Not logged inOpenClonk Forum
Up Topic Development / Scenario & Object Development / Cannon - Gunpowder Requirement
- - By Ringwaul [ca] Date 2010-07-02 21:25
Newton and I were discussing in IRC how the cannon will work in game. We came to the simplest conclusion that the gunpowder should not require gunpowder because it makes the player micromanage producing the required gunpowder just to shoot it.

I believe there are a few options here:
1. The cannon will not require gunpowder
-or-
2. Gunpowder will be an abundant resource (ie: 1 sulfur + 1 coal makes lots of blackpowder pouches)

What do you think?
Reply
Parent - - By Zapper [de] Date 2010-07-02 22:23

>because it makes the player micromanage producing the required gunpowder just to shoot it.


But the Clonk economy is about managing stuff like that, or not?

If you just don't like that the player has to carry a lot of single objects (i.e. one object for one shot), make it a gunpowder barrel and not a lump of gunpowder as it currently is.
The cannon is different compared to a catapult. To justify that it is (or should be) a lot stronger, it has to be harder to handle (the catapult on the other hand can be used for free). And I want to blow up stuff with gunpowder barrels.
Parent - - By Newton [de] Date 2010-07-03 00:47 Edited 2010-07-03 00:49
It shouldn't be about micromanaging. There is no limit to what one could add to make the production line to produce effective weapons even longer. Question is, where will we set the limit? For bows and arrows, one could need a bowstring, special wood, arrowheads, rope and appropiate tools plus the facilities to produce such a bow which again needs an array of different materials.
I think the limit needs to be put rather low because in scenarios where you need weapons and where you need to produce the weapons by yourself (mostly settlement melees), you need them fast. It may not be tenacious to produce (at least) the basic weapons, and, most importantly, having to produce materials that are to be consumed by your warmachines like the cannon (or e.g. your train, blimp,...) is like the concept that clonks have hunger, can get tired or freeze. It is tedious and not fun.

So, on a general note, I plead to require as few materials that are consumed constantly (by weapons) as possible. Just because of this, the coal plant was practically never used in Clonk before and the catapult was almost always favoured over the cannon (if several gunpowders were not just placed in every cannon by script). And that's why ~every munition is bought and produced in packs (Arrow pack, lead shots,...). Consuming weapons mean that you need to keep your economy running all the time which you don't want and can't if you are inmidst battle (unlike in e.g. The Settlers, where it all works automatically).

Looking back on the cannon as we know it since Clonk3, it just has been too tedious to use it to be of value in a fast-paced melee as we want to have it in OC.
Parent - By Isilkor Date 2010-07-03 00:54
The power plant was also never used because it didn't have a tangible advantage over the windmill, mostly because there almost always was wind.
Reply
Parent - - By Zapper [de] Date 2010-07-03 11:34
What is the advantage of the catapult then? That it is made of wood?
I do not think it is a bad idea to balance the game with consumable ammunition where it seems appropriate. (One gunpowder barrel could last for about ten shots or so)
Parent - - By Newton [de] Date 2010-07-03 12:26
That the catapult shoots less in a straight line but more ballistic is a great advantage to overcome obstacles like cliffs etc. on the way to the target, actually. If not for extreme range, I'd actually still favour the catapult for most of the tasks even if the cannon doesn't require gunpowder.
The catapult and the cannon are just two different weapons which have both different strengths and applications - the one weapon is not an "upgrade" to the other - at least it shouldn't be.
Parent - - By Travis Date 2010-07-10 15:12
Take a scenario like "Clifffight", where the players start with a huge gap between them. You can choose to attack directly or just focus on the artillery. In this situation the catapult is not an option and you can only use the cannon to attack.
So with your cannon the players would start almost immediately to shoot stuff at each other, to randomly hit some poor Clonks walking around the base, because they don't even need something to load the cannon (producing or buying gunpowder). This leads to a totally super-deadly-imbalanced weapon for everyone who has a stone in his hand. With a weapon like that I would just randomly shoot stones or eartchunks into the direction of the enemy machine-gun-style, in any scenario. Also the cannon is ultra fast and a Clonk can hardly dodge it.
So my point is, a weapon like that needs some more effort than the catapult or is just plain imbalanced.
Parent - By Newton [de] Date 2010-07-11 00:01
Don't think so. We'll see.
Parent - - By Newton [de] Date 2010-07-03 10:45
For both cases here how I can imagine how it can work comfortabily for the player to use it:

  1. ControlUse: Aim. On ControlUseStop, show ring menu with clonk's contents to select which item to shoot (close menu for none)

  2. Clonk has a gunpowder barrel in its contents which has different graphics for a different count of possible cannon shots possible with it. (Number should be something between 10 and 30) On start of usage, the cannon checks like the bow if it has a gunpowder barrel as Contents(0). If not, he searches the clonk for it and transfers the barrel automatically. Otherwise, if the cannon doesn't have a gunpowder barrel and the clonk doesn't have a gunpowder barrel, the cannon cannot be used. The rest is the same as 1, only that the gunpowder barrel is showed in the ExtraSlot of the cannon in the action bar.



Actually, I could very well live with both options as long as we move away from one material = one shot. Both options are comfortable to use.
Parent - - By Sven2 [de] Date 2010-07-03 12:05
Aim first, then select what to shoot? That sounds like a very bad idea if you're trying to hit a moving target.
Parent - By Newton [de] Date 2010-07-03 12:26
True.
Parent - - By Ringwaul [ca] Date 2010-07-06 03:14
Well, I have made a powder keg. Currently, it holds 12 powder. It can be loaded into the cannon and the cannon will automatically retrieve black powder from the keg to fire. Alternatively, the player can take powder out of the keg for whatever other purposes (ie: producing musket-ammo) via ControlUse(). If the player does not need powder he has taken out, he may drop the keg and throw the powder back into it.

Also, some other fun things: when ignited, the keg will have a stronger explosion based on the amount of powder currently inside it. When the keg is emptied out, it becomes a normal barrel (used to construct powder kegs -- now with 3D graphics!). This is another point I would like to ask about: I was thinking the powder keg should require only one sulphur and one coal (besides a barrel to put it in). Is this a reasonable amount? This will make gunpowder very abundant and require much less micromanaging of constantly digging up resources to continue battle.
Reply
Parent - - By Clonk-Karl [ca] Date 2010-07-06 06:18
We might want to consider removing the single blackpowder objects when we have the keg. I don't like the "taking powder out of it" part as it is again the kind of micro management I think we want to avoid. Musket ammo should probably not be produced one by one either so requiring a whole keg for production seems OK, or the production directly just takes a certain amount out of the keg.

> I was thinking the powder keg should require only one sulphur and one coal (besides a barrel to put it in). Is this a reasonable amount?


I think it should not be more than that. But in the end fine-tuning like how many powder the keg should hold and what it should need to be produced also requires some test playing.
Reply
Parent - - By AlteredARMOR [ua] Date 2010-07-06 13:23

> Musket ammo should probably not be produced one by one ... production directly just takes a certain amount out of the keg.


Or there is more than 1 pack of ammo produced at a time...
Reply
Parent - - By Ringwaul [ca] Date 2010-07-06 19:11
But perhaps the player only wants one pouch of musket ammo?
Reply
Parent - - By Zapper [de] Date 2010-07-06 20:25
Then he only takes one of the five that were produced? :)
I mean: Even in Metal and Magic you can split up ammunition if you don't want to carry 10 bullets around which you most likely won't need anyway
Parent - - By Ringwaul [ca] Date 2010-07-06 20:41
Making the powder keg a stackable object and removing gunpowder altogether doesn't sound like a bad idea. However, I can foresee one problem: The player makes a powder keg, and uses it to shoot a few shots with his cannon. Then he takes the keg out of the cannon and wants to make some lead shot with the gunpowder. How does the game handle creating x-amount of lead shot when the powder keg is missing some powder?

You could make a calculation to determine how much leadshot is made based on the amount of black-powder left in the barrel, but because you cannot make a fraction of a lead shot, this would lead to wasting blackpowder (unless you got 12 lead-shot from one powder keg...).
Reply
Parent - - By Zapper [de] Date 2010-07-06 23:09
My intention was not to make the powder keg stackable but to make the ammunition (for the muskekt) stackable.

