Deadlock II: Orders, Missions and all about Combat
Posted: Mon Jun 27, 2016 9:54 am
I had to say that it is really really exciting to know this board from wikipedia link. :D
At this post I would like to talk about some of my discovers and some of my confuse (in my poor English, sorry.)
Deadlock was so attractive to me cause it was an "honest" game.
It was made in the years that most of the people was still learning "how to make a game" instead of "how to make money."
Using a lot of time making "Help and Information" page inside the game instead of trying to make weapons glowing and more
more gambling kind systems.
All of the numbers displayed was just what it works inside the game:
Defense = HP, Defense - Attack = remaining HP, remaining HP / Defense * 100 = Health;
Even the sound effects express exactly what it is going on in the combat! (That is why I called it "honest" game.)
When Tank like Units such as Fusion Cannon had been hit, it will have a sound like "dāngǐwū"
When Defense Installation such as Laser Defense had been hit, it will have a sound like "māowū"
If you try to count the firing and hitting sound effect counts in great amount (I mean maybe 15 times? 20 times?) like me,
you would find out "Damn! Veteran unit fire 20 times and hit 13 times, 13/20 = 0.65; 65 it is just exactly what displayed
at Accuracy section! What an honest game!"
By counting the sound effects, I think:
Laser Defense: HP 20~25, Atk 4
Flake: HP 50
Torpedo Fort: HP 50, Atk 15
I think Defense Installations was just like the description in game "about equal in power to a OOO,"
same attack power but have a little bit more HP.
By the way, accuracy would be:
Green (exp: 0~99) => 50
Veteran (exp: 100~399) => 65
Elite (exp: 400+) => 80
And this should be the only improvement for experienced units in Deadlock II.
I have memories of increasing moving speed and firing rate at Deadlock I, but now I do not have a copy on hand to confirm it.
****
We have learned Attack, Defense, Accuracy above, now let us move on to some opposite attributing(?) units.
Interceptor > Bomber(?)
This answer would be NO; I have tried to transfer unit(s) to others for making them combat one by one,
turbo wing fighter as an interceptor roll had little chance to win starflare bomber as hmm.. a Bomber.
(I had confirmed remaining health and sound effect counting, no attack multipliers applied, they do not work like how Homeworld does.)
Although turbo wing fighter could not really take down starflare bomber as what we thought of "Interceptors and Bombers,"
I have notice something at ChCh't campaign scenario 2, which Cyth love to build a lot of turbo wing fighter:
Basing on above one by one experiment I thought my starflare bombers would neutralize the defense installations without difficult
and maybe could take down most of the fighters, but the result was zero bomber survive, zero fighter casualty!
So, hmm.. here is one of my hypothesis:
"Though attack multipliers was not applied for fighters to bombers, bombers will have priority at ground unit(s)
making it looks like fighters can take down bombers efficiently."
I think this priority mechanism hypothesis maybe works on SAM Troopers too; But for "Submarine and Destroyers" I am
not really sure, only known is that they do not have attack multipliers inside. Maybe there is no attack multipliers mechanism
inside Deadlock.
All units and defense installations that could "fire" could attack both air and surface targets, such as flake launcher would
attack fusion cannon if there is no aircraft buzzing around. The only exception is torpedo fort, it will only attack sea units.
Maybe there is priority mechanism or accuracy correction for flake, but it is hard for me to prove it.
****
Unit's moving speed was critical when we need to retreat or to approach defense installations.
When affordable, I prefer AAV rather than Fusion Cannon, prefer Battle Trooper or Assault Trooper rather than Disruptor Cannon.
What I would like to share at this really really short section was that I have notice they will try to "move on the road"
and when this happened, they will move faster. The faster the units was, the more significant difference could be observed.
(ChCh't + Power Cell)
Since we could not assign them to build roads at where we want, I think this discover would be hard to implement attack or defense strategy.
****
Finally, combat orders, missions, and ability.
For combat orders, most of the time we would only use Attack Units Only, Avoid Mines, and Combat Support.
Basically, Attack Units Only and Combat Support was the same, both of them will not attack buildings except defense installations;
Only difference is that Combat Support will make them hold on the bottom line for about 5 seconds. Combat Support order was
handy for foes that build their defense installations with a distance from where your units enter the map, you can reduce hostile
milita without taking fire from those fixed damage dealer.
For all other combat orders like "Attack OOO" and Avoid Mines, they will engage everything they met, creating ruins on the path
where they visit (which most of the times we would like to avoid.) Avoid Mines was used when advancing on mined neutral
territories such as ChCh't campaign scenario 2; After success avoiding the mines and take over the territory, the mines will be
disarmed automatically.
Most of the abilities could be found in missions section, here I will only point out what was not described inside help.
Juggernaut, this will make your soldier attack buildings only, yes, Buildings Only.
