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Added 3 passes for the ornithopter airstrike
@sorcerer86pt's video shows that this appears to be missing a key detail from the ornithopter strike: they should circle by ~270 degrees, such that the second strike is at right angles to the first, and the third at ~180 degrees, so they fly off the map in roughly the same direction that they flew in.
Didn't know that aspect ( didn't play dune 2000). I just counted the strike phases.
Em 21/03/2020 à(s) 8:05 da tarde, Paul Chote [email protected] escreveu:
@sorcerer86pt https://github.com/sorcerer86pt's video shows that this appears to be missing a key detail from the ornithopter strike: they should circle by ~270 degrees, such that the second strike is at right angles to the third, and they fly off the map in roughly the same direction that they flew in.
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In the video that I linked to in the original issue they seem to exit the map at about 60° to their entry trajectory - https://youtu.be/dmflM70vtZI?t=36 (timestamped). Watching the video @sorcerer86pt provided, they seem a bit too eager to turn, barely managing to turn towards their target because they start turning too early, but one could still take this as an improvement over the original where they would take their time and circle half the map, giving the opponent all the time to repair affected structures and shoot them down.
Here is another timestamped video - https://youtu.be/_t3Tuuoy_P4?list=PLw2L04beHwWBbjNh8AnY2OTbHKb5XeDlO&t=577 The angles seem to match the first one, but the formation is broken. Also it seems they don't bomb in a straight line here as well, much like the video from @sorcerer86pt (and unlike my first video). And another one: https://youtu.be/_t3Tuuoy_P4?list=PLw2L04beHwWBbjNh8AnY2OTbHKb5XeDlO&t=3335
Considering how poorly Ornithopters seem to fare in the original, we need to decide how close to that we want to get with this.
I think it's a pretty valid point to say that
- The formation we use (like for Badgers in RA and A10s in TD) is nicer than the original line formation.
- The decreased turning arcs do make this support power a bit more potent, by both decreasing the total time over which the damage is dealt and preventing the Ornithopters from straying too far into enemy AA fire.
- The angles at which the ornithopters hit are hardly crucial.
- The triangle formation plus the turning make for some weird formation reordering, but having them keep formation while turning would require each one to individually adjust its movement speed, which is unrealistic at this point due to engine limitations.
Here is another video (in case the previous ones weren't enough), this time made by me: https://gfycat.com/firmbetterkite Also the Ornithopters seem to come into the map from where the High Tech Factory is.
We do need to settle on a specification for how we want all of this to work.
which is unrealistic at this point due to engine limitations.
No it isn't. It would be straightforward to create a new fly-type activity that allows the aircraft to follow a path with a constant offset to keep formation. Someone just needs to write the code.
we could define a steering behaviour of leader- follower in formation , where 1 is the leader that you define the path, and the other 2 , the followers, follow the leader path with a given offset. This also allows formations for units.
Unless someone is both willing and able to (because I'm willing, but I doubt the "able to" part) to implement proper formation flight when turning, I say we use that as an excuse to quickly resolve one of the bigger questions regarding this feature: "Do we want to keep the original line formation or the ORA triangle formation?". Keeping the original formation is much, much easier and also true to the original, while using our "modern" formation would involve significantly more work.
So with that in mind, I suggest a couple of changes (which I might PR towards Mailaender:3-orni-strikes if we come to an agreement here) that would:
- Give us the original line formation (also known as "drop-feeding your enemy" or "going in 1 by 1 to die easier")
- Get us really close to the attack angles and circling area of the original (with the circling area being maybe slightly smaller, which is a good thing for the Ornithopters' survivability).
This video of the original (that I linked above) produces this bombing pattern, while this video of ORA with my proposed changes to this PR produces this bombing pattern. I think this would qualify as "close enough", as it looks pretty good to me.
The possibly only thing left to figure out is the plane's exit trajectory. In the original they exit in a straight line after their last bombing run, resulting in a 60° angle to their entry path (which starts at about the player's High Tech Factory), while here they try to exit in the same direction they faced when entering, which is a leftover of how Badgers and A10s work. I'm not sure this can be considered an issue, but it is a polishing thing.
Oh yes, the Camera actor for the support power is wired to only exist during the first bombing run. We should either keep it alive for the whole thing or recreate it for each pass.
@sorcerer86pt unfortunately your suggestion would run into issues at the first sign of enemy AA.
It has been over two years since this PR was deemed insufficient to solve the task at hand and several tiers of dependencies/blockers came up and were shelves. There is no point in keeping it open indefinitely while we wait.