So units will intelligently attack units based on priority. Are we as players going to be able to change those priorities in game? also will we be able to specify the maximum number of units that attacks a single unit? Say for example I have 65 bombers that I'm sending to a base with 15 AA towers, and say it would take 6 bomb strikes to kill a tower. Say the "regular" unit AI would split the forum equally between all 15 towers resulting in 4 bombers (1 group of 5) attacking each tower resulting in 0 deaths. Could I change that in-game via sliders or something to tell my group to split the bombers into say... groups of 11 and attack (but likely destroy) some of those AA towers?
Just to confirm, you are imagining an AI that goes "we have been ordered to attack 10 buildings with 10 bombers, that is 1 bomber each". It is far more likely that what will actually happen is "we have been ordered to attack 10 buildings with 10 bombers, it will take 5 bombs to destroy each building, so attack each building in groups of 5"
The best* option would be; We've been ordered to attack buildings { A, B, C, E, Q, and R } Building A has x-units of health, we need a minimum of 4 bombs to kill it cleanly. Building B has y-units of health, we're going to need 80 bombs to kill it cleanly. Let's put four bombers on Building A, everyone else starts on Building B. The first lot of bombers should join in after dispatching A. And so on... I don't particularly want sliders to divide up how many bombers per target, especially when the targets shoot back. If I can eliminate one target straight away, it can't shoot back, and means I will be shot at less. Dividing up by a set number means that I won't always have an optimal amount of damage applied to each target. Remember, the optimal amount of damage is; just enough to kill it instantly**, but not a drop more. *best is a subjective term, there's a lot more to possibly consider. **excluding the chance to miss targets, then you have to apply statistical methods and confidence intervals. [EDIT:] LiveStream video, 38:14. If Uber doesn't do this (now that they've explicitly mentioned the subject, I'm confident they will), I will.
Its very easy to theorise how smart it will be, maybe it is smart enough to prioritise AA on the first pass etc. Whenever an idea is suggested and it involves user customisation through sliders I cant help but laugh. How common do people think sliders are in games (besides graphical settings)? In most cases, like this one, sliders is just another way of saying "this will need some testing in beta and then refining and it should work fine". Excessive in-game (as opposed to while game is paused or between games) menu items is a sign you haven't actually tested/played your game enough.
One thing to consider besides missing the target is if you are likely to lose bombers before they can attack their target. It might be more favorable to do overkill but be more certain that you actually kill the targets in the first run.
My thought is we will do the best we can. If players want more fine tune control than we can provide (like adding in a couple extra bombers to each target in case some don't get a chance to release their payload before dying), there is always the option to manually give the orders.
Exactly, systems liek this are implemented to provide a baseline, and user control is what should be used to do something better than that. Also Sorian whiloe on this topic, do you know of the Split Targetting system with have in BlackOps for FA? Basically you can select a bunch of units, apply a queue of tarets, hit a key(in our case it was Shift+G) and all the attackers get split up based on the targets, so 10 bombers and 5 targets each target would get 2 bombers AND each pair would still have the other 4 targets as part of the queue so once they've killed the first target they'll automatically move on to the next one. Any thoughts on a system like this? Mike
what i would like to see would be an intuitive way to have unit groups target specific structures intelligently so I don't have to queue out attack plans, but have the ability to change this. Now I'll admit I do not consider myself a good or even adequate player of these types of games. But I will change attack strategies depending on base layout. Sometimes it just makes sense to hit for example an opponents economy, ignoring base defenses, as it would essentially cripple them. Whereas other times I would target AA towers & other defenses. Without doing the mass select and order to attack a specific structure (ie 100 bombers all attack 1 AA tower at a time (or power plant, etc) they would intelligently split into groups. But have each group be large enough to absorb some losses while still successfully destroying the target and yes I know you'll do the best you can
