Attack Move Command & Target Priorities

Tbh I recall the amount moved before stopping and firing was enough for my units to be in range of their second row of units or Defense, which means i'm getting twice the damage output from my enemy.
They can easily have units not stop on a dime and still fire from max range, there's no need for us to argue about this.

Explain.

Mike

Please no.

When you've been arguing for a page, with someone with 1413 posts, who currently works on one of the most popular mods for the game in question... stahp

Woah, that many already? I haven't been keeping track, wonder how many I'll have by release? xD

Mike

There are many ways, here's a simple one, when a unit checks if it's in range of a nearby enemy unit it uses its max range + distance needed to fully stop. So if a unit's range is 9 and needs an extra 1 range to fully stop, then instead of checking if there are enemy units within a radius of 9, it check if there are enemy units within a radius of 9+1 so it has time to stop and still be in max range.

Also there's nothing wrong with units stopping on a dime, people never complain about it and it's present in many RTS games.

Games in the TA vein have more simulation. Unit acceleration and deceleration can have a lot of complex implications.
This complexity opens up a lot of more tactical decisions. Units that have low acceleration behaves differently from units with high acceleration. This affect how these units are microed.
If your units have low acceleration while the enemy has high acceleration you might you have to chose if your units should stop at max range and fire or if you want to go closer. If you stop at max range the enemy can move as your units won't be able to catch them before they have accelerated and started moving away. Depending on the situation you might think it is not acceptable and you might rather want to stay in range and kill the enemy as fast as possible.
Slow deceleration and low turn speed means that your units will not be as agile and your decision, if you want to keep the speed or stay at max range, has to be made earlier.
This complexity adds depth in my opinion and makes it possible to differentiate units in even more ways.

Arguably, if you want to use this fully without much micro you would need stances like:
1."decelerate and stop at max range"
2. "get in range and then decelerate"
3. "get in range and if the enemy is moving away from you try, to pursue and stay in range while the enemy is moving away from you".

In SupCom units would do it like 2, "getting in range and then decelerating". The problem with that is if the enemy gets out of range the units would have to accelerate again to get in range and therefore make less damage.
Not only were there a 0.5 second delay before the order given would actually be performed, but orders would only be initiated for the first 3-6 units and then after a pause the next 3-6 units would receive the order so the larger unit count you are trying to control the harder it gets to make them all line up at max range and get in range at the same time.

No doubt that having acceleration and deceleration will make for a better simulation, but that doesn't necessarily mean it will also make for better gameplay, it very well might.

As i understand it, and i think the devs made this pretty clear, they want the game to focus on the larger picture (and on macro) and not on small micro decisions. In essence as you lead many battles on multiple fronts and on multiple planets, you shouldn't be microing individual battles, you should be strategizing and controlling your battles on a larger scale.

Needless to say, the thread is starting to derail from its original purpose, however i think i got my answer in regards to Attack move. How will target priorities work?

Overall, not that big of a deal, looking at SupComFA priorities are dealt with very broadly, here is the code from the T1 Cybran Mantis;

Code:

TargetPriorities = {
'SPECIALHIGHPRI',
'TECH1 MOBILE',
'TECH2 MOBILE',
'TECH3 MOBILE',
'STRUCTURE DEFENSE',
'SPECIALLOWPRI',
'ALLUNITS',
},

Because SupCom/TA don't have boatloads of arbitrary armor types and weapon damage types and such priorities don't play as much of a role overall.

Not that you can't go in and do it based on each individual unit type, and do it differently for each unit, there is little actual benefit.

Mike

mm standard stuff. It would be cool if we can customize priorities in-game somehow, like have presets and just assign different presets to different groups of units or something.

IIRC every time I had the enemy ACU ID'd via radar if I constructed a Mavor, it would always begin raining on that ACU's parade. If I wanted to toy with an opponent with it, I would have to make sure it didn't switch back to it's default target and ending the match.

It could be only that intelligent because of the name. However that would be a complete coincidence. :mrgreen: