rationalize soft counters, etc

[Victimizer]

Description:

One of the things about RTS games that has persisted despite its obvious unrealism is soft counters, and in cnc it goes as far as every unit damaging another at least a little, no matter how heavily armored the target is. So, this means that even quad guns destroy overlord tanks.

Of course, in reality, vehicles do not have hit points as such: a tank is critically damaged when its armor is pierced and the crew is killed or vital equipment like the engine is destroyed. This may happen on the first shot, or the twentieth. A heavy machine gun round like the one fired by a quad cannon usually penetrate armors worn by vehicles like humvees or even apcs like m113 Gavin. But main battle tanks are usually many times heavier than these vehicles: and even their flanks are so heavily armored, that heavy machinegun fire just bounces off. Small firearms, like AK 47, have no more effect on a main battle tank than throwing hamsters on it.

However, soft counters are important: if you need a hard counter to destroy everything, it'll hurt gameplay. Therefore soft counters need to be rationalized.

Take for example, a rifleman squad or whatever is planned for basic infantry in general 2. I suggest that every basic rifle squad is equipped with multiple light weapons: including light anti tank and light AA missile systems. Some soldiers in squads would carry LAW-style portable rocket launchers, which would damage light vehicles quite severely, but only inflict minor damage on heavy tanks. They would not trace their targets, so a fast moving technical wouldn't be a viable target. But because missiles like LAW are scarce and ineffectual against infantry in the open, the squad would use their assault rifles to attack infantry and soft-skinned cars, and only use their rocket launchers to attack tanks, bunkers and apcs and the like. Airplanes would be vulnerable only to AA missiles, but stationary hovering helos could be effectively engaged with small arms.

So that's your basic infantry squad: they'd have a wide variety of weapons, they could do a little bit of everything, but they would not be especially good at anything. Instead of engaging tanks with assault rifles, the squad would use light anti tank weapons: which at least inflict some damage on even heavy armor, thus making soft-counters more plausible.

Same would be true for specialized infantry squads:
for example, an EU anti tank squad might be equipped with javelin style anti tank systems, which would be a very hard counter against heavy armor, but they could be used as soft counter against infantry since they'd also carry their faction's basic assault rifles.

For GLA, their basic rebel squad would tote AK 47s, but they'd also carry molotov cocktails against tanks. These could be upgraded to RKG-3 anti tank grenades and then to RPG 7s. Not all of them would carry such weapons: only like 2 in 5 members of the squad, enough to inflict some damage on tanks so that they can be used as soft counter to a tank rush.

In summary, the point is that whenever soft counters raise doubts about plausibility: like hamster throwing catapults destroying overlord tanks, include secondary weapons to explain these away. The hamster catapult should have an anti-tank missile as secondary weapon. The secondary weapons should not be super-effective, but enough to justify the minor damage that is required to make it a soft-counter.

Positive Effect:
It would be cool.
Negative effect:
It would obviously require more work to make multiple attack animations and stuff like that for many units.

[Alaskan_Viking]

If regular infantry carried stingers, what would the point of anti air infantry be?

[Victimizer]

If regular infantry carried stingers, what would the point of anti air infantry be?

That's like saying that "who needs tesla coils when you can build pillboxes?"

The secondary weapons would not be comparable to dedicated anti aircraft/anti tank units, but enough to justify the minor damage that is required to make it a soft-counter. Manpads like stingers and sam-7 are regularly carried by "basic" infantry. But they cannot deal with all aircraft threat, which is why larger anti aircraft defenses exist.

Ingame it might go like this:

A regular infantry squad would carry 1 manpad
An anti aircraft squad would carry 5 manpad

[Golan2781]

They should just remove the obvious out of place softcounters. There's simply no need for Riflemen to be able to damage, let alone kill a tank. If you suddenly give them an AT weapon but make it the power of firecrackers, it will likely be more confusing, as the visual feedback is "hey, they have special AT weaponry!" but the actual gameplay effect is in no relation to this.

[Victimizer]

They should just remove the obvious out of place softcounters. There's simply no need for Riflemen to be able to damage, let alone kill a tank. If you suddenly give them an AT weapon but make it the power of firecrackers, it will likely be more confusing, as the visual feedback is "hey, they have special AT weaponry!" but the actual gameplay effect is in no relation to this.

Not necessarily. The light anti tank weapons would have slower rate of fire and less spectacular projectiles: heavy anti tank weapons would have a higher rate of fire and large projectiles with thick smokey trails and stuff like that, to tell the player of the power differences.

[Golan2781]

The power of a rifleman against a tank doesn't even rate on the damage spectrum of AT weaponry. No matter how small the trail, no matter how low the firing rate, a missile with the same damage output will feel like underperforming drastically. You will only get players wondering why they are issued such crappy AT weaponry in the first place.

[wombat789]

I completely agree with Victimizer . This surely would imply the need for limmited ammo . A squad would have anti tank but the downside would be that they should run out quicker .Being a larger ordinance .It also implies a squad using different weapons in sequence . Could there be different attack order sequence templates that the player chooses for the infantry squad ?

[Victimizer]

I mean it like this: a squad of 5 infantry would engage infantry and light vehicle targets with assault rifles. Say the damage to these targets would be 5 hitpoints per burst from each rifle.

But when engaging tanks, the damage of 5 hp would be concentrated into a single rocket and then doubled: the rocket would cause damage of 50, but would have significantly reduced rate of fire than the rifle attacks. This rocket would be fired by a single soldier in the squad, who would carry it in addition to his rifleman equipment.

Or something along these lines.

This surely would imply the need for limmited ammo

Not necessarily ammo limit. Just a low rate fire or a lengthy burst delay. Light anti tank weapons are not known for their rpm.

[Golan2781]

Hm, it could actually work with a Squad of around 5 if the balance is somewhat close to Gen1. A Ranger deals ~5DPS to a tank while an MD deals 40DPS. If the Squads are made up 4:1, the Ranger Squad MD would just have to fire at half the rate of the regular MDs.

[reice]

I have a solution: ignore it and pretend that the bullets are high-tech AP awesome! They're full of acid!
Why don't my men shoot aircraft? Because it would ruin the game if Riflemen could shoot aircraft!
Why don't the tanks shoot at each other from across the map?
Why bother teching up? HQ could just send the blueprints for tech units by e-mail!
Why do they spend money building bases when they could just ship in all of their troops?
For each unit they build, they could instead build a fleet of long-range missiles and destroy enemy bases easily!

Yup, all the things they could do, but I guess all of the generals agree that war should be fought the fun way.