Quake suggestions

Let's assume the way the missile terraforms is spherical. I doubt shields block any effect volumes. Hence, if the radius of the Quake effect was 50% bigger than the radii of the big normal shields, then not actually reaching the ground would matter less. The smoothing should be almost equal through and through, but I don't know if it's weaker near the boundaries at the moment.

As the radius of a large shield is 350 elmos according to the wiki, 50% more is 525. I think one would also need to increase the price as that is about two times the current missile as far as I know. I suppose the Quake could be made heavier because of the shield problem. How much should the cost grow?

However, the changes I suggested would move the role of the missile toward countering big terraforming projects at the expense of small ones. I think the distant and suddenly occurring changes in the ground can be solved by adding many dust clouds and possibly slowing down the duration to three seconds.

"Quake" conceptually feels at odds with what it actually does.

Say there are two giant 1000 high spires. One has a teeny picket on top, and one does not. If an effect called "quake" happened on both, my intuition would be that they'd both collapse, and that the picket would probably take a bit of damage from falling.

Instead, building foundations appear to be made out of bedrock:



I'm not really sure what changes could make sense balance- or intuition- wise, though. Most terraforming is about being able to raise a ballistic unit or structure, or being able to sink important eco or special weapons.

As long as the current interactions are in place, there are very few situations where even the suggested revised quake would be able to do anything.

Without the current interactions, well... Being able to secure terraforming projects by sticking gauss or faradays on top was what made robust geometry puzzles possible. Perhaps if it was only able to send DDMs down to earth, rather than dragging up superweapons? It could be interesting to experiment with, though I don't think mechanical changes like this would be possible to test through the quick modding system.

Blocking terrain deformation effects could cost the statics some health, proportional to the volume of alteration prevented.

Statics with not enough health to pay for this prevention should prevent as much as they can, then die.

Quake is already very useful vs spired Crab. I never realised how much damage Crabs took from falling.

Having some smooth weapons change the height of structures sounds ok. It is a bit annoying to code and I don't know whether I'd open the ability to all smoothers. It is a bit inconsistent, but restricting structure moving to Quake and DRP is a simple change in terms of design.

I feel like terraforming could use having a minimum gradiant you can raise things up/down at, instead of letting people create sheer 90 degrees rises and falls. Maybe 70 deegres or so.

Imposing such a gradiant would mean that increasing/decreasing the height of something a lot would cost significantly more than increasing/decreasing it a little, due to the volume of earth being moved being greatly increased.

It would also make deep holes in the ground less OP as there would be more of an angle for projectiles to get in at.

And it would prevent people from putting Crabes on top of really tall toothpicks. That would be nice.

But I see people put Crabes on top of really tall, really thin spires quite regularly. If there's already a minimum gradient, then perhaps it needs to be increased.

A stricter gradient limit would make me less enraged by terraforming

quote: I'm afraid its smoothing ability is too unreal.

Epic.

In my mind I envision quake tearing and distorting structures. Nuts and bolts distorting and tearing loose, towers bending and collapsing. Same with gravity gun on sumo, only from a different direction.