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Sides in Boson

This page describes sides and their units of our story

Misc

• For each unit, I'm trying to point out current units that we can reuse when possible. For some units we don't have any fitting model, those are marked with model needed! label and might be of interest to designers.
• There are some models that we have which can be used either for one side or the other, such as the harvesters. But for the other side, we would need another (different-looking) model
• Helicopters will fly faster than land units drive
• Planes will fly faster than helicopters
• I tried to make the sides a bit different, so for all units of side A, there isn't necessarily equal unit in side B. This will hopefully make gameplay and strategy different for each side which should in turn make things a bit more interesting.
• Note that there is no Atania side. This is because firstly, Atania's military is small and weak and thus doesn't play very important role in the conflict, and secondly, we do not have resources to model third side.
  I think the "small and weak" point is very poor: if you are being attacked, you're going to defend yourself. Even if you don't have a lot to do so. We may justify not having atanian units for now, by saying that all their military is "somewhere else", i.e. our missions take place only where there is only the UN to fight against Kangalo. - Andi
  They are defending themselves, however major operations are executed by UN, which suits your justification. BTW, we might mention them in the storyline, e.g. "Atania's forces conquered an important point, now you have to go in to defend it against counter-attack" - Rivo
  Atania's military can be modelled on South Korea during the build up to the Korean War, eg. Atania was equiped by the US with equipment for self defense only, offensive weapons such as Heavy Artillery were withheld from Atania's armed forces to prevent any agressive actions against Kangalo by Atania's Leader. When Kangalo attacked, Atania's poorly trained divisions were brushed aside by the more heavily armed Kangalo forces. The UN passed a resolution to send a liberation force to restore the sovereignty of Atania. - Peter

Kangalo

Basics:

• Uses a bit obsolete military equipment, but in big quantities, i.e. favors quantity over quality.
• Units should be less technically advanced, still powerful but lacking enhancements such as the ability of tanks to fire accurately while moving (no computer aided aiming in the tanks gun to compensate for the bouncing of the terrain)
• Units are quite cheap, the lack of technological advancements makes them less costly to produce but also makes them less survivable, eg. aircraft cannot fly in bad weather or fog, or at night because no IR vision
• Strategy is to use huge groups of units
• Few powerful (experimental?) superunits, the Soviets were all about big powerful guns, tanks, etc but with less technology integrated
• Not many air units (because air = expensive), however there are AA units. Can have cheap single role aircraft, eg. day fighter, ground attack fighter, but no multirole aircraft (Air to Air and Air to Ground)
• Kangalo's units are ATM mostly based on Russia's units, however it's a fictional country, so artists can use their own ideas instead (keep the unit roles though)

Units:

• Ground
  • Medium tank
    Main battle tank, similar to M1A1 or our Leopard
  • Light tank
    Lighter armor and firepower, costs less than medium tank, maybe a bit faster? Something like our Panther perhaps?
  • AA cannon tank
    Medium efficiency against air units. Something like Shilka.
    Model needed!
  • Oil harvester
    Can use the current one
  • Mineral harvester
    Can use the current one
  • Jeeps or other fast and light scout (and light attack) units, with mounted machinegun
    Should be fast, lightly armored, meant for scouting, not really for battles. Maybe our Wolf or something similar?
  • Mine planter
    Creates a minefield. Current Piranha.
• Air
  • Something like MiG-29 - air superiority fighter, maybe with limited air-ground capabilities
    Model needed!
  • Attack helicopter, something like Mi-24 or Mi-28, mostly anti-ground
• Facilities
  • Cmdbunker
    Current cmdbunker should fit quite well
  • Powerplant
    Maybe Smackware's powerplant?
  • War factory
    Our current one?
  • Radar (both land and air combined?)
    Maybe current comsat?
  • Mineral refinery
    Current model?
  • Oil refinery
    Current model?
  • Airport
    Current airport model? Code needed!
  • Do we need techcenter??
    What about some kind of spy facility? -> Kangalo doesn't develop technologies, but steals them? - Andi
    That would be cool, but how would you implement it? Like UN's technologies and just call it spying/stealing? - Rivo
    That's one way, but I'd start out much simpler: use a techcenter, call it a spycenter and say "the technologies there are stolen somewhere in the world" - Andi
    Umm, yeah, that's what I meant. Then we'll need a model for this as well - Rivo
    Model needed!
• Defensive facilities
  • Samsite
    Quite powerful, the main AA defence of Kangalo. More effective than the flak gun, but also more expensive
  • Turret
    Can probably use one of current turrets
  • Long range cannon/turret (artillery; rather offensive)
    Maybe one of current turrets can be used?
  • Air turret/flak gun
    Cheaper AA defence
    Maybe one of current turrets can be used?
• Superunits (= cool and expensive units)
  • Mammoth tank
    • very strong - lots of armor and firepower
    • has anti-air weapons
    • very slow, in particular turning speed (i.e. vulnerable against fast units)
    • model needed!, mayber this one can be used as a starting point
  • Long-range missiles facility (something like nuke in other games)
    Should be a big (mostly underground?) building with a missile bay door which could be animated to open when launching the missile (code needed!)
    Model needed!

