Relation to Metal Fatigue

A few of us have played Metal Fatigue. But, I'm not sure there's any specific influence from there in Servo. Similarities will exist given giant robots and all, but there wasn't any intention to make an homage.

On the weapon mix and matching... We have it restricted right now for a couple of reasons.

1. It helps you make choices and investments. You end up giving your Servos more of a unique role this way. If every Servo can do everything, that has been less fun in our testing. We've found it also helps recognition in multiplayer. When you see someone roll in with swords, you know enough about what that Servo can do. But, this is a hotly debated issue, so we're interested in thoughts there. 

2. We haven't found any good solutions to the problems created by wielding items of multiple types in the common RTS control scheme. Right hand is currently dominant. So, we use that to decide ranges and whatnot when you right click on a target (you can turn on the automatic commands and be super explicit, but few do that). Anyhow, let's say that you have a sword in your right hand and a gun in your left hand... When you right click on a unit, you'd then close to melee range so you can swing that sword. Fine. But, what happens when that unit runs away from you? Do you chase it directly to keep the sword in range or do you stop to fire your pistol?

We are traditionally not fans of trying to guess what the user wants us to do. We want something very clear.

It's often suggested that the offhand pistol can be shooting while you're closing to melee range. True. That's reasonable. When we flip it around, though, it's not so clear. If I have a pistol in main and sword in off, when am I going to use the sword in that model? Probably when you've closed on me and I'm in melee range. Is that enough? Would you ever choose that? Our fear was that it wasn't useful enough.

But, that's why we're doing this. To get feedback. Tell us what you think. We've have a simpler, but restrictive system in place now. We can experiment with more flexibility, but it does complicate things.

Oh, and you can put some other stuff in that left hand. The deflector/riot shields, for example.

Hello,

I've neer played Metal Fatigue.

I prefer to have choice, if i want a pistol and a fist on the same servo, it's my decision, not yours. That way, i can have a shield maybe, and a gun, or a sword, or a grenade or whatever suits me. In my opinion, player choice > * Even if it's not perfectly balanced, we can have 3 servos with different combination. There will always be a "best combo" whatever you try to develop, so at least, leave the choice to the player to have fun.

About the melee vs range, what about a "Force attack" command ? In many RTS we can command a move, or move and attack if we hold Ctrl key. For Servo, when a servo is selected, we could have something like this :

- Lclick = select unit.

- Rclick = move to target and engage with the most ranged weapon.

- Ctrl+Rclick = move to target and engage with closest ranged weapon.

- Alt+Rclick = move to target and do not engage (maybe we can have a shield, protecting the servo unless it attacks).

That's really interesting that it wasn't an influence for this game. Funny coincidence!

I'd love mixing and matching parts more, it adds a large more amount of customizability and personalization.

Dawn of War 2 handled this by having a toggle button in the unit panel for "prefer melee" and "prefer ranged". Units could use the pistol while running towards the enemy, but then engaged in melee. A unit "in melee" couldn't use its gun. But that's actually directly from the WH40k tabletop game.

But, what happens when that unit runs away from you? Do you chase it directly to keep the sword in range or do you stop to fire your pistol?

I think that if the unit is faster than the servo, then the servo uses ranged, and maybe or maybe not chases it while using ranged. If the unit is slower than the servo, the servo keeps using melee (unless it's set to hold position or something)

If nothing else I want more visual feedback about the way arms are linked - it took me a few tries to figure out what was going on the first time. Unfortunately simply putting the slots next to each other would destroy the current layout.

I think the big thing to remember that is different between DoW and this game is that the characters were designed for both melee and ranged. Obviously some heroes were better at one than the other, but they were at 100% of their capacity to fight whether they were in range or melee.

In Servo, if you put a gun in one hand and sword in the other, at best you are only ever doing 50% of the damage you could be if you dual wielded the same thing. You can only ever use 1 weapon at a time, whether it be your pistol or sword, so you are actually significantly gimping yourself. I can see why this is an appealing idea, but remember that they are actually very different systems.

If I take a 15 dps sword in one hand and a 10 dps pistol in the other, I will be doing 10 dps while closing and 15 dps in melee. Now if we dual wield either of those weapons, it is now 20 dps at range or in melee with pistols since they can now shoot regardless, or 30 dps while in melee with swords. In DoW you didn't have to limit your effectiveness to have both since they were both inherent to every character, while in Servo you do.

In Dawn of War (and Metal Fatigue actually), ranged units were at an inherent disadvantage in melee.

For example, in Metal Fatigue, if you equipped your bot with two long ranged weapons, it was very powerful and you wanted to stay away from it. It could wreck an army of small units. However if you got close and in melee with another bot, all it could do was piddly damage by whacking the other bot with the ranged weapons. If you put one ranged and one melee, you were much more versatile, but sacrificed specialization. I think the choice between versatile/specialized is a good thing to let the player decide.

The key difference here is that you can do 100% of your ranged damage no matter the range. It would definitely be a significant change to the game were that changed.

Yes, one of the key questions is whether or not ranged weapons can do normal damage/procs at melee range.

The juggernaut is the next playable class (you may have seen the AI using it). Part of why it's not rolled out yet is that it has to solve some of these issues... It doesn't have the literal flexibility of the champ, so it currently has a min range on everything. This is cool, but once you get under that min range, well, yeah, it's kinda crappy.

We totally understand the desire to "equip" anything. That's where we started. It was getting pretty confusing in PT, though, so we flipped and went to a system that everyone understood. That's made PT a lot better. As we stabilize on how things work, we're going to revisit this and see what we can do. So, these suggestions are very helpful.

Devs:

Is it feasible to have separate animations for when two melee servos get in combat? That is, alternating blocking and attacking, etc. Again, this is from metal fatigue, and it was pretty cool seeing two combots in melee. (I understand that combat in servo is a bit faster, just a thought is all)

It's something that's on our list.

A tiny, tiny glimmer of the coordinated anims is in with the sword fatality (the one where the attacker dual slices the victim).

The trick with matched anims, of course, is that the other player is likely not interested in waiting to take damage. We are going to look at some options there once the basic pace of combat is sorted (which is still a long way off, IMO). Until we get the pace of combat nailed, it's hard to tell how much 'dead space' we have in the anims. If we don't have a lot, we'll need to work react anims into a blend with the attacks. If we have a lot, then we can maybe do something more interesting.

Having access to a unique ability that the sword offers might make up for the fact that it's not being used in auto attack combat.

Just spit balling here, but maybe something that pushes a unit away, but the skill if only active with the left hand. The sword now offers a little bit of defense, but you can't use it will in the right hand to break it in some unforeseen way.

Maybe the right hand is a gap closer, while the left hand is a push back, for balance's sake?

Yes, the sword unique option works fine. I think it's probably still confusing, though. We'd like to avoid that.

I think we're centering around trying the "switch the default auto attack" button. Yeah, adds another two buttons to the UI (since we'd really have to show the default attack by, um, default and the switch button, though maybe the switch button can be a smaller one or something), but it makes it a choice and unasks any ambiguity. Then, if you choose to dual wield, you just don't see that because both are active.

OH Man I forgot about metal fatigue. I love that game. I mean yeah it was a very basic RTS but it was so fun.

Awesomesauce!

Dawn of War got away with one button, it showed a sword if melee was preferred and a gun is ranged was preferred.

That's a pretty neat idea!