Should Artilery Paint "cost" at their attack targets

so i just watched the latest livestream and i though occurred to me when i was thinking about the flowfields and "cost", would it be a good idea if Artillery units weapon fire had a chance to be detected by the targeted unit and Painted high "cost" values at their attack targeted locations, to mimic unit detection and avoidance of enemy weapons fire, causing the targeted unit to attempt to make a move away from the high "cost" location thereby dodging (successfully or unsuccessfully) the direct impact of incoming weapons fire.

it wouldn't have to happen on every artillery shot but give each shot a chance at being detected by the target unit and paint a high cost field in the area of it impact to cause the units targeted to attempt to avoid the fire.

critique, review, discuss, any ideas or thoughts.

I think this is a very interesting idea. It makes long range artillery less effective against small groups of units or agile units but still effective against large masses of units or very slow units.

No, because then somebody could fire their artillery to trick enemy units into moving towards certain areas and in the long run, the avoidance of "cost" could harm the play's control over units if they constantly avoided any projectiles. Cost should only be increased in situations where the action is so sudden that the player couldn't possibly react in time.

A good example would be a falling building as said in the stream, but also things like falling aircraft. Any direct attack weapons should not be avoided.

I think dodging incoming fire is a micromanagement issue, not a unit AI issue.

I think it's more productive to talk about the idea (auto arty dodging) and its merits rather than it's implementation (which could be painting flow-field cost).

So, with that in mind, I like the idea of auto-dodge.
Dumb units standing still just soaking up damage has always frustrated me.

How Uber choose to make it happen (or not) is their responsibility.

I will just note; "auto-dodge" is not a new discussion on these boards.

Really, because using artillery as an area denial tool sounds pretty awesome.

i hadn't thought of that at all, but that does sound pretty, cool, and is a viable artillery tactic, rather than attempting to make shots on enemy targets, use the artillery to deny access to a choke point

This. Flow fields do allow this to "automagically" happen, but this is actually discussing this from an implementation perspective instead of an idea perspective.

My idea would be like the Radar Targetting facility from TA: You build a fire-control/detection structure, and that gives units the additional movement stance of "avoid" (on top of hold ground, manouver, roam etc., using TA ones as an example). Units set to this would try do dodge incoming fire specified by the control/detection structure.

As an aside to this, I wonder if Uber plan to have modding APIs for modifying the flow field costings - there's a lot you can do with them.

I think a player should be smart enough not to send his column of tanks in a deathtrap. That are the things that will help observant players win the game.

The thing is: when will the units start dodging?

If the arty shells are sufficiently slow, using multiple arty's you could group up enemies and then bring down the hammer so to speak. Essentially, an ever-shrinking ring of arty fire.


I personally think this is an idea with potential, but could hugely devalue arty.
For example, would the units only dodge once the bullet comes into view? why would the radar not pick up the attack? etc.

It does sound cool, but if the player can pick a spot to bombard (instead of only a unit), this can already be done. Making it so the player has no choice but to go around the enemy fire sounds like a bad design choice to me. There are cases where the player may just want to try to quickly run through the bombardment.

My personal concern here would be the devaluation of artillery as a means of attack. Thundercleez also has a point with there needing to be a way for a player to over-ride such a built in behavior.

I dont think arty shells should be detected other than by sound, but an early warming system for missiles would be interesting as a high level structure or as part of an advanced radar.

I don' think the units would have a hard time detecting an asteroid coming in though.

Obviously your base would be fudged but having your engineers and faster units rush away from the impact would just be amazing to watch, knowing its not yourself doing it.

This flow field tech combined with Sorian programming the AI is just going to be incredible.

I'm gonna put my money down early on saying PA is gonna be voted PC game of the year everywhere.

Well, except in the places that are paid to say the latest first person shooter to come out is.

Exactly.

Something both as trivial (for the player) and as click-consuming as dodging projectiles should be automated. It doesn't need to be absolutely perfect, only to be good enough so the player don't have to babysit their infantry while there are base building, land grab, pincer manoeuvres and harassing to be done.

aside from artillery, there are other unit/structure types which could use such a mode.
for example avoiding firing arcs of fixed defences, detection in general, etc.
the problem is, the useful variants dependent on unit A encounters unit/structure B would keep multiplying fast (light units shouldn't necessarily encounter the same influences as heavy units, your order type would would have to reflect expected influences, mixed unit groups have to decide to follow some preference setting,..).
Don't know if the pathfinding algo/user given options can handle that in a efficient and for the user plausible way. And just using arbitrarily some avoidance for artillery seems a bit unintuitive.

I can't really see artillery fire creating cost areas for units to avoid being a good feature. This could create more unit micro by having to make specific waypoints for units that are not crossing an area because of artillery fire. At least this is how I understand it.

Also I believe a lot of people would be confused as to why units were avoiding seemingly easy areas to traverse on.

That's easily solved by making it a toggle, so the player has control about whether or not they do it.

I would prefer to never ever have to deal with cost in any way that it was not intended.

No I don't think a toggle would be a good idea, that would just add another button on my screen.
Cost should not be something the player can manipulate. It's meant for pathfinding. Not for strategies. I'm happy Uber showed us the tech behind pathfinding but its something that operates behind the scene.

the "cost" is only applied to each individual artillery round as it approaches its target, its not as if it constantly covers a large area, it would only affect your units if they are actively being fired upon, unless of course the artillery were attacking a ground target constantly in some form of area denial tactic