Steal Technology, athought the success discription looks like "$unit_name has stolen the engineering blueprints
for $tech_name technology! The unit got past the security systems in a $foe_race_name research facility
in $territory_name." It does not requires your scout to work on a territory that has research facilities,
you just need to put your scout inside a territory that have different color flags, this makes them less risk
to be caught by patrol units. Notice that we could steal pacted alliance without breaking the pact.
Hunt, looks like it will make your submarine to Spy when no enemies shown in same territory and behave as No Mission when engaged enemies.
I am not sure will this mission apply other advantages when ambushing, but looks like there is not.
Underwater Search, weakened Patrol mission. This mission seemed to be a replacement of Patrol
for contending against Silent Running, but will need to start a fight after success detection.
Most of the time, I will not use this mission; Destroyers do not have absolute advantage to Submarines.
(Also, since I will not use this mission at most of the time, I have no idea will detection fail or not.)
Mind Blast, weird ability. I expect it would be something like Yuri that "Blast" units in one shot;
Instead, it just applied a visual effect of blue circle, a little bit like the ones of missile hit on target and..
nothing happened at all?! Units which was aimed by Mind Blast and success at retreating will act as
nothing special happened, they can still repair as usual.
Sabotage, what Maug scouts was born for. This ability was very useful when facing over-teched
defense installations in campaign scenario. Since the building was created by game script,
your foe does not have technology to rebuild it in a short time; When no Energy Defense and
Anti-Matter Defense was remaining on the planet, time to call your Fusion Cannons to work!
Steal Resources, this will transport resources to the nearest yellow color flaged territory including wastelands.
Although most of the times we do not have money to transport all of the loots from wastelands
back to our base, reducing your foes' resources will help a lot, sometimes.
(Yes, I am talking about ChCh't campaign scenario 5)
Poison Land, I am not really familiar with this ability, but it looks like will only destroy half of the food
for one turn when success; Instead of what we could have thought of "poison" that harmed continually.
Mines, even more deadly than Anti-Matter Defense, each triggered will deal 50 points of damage.
Only Holocaust Cannon and Shockwave Carrier (well, have not happened yet, but from Shockwave Carrier's
Defense statistics it should be able to survive) can tank one mine burst.
Mines does not have the concept of consume, the more you send, the more they kill;
And, if you failed to take over that territory, mines will still remain.
There are only three methods to remove mines from the planet:
disarmed by scout, using force to take over that territory, and, clicking on the mine icon
to blow away the mines by its owner.
****
Above was all I know about combat, currently.
If you know what is going on when Mind Blast unleashed;
If you know what kind of silver bullet is flak using when they hunt my bombers down;
Please do tell me more about this honest game. <(_ _)>
At this post I would like to talk about some of my discovers and some of my confuse (in my poor English, sorry.)
Deadlock was so attractive to me cause it was an "honest" game.
It was made in the years that most of the people was still learning "how to make a game" instead of "how to make money."
Using a lot of time making "Help and Information" page inside the game instead of trying to make weapons glowing and more
more gambling kind systems.
All of the numbers displayed was just what it works inside the game:
Defense = HP, Defense - Attack = remaining HP, remaining HP / Defense * 100 = Health;
Even the sound effects express exactly what it is going on in the combat! (That is why I called it "honest" game.)
When Tank like Units such as Fusion Cannon had been hit, it will have a sound like "dāngǐwū"
When Defense Installation such as Laser Defense had been hit, it will have a sound like "māowū"
If you try to count the firing and hitting sound effect counts in great amount (I mean maybe 15 times? 20 times?) like me,
you would find out "Damn! Veteran unit fire 20 times and hit 13 times, 13/20 = 0.65; 65 it is just exactly what displayed
at Accuracy section! What an honest game!"
By counting the sound effects, I think:
Laser Defense: HP 20~25, Atk 4
Flake: HP 50
Torpedo Fort: HP 50, Atk 15
I think Defense Installations was just like the description in game "about equal in power to a OOO,"
same attack power but have a little bit more HP.
By the way, accuracy would be:
Green (exp: 0~99) => 50
Veteran (exp: 100~399) => 65
Elite (exp: 400+) => 80
And this should be the only improvement for experienced units in Deadlock II.
I have memories of increasing moving speed and firing rate at Deadlock I, but now I do not have a copy on hand to confirm it.
****
We have learned Attack, Defense, Accuracy above, now let us move on to some opposite attributing(?) units.
Interceptor > Bomber(?)
This answer would be NO; I have tried to transfer unit(s) to others for making them combat one by one,
turbo wing fighter as an interceptor roll had little chance to win starflare bomber as hmm.. a Bomber.
(I had confirmed remaining health and sound effect counting, no attack multipliers applied, they do not work like how Homeworld does.)
Although turbo wing fighter could not really take down starflare bomber as what we thought of "Interceptors and Bombers,"
I have notice something at ChCh't campaign scenario 2, which Cyth love to build a lot of turbo wing fighter:
Basing on above one by one experiment I thought my starflare bombers would neutralize the defense installations without difficult
and maybe could take down most of the fighters, but the result was zero bomber survive, zero fighter casualty!
