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Size of Cities/Facilities - 1/31/2017 10:51:22 AM

Fer_Cabo

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Hi folks,

I kept wondering how my (otherwise outdated and unprecise) DPRK Scuds kept missing Seoul without causing any damage points... Until i realised that a "Big-City" facility unit/marker is only 5 meters x 5 meters.

How can big urban areas (take for instance Seoul) be modelled without the need to copy/clone hundreds (or even thousands) of adjacent "City" facility units??

Thanks!!

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RE: Size of Cities/Facilities - 1/31/2017 11:06:27 AM

Dysta

Posts: 1909
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There are two ways I could make:

1, Replace Scuds with other NK nuclear missiles, the blast radius should be big enough to hit City Markers.

2, Make trigger side, define area with RPs around city markers, and use triggers to add/subtract score, or delete/damage city marker('s HP) when Scud reach it. For simulate the damage effect.

< Message edited by Dysta -- 1/31/2017 11:09:49 AM >

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RE: Size of Cities/Facilities - 1/31/2017 11:22:39 AM

mikmykWS

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You could use the overlay feature to get a sense of how big the city is and drop building units to kind of match. i wouldn't even try to match building for building but if you just use the copy feature to make some areas more dense you'll likely be capturing the effect you want.

Thanks

Mike

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RE: Size of Cities/Facilities - 1/31/2017 11:29:55 AM

Fer_Cabo

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Thanks for the tip... not sure my little north korean friends have enough plutonium to tip all those Scuds (the majority of which will end up blown up in the air by Patriots, THAADs, etc.)

I like the RPs + Area + Triggers + Events + Actions better, but still quite convoluted, ain't it?

I'd rather hope for the Probability of Hit modified for this kind of "super-size" units/targets... or just for the measures to be changed in the DB. The latter seems to me as the easiest way, although i don't really know the implications of that change deep inside the calculations done by the software.

On a (bit) more rigorous thought, city-AREAS should logically affect the PoH to units located in their area. And as units/facilities, be subject to a different kind of probability-driven damage, such as fires being started, etc.

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RE: Size of Cities/Facilities - 1/31/2017 11:35:31 AM

Fer_Cabo

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For Seoul, that's going to take a big-big overlay file... and a big-big-big amount of time doing 5x5 units copy+paste stuff.

I mean... i just want to bomb a big civilian target. My question was... how can the "Big-City" facility be only 5x5 meters? Any ship or even many aircraft are bigger in the DB, right?

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RE: Size of Cities/Facilities - 1/31/2017 11:46:13 AM

mikmykWS

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it's a marker. Nobody has ever complained about this to be honest.

The overlay shouldn't be that big at all. Are you familiar with the process?

Adding a unit and moving your mouse and hitting c a bunch of times shouldn't be a huge thing. You can even group them at the end.

Mike

< Message edited by mikmyk -- 1/31/2017 11:47:30 AM >

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RE: Size of Cities/Facilities - 1/31/2017 12:15:16 PM

Fer_Cabo

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No complaining Mike, just a suggestion.

Yes,i'm familiar with the Overlay system, but trust me, try to create the file for Seoul with GMAPS.net. It's just too big even to be processed/created.

My point is that, even if that was possible, i'd have to hit the paste button like 12 million times...

Seoul city area is about 20 Kms x 15 Kms = 300 Million Sqm / (5x5)=25 sqm

If i only copy/paste a few hundred times, the probability of hitting anything is still tiny, because it's just a few hundred needles in 200 Tons-Haystack ;-)

Btw... Those markers 5x5 meters bit have a 50.000 Damage Point value, which is a pretty black-hole kind of target (tiny but with a huuuuuuge mass)

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RE: Size of Cities/Facilities - 1/31/2017 12:37:27 PM

mikmykWS

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Yeah the damage point are so high so they can't be easily destroyed. Its a marker unit. We don't have to defend anything about it

If we did increase the area to match city sizes there could be greater issues. Specifically anything within its area hit will also hit it.

In terms of modelling you don't have to add every building just build up enough to get the effect you want.

I've actually done what you're talking about a number of times in my scenarios and my perspective is it isn't that difficult. If all this is too much work perhaps this may not be your kind of game.

Thanks

Mike

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RE: Size of Cities/Facilities - 1/31/2017 12:49:11 PM

Dysta

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Like I said, I could use score system to judge the 'damage' rather than city marker's health. I made an example for you to download.

Attachment (1)

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RE: Size of Cities/Facilities - 1/31/2017 2:12:17 PM

Fer_Cabo

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This is my kind of game, pretty sure about that... at least i hope you're not trying to convince me otherwise, LoL!!

Mike, don't get fussy, please. I don't think i'm saying anything crazy... If you populate an entire area with "Big-City" 5x5 meters (at 50.000 DPs each) markers/facilities, you'll need literally MILLIONS of weapons to destroy it.

Do you think a 500 Kgs russian free-fall bomb will destroy (in real life) a 5x5 city block -if it did exist...-??? Well, now, in CMANO, it'd barely scratch it with a few hundred DPs. That is, if it hits it directly and very accurately.

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RE: Size of Cities/Facilities - 1/31/2017 2:31:22 PM

mikmykWS

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I wouldn't populate with Markers. I would populate with buildings. There are tons of building types available in the db.

