between the piers will allow those craft to pass through.
(https://s20.postimg.org/vpwelp5hp/oceania133.jpg)
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More testing on the bridges and PT and LVT4. Looks like I can put a PT spawn from each field. And I don't have to do compound bridge segments which will shorten up the time GV will be exposed on the bridges.
(https://s20.postimg.org/abeoc1dl9/oceania135.jpg)
(https://s20.postimg.org/uu9kh3ril/oceania136.jpg)
(https://s20.postimg.org/b27ehtfyl/oceania137.jpg)
(https://s20.postimg.org/g9nfp5q8d/oceania138.jpg)
(https://s20.postimg.org/wyovl2mtp/oceania139.jpg)
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If and when they bring back the Fester Map it would be nice to throw a few of these bridges in..........lots of rivers on that map
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when I was asking for destroyable bridges I did not put enough thought into it, or be more specific, the town has 3 bridges-1 or 2 can be blown up for a 10 or 15 minute down time, that's all.
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To late, the cows got out and are in town mooing the pub.