Forgive me but I forgot the terminology the Uber guy's used. Also I'm not sure if this has a proper place that I haven't seen, or if it's been raised before and I haven't seen. I remember someone who was in charge of the pathing on planets, talking about how units avoided cliffs and things they couldn't pass, and they prioritised flat terrain over bumpy and difficult terrain. I had a random thought, that perhaps there could be something similar for orbital and air layers. For example, known anti air defenses, or anchors. Since you'd have to physically target them anyway in most cases. so as far as ai pathing is concerned, perhaps air units avoid flack and aa towers, and orbital units avoid anchors when given a general move or patrol command. Conversely, maybe prioritise those things? If i'm attack moving with bombers, they auto prioritise AA, and orbital fighters prioritise anchors. Maybe fighters prioritise the advanced aircraft over basic aircraft? Edit: cost layer, land units moving over terrain. thank you dc443. Matt
if you mean painting a no fly zone on the planet for air units, im all for it. the same for other types of units would be great, like having your tanks avoid a artillery infested area or your orbital to stop flying over clusters of umbrellas.
Actually, having a click-and-drag option to create a red zone that's basically says to your units "don't go here", and then they avoid it like they would cracks.. that would be an amazing feature
It would be absolutely awesome to see mountains the size of Mt. Olympus on Mars. Just imagine that, planes would fly around the mountain.
Or weather, with thunder clouds or acid rain that either damage, slow, or even outright destroy units passing through.
@cybrankrogoth the term you are looking for is "Cost". They had a nice demo where the AI Pathing guy could "draw" in the Cost field and it would affect the pathfinding in a really rather intuitive and elegant way. The units always take the cost field into account in order to avoid obstacles. In that video they specifically addressed the questions on twitter that were being generated at the time which is precisely what you all are mentioning, that is to say, the idea (on UBER's part) was never to expose the ability for you as the commander to be able to "paint" into this cost field in order to finely adjust the pathfinding behavior of AI. Perhaps there is a fear that this could turn into a can of worms as far as competitive is concerned. But I see no immediate reasons why this should not be explored. I doubt that their position on this has changed, but I think that many will agree with me when I say that this is probably a missed opportunity. Practically speaking, as commander of breathtaking robotic armies of doom, it makes a lot of sense that one ought to be able to issue a command such as "avoid the AA encampment in this general area", however as some of us are already aware, this type of vague reasoning very much stretches the limits of the capabilities of (current-day) artificial intelligence. The reason I say that this is a potentially huge missed opportunity is that allowing a commander to paint on the battlefield to better direct units is exactly the kind of innovation that will push RTS into a completely new era. For example, one where a player might use a stylus on a tablet, instead of a mouse on a PC. While it is a little unrealistic to try to implement the kind of intelligence that can deal with a vague command like that, we have seen right here that the next best thing is probably to scribble into the cost scalar field to directly control pathfinding. Perhaps the logic is that with features such as spherical battlefield geometry, kinetic energy weapons, and games that can span multiple worlds, the limits have been put in place. Yeah, I can settle for that...
It would be cool if any AA or Defences scouted would auto update the cost map for units, to reduce micro managing assaults. I'd also like to see a modified click (say shift-ctrl click) to have all units arrive at the same point at the same time. Just to make it easier to do a combined assault.
Current day AI wouldn't be stretched too hard to avoid flak in an area to be honest.. AI informs fighter pilots "at GPS point xxx,xxx for a radius of xxxKM, avoid" bam, you've got a no fly zone to tell your fighters to not float over AA. It's only vague if you word it vaguely. But as much as I would love to paint avoidance zones, if the static defenses of the enemy (not the mobile ones) modified the cost of the area, that would promote non-stop scouting. Which I'm ok with.
Thank you waylanderpk and icefire 909. I realised after posting I wasn't real clear. you guys have hit the preverbial nail on the head. Although I do like the idea of introducing the ability to artificially label areas "attack here first" (reverse cost?) or if theres anti air visible, the range creates a cost layer in the air so aircraft avoid it. This way you're not having to specifically micromage to avoid/ target aa units or turrets with air. Matt
