Along with the development of the area commands, and setting unit stances for each specific unit group (which are mainly defensive in nature), I was thinking that Sorian could also implement setting general target priorities for each unit group. I am mainly drawing this idea from playing cell phone app games that feature not only city building and tower defense elements, but a multiplayer offensive component of being able to attack other player cities with your army. In these games, each unit type has a specific target priority built into it, and it forces the player to create a force with the proper balance of unit types to annihilate an enemy city effectively, based on how it has been constructed. The Target Priority types, as they translate to PA could be as follows: -Any/None (Default setting, would target the closest enemy object) -Defensive structures (walls, turrets) -Economic structures/units (Metal Extractors/Storage, Power Gens/Storage, Fabricators) -Production Facilities (unit producing structures, including Nukes, Orbital Launchers, etc.) -Commander (would operate like the Default, unless the Commander was in range, then all other targets would be ignored) Of course, if the priority targets were not in range, then the unit behavior would return to the default, attacking the closest enemy object. I think that creating multiple unit groupings with different Target Priority settings could make for some interesting game play, and of course, eliminate the need for more micro management within the defined area of attack. This would make the attacking force carry out the explicit strategic goals of the player more efficiently, and allow them to spread their concentration between multiple planets on a larger scale game more effectively.
Different units are going to excel against different targets. It's not really possible for everyone to share the same priority list.
I thought that the general idea was specifically not to do the Rock/Paper/Scissors style approach like most other RTS games, where you have units that are used to counter other specific units. If that is the case, then all units will do damage to all other units, with no special bonuses. The exception might be with Air units. Some ground units can't attack air units, and vice versa. Also, from what I've seen in the Alpha streams so far, most of the top players' offensives are heavily ground based, and would stand to benefit from having target priorities assigned. This is especially the case for when their attentions are split between coordinating attacks into the enemy base from several different directions, or when they have tons of different units in a large mass, and they don't have time to micro many different sub unit groups' targets within that mass. I've seen it where players units roll by soft targets in favor of destroying a few enemy units that are replaced very quickly, instead of destroying the fabbers that are building defenses, or the production facilities pumping them out. The result is that the attack fizzles out without significant impact (unless it's totally overwhelming and destroys everything). I don't think that the quality of gameplay is enhanced by having to micro the units to get them to attack what you want, when you could just direct them to attack what you wanted with a priority setting. After all, we shouldn't have to rely on the unit AI to make every decision for us about what to attack, when we can't direct them to do so at each moment.
The Game Isn't RPS, but that doesn't mean that some units, simply by virtue of thier design, won't be better in certain sitautions. For example a unit with a high rate of fire is better to use against 'weaker' or more numerous targets where they don't waste shots as opposed to sometihng with a High damage and a slow rate of fire that would do massive over kill each short(wasted damage). Or if there are Gunships, you would most likely rather have your AOE Flak shooting them them as opposed to Interceptors flying overhead. Mike
I agree. I didn't mean to imply that we should be able to set unit priority to one enemy unit type over the other, but targets other than mobile military units. Units should inherently know which mobile enemy units to target to do the most damage to the opposing force already. However, in situations say, where you want to do the most economic damage possible with a force that is not strong enough to take out all of the enemy units and structures in the area, when their are mobile enemy units present. Setting your raiding group to Economic priority and setting a destination for where you know there to be a large Mex, or Power Gen field, beyond enemy defenses, would maximize their effect to that specified goal before they were eliminated, and would allow you to concentrate on other fronts while they did it.
