Vehicle Stats

[linkshot]

I finally came to a realization (that I talked with Rob about) today.

This game reminds me a lot of Kirby Air Ride. Vehicular, single-button, free roaming world with powerups.

Currently the vehicles only have a couple stats: Health and Speed.
I'm assuming weapons and shields are separate entities attached to a vehicle

This is where the "lack of skill" feel comes from. All the tanks are straightforward to control.

I'm proposing a few more stats here:

Split all movement into Forward and Backward.
Add acceleration, max speed, and braking.
Add turn and grip.
Split Turn into Moving and Stopped.
Add "reverse range".

The speed things are straightforward. No explanation necessary.

Turn is how fast the vehicle will face the direction you tell it to. Some vehicles turn better when stopped, others turn better when moving.
Grip is how sharp the vehicle will change its moving direction. A vehicle might have amazing Moving Turn but terrible Grip, causing it to turn in a wide arc and very clumsily.

Reverse Range is how much leeway a vehicle gives you when clicking to move backward. A vehicle with a 0-degree spread will simply never move backward. 45-degree is average, and 340-degree will make it hard to move forward!

Taking a couple of the extreme examples in Air Ride:

Swerve Star would have no Moving Turn ability, but decent Stopped Turn. It would have amazing Acceleration, great Max Speed, and outstanding Braking. This results in having to move in a series of beelines to get around.

Slick Star, on the other hand, would have decent Moving Turn, poor Stopped Turn, decent Acceleration, good Max Speed, but almost no Grip. This results in sliding absolutely everywhere. In fact, this is how I imagine the Hurricane should be.

Formula Star is just a drag racer. Terrible Moving Turn, bad Stopped Turn, poor Acceleration, but the best Top Speed, and average Grip. As I see it, the Mustang's Backward stats should be this, to make it so its weakest shield point gives it the fastest movement. As such, it should also have poor Reverse Range to make it harder to keep that speed.

Any more stats that should be added? With a near infinite amount of shield + weapon combination to attach to these stats, we could see a lot of variety, which would definitely take a mastery of the game.

[elrondel]

Off topic, but Kirby Air Ride was one of the most amazing games I've played, even now..
There's been a lot of debate about a new movement system; I think this is a step in the right direction.

[stupidity]

yes.

Most of the existing tanks differ primarily in attack pattern. I would expect future models to have differing movement patterns as well.

Too many stats could seem confusing to a new player, but a pretty little bar graph in the description would make it seem pretty easy to understand.

[amitp]

Yes!

I had experimented with a “physics based” movement model a few years ago — demo — use WASD+QE to fly around; change the thrusters on the large model, and see how your flight characteristics change (these are represented by the polygons). Some vehicles can turn well while moving (red ship); others turn better when stopped. Press T to change the spaceship model. Asymmetric models are also possible but not enabled in this demo. With something like this, a powerup would be a new thruster or weapon that affects your vehicle. Or receiving damage could affect some of your thrusters, affecting your movement.

I had abandoned that project because I couldn't get the tradeoffs to be interesting for player-designed vehicles. However in Grid12 the vehicles aren't player designed so this idea could be useful.

In the end though there's no particular reason to stick to a physics-based model. It's not necessarily optimal for gameplay, although it is fun to play with. It sounds like Kirby Air Ride was optimized for gameplay instead of realism.

I'd love to see a lot more variety in how tanks move, not only player tanks but also enemy tanks. I think that'll be necessary if we're going to have 100 different player classes.