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The need for sniping to win an engagement in 0ad a26 doesn't come from overkill. There are numerous ways to reduce and induce overkill that aren't sniping. Sniping originates from the lack of combat value of melee units (some champions can be valuable, but not very). Hopefully @real_tabasco_sauce's melee rebalance can deprecate sniping when compared to traditional micro exampes like @Atrik mentioned. While everyone loves to hate sniping, just everyone loved to hate the meat-shield meta before it, automating it will not fix the underlying balance issues that are the root cause. Anyone remember the formation spam micro from a23? I for one really appreciate how far we've come from those days.

Agreed, but keeping battle mechanics all revolving around tricking unit AI to make and avoid overkill is simply lame. Well, it probably still is a 'technical skill'. It's definitely a trainable skill to make the right sequence of clicks and to do it very very fast. But I agree, @Dizaka, 'sniping' is actually the one thing dumbing down this game rn. And I don't know that it is any sexy for new players to come to 0ad and be good at 'sniping'. Only to some players that are used to 'sniping', is this mechanic not obviously ridiculous. You aren't going to make anyone wanting to learn 0ad showing off, the currently battle n°1 battle mechanic: sniping (aka mashing keys).

I mean, there's a way to implement this without it being an issue. It can be default behavior situation. It could also be taken even further to prioritize ranged over melee units. I don't even believe it needs to be something like the 'h' key. Rather, the 'h' key could reset the behavior as it resets the current default behavior. There's ways to implement it to make it opaque to the regular user. More advanced users could do their own sniping behavior with keys/shortcuts however they want. @Atrik I'm sorry, but there is no "skill" in mashing keys nor a "skill gap" in mashing keys. It's like saying to make mashed potatoes you need skill. No, you just need half a brain to mash a potato well. There is no "skill" by randomly selecting individual units to target. Additionally, it is unrealistic for a "top commander" to be telling individual units who they should be targeting. Extremely unrealistic and I believe 0ad wants to be more of a RL simulation - I believe that's why catapults no longer do the massive AOE damage.

Why? I was recently having discussions with some smart community members. I shared with them my reasoning: Sniping is definitively not, following 0AD vision on Repetition - "If you find yourself doing the same action over and over without thought, then we need to either eliminate or automate such an action. Linear repetitious procedures are meaningless and boring." Manual sniping is as today, very clearly on the very repetitive end of the spectrum. Testing if this would be OP A mod in development from a very smart community member, gave me the opportunity to emulate some kind of "auto-sniping". I was surprise to find out it was indeed very effective, and beating by far a top player sniping skills: NoobDude (That I have 0 chances to beat normally). I was very surprise because my expectations was that it would make little difference compared to player manual sniping. So I though about just putting the idea into a hole forever... ... But since my initial reasoning was still holding true, and smart members were agreeing that it was, in theory, undesirable to have to have to spam so much clicks to control a very simple behavior, sniping still feels like a problem needing a solution. How could this be addressed unit_action.js, already have a kind of class filter for "attack-move". Another way I found to get a sens of what would such feature could feel like. "attack-move": { "execute": function(position, action, selection, queued, pushFront) { let targetClasses; if (Engine.HotkeyIsPressed("session.attackmoveUnit")) targetClasses = { "attack": ["Unit"] }; else targetClasses = { "attack": ["Unit", "Structure"] }; Implementing a stance, or hotkey, in main game that would help players "attack weakest unit in range" or another similar feature may change the meta. But this "sniping" meta of is arguably not most rewarding mechanics you can hope for a strategy game. TLDR: No script publicly exist for (practically) sniping in a multiplayer game. I think we should however seek to fix the compulsive clicking required for sniping. This won't end 0AD, but may give way to the implementation of more interesting mechanics, and game-play metas. Also the unfair advantage that this could provide may deter any moders to do it. The best approach could be to have it in native game.

Overkill is definitely a thing with crossbows. More so with champion crossbow from mace. It's not really automating sniping. It's modifying the current targeting/attack mechanic to the one being most utilized/favored by players. It's similar to changing game stats. Additionally, I do not believe melee are useless. Watch how fast regular sword mow through the current tank/archer meta. A good maury player (and iberian) can cause a lot of havock. Additionally, a good Gaul player can silence the ranged meta by flanking. Edit: On another note, sniping became more popular/useful with introduction of Han, a crosssbow ranged civ.

I look at it that way: We want to maximize Strategic skills (or decision-bearing actions). We want to minimize Technical actions (or skills in offsetting the interface and game limitations). Sniping is just you wanting your ranged units to attack enemy ranged units but you can only do it by clicking all enemy units. You are offsetting a game limitations with a technical skill. Flanking, engage/retreat, formations, positioning of small units detachments are on the other hand what the game should be about. These are strategic skills, and it would be even more rewarding to have to choose the right one, to counter the enemy, or to play a specific battle tactic. The fact that formations choice for a engage is made irrelevant (you should go for box every time and start sniping) because of the default AI focus isn't really fun.

