Remove over-firing

[Zoythrus]

ok, dont you hate it when there is one enemy unit who has like, 10 HP, and all of your archers fire at him? one arrow would do the job just fine, but they all attacked him. this sux because what if you have like, a bunch of artillery waste their shots on some guy who could easily be killed by one shot.

my solution? allow the engine to calculate attacks and damages before an attack is made. then it can use this info to tell how many nearby units would be needed to kill it in one shot. get what im saying?

[John.d.h]

I'm usually all for having intelligent unit AI, but wouldn't this be overstepping its boundaries a bit?  If you want your artillery to hold their fire, you can just... you know... have them hold their fire.  If some dude jumps in front of your squad, everybody with a gun is going to try to turn him into a chili-like paste of ex-human goo, unless they already have specific orders not to.  The behavior you're talking about would really only make sense for a hive mind where all the units know instantly who's going to do what, like a faction of robots, bees, or robotic bees.

[Omega]

I'm usually all for having intelligent unit AI, but wouldn't this be overstepping its boundaries a bit?  If you want your artillery to hold their fire, you can just... you know... have them hold their fire.  If some dude jumps in front of your squad, everybody with a gun is going to try to turn him into a chili-like paste of ex-human goo, unless they already have specific orders not to.  The behavior you're talking about would really only make sense for a hive mind where all the units know instantly who's going to do what, like a faction of robots, bees, or robotic bees.

I'm with John here. It would be a waste of development time for an unnecessary feature.

[ultifd]

I agree with what John and Omega said... 

[-Archmage-]

I'm with John, Omega, and Ultifd.

^{Edit by Ultifd: The joke is over, please stop...}

[treba]

especially because you often don't know what will happen while the projective is flying. artillery often does not hit it's target because it might move away. a unit can be healed before it's getting hit etc.

and, finally, that's a part of the micro management
if you don't want to micro, try globulation2 

[Zoythrus]

well, the reason why i brought this up is because Starcraft 2 made a huge deal about it. the community made a huge fuss about over-firing because it's wasted micromanagement. i'd rather be managing something like an attack instead of turning my defenses and artillery on and off.

[-Archmage-]

As dumb as the AI is, we still don't want unrealistic instant psychic communication.

[wyvern]

I would support this not only for the reason stated but also because over firing kills the players own melee units when they go in to occupy the dead units square, and psychic communication or not, I think an archer would start shooting at a more valuable target if he saw his previous victim was staggering around bleeding, with arrows sticking out of him, which is what a unit pretty much is once it drops below the 100 hp mark.

[-Archmage-]

I would support this not only for the reason stated but also because over firing kills the players own melee units when they go in to occupy the dead units square, and psychic communication or not, I think an archer would start shooting at a more valuable target if he saw his previous victim was staggering around bleeding, with arrows sticking out of him, which is what a unit pretty much is once it drops below the 100 hp mark.

Well someone's gotta shoot him.

[John.d.h]

Well someone's gotta shoot him.

"Why didn't you kill him?"
"I thought you had him!"

[ultifd]

I think a compromise that would somehow fix this problem would be great...but I don't think this should change for every single unit. Like make it optionable in the XML of a unit or something...perhaps this would be useful for enemies that have a limited amount of EP.
Although I don't really know why we're discussing about this now, as GAE is not really trying to add anymore "new" features for now... 

[-Archmage-]

Well someone's gotta shoot him.

"Why didn't you kill him?"
"I thought you had him!"

Hahaha!

In a long time when some kind of priority system is integrated this should be mostly taken care of anyway.

[Omega]

I would support this not only for the reason stated but also because over firing kills the players own melee units when they go in to occupy the dead units square, and psychic communication or not, I think an archer would start shooting at a more valuable target if he saw his previous victim was staggering around bleeding, with arrows sticking out of him, which is what a unit pretty much is once it drops below the 100 hp mark.

Wouldn't it then, be a better AI fix to make melee units look around for friendly fire before they run to the dead opponent's location?

[treba]

imo this whole "occupie space of killed unit" or how it's called should be changed anyways, so units that attack without attack order just return to their former position.

about the projectiles again: catapults are no siege tanks. siege tanks do instant damage (don't know exactly about sc2, but that's how it was in sc1). so it's easy to calculate.
but explain me how a catapult can make sure that nothing unexpected happens while it's projectile is flying. for example if there were healing units. they could get very strong if all range units would always stop attacking a unit on low hp, that can then be healed again before the killing projectile hits it.

any ideas?

[will]

I have not looked at the targeting logic but presumably all units attack the most immediate threat which is likely measured in closeness?

What would be nice is for units to attack a weighted-random threat.  (Its very easy code if you have a list of legal targets and can weigh each of them with some metric - perhaps a mix of distance, armour choice and hp?)

So a unit will most likely attack the nearest unit, but there's a smaller chance that they attack something slightly further away.  This choice would be re-evaluated quite often.

In a melee situation the there would be a more even distribution of pain over the massing enemy.

Regards the occupying space of dead enemy, that's been getting on my tits when playing the game ever since the beginning.  Haven't got to like it yet.  In my opinion, its not fun micromanagement, its tedious.

[Omega]

So a unit will most likely attack the nearest unit, but there's a smaller chance that they attack something slightly further away.  This choice would be re-evaluated quite often.

But, units should also not switch targets mid attack unless the reasoning is very strong (eg: attacking something that is considered of little threat, even if half dead, would be a bad choice if something especially deadly just appeared and is wrecking havoc amongst you).