As far as spacing you can get away with probably 50 for an entire city and still get the effect you're looking for.

If you are modeling what happens when a 500kg bomb falls on targets you probably should model them concisely instead of trying to use one vague big marker.

These are all just suggestions. You can do pretty much anything you want. Kinda like us

Mike

< Message edited by mikmyk -- 1/31/2017 2:33:49 PM >

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RE: Size of Cities/Facilities - 1/31/2017 3:38:46 PM

ColonelMolerat

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The way I've seen it done in scenarios (on a smaller scale, anyway) is to have just a few 'key' buildings placed.

Eg, landmarks, government buildings, bridges, perhaps a few streets of interest.

Once the dust has settled, you can get an idea of how much of the city was destroyed by how many of the 'important' buildings are left standing.

The flaw is that you may only need a few dozen bombs to make it look like the city is completely destroyed (by destroying all of these key buildings), but perhaps you could also sprinkle a few of the 50,000hp markers around to act as 'sponges'? After all, it doesn't really matter if they're not completely destroyed, since I can't imagine (short of modern nukes I suppose) a city of that size being levelled to the point of every last building and person being wiped out.

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RE: Size of Cities/Facilities - 2/3/2017 4:35:53 PM

Fer_Cabo

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Thanks a lot. I opened your scenario, but see a key flaw/weakness in how you approach the question.

Unfortunately there's no Lua Script nor defined trigger in CMANO for anything such as "Weapon Hit" if it's not related to actual DAMAGE to a specific Unit.

Maybe i'm missing something, but you have used the trigger "Weapon Enters Area"

=> Therefore, your event will award points to the North Koreans each time a Weapon (any weapon) OVERFLIES the defined Area. It does not matter if the weapon is destroyed in the air before landing/hitting anything, or if it's just incidentally flying over the defined Area en-route to another target/location. In any of those cases, the North Koreans score as well, which is not too fair after all... right?

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RE: Size of Cities/Facilities - 2/3/2017 6:29:28 PM

Cik

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sure, but if you just draw the circle in a tight band from the core of the city you can make it an appropriate size- if a tactical weapon manages to make it over the edge of your city at low altitude you're already in trouble. giving them some points for that hardly seems unfair. if SCUDs scatter in CMANO (do they? they're apparently really inaccurate IRL) anything less than a short-edge short miss or a long-edge long miss means that you're still going to lose a city block. even best case, where it misses short of the city or over the city entirely (only one of which actually matters, point-wise) you're still losing farm houses, bridges, farmland, roads, etc which isn't good.

as far as i'm concerned that's bad enough to warrant point losses, assuming at least that SCUDs not making it to whatever city(s) you're protecting is important enough to the tactical commander you're representing in-game. you can always counterbalance this small abstraction by just increasing the points you get for destroying SCUDs, eliminating enemy planes / tanks / what-have you. if on average one SCUD makes it in to score points that should not score points, and if on average a player kills 20 tanks, bumping the per-point value of the tanks to compensate a little might fix the problem.

i mean, this assumes that you don't want to just cntrl+C some buildings around and then use a "unit damaged/destroyed" event. which i don't see why not; that's what i generally do and it works well enough, especially for something as dangerous as a tactical missile which shouldn't really have problems ruining them with a single strike.

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RE: Size of Cities/Facilities - 2/4/2017 1:18:16 AM

Dysta

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Cik

if SCUDs scatter in CMANO (do they? they're apparently really inaccurate IRL)

I tested it with the uploaded scenario before, I don't see the spread but the burst is sometimes too early and damage the city marker DP less than the direct hit. I had to make the trigger area bigger for Scuds.

Oh, the area can be disabled in case of the 'expected destruction' (if the scenario doesn't end here), the score/unit destroyed triggers with inactive action can do. I will make a more refined test scenario later on.

< Message edited by Dysta -- 2/4/2017 1:38:54 AM >

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RE: Size of Cities/Facilities - 2/5/2017 7:06:39 AM

michaelm75au

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The next SR will allow you to get the current damage level of a unit thru the GetUnit() command. Due to large DP on the markers, the damaged trigger wont fire as damage is usually less than the minimum 1%.
This might be useful if you want to manually track the damage.

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RE: Size of Cities/Facilities - 2/5/2017 9:10:15 AM

Fer_Cabo

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I think that, besides a new script "GetUnit()" command, which will no doubt enhance the ability to fine-tune the triggers & events, a "GetUnit Damage Points" and "GetSide Damange Points" (accumulated) would also be very helpful.

For instance: If a Side's Damage Points sustained bigger than that 80% of that Side's initial total Damage Points, then (Action) Change Doctrine (Nuclear Weapons Use Granted = "Yes").

So far this is not possible, as far as i know.

It'd also allow the Point Scoring to be set according to DP inflicted or sustained, which sometimes might be a more fair way of scoring in a Scenario, and also easier to define than he current way of having to set up an event for every possible type of Unit (with the diversity of units included in a type - i.e. Surface Ship- being ignored) or even for every particular or specific Unit, complementarily to the former - i.e. Surface Ship sunk=100 Points + CVN George Bush sunk = 200 Points, thus making sinking CVN George Bush worth 300 Points.

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