Ideas on AOEs

Aug 14, 2016
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#1
I think I'll expand on this idea later when I have more time. But I'm heading into work now so I can't fully type out my thoughts and I fear I might forget them by the time I get home. So I'm typing out the rough idea now.
  1. Well there be multi layer AOEs in this game?
  2. Well each type of AOE have different drop off ranges?
  3. Well it be possible for secondary effects of AOE to do things?
For a short example take lightning. Sure most of the damage from lightning is done to things it hits and to the things it can chain jump too. That is main effect but we all know the AOE that lightning makes that is thunder, the pressure wave move things around if close enough to it short drop off range but the sound is makes can be heard for miles away. But what some people don't know is that all lightning also makes EMPs and the more powerful the lightning the more powerful of an EMP it makes.

So let's say I'm inside of an enemy base and I start to use something like an Tesla gun for crowd control. Would the EMP also make things like unshielded lights and other electrical devices start to act odd, if not just burn out / blow up, do to all extra energy in the area?

Another example of a multi layer AOE is things like impact events. There is the impact, the heat, and the shockwave. 3 different effects all with different ranges and levels of drop off. Being outside of the range of one effect doesn't mean you are outside of the range of another effect.
 
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Pandagnome

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#2
With different ranges of AOE type damage would being closer to the main AOE damage cause the most amount of damage than a secondary or 3rd AOE?

Could it depend on the resistance with the armor type, shield strength and even the amount of health pool?

How long would the duration of the AOE be, is it short and devastating or could it flutuate in random waves etc?

Would the AOE have residual effects linguring until it dies out e.g radiation?
 
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Aug 14, 2016
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#3
The thing that first made me think of this thread was things like toxic bombs in some games as well as things like OSHA rules (I work jobs where I have to think about stuff like that) when it comes to things like dust and gases.

In some games the way my character would poison enemies is by throwing something like a glass bottle at them and when it breaks a toxic cloud pops out of it. In some games the damage they take is always the same no matter if I hit them with the bottle or if the bottle hits the ground because the bottle itself doesn't matter in the games. But in other games mass of the glass bottle is taken into account dealing damage if you hit an enemy with it. And if the stuff inside the glass in under pressure or designed with a lot of tension in it than the shards of glass can also hurt near by enemies as they fly everywhere like shrapnel. And then there is the toxic gas that poisons enemies who touch it and/or breath it in. In a lot of games things like gas clouds are always the same size and don't really move or grow. Unlike in real life where gas will keep spreading until reaches a kind of equilibrium with things around it. But in some games the gas cloud does spread out over time until it goes away. With the enemies near the source of the cloud taking the most toxic damage as the concentration of toxin is higher and the farther away they it does less damage as the concentration is lower. Hell, in some games even the broken shards of glass stay on the ground for awhile before they despawn, meaning if enemies walk over them they can also take damage.

Just from that example alone you can see how many layers of damage and AOEs that can happen just from doing one thing. With the more realistic games having the same enemy being effected by different types and sources of damage all at once. In this being,
  1. The impact of the bottle.
  2. The shattering of the glass.
  3. Any cuts from glass shard shrapnel.
  4. The toxic gas itself based on the level of concentration of the gas.
  5. And any extra effects the gas might have on the enemy's body and/or mind.
And besides the different ranges of the AOEs some of them just stay around in the area longer than others. Like in the example until the concentration of gas is below the point there you can take damage from it and until the glass shards despawn.

I like games where there is layered damage because it is more realistic to how things really work. It is often times not just one thing that hurts you but many different things hurting you at once and some of those things can be delayed in hurting you. Like an infection, which is why you try to clean out wounds before that happens. And the fact that we are in things like powered armored and mecha doesn't matter in this because some types of damage can bypass things like shields and armor if they are not designed to stop such things. Like heat and other types of radiation or sounds and resonance frequencies. And this is why in some mecha games using weapons that do things like make high heat but do low damage is still a good option because you can force enemy mecha without really good cooling systems to over heat forcing them to shutdown and/or malfunction.
 
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#4
n some games even the broken shards of glass stay on the ground for awhile before they despawn, meaning if enemies walk over them they can also take damage.
Would weather assist in the damage such as using in a storm could increase the damage by the wind propelling the glass faster while it is blown around.

Perhaps the gas relased near the heat from lava could cause some serious blast.

What about if we take an advantage of an environmental factor such as an avalanche. To lure the target just as they are hit by the avalanche the cold itself would slow them down too.

etc
 
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Aug 14, 2016
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#5
If there is wind in the game and it is taken into account when different effects happen. Than yes, things like glass shards can pick up extra energy in places with high enough wind speeds. It might effect how you fight as the wind might blow some things away from you or towards you, and the same can be said of the targets. You might when you avoid using some weapons and abilities while you are facing the wind unless you want to risk having some of it blown back at you. And when it comes to some types of AOEs the wind can change the sharp and range of it. For example going from say a sphere or ring shape into an ovel or teardrop shape.

And if environmental temperatures are taken into account than the effects of some AOEs can change not only their shape and range but their power and form too. For example if the ambient temperature is high than gases will expand farther and faster because of extra energy. While things like pressure waves become more powerful in ambient temperature is low because the air density is higher, this why sound travels much farther and clearer on cold days than it does on warm days. Likewise things like electricity might flow better through some objects when they are colder because those things become superconductors at those temperatures. Although different types of electromagnetic radiation might act differently going by the ambient temperature this is not always the case, so it'll go by what types of radiation is used and accounted for in the game. And yes, heat also counts as being part of electromagnetic radiation and a type of light. Meaning that to beings who can sense that type of radiation as part of their sight, all living humans glow because living humans give off heat. So to some types of animals and stuff you do glow in the dark.

And if we so things like fight in outer space or some other void, some effects and AOEs will not just exist because there is no really for them to travel. Like sound. Most sci-fi like to have things like epic space battles but one of things a lot of us who know about science and space get annoyed with some times is the fact that you can hear all this stuff happening where there should be no possible way for you in space. Most sci-if just ignore this and never try to explain it. But there are a few sci-fi who try to be more realistic and explain how we might my able to hear those sounds when sound can't travel in a vacuum. One sci-fi that did this was Gundam.
 
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