This is actually something I would like to see in PA. Say you have an artillery style unit and then a flying scout goes past it. It turns to fire at it even though the chance of hitting the aircraft is low. Proper anti-air like the flakker in TA didn't target ground units however there may be a greater merit to make it face a certain direction and keep it fixed to be ready to hit a second wave of aircraft coming from the same direction. Allow for an example a flak cannon to just target gunships while missile units focus on fighters. Would it be possible to fix the direction a turret is facing and/or maybe make it ignore certain types of targets? I think it would be a great addition personally. The direction a turret/unit could be fixed would be in degrees that you can personally choose for instance, say 30 degrees or 180 degrees. Ignore target type would be a question of tick boxes or you could select all units of a type and then choose to tick/untick target types for all of that type.
Or just make it so that Artillery can't shoot air? This it the kind of stuff the leads me to prefer the Separation of targeting between layers. Want to shoot Air, use an AA weapon. Mike
Artillery might need to shoot air occasionally if say an air unit lands on the ground or is deployed on the ground for some reason. What if ground units move past the direction of an artillery unit and then it turns to hit its current target [which other artillery units might also be targeting] thus ignoring any targets that might also be easier to hit right in front of its former direction. Defences behind an artillery unit might be quite capable of dispatching any units that slip past the defensive lines so to have an artillery unit targeting them would be overkill/not practical. Manhandling every artillery unit with micro to its fullest potential while fighting is also not completely practical imo.
This happened automatically in FA. Air units were essentially considered ground units when they landed, meaning you could fire on them. I'm not sure I see the point. For fixing direction, you get to at least choose the direction it faces by default. And what happens when there are bases in two opposite directions? All of a sudden, you have to purchase multiple artillery pieces, which I'm going to assume are expensive. I'd much rather it go 360. I'm not sure I see the point of disabling what units it attacks, either. It automatically won't target units it's not supposed to (submerged and air, and I'm assuming orbital ), and otherwise it will likely target the closest enemy, unless you give it a specific target. What does more functionality offer? KISS, I say, KISS!
Perhaps there just needs to be a more comprehensive targeting algorithm. You could have any unit automatically target another unit based on the following factors: - Threat of the target unit - Cost of targeting the target unit (amount of time to move turret in to position, etc) - Probability of hitting that unit This would be too expensive to calculate for every unit combination, but it could be used in a limited way to help groups of units optimally target other groups of units. One shortcut that could help is to have fixed "killability" values from one type of unit to another, so your unit will only target something if it knows that it's usually likely easily track and hit it.
Trivial solution: Create lists of "High Priority" targets for each unit and define an Engagement range for each unit that's some fraction larger than its weapon range (how large depends on its RoF and traverse speed). Units will not attack low priority targets if a high priority target is within its engagement range unless ordered to. No micro, no arbitrary AA restrictions, no fuss. And unlike a complicated series of targeting priorities which changes with range and speed and turret angle, it's transparent and easy to understand.
Fixing something for one direction doesn't mean you can't change the angle that the artillery piece is currently fixated on. So you want it to only fire 180° directly north, you can then change the artillery piece back to 360° as and when you need to.
Oh, wait. OH. I think I misunderstood what you were saying. I thought you meant fixed, as in limited degree of movement. So by fixed, you mean, be able to set a certain arc length that the piece can move across (say, 30 degrees), but be able to edit it (change from 0-30 to 60-90, or 60-180), simply to control what direction it fires in in case there is an important army approaching? Cause that sounds pretty neat.
I think Unit priority lists would be a bit too much micro management, but the limits on firing angles would be a great feature! Can't recall all the times my Cybran medium artillery blob (I like Turtles) would turn around 180° to shoot that enemy unit surviving the crash of its Air Transport and in the process annihilate part of my base/defense structures...
If said list is only one unit deep (ala. shoot at this type of unit over all others then you can bind it to something like a double right-click and it's no more micro than issuing an attack order. In fact, in situations where you'd be chaining a bunch of attacks together (like shooting at all the AA turrets) then you'd be clicking less overall. ^_^
Make a new order for artillery, a Killzone command if you will. The artillery only attacks targets inside the Killzone(s) which are circles you define on the map for each artillery piece like an order (click center and drag out the radius). If the targets leave the zone, the artillery finds a new target. Press "stop" to clear its killzones. Useful for artillery with very low traverse rate as you don't want them constantly adjusting their barrel height which can take multiple reload times.
i like that. i think you mentioned a mod you made for FA in the past, all the advanced controls and overkill optimization from that would be well suited to PA.
Yep that's what I meant Kill zones sound pretty nice too. Would probably be more applicable to nuke like units/long range. Adjustable firing arcs Kill zones Target Priority Might make strategy more strategic