Real life. That’s the argument generally given about the 0ad - it’s not a fantasy simulation but as close to real life as plausible. Realism and historical accuracy is an important element of 0AD. Sniping is a fantasy feature and a fantasy “micro” skill. There never exists one person who controls everyone to target 1 person to give an overkill problem. That’s unrealistic and something out of a fantasy. Sniping and hero strafing are end user solutions to the same problem - the “intricacies” of the targeting system. Basically, the limitation of dev resources. Targeting needs rework in a way @Atrik suggests to allow for better balancing of melee vs ranged.

What's RL?

Many modern games in a variety of forms like fps rts and whatever have attempted to dumb down, simplify, and remove skills when compared to older games. In RTS games you have strategies and then strategy execution, a higher skill player will beat a lower skill player when using the same strategy and that is expected and good. There are examples of fps and rts games that attempt to "level the playing field" by limiting the advantages that skilled players can develop over unskilled players. The expectation in fps games is that "everyone will have fun", and in rts games the expectation is that "the game will be purely strategic", but in reality it makes the game very shallow and gives no reward for someone who is trying to learn to play better. In fps games an example is removing and simplifying player movement mechanics and learnable gun recoil control. These are things players can learn and master to beat other players, and if they are removed or randomized or automated it makes the game both "noob friendly" and boring to play because once you max out the basic mechanics there is nothing else to learn. In Rts games such as Aoe4 you can see that strategies for different civs are decided entirely by which "landmark" you choose when you age up. The landmarks usually have some automatic, non-executable bonus that has no actionable effect on the game, the game-winning actions of the player are focused on to one simple A or B decision of what landmark to build. Another example from aoe4 is the removal of opportunities for battle micro, where battles become entirely decided by previous eco and landmark choices. RTS games should absolutely have skills involved, strategy execution should take skill. It gives games depth, makes them more fun, and improves player retention. Removing opportunities for learning skills and strategy execution will have a negative effect on 0ad. I'm not saying that sniping is a good thing, its just that when aspects of the game are optimally automated, we effectively lose those features of the game.

Throwing aside the effort to develop this, the potential performance costs, the UI clutter, and the difficulty for new players to learn something like this, I think this would be actually harder than using the mouse and hot keys to select and attack. (Aka micro). There is simply no way it turns new players away. New players don’t experience micro unless they go against a player far better than themselves. new players get turned away by difficulties in finding matches, performance issues, and boredom. the learning curve for micro is actually part of a “skill gap” and it is essential for games to be fun and learnable. people who have played for years should be able to beat new players because they are better. There is nothing wrong with this. now overkill can be addressed partially by modifying unitAI. I think there was a motion for ranged units to target the next closest unit of the closest is already being attacked by x units. Personally I am 50/50 on this idea, but in the grand scheme of things, it should be the player’s responsibility to manage overkill.

Honestly, I think "damage balancing" / autosniping should be a game feature. Overkill creates problems in the big balance scheme of things. Currently, in RL you have small groups of soldiers with their own leadership who coordinate so that same targets on the same battlefield aren't chosen. It wasn't and isn't the responsibility of the supreme commander to choose your targets. Even in early Rome armies were split into smaller more manageable groups. Look at modern battlefield stuff you see coming out of Ukraine. Russia does extreme overkill - not really a good strategy. Why can't there be a formation or a hotkey to manage attacked targets? Why can't 5 units only attack 1 target from each side? (e.g., make it similar to the "production" setting?) Why do we have the unrealistic expectation that the "supreme commander" (player) somehow has some kind of magical micro that makes one better than the other on the battlefield. The current "micro" is a poor emulation of IRL and turns new players away. Also, it's a big enough issue that impacts balance. As long as units don't target others as efficiently as possible then the learning curve for this game will be extreme and result in turning new players away. @BreakfastBurrito_007 @real_tabasco_sauce @Atrik @roscany @alre

"little updates" and "little fixes" Latest sl5net released this 18 Aug 12:27 v1.0.44 8731a5a update different hello when many players already in use different hello when many players already in versionNr to ...P when use: modsImCurrentlyUsing+Ta update doRatedDefaultAutoupdate to much smilies set maxJoinLeaveMessagesInLobby a option in options with default 30 update suggestion on game login don't allow mote yourself. could be confusing add experimental flag add g_selfNick as default to search chat if tab pressed in search state https://api.mod.io/v1/games/5/mods/3105810/files/4186045/download Assets 4 autocivp.pyromod 905 KB 2023-08-18T12:27:21Z autocivp1.0.44_igCoChecktrue_noMpJS.zip 678 KB 2023-08-18T12:27:30Z Source code (zip) 2023-08-18T09:18:57Z Source code (tar.gz)

Could you maybe add a option to enable/disable the bars? I really love them when i spec, but i have no time to check them out in a game. In fact, they take valuable screen space away from you. But that's only my opinion. Would be great to have the option to change between a more minimalistic view, where you maybe just see the important stats and the map, nothing more.

Stop calling for bans. The problem to solve is very obvious. A noob playing archers civs won't even understand why even against AI, archers feel very weak. Sniping is making a technical but very repetitive sequence