"Yes, but the keg is ammunition itself - for the cannon!"
That is correct. But we do not need objects for the gunpowder there. The powder is either in a keg or in the cannon. The player does not need to have a lump of gunpowder in his hand at any time (which was weird anyway)

If the keg has only half the powder, only half the musket ammo will be produced. Making the keg stackable would have annoying side effect since it turns into an empty barrel after use. One would have to think of something to make sure barrels do not magically appear or disappear somewhere
Parent - - By Ringwaul [ca] Date 2010-07-06 23:24
The ammunition for the musket already is stackable, and it's max stack count is 8. If we are to have 5 stacks of an 8 stack, then this would allow the clonk to carry 40 shots.

I think the best solution would be to simply have the workshop which creates lead-shots search the powder keg for ingredients. We don't actually need the player to be able to grab/put gunpowder from/into the keg.

Also, I don't see much of a benefit gameplay-wise from creating as much lead-shot as possible from a keg. This removes control from the player; if the player wants to create some lead shot and then fire a cannon with the same keg, why would he have to make certain to use the cannon first, for fear of using up all his black-powder? Of course we can say the player can simply make more, but isn't this just adding more and more complication?
Reply
Parent - By AlteredARMOR [ua] Date 2010-07-07 08:02 Edited 2010-07-07 08:05
I agree with Zapper about NOT making the keg a stackable object.
As for "gunpowder": you need some container to store it anyway (IIRC, currently small ammount of powder simply lies as a heap on a piece of paper). So why not making keg such a container?
Yes, it would be nice to require keg for ammo production and prohibit player from putting/withdrawing powder into/from the keg.

How I imaging this myself:
1) You need (say) 1 x sulphur and 1 x coal as well as 1 x (wooden) barrel to produce a powder keg in the respective workshop.
2) You can load a keg into the cannon to provide it with (again, say) 12 shots. The keg VANISHES when it is loaded into the cannon increasing some internal counter of the available shots.
3) Alternatively, you can store 1 x keg into an "ammo-production workshop" to receive (maybe with the need for some other ingredients) N x musket-shots. The barrel itself either vanishes or (more likely) remains empty.
4) Making the keg some kind of a "production resource" (the way it was described above) may allow us to imagine some other interesting ways of using it (for instance, it can be used for some super-explosives production).
5) And yeah, it would be nice if the keg left on the ground and shot by a musket provided a fancy explosion...
Reply
Parent - By Zapper [de] Date 2010-07-07 08:39
I have nothing against producing one (bag of) ammo at a time while emptying the keg bit for bit - sounds fine
Parent - - By Clonk-Karl [ca] Date 2010-07-07 02:41

> How does the game handle creating x-amount of lead shot when the powder keg is missing some powder?


Hm, the naive solution is to leave the unused powder in the keg.
Reply
Parent - By Ringwaul [ca] Date 2010-07-07 03:33
Ah, I was under the assumption that the powder keg would actually be a component in the leadshot, instead of simply fetching blackpowder from the keg.
Reply
Parent - - By Newton [de] Date 2010-07-07 12:28 Edited 2010-07-07 12:36

>How does the game handle creating x-amount of lead shot when the powder keg is missing some powder?


Require coal+sulphir+more for creating lead shots instead of requiring a powder keg+more. (Why do you need a barrel to produce lead shots? ^^)

P.S: Whew, so complicated solutions here! Why not just consider the gunpowder keg as a (stackable!) ammunition for the cannon (and other gunpowder-driven warmachines) instead of a material which is meant to be refined further? The gunpowder keg would then be the same as the lead shots or arrows - a munition type.
I'd like to have the stackable-system kept out of the production line. It'd get too complicated.
Parent - - By Ringwaul [ca] Date 2010-07-07 20:05

>Why not just consider the gunpowder keg as a (stackable!) ammunition for the cannon ... instead of a material which is meant to be refined further?


Well, the player shouldn't be able to create a single "Blackpowder" object. By creating the powder keg, he is basically producing a whole barrel of it (only 1 sulphur and 1 coal for 12 gunpowder). Therefore, for objects that need gunpowder for construction (ie: the Boompack or Leadshot) the player needs a way to be able to use that gunpowder.

