Rather simple question, when will it be enabled by default? I understand that the current version of the targeting AI would utterly break if friendly fire was enabled as currently LoS tests only consider terrain but not friendly units. But friendly fire (or at least: friendly units blocking shots) is essential for dealing with the issue of deathballs. Direct fire units need better stats (especially survivability) to make up for the lack of indirect fire capabilities, thats just natural. But in return they may never be given the ability to form deathballs. That means if you deploy a large number of direct fire units, you may not gain an advantage by balling them up. If you are to unfold their full strength, you should be forced to flank, or in other terms: To spread them out in order to increase the width of your front line. As long as direct fire units are partially capable of indirect fire (as projectile collision with friendly units is deactivated), real indirect fire units will never be worth it and tank rush with a rather large blob remains the only viable option for a ground based attack.
How exactly would this work? If friendly fire is on then you wouldn't be able to have groups of more than a couple units because they would all obstruct each other and not be able to fire. Wasn't enabled in supcom for good reason I imagine. Since this game is meant to be about large armies how is this going to affect 100 tanks? Surely 100 tanks is about as effective as 10 since they cant fire?
I would prefer a system where units cannot shoot through each other, thus preventing DF units from forming ball like shapes. BRING ON THE WALL!
Real-life has friendly fire, and it hasn't stopped riflemen from being used en-masse. It's called rank and file.
As usual, real life is a really crappy game so please don't design our real games after them. Friendly units blocking shots (ie. not allowing the unit behind to even take a shot) is a much more user friendly implementation of friendly fire. Its less likely to annoy the player with random deaths of their own units while keeping the intended mechanic of keeping large amounts of similar units to shoot at the same time.
And that works with how many ranks exactly? 3, at most. And it requires a special formation to fire which comes with additional drawbacks (like not being able to move while in formation). Less files, more ranks to march in order to avoid choke points, but for attack formation you usually spread out to achieve at most 4-5 ranks whereby the last ranks act solely as reserve for their dead comrades. Even less ranks if there is enough free space. A large blob of riflemen was just canon fodder, not less no more. And with modern warfare, you see rank and file formations solely in parades and for marching since small, inhomogeneous, independently moving squads have shown to be way more efficient, especially in terms of losses. You see, there are no working direct fire deathballs in real life either, and there never were any. And before you even try to bring archers up, they don't really count as direct fire, they are more the equivalent of modern mortars.
Friendly fire on by default is bad. You shouldn't have to resort to such a thing to prevent deathballs. Starcraft 2 had a deathball problem and they fixed most of it in HoTS without introducing friendly fire. Obviously, that's a different game, but the same principles can apply. Just introduce sufficient potential for raiding your opponent and it will not be an attractive prospect to deathball up your units.
Uhm, you DO realize that Starcraft 2 has many melee focused units which kind of act the same as if there was friendly fire? Front row blocking rear rows from attacking so the force of an army grows only linear with the number of units, not in square. And even "ranged" units in Starcraft 2 have rather limited weapon range, which is yet another tool to prevent deathballs by limiting the number of rows which can stack at most. Well, except for a few overly expensive units, but they do relate more to artillery in PA, with the minor exception that they still don't have indirect fire. Seriously? Having to rely on short range units solely for the main army just because they didn't even consider friendly fire to be a much smarter solution?
While I'm not very good at SC2 I've watched many "pro" replays and the deathball is well and alive. Just because there is lots of raiding and multipronged attacks doesn't mean that apparantly most longer games by the best players end when one giant army wins a decisive battle against another giant army. (Giant here is obviously relative but it means almost all of the limited number of units of a player, ie. a deathball.)
Friendly fire is a pretty lame mechanic in simulated games. It makes sense sometimes, but it can get pretty stupid when your advancing army drives right through the mortars your Mobile Artillery launched while you chase the enemy Commander, and your army just ends up killing itself. And it just gets silly when the mobile artillery ends up killing itself. I think shot blocking with no damage should be the norm, with options for transparent friendly units and full friendly fire being available.
I think the problem right now is the pathfinding smooshes units up right next to each other and there are no formations. So it just looks really unnatural and weird. Once we get standard formations and better spacings (and possibly smaller scale) then it will look better. I do think there should be friendly fire with artillery though.
Blocking is just fine for the purpose of preventing deathballs, but full friendly fire isn't that much of an issue either. Just don't forget where you had your mortars firing at.
deathball? do you mean the units clumping together to one huge mass? wasn't there the plan to implement flowpath movement and formations? so, if this was meant with deathball, it will be changed with this. Friendly Fire with AoE - Fine Forced Friendly Fire - Fine But Units blocking Shots? - No. I would never build an army again if i would know, that only the first few units could hit.
It's not about them clumping together to one huge mass because the pathing fails. It's about players making them clump together on PURPOSE because they are fully aware, that only the front row can get hit while the back rows will only multiply the fire power. Right now, you can do about a dozen rows of tanks and the effective strength of the army grows in SQUARE with the number of rows because shots are not blocked. Thats what you call a deathball, a formation where the firepower can be increased with almost no limit by throwing in more units, but at the same time the attackable surface of the blob stays the same so BOTH durability AND firepower scale linear with the number of units, resulting in a squared(!) strength. This discourages any type of smart maneuver like flanking or alike since deathballs are the only economic choice as long as shots are not blocked, which suddenly makes the effective strength of an army scale only linear with the number of units. Advantages need then to be achieved by flanking and alike (increasing the length of the front line = unleashing more firepower) with all the real risks which come by these maneuvers.
You do realize all units shoot on a ballistic arc, meaning the farther they are from their target they are, the higher they shoot. Meaning that units behind other units can still hit the target. And by shot blocking I primarily meant buildings, so you don't have utterly mental scenarios where you have a squad of Levelers sitting behind a T2 factory shredding an entire army while that army attempts in vain to destroy/circumvent the T2 factory.
