No-Go-Zones and overriding the Pathfinding Algorithm

This depends of how the implementation of the flowfield is tweaked, but if you place a waypoint in the middle of the chokepoint, some units won't go around and then in reverse inside the chokepoint ? (making it even more crowded

well I don't think necessarily that you should control the cohesion. But just have it naturally tuned to make sure that you don't get unintended stragglers which can be very annoying.

For a larger group of units it might even make sense to go around if the blob is big enough that units going around wouldn't actually separate from the group. So the cohesion level should probably scale this way.

A simple rule might be "don't move in a way that takes you more than X units away from the nearest friendly unit in the selected group" or something similar. This would scale naturally.

Maybe you want units to go around so at the end all units are faster at the goal, then waiting 1h at the choke point.

No no no... just imagine you had very good reason to force all of your units through the choke. There could be stationary defenses on either side for example. How would you control the units to move exactly like you want them?

yes, and also there might be tactical reasons for loosening the cohesion of your selection group. This might spare tons of micro at times. And as we all know, tedious and time consuming micro mostly stems from too little control power over the game.

If you wanted to make them intentionally split up this is something that can easily be handled with move orders. But making them stay together is not something you can do this way. Ergo the engine must enforce cohesion, but not split them. This is the players job.

No, not on your side here. You want to prevent something the engine may do on its own, to just ad micro afterwards to do what the engine would have done itself?

Uhm no? The opposite. You must have misunderstood me. Where did I say I wanted to artificially add micro?

Edit: overlooked the other post, nvm.^^

The likelihood you have to cross the entire planet with one move order, and you need to specify more than one choke point your units must absolutely get through together is so remarkably slim that the rest of this discussion becomes irrelevant.


The entire point of the flowfield is to get units from A to B as efficiently as possible. If that means half the force splits up briefly to get around a chokepoint and thereby arrives faster at the goal, that is GOOD. You've given it a goal, it's done its job.

Changing the goal from 'get from a to b' to 'get from a to c via b'... involves adding a goal.

Problem solved.

if placing a way point in the narrow pass is to much macro then i have no idea how you expect the game to know what you really want.

I am not gonna repeat myself...

Take a step back, and think about what the solution to your problem really is. Do you really want to be fiddling with some 'cohesion' slider with a group of 100 units? For ONLY the very particular times where you need units to clump together for some unspecified reason?


If you need to make tactical, specific movement decisions, you need to give more instructions to the game. It's simple, it works, and it scales, and it's especially effective if you can adjust / add waypoints on the fly.

In my opinion, additional UI elements like the suggested 'cohesion bar' should be kept to a minimum. Not because I want to add more micro, but because it becomes slippery slope where more and more UI elements are added to help with basic unit behaivour. If the 'cohesion bar' is implemented, shouldn't we also get a slider that determines the agressivenes of units (scale: run away <---> fight to death), and a checkbox that forces units to give way to bigger units, etc. etc.

The problem is that all of this can be acomplished fairly easily with one common UI element, the mouse, and it can become even more of a clickfest if you need to select the right units, move mouse to a slider, get it in the right position, select new units, and so on and so on.

That said, I am very open to innovative UI, as long as it's not intrusive and cluttered.

My thought's exactly, if you only opt to give a single way point when you want units to get to the other side of the planet, you can't be upset if the computer didn't read your mind to know where exactly you wanted them to go.

It's like in SupCom, people would complain that units get strung out over long trips, but if you give better waypoints it goes a long way to mitigate that.

Mike

the degree of cohesion of a group of units is not a one purpose thing in that sense. It determines the overall movement behavior of the group that might matter for more than just the one move order. And there is no way to accomplish exactly that degree of cohesion that you may want with more than a dozen units. With a dozen units it will be a super-clicklfest and with more than that it is simply impossible.

customizable UI is the magic word.

That's why I always said selection groups.. groups that are bound to your number keys, because how would you want to do it differently? Well you could do it with those advanced commands things, that have been discussed at some point... command that are their own entity and independent from units. units only get applied to commands. But that would need these to be included in the game as well.

I agree with the general feel of this topic that there is no need to add user definable no-go / don't-stop / no-go-unless-you're-on-it zones, and that waypoints work well as a means of moving units (and have for decades). The zones would be pretty useless even as a way to keep your base clear, again a waypoint connected to a factory for newly constructed units elegantly solves the issue and is intuitive.

To that end I think optional 'sticky' waypoints are a good idea (ie when you define a waypoint with multiple units selected, by default they all go through the points as fast as they can, unless they hit a 'sticky' waypoint where they regroup then continue). I don't know if this is the norm in games now or if the way waypoints are done in PA has even been decided (sorry I'm new, and will shut up now ).

This flowfield thing has never been there before, as they said themselves in the stream... (SupCom 2 doesn't count). And I don't know if you see the problem. Your units might not move through the waypoints the way you had planned, because of the flowfield.

I'm not sure that talking about what's possible or impossible in this untested system will get us anywhere, but I would be suprised if Jon approved a system that couldn't handle more than a dozen units when the team is aiming for a million.

Having selection groups is fine, and I don't think the cohesion bar is a bad idea. However, if we go with this incredibly customizable UI where one player might have other options avaliable to him than another I think problems might arise, especially for new players. I also think it will make the game feel less consolidated.

I just think that in most cases, the most simple and intuitive solution is the best, and I don't see a reason why the mouse can't be used to sort out unit behaviour.

? Of course I was referring to the mouse-method... So what I wrote there is my answer to your statement that there was "I don't see a reason why the mouse can't be used to sort out unit behaviour.".


And what I forgot in my answer to this:

It is not about specific movement decisions, but the general behavior of your selection group. Why say things that I never said and pretend I did say them?
And also it is not about "clumping together", but not splitting up. And using words that evoke negative associations does not change that.

Here's my understanding:

• Flowfields is a fancy way to path-find from a to b, which works dynamically as obstacles get in the way, choke points become choked etc
• Going between every point in the waypoint is subject to it's own flowfield (a to b, b to c etc). In other words there's no large scale analysis of the entire waypoint path, it's taken a point at a time. In other other words, the user-defined waypoints aren't ignored even if it's quicker to get to c by skipping b

So if A was one side of the hill and B the other, units may go over the hill or around dependent on cost. But if A was one side, B the top of the hill, C the other side, all units would have to get to the top of the hill before trying to get to the other side. Which means waypoints are a quick, easy and intuitive way to make units do what you want. Like always.

Ignoring some points on a waypoint if it's quicker to do so sounds like a broken waypoint system (think about a scout zig-zagging fog of war away). It would be ignoring direct input from the player, an onmipotent being who specifically told the little minions to go here then here then here. There's more strategy to getting between two points on a map than finding the quickest route. Maybe it would be a good idea to avoid the opposing army in the middle.

So all you have to do to have more control of where your units go is to put more points on the waypoint in key areas (like at a chokepoint you want all of your units to go through).

I realise you were talking about the mouse verision. I would be suprised if the team sticks to the mouseverision, and makes it difficult/wonky to use with only a dozen units, when they have planned for 1 million units.