[fixed] bug with hold position in 3.5.2

[Ishmaru]

I don't know if this was always the behavior or not but I recently tried (in my mod) to have some long range units defend a location, by using hold position, to find them moving to the enemy's location when they were destroyed. I don't believe this should be the behavior of a unit told to hold position...

[tomreyn]

So these units did not actually hold position? This should not happen, and when I recently used it on 3.5.2, it did not happen (i.e. units did hold position when asked to). Maybe this is only specific to some units but not others? Were all requirements met (you often need a training camp upgrade to be able to hold position)?

[Ishmaru]

Sorry I should have stated before but these were units in my Annex mod not megapack, but it did work for these units at one point...

The strange thing is that some of the units advanced while others (of the same type) did not, however as more enemies arrived others units would go off hold position untill nearly all units were moved and scattered. Ill do more tests to see its those individual units or overall thing.

[Ishmaru]

So only units that use ep attacks have this issue. I may have an explanation for this, for units with standard attacks it works fine, however for units with ep attacks there is an issue. Normally when a unit attacks in hold mode it will return to hold after it finishes attacking, however if a units attack uses ep and it runs out of ep it changes to stop mode not hold. the behavior for when a unit does not have enough ep for its next attack is to go into its stop skill, which negates the hold position. Almost all of my units that have ep attacks use up all of their ep in a single shot so thats why they were constantly going out of hold position.

[titi]

Yes what you describe is true. If units which need EP to attack are low on EP they stop their attack skill and fallback to standing skill.
But this standing skill has of course no hold position.

I am not shure if we should change this now, as this will affect units in other mods  too.   

[will]

Can't see the circumstances when the current behavior doesn't seem buggy

[John.d.h]

I am not shure if we should change this now, as this will affect units in other mods  too.

I'm sure that this is not the intended behavior.  If the author wanted the unit to always pursue the enemy after attacking, the unit would not have a hold position skill at all, right?

[Ishmaru]

I don't think having unit break hold position formations when they run out of energy / ammunition and advance toward enemy, is useful in any way or makes any sense...   If unit is told to hold position he should stay like that until hes told not to.

Is there any way we could change behavior to check if units on hold position before attacking and goes back to hold position when out of ep? Or something of the sort?

[Omega]

I don't think having unit break hold position formations when they run out of energy / ammunition and advance toward enemy, is useful in any way or makes any sense...   If unit is told to hold position he should stay like that until hes told not to.

I'm all for changing it as per the above.

[tomreyn]

I, too, think it would be nice (and an improvement) if units were to return to their earlier state ("hold position" if they were set to hold position, "stop" otherwise) when they run out of energy points. I don't expect this to have adverse effects on existing mods.

[softcoder]

Fixed in svn rev #2636.

Now when a unit runs out of ep and is executing a hold position, if the stop skill of the command takes NO ep then the unit will re-hold and once ep regenerates it will begin attacking. If the stop skill takes ep the hold position command will cancel.