UN

Basics:

• Every unit is important
• Units are more expensive, but powerful
• Strategy is to use smaller, specialized groups of units
• Upgrades are important, also single-unit upgrades
• Better intelligence, units have bigger sight ranges
• More types of air units, easier to gain air supremacy
• Doesn't use land mines, because they have been banned by majority of UN/NATO members
• As this side actually exists in real life, it would be nice, if the unit model would be closer to actual military units listed below

Units:

• Ground
  • Leopard medium tank
    Current model is used
  • Challenger 2 heavy tank
    A bit heavier tank: more firepower and armor and a bit lower speed. Not nearly as powerful as Kangalo's mammoth tank though
    Model needed!
  • AA missile tank
    Using Smackware's Bulldog for now
  • Oil harvester
    Like the current one, maybe the capacity should be bigger than that of Kangalo's harvester
  • Mineral harvester
    Like the current one, maybe the capacity should be bigger than that of Kangalo's harvester
  • Some scout unit, fast+big sight range
  • Mobile radar?
    Does anyone know if military actually uses mobile radars (on land units)?
• I WANT INFANTRY!
• Air
  • F-15 Eagle fighter (air-air missiles)
    Model needed!
  • B-1 bomber (air-land missiles/rockets/bombs)
    Model needed!
  • A-10 - supporting plane
    Using current model
  • Support aircrafts (air-land missiles/cannons) - mostly, if not completely, helicopters
    • AH-64 Apache? - attack helicopter - our Koyote is similar to that
  • Scout helicopter, with light cannon? Or maybe a spy drone instead?
    Our Puma might fit the role
• Facilities
  • Headquarters
    Should be a bigger building, especially with bigger above-ground part than that of our current cmdbunker. Something like HQ in Smackware species
  • Powerplant
    Could use a new model, current one isn't very realistic.
  • War factory
  • Techcenter
  • Ground radar
    Current one should fit
  • Air radar
    Current one should fit
  • Mineral refinery
    We can use current model for one side, but we need another model for the other one
    Maybe current models could go to UN and something smaller and/or more robust could be made for Kangalo
  • Oil refinery
    We can use current model for one side, but we need another model for the other one
  • Airport and/with helipad
    We actually have both models (though they could be made a bit more interesting perhaps), now we need code to support them so that aircrafts would actually takeoff, return to and land at them.
• Defensive facilities
  • Samsite
    Main AA-defence, quite powerful (although, from story's POV, AA might not be that important because Kangalo doesn't have very powerful air force). Current samsite should fit
  • Turret
    One of current ones might fit
• Superunits
  • AA laser facility (can instantly take down any aircraft, requires lots of power)?
  • Long-range missiles facility (something like nuke in other games)
    Should be a big (mostly underground?) building with a missile bay door which could be animated to open when launching the missile (code needed!)
    Model needed!
  • Stealth bomber? (how can we make it "stealth", both in gameplay and in code?)
    perhaps they could be "cloacked" somehow so that enemy would need a special unit to see them unless they fire, in which case all units see them for a short period
    B-2?
    Model needed!
  • Satellite - temporarily unfogs the whole map or part of it
    Would it accessed through UI, maybe headquarters could have some action for it

Unit properties

This section lists suggestive values for different unit properties.
It is mostly meant to make my own life easier when writing unit configs.

Also note that some values such as damage and health will need to be scaled for one or both sides (as Kangalo's units are meant to weaker than those of UN). Listed values will probably be used for UN units and Kangalo will use scaled values.

Speed

• Heavy units (e.g. heavy tanks) - 1.0
• Tank's speed would be about 1.5-2.0
• Fastest land units - up to about 2.5
• Helicopters - 4.0
• Planes - up to 7.0
• Really fast planes - up to 8.0-9.0

Values are in cells/second, so for a map of size 300 (I hope this will be average map size), for land unit it would take about 150 seconds = 2.5 minutes to cross the map. For helicopter it would take 75 seconds and for a plane about 45 seconds.

Damage

• Machinegun - 10-15
• Heavy machinegun (on e.g. aircrafts) - 25
• Cannon (on tanks and turrets) - 70-120
• Missile - 80-130

Reload

Note that if we take a longer period, then during that period, machinegun should do almost same amount of damage as a cannon. However because target's armor value is substracted from attacker's damage when calculating damage in boson, it means only that machinegun is much less effective than cannon against armored targets. For unarmored targets, the difference it much smaller.

• Machinegun - 0.5-1.0
• Cannon - 3-6
• Missile - 4-7

Health

This is based on the damage and reload values so that it would usually take 2-3 hits from a similar units to kill a unit

• Light units (e.g. scouts, jeeps, etc) - 80-150
• Tank - 150-200
• Heavy tank - 200-300
• Aircrafts - 150-300

Armor

• Lightly armored units, e.g. scouts, jeeps - 0-3
• Tanks - 5-15
• Heavy tanks - 10-20
• Aircrafts - 5-20
• Facilities - 0-20

Sight range

• Average land unit - 10
• Average air unit - 15
• Average facility - 5-6
• Average defensive facility - 15-20
• Samsite - 15-25

Weapon range

• Tank - 10
• Defensive facility (turret) - 15
• Anti-air unit - 20-25 (because air units are fast and thus much more of a threat)
• Air-to-land aircraft - 10-15
• Air-to-air aircraft - 15-20

Note that we probably need to do some tests to find out how the engine deals with weapon ranges of 25 cells...

Cost

Values listed are costs in minerals, oil costs will probably be about 1/2 of those

• Tank - 300
• Heavy tank - 500
• Turret/samsite - 200-300
• Important facilities such as refineries, warfactories, etc - 1000-1500
• Aircrafts - 1000-2500