So, hmm.. here is one of my hypothesis:
"Though attack multipliers was not applied for fighters to bombers, bombers will have priority at ground unit(s)
making it looks like fighters can take down bombers efficiently."
I think this priority mechanism hypothesis maybe works on SAM Troopers too; But for "Submarine and Destroyers" I am
not really sure, only known is that they do not have attack multipliers inside. Maybe there is no attack multipliers mechanism
inside Deadlock.
All units and defense installations that could "fire" could attack both air and surface targets, such as flake launcher would
attack fusion cannon if there is no aircraft buzzing around. The only exception is torpedo fort, it will only attack sea units.
Maybe there is priority mechanism or accuracy correction for flake, but it is hard for me to prove it.
****
Unit's moving speed was critical when we need to retreat or to approach defense installations.
When affordable, I prefer AAV rather than Fusion Cannon, prefer Battle Trooper or Assault Trooper rather than Disruptor Cannon.
What I would like to share at this really really short section was that I have notice they will try to "move on the road"
and when this happened, they will move faster. The faster the units was, the more significant difference could be observed.
(ChCh't + Power Cell)
Since we could not assign them to build roads at where we want, I think this discover would be hard to implement attack or defense strategy.
****
Finally, combat orders, missions, and ability.
For combat orders, most of the time we would only use Attack Units Only, Avoid Mines, and Combat Support.
Basically, Attack Units Only and Combat Support was the same, both of them will not attack buildings except defense installations;
Only difference is that Combat Support will make them hold on the bottom line for about 5 seconds. Combat Support order was
handy for foes that build their defense installations with a distance from where your units enter the map, you can reduce hostile
milita without taking fire from those fixed damage dealer.
For all other combat orders like "Attack OOO" and Avoid Mines, they will engage everything they met, creating ruins on the path
where they visit (which most of the times we would like to avoid.) Avoid Mines was used when advancing on mined neutral
territories such as ChCh't campaign scenario 2; After success avoiding the mines and take over the territory, the mines will be
disarmed automatically.
Most of the abilities could be found in missions section, here I will only point out what was not described inside help.
Juggernaut, this will make your soldier attack buildings only, yes, Buildings Only.
Steal Technology, athought the success discription looks like "$unit_name has stolen the engineering blueprints
for $tech_name technology! The unit got past the security systems in a $foe_race_name research facility
in $territory_name." It does not requires your scout to work on a territory that has research facilities,
you just need to put your scout inside a territory that have different color flags, this makes them less risk
to be caught by patrol units. Notice that we could steal pacted alliance without breaking the pact.
Hunt, looks like it will make your submarine to Spy when no enemies shown in same territory and behave as No Mission when engaged enemies.
I am not sure will this mission apply other advantages when ambushing, but looks like there is not.
Underwater Search, weakened Patrol mission. This mission seemed to be a replacement of Patrol
for contending against Silent Running, but will need to start a fight after success detection.
Most of the time, I will not use this mission; Destroyers do not have absolute advantage to Submarines.
(Also, since I will not use this mission at most of the time, I have no idea will detection fail or not.)
Mind Blast, weird ability. I expect it would be something like Yuri that "Blast" units in one shot;
Instead, it just applied a visual effect of blue circle, a little bit like the ones of missile hit on target and..
nothing happened at all?! Units which was aimed by Mind Blast and success at retreating will act as
nothing special happened, they can still repair as usual.
Sabotage, what Maug scouts was born for. This ability was very useful when facing over-teched
defense installations in campaign scenario. Since the building was created by game script,
your foe does not have technology to rebuild it in a short time; When no Energy Defense and
Anti-Matter Defense was remaining on the planet, time to call your Fusion Cannons to work!
Steal Resources, this will transport resources to the nearest yellow color flaged territory including wastelands.
Although most of the times we do not have money to transport all of the loots from wastelands
back to our base, reducing your foes' resources will help a lot, sometimes.
(Yes, I am talking about ChCh't campaign scenario 5)
Poison Land, I am not really familiar with this ability, but it looks like will only destroy half of the food
for one turn when success; Instead of what we could have thought of "poison" that harmed continually.
Mines, even more deadly than Anti-Matter Defense, each triggered will deal 50 points of damage.
Only Holocaust Cannon and Shockwave Carrier (well, have not happened yet, but from Shockwave Carrier's
Defense statistics it should be able to survive) can tank one mine burst.
Mines does not have the concept of consume, the more you send, the more they kill;
And, if you failed to take over that territory, mines will still remain.
There are only three methods to remove mines from the planet:
disarmed by scout, using force to take over that territory, and, clicking on the mine icon
to blow away the mines by its owner.
****
Above was all I know about combat, currently.
If you know what is going on when Mind Blast unleashed;
If you know what kind of silver bullet is flak using when they hunt my bombers down;
Please do tell me more about this honest game. <(_ _)>