How to make Ostheer guns "movable"

Since a lot of concepts include movable heavy guns like the leFH 18 (I'll take this one as example) and make them towable to trucks, I thought abit about how to make this possible in CoH.
I came to the conlusion, that, at least now, it's impossible to create such a thing, just think about the animation and how to make the gun "follow" the truck, what happens to the crew etc.

Therefore, here is my suggestion:

• The gun itself isn't movable. This makes sence, since most of those guns mentioned in conepts are anyway to  heavy to be pulled around by their crew.

Therefore, make two different models:

• A halftrack model, which symbolizes the artillery tractor. Maybe, you can even attach the gun it should carry to the model. (It's part of the halftrack, so it won't be able to detach, uncupple etc.)


• A static "fire position". It's like the british emplacements, the gun itself and some sandbags, crates and of course, the most important: the halftrack.
  The whole thing is a building, meaning the truck and the sandbags are static (-> Brit emplacement) but the gun can be turned around at 360°. This means that there musn't even be new animations, simple take the British ones.
  

So this is how it would function in CoH:

• You build a halftrack in a building, like every normal vehicle.


• The halftrack can't carry infantry, of course, its one and only ability is to "Set gun into fire-position".


• When you activate this ability, the halftrack disappears (alpha out, get destroyed without animation and wreck or something in this lines) and an emplacement is spawned, showing the gun (+ crew) in something like a British howitzer position. An halftrack is part of this position, thus nobody asks: "Wohhoo, what happened to the HT?!"


• The emplacement has an ability: "Mobilize". Once activated, the position/building/emplacement disappears (same like the halftrack before) and an halftrack (propably with a gun model attached) spawns.

What do you think about this idea?

this sounds like an awesome idea! I like it. Only thing is that those deploy- undeploy should have cooldowns with pretty high values so you can't just switch positions every few seconds.

but the issue is what u claim that we need to pay for setup etc hummel just needs to set up to get a bigger range 

edit:
i just have read it my selve and its jiberish ( i have a troth infection so im quite full whit medical stuff)

sound very fun lets do it like this:
u buy the howizer whit tracktor and u can set it up once that would mean the germans atlast get some fixed arty

Last edited January 20, 2010 at 10:39 PM by bastex

Aouch!
This is awesome  :o

bastex wrote:
but the issue is what u claim that we need to pay for setup etc hummel just needs to set up to get a bigger range

? Cooldown =/= costs.

First thanks for your positive feedback!  :)

Of course there should be some decent cooldown to prevent constant position-switching. Something around 3-5 mins would be OK, I think.

But I didn't really get what bastex meant, if you can please enlighten me?

3-5 min to set up and lock down? Ouch, I mean, even the Hummel isn't that bad

Mobile arty : AT88, 25PdrHowi, 105mmHowi, etc
Reasons for their immobility has always been : Balance,
and animations. Has to be pretty good reasons for this.
I've noticed the costs of these is usually pretty glorious
as well.

Topic of Animation : (Mobile big Guns) :
Aouch's suggestion is an excellent one. It circumvents
this fairly well :) I like.

(A pity, though. Codename Panzer's and Men of War's
animations are awesome)(I love how the crew of the gun
rush into the Half Track/Truck when it hatches up the
gun) :p Yea, yea, this isn't the case in COH, I know.

Topic of Balance : Something seriously punitive. Not
like Marder3, Hummel, etc, lockdown. But like offscale
is needed. 3-5 minutes (I favor 5) is good, I feel.

Some thoughts. I like the timer of the british trucks
Takes 'em awhile to setup. Such super guns shouldn't
be able to setup/fire instanteanously, like Priests and
Hummels (That is, after all, what they are for : Self-
propelled guns) :)

When I said 3-5 mins, I didn't mean the set-up-time, but the cool-down for the mobility-ability.
Set-up should be done within 15 secs, which is already a long time, seeing as the frontline can be overrunned within a matter of a few seconds, especially Conscipt + T34 spam.  ;)
Remember, we're still talking about "movable" guns.

@Loup: Sorry for the match we had today. My CoH still tends to crash from time to time...  :-\