Currently, the powder keg isn't a stackable object. It only is constructed with the contents of 12 blackpowder. When emptied, it turns back into a barrel. Therefore, all the cannon is doing is fetching blackpowder from the keg's contents. I was thinking it would be conceivable to allow production buildings to search the contents of the objects contained within themselves. This would allow the powder keg to work with any production that requires gunpowder and still work with the cannon.
Reply
Parent - By Zapper [de] Date 2010-07-07 20:22

>Well, the player shouldn't be able to create a single "Blackpowder" object. By creating the powder keg, he is basically producing a whole barrel of it (only 1 sulphur and 1 coal for 12 gunpowder). Therefore, for objects that need gunpowder for construction (ie: the Boompack or Leadshot) the player needs a way to be able to use that gunpowder.


His point is that while barrel+sulphur+coal=keg and therefore sulphur+coal=gunpowder, the player does not need this gunpowder at any point in the game since he can just use the ingredients used to create this gunpowder. (Producing ammo would then not be gunpowder+metal but sulphur+coal+metal)
(And thus keeping the keg away from any production - I don't know whether I like that or not. Has advantages and disadvantages.)
Parent - - By Ringwaul [ca] Date 2010-07-06 19:40

>requiring a whole keg for production seems OK


Well, 12 gunpowder units would be an incredible amount of gunpowder for only one musket ammo pouch.

Micromanagement is a large part of clonk's settlement aspect, however, I would agree we should avoid it for battle situations. It could be possible for the Building-That-produces-leadshots to search in the contents of objects inside itself for ingredients in construction, could it not? The cannon currently does something like this, where if there is a powder keg it automatically takes out one blackpowder unit before firing.
Reply
Parent - - By Clonk-Karl [ca] Date 2010-07-07 02:44

> It could be possible for the Building-That-produces-leadshots to search in the contents of objects inside itself for ingredients in construction, could it not?


Right, that's what I have meant with the rest of the sentence you did not quote.
Reply
Parent - - By Ringwaul [ca] Date 2010-07-07 03:31
Ah, indeed. So the only current change to fit the specifications is to disallow the player from exchanging powder with the keg?
Reply
Parent - - By Clonk-Karl [ca] Date 2010-07-07 06:34
I'd suggest so. Currently there isn't anything one could do with the single powder but not with the keg anyway, right?
Reply
Parent - By Ringwaul [ca] Date 2010-07-07 09:38
Right.
Reply
Parent - - By Newton [de] Date 2010-07-07 12:41
12 "gunpowder units" (=enough powder to shoot the cannon 12 times) but still one powder keg. So, one object, one material. (A "toolbox"/medipack would also be one object in clonk, even though it might have a number of (medical) tools inside.)
Parent - - By Ringwaul [ca] Date 2010-07-07 19:52
I began to think this as well. However, in relation to a cannon being able to fire 12 times, how can this possibly allow a musket to fire 8 times?
Reply
Parent - By AlteredARMOR [ua] Date 2010-07-08 07:12
Well, actual numbers can be modified a bit later...
Reply
Parent - By Zapper [de] Date 2010-07-06 12:49

>I was thinking the powder keg should require only one sulphur and one coal (besides a barrel to put it in). Is this a reasonable amount? This will make gunpowder very abundant and require much less micromanaging of constantly digging up resources to continue battle.


I think that is fine. One could argue that you get a strong explosive that is cheaper than a superflint - but the keg is destroyed when blown up, right? So you lose your barrel too?
And that balances it, imo
Parent - - By Maikel Date 2010-07-19 13:16
I implemented 2, but left out the ringmenu for now since it has buggy behaviour in combination with controluse. Note however that the HUD can't show extra slots on vehicles(#336).
Parent - - By Newton [de] Date 2010-07-19 13:23
Last time I looked (yesterday), the cannon shows the contents of the cannon in the ringmenu, not the contents of the clonk. This doesn't make sense.
Parent - By Maikel Date 2010-07-19 13:26
I did this just now.
Up Topic Development / Scenario & Object Development / Cannon - Gunpowder Requirement

Powered by mwForum 2.29.7 © 1999-2015 Markus Wichitill