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News: Celebrating 30 years of Star Control 2 - The Ur-Quan Masters

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Author Topic: Orz Marines  (Read 3747 times)
Xander77
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Orz Marines
« on: December 13, 2004, 12:22:56 am »

What does their kill/death rate depends upon? For example, I've noted that they don't fair too well one Yehat ships - being destroyed after 3-4 kills... but a single marine can take out half a Spathi crew... and how does having many marines on board a single ship effect their capability?
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Re: Orz Marines
« Reply #1 on: December 13, 2004, 01:05:33 am »

See here for an explanation of how it works.
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Re: Orz Marines
« Reply #2 on: December 14, 2004, 12:45:39 am »

Semper *Frumple*.
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Re: Orz Marines
« Reply #3 on: December 16, 2004, 01:12:20 pm »

I don't believe that. What does the source code say about it?
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Re: Orz Marines
« Reply #4 on: December 16, 2004, 07:29:51 pm »

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I don't believe that. What does the source code say about it?

That explanation is based on the source code, and is correct as far as I can tell by looking at the source code. Essentially, once a marine is inside an enemy ship, every 12 frames it has a 50 % (1/2) chance of killing an enemy crew member and a 6.25 % (1/16) chance of dying. Try reading src/sc2code/ships/orz/orz.c if you don't believe me or Nic.
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Re: Orz Marines
« Reply #5 on: December 16, 2004, 08:10:09 pm »

I didn't see anything in there about the odds or living or dying. Are you
sure it's in orz.c?
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Re: Orz Marines
« Reply #6 on: December 16, 2004, 09:27:57 pm »

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I didn't see anything in there about the odds or living or dying. Are you
sure it's in orz.c?

Yes. Look at function void intruder_preprocess (PELEMENT ElementPtr), specifically lines 411-436. Lines 414 and 423 compare a random value (from 0 to 255) to two constants (16 and 144), just like Nic said.
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Xander77
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Re: Orz Marines
« Reply #7 on: December 16, 2004, 10:34:48 pm »

In a related question, are they hurt by collusion with asteroids? I know Doggis and Ur-Quan fighters destroy them, but never had the patience to make one bounce an asteroid 3 times...
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Re: Orz Marines
« Reply #8 on: December 17, 2004, 01:10:00 am »

If you wanted to have a little fun with this, you could make the "kill vs. be killed" thresholds happen at the "opposite ends" of the byte, rather than next to each other, so for instance a value of 240-255 = "die", a value of 0-127 = "kill somebody", and 128-239 = "do nothing".  Then you could outfit each type of ship with a "toughness" attribute that could be applied to the randomly generated value.  Ships with a high "toughness" value would have a higher chance of killing the stowaway, and a lower chance for casualties, and ships with a low "toughness" value would have the opposite.

Might be amusing, but it might also play hell with the game balance.
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Re: Orz Marines
« Reply #9 on: December 17, 2004, 02:44:20 am »

Quote
If you wanted to have a little fun with this, you could make the "kill vs. be killed" thresholds happen at the "opposite ends" of the byte, rather than next to each other, so for instance a value of 240-255 = "die", a value of 0-127 = "kill somebody", and 128-239 = "do nothing".  Then you could outfit each type of ship with a "toughness" attribute that could be applied to the randomly generated value.  Ships with a high "toughness" value would have a higher chance of killing the stowaway, and a lower chance for casualties, and ships with a low "toughness" value would have the opposite.

Might be amusing, but it might also play hell with the game balance.


I think the equal effectiveness against all ships makes some sense. When you're invading a ship, you want to blow the damn thing up. Collateral damage during fire fights is a plus. That means those Orz can blast open outter walls and have the crew be sucked out into vacuum. They can storm a room and go completely ballistic on everything that does and doesn't move. The defenders are desperately trying not to wreck their own ship, and probably aren't wearing heavy power armor or carrying fully automatic high-output deathrays.
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Re: Orz Marines
« Reply #10 on: December 17, 2004, 07:33:13 am »

I don't think asteroids affect marines. They behave more like a ship than a Dogi or fighter. If they bounce on the planet three times they die, though.
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Re: Orz Marines
« Reply #11 on: December 17, 2004, 09:28:45 am »

That's kinda neat. I'd always wondered how the game figured
out how much damage the little guys did.
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