From: lidl@rodan.UU.NET (Kurt J. Lidl)
Newsgroups: rec.games.xtank.play
Subject: Re: acid sprayers
Date: 28 Jul 1992 14:02:46 -0400
Organization: AlterNet -- Falls Church, Virginia, USA
Distribution: usa
Keywords: acid, ramming, close-in

n8841777@beaker.cc.wwu.edu (Mike Toepke) writes:
>ratner@ficus.cs.ucla.edu (David Ratner) writes:
>
>>But I post this question for discussion - does anyone else think 
>>acid sprayers are too strong?  They generate no heat and do 6 points of
>>damage.  For close-range fighting, it seems to be second to none, and
>>if you try a long-range fighting vehicle, you must add lots of heat-sinks
>>to avoid the massive heat buildup (and of course the heat-sinks take space!).
>>In addition, a long-range vehicle must spend $$ making sure it has good
>>speed, good acceleration, and good mobility, so a short-range acid-sprayer
>>cannot close the gap.
>
>[...]
>
>The way to combat acid sprayers is to maintain your distance and use longer
>range weapons.  You have to be a fairly good gunner for this to be effective
>however, as your opponent is likely going very fast.

One of the major contests that seems to happen (more and more so, as
getting a large group of people together is not as easy as it was when
Josh & I were at the University of Maryland), is one, two or maybe
three people against a whole bunch of robots (typically tagman and gnat).
This ends up pitting human controlled vehicles to a bunch of very
fast, highly mobile robots...

>We have found that acid sprayer designs are not as effective against
>programs which can target well while maintaining their distance, but none of
>our players are as accurate as some of the very good programs.

Right.  Acid sprayers make a slightly more deadly than average weapon
for humans.  However, humans don't get some of the balancing factors
that robots get to enjoy.  The messaging system can really only
be effectively exploited by robots -- no human is going to be able to
process eight messages/frame, and do anything else...  Tagman and gnat
are quite effective at sharing information with other robot players
on their team.

Gnat goes a step farther, and passing arbitrary binary data, mostly for
doing mapper updates with its other team members.

Humans just can't do that.  In this respect, robots have a very
powerful tool that humans cannot use effectively.  (Granted, if you
are all playing in the same room, humans can use that quaint
out-of-band communication protocol "speech" to get across information,
too :-)

>[immunity to heat seekers]
>
>If heat seekers could target acid sprayer designs they would be an excellent
>choice in fighting them because of their stand-off capability.

Right, and you would be trading off acid sprayers for heat seekers
as the "ultimate weapon".  With the reduced range of the acid sprayers,
you have to get in close to make a kill.  Try fighting a bunch of gnats
with a vehicle that has only acid sprayers.  You will lose, badly.

>Acid sprayers should do less damage, be more expensive, take up more
>space, and/or be heavier.  They are fun to use, but they are unbalanced.

As I see it, they give humans a chance in heavy combat.

Robots have other features and capabilities that can far-outclass
human players.  For example, tagman has the capability to "feather"
it's shots, which is why you see such a nice "hose" effect when it
has three weapons.  Rather then fireing all three shots, and then
waiting for three the weapons to re-load, it fires one the first
frame, one the next, etc, etc...  Check out the code...

-Kurt
-- 
/* Kurt J. Lidl (lidl@uunet.uu.net)   | Unix is the answer, but only if you */
/*                                    | phrase the question very carefully. */
/* Don't even think of confusing my opinions with my employer's opinions!   */
Newsgroups: rec.games.xtank.play