MegaGlest Forum
Archives (read only) => Glest Advanced Engine => Feature requests => Topic started by: McGyver008 on 1 November 2010, 04:03:21
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During several games I came to the insight, that there is a huge difference of Glest units and the units in other games:
To make it concrete, let me describe a few situations:
I built s small 'wall' of defensive towers (in general stationary defensive buildings). Most factions include units, which are capable of repair most of the buildings, others may be able to heal. But assume, I have placed a repair unit behind such a wall of defense. If this repair unit is also able to attack, then - in case of an attack - this unit permanently tries to attack the enemies, absolutely neglecting, that the own defensive towers are attacked heavily. In many cases I found one or more destroyed towers and ... a few silly repair units, which then run to the (superior!) enemy (the wall is now 'perforated'), who kills these idiots in a blink of an eye.
A unit with different skills should get a control, which is able to suppress one ore more skills in order to make them - like in this example - repair (or 'forget' their weapons).
The same problem for units, which can build and attack.
In general the problematic units are those ones, which skills are 'civil' in combination with an attack skill.
There should be a possibility to suppress or prioritize some skills.
Also I would see benefits, if I can make attack units prioritize some of their weapons, since I know of course, which units I want them to attack (and usually one knows very well the special weaknesses of the attacked units).
Another point, which is extremely annoying, is a lack of a command, which makes units stay in a given area. There are, to give also an example, 3 groups of units in my base. Each of them consist of 'fighters' and 'healers'... and they are also located near to defensive towers, so that they can support each other (defensive and offensive units). If now one group is attacked (or the towers near by them), the units in the neighboring group also begin to run to this group, although the attacked group is strong enough to kill the attackers in a few seconds. The first consequence is, they leave their defensive towers, which now can easily be attacked by another enemy group and (since most of the repair units also are able to attack, see above) destroyed. The second consequence is, the own attacking units begin to run in direction to the enemy trying to go where the enemy came from (at least some fields). As long as there is a wall of defense towers, this is either impossible or they try to run outside the base to reach the enemy.
This is an extremely stupid behavior, because in most of the cases the defensive units are strong enough to stand average attacks, whereas many 'running' units are extremely weak. The consequence are many killed own units, which are very useful inside a base, but are absolutely out of place in an 'un-guarded' area.
Every attack unit should be controllable in aspect to the radius it is able to go to. And if there is no longer an attack, it have to move back to the center of the area. This behavior in other games often is 'guard area'. Units can move inside an area to attack, but do not follow an enemy outside the area (so they avoid to blunder into a trap blindly).
It would be interesting to get some comments...
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Another point, which is extremely annoying, is a lack of a command, which makes units stay in a given area.
Does the "guard" command not suit you?
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There is guard and patrol which help a bit though if a unit patrols will it break its patrol to attack?
Anyway, I'm not sure why I haven't thought to suggest this yet but from one of my favourite RTS games Stronghold, units have stances. These are like commands but passive and influence the units auto command priority!
- Aggressive Stance: Unit will pursuit enemies and attack on sight.
- Defensive Stance: Unit will defend the spot they're on, if enemies come near it will attack then return to the spot they were at, if the enemy flees the unit won't chance very far, ranged units should stay stationary if their range is equal to their sight or something like that.
- Passive Stance: Unit wont attack back or anything, they will just stay where they're put! Has some uses maybe for repair units or healing units which will heal or repair instead.
- Patrolling units should treat their patrol spots with their stance and guarding units should treat the unit they're guarding as their spot so a defensive unit will return to one of its patrol points or to the unit it's guarding.
- Also a new patrol feature for advanced patrol paths would be nice. When choosing patrol the unit starts from where it's standing and then goes to where told and then back again, what should also happen is that when shift is held more patrol points can be added so rather than back and fourth between two points it could then be from one point to another, to another, etc then back to the start and loop.
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What your refering to affects initiates because they have an attack command (which takes priority), whereas workers will run away if the foe is sighted (because they don't have an attack command).
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What your refering to affects initiates because they have an attack command (which takes priority), whereas workers will run away if the foe is sighted (because they don't have an attack command).
AI like that shouldn't be defined just through what abilities they have, more unit control would be better, stances for example, but also choose whether units run away or not, also mainly for Glestimals, whether units will run away unless they're in a pack?
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What your refering to affects initiates because they have an attack command (which takes priority), whereas workers will run away if the foe is sighted (because they don't have an attack command).
AI like that shouldn't be defined just through what abilities they have, more unit control would be better, stances for example, but also choose whether units run away or not, also mainly for Glestimals, whether units will run away unless they're in a pack?
Agreed. Relatedly, did you know that if your "worker" unit has a morph command, the AI treats your faction like magic? Because there is no actual way to define AI usage for mods, it stoops to using dirty methods like that. I hope the future will hold more control over the AI, but that would be a major change and shouldn't be expected for a long time.
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What your refering to affects initiates because they have an attack command (which takes priority), whereas workers will run away if the foe is sighted (because they don't have an attack command).
AI like that shouldn't be defined just through what abilities they have, more unit control would be better, stances for example, but also choose whether units run away or not, also mainly for Glestimals, whether units will run away unless they're in a pack?
Agreed. Relatedly, did you know that if your "worker" unit has a morph command, the AI treats your faction like magic? Because there is no actual way to define AI usage for mods, it stoops to using dirty methods like that. I hope the future will hold more control over the AI, but that would be a major change and shouldn't be expected for a long time.
This means all my factions are treated like magic due to gatehouses using morph to open and close. Hopefully when the massive AI work begins this will be addressed though.