Armadillo Facing

Considering how the game’s ballistic system works, it’d be lovely with a way to turn the vehicle to face a direction of choice. I realize you can “just” move one square in the direction you’d like to face, but sometimes that’s not a possibility (usually because of terrain). You could argue that a car can’t rotate around it’s center, and I could argue that when you click on the square behind the Armadillo, it does actually rotate.

The reason for facing a direction of choice is of course the tactical choice. I’m not saying it should be “free”. As far as I remember from UFO: Enemy Unknown and Terror From the Deep, it cost 1 time unit for every 45 degrees you wanted to turn and it was actually somewhat important since your tanks had more armor in the front (which tanks usually do).
It would certainly give the player more tactical options, which, in my opinion, equals quality in a strategy game.

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I agree, but it does seem “weird” for a vehicle to turn on the spot as it does with the turret. I actually think this is a mistake. The turret should be able to shoot 360, but the vehicle should remain stationary. I agree on the part that maybe for 10% action points or whatever, you could turn the vehicle, but just like with a normal human car, turning a vehicle requires way more movement than just a 90/180 degree rotation.

Really depends on the vehicle though. The Armadillo is obviously not any ordinary car :stuck_out_tongue: I assume using wheels instead of tank treads (like a lot of modern APC’s use) is an art design more than anything. Even so, a wheeled vehicle could technically be designed to allow for turning on the spot, which would probably be useful in a combat situation.

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The Armadillo uses a wheel design known as Mecanum. This places rollers on the wheels at 45°. In doing so, the force the wheel applies to the ground is also shifted 45°. By adding this various vectors in different ways, you can get it do all kinds of things, like spin in place without turning the wheels, or crab walking the vehicle

The fact that it is animated like a normal car at the moment is something I’ve brought up.

Vehicle facing options are something that have been mentioned as being in the works.

As for the Armadillo turning when firing, I think the armadillo does that for 3 reasons: to bring its strongest armour to bare on the target, to give the turret the widest elevation options, and no facing options yet.

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Having the ability to manually turn the Armadillo - as is possible with HWPs in XCOM 1994 - would be lovely.