Planetary ACL

[MarvinMan]

I've been thinking about where ACL can go next. Full 3D dog fighting in space would be cool, but represents a huge step change in difficulty and rules. I think that holding ACL matches on planets with a reduced rule set would make ground based combat more interesting and provide a smoother transition to art-to-air engagements. All the current ACL bots would still be viable, perhaps with some tweaks for longer range accuracy, so any bots built for the new format would have something to compete against immediately.

The rules could probably be cut back a lot, just keeping the parts limits and some restrictions on homing projectiles/suicide attacks. All types of ground, hover and flying bots would be allowed providing they stay within the gravitational field of the planet. Almost all types of weapons, including lasers, grenades, mines, missiles and plasma cannons are allowed, with some limitations on homing projectiles.

Overall, planetary ACL should be much faster and more dynamic, with less of the point-blank cannon spam that happens currently.

Any ideas/suggestions?

[z26]

What kind of planet size do you have in mind?  With planets that are too big this will eithier turn into a missile contest or a game of hide and seek, depending on how much ground cover there is.  With planets that are too small, being pushed out of the planet will be pretty easy (overlapping two planets for stronger grav might help with that)  So I guess there is a certain range of sizes that offer the best experience.

[MarvinMan]

I was thinking of the main stardust planets. There would be a lot less cover for ground bots, but there would also be very little for them to crash into so speeds can be higher.

For now, It should work to put the bots close enough together that at least one of them will lock on and bring the fight to a range that he bots are designed for.

[PressureLine]

Why not just make some super-huge arenas? Planets are hinky because the grav field isn't that big, and the curvature screws with things (altitude difference & distance trig for one) something fierce. Changing the max distance of cameras to something bigger (afair it's 256 in XFM 0.5) is really easy, making it 512 (or whatever) would certainly lessen the 'search' time required on arenas (and on planetary surfaces)

Tech Arena Hex is a pretty big arena, it would be relatively easy to expand it even more to provide for long-range gameplay.

[MarvinMan]

If huge flat arenas are practical, that could be good. Really, it would just be nice to have enough space for bots to get up to a decent speed without constantly having walls in the way.

I suppose at this point it would be worth seeing if two fast bots are even capable of hitting each other with unguided projectiles.

[cupid_the_conqueror]

I suppose at this point it would be worth seeing if two fast bots are even capable of hitting each other with unguided projectiles.

I can accurately fire a dumbfire rocket with launch velocities exceeding 5k, it may phase through the target some of the time, but the targets speed is pretty much irrelevant. But as for plasma weapons? I doubt two fast plasma bots could hit eachother even if they programmed lead time, the bullets just move too slow

[MarvinMan]

If the two bots are chasing each other, the distance and relative velocities might not be too bad. Substantially increased cannon output is likely to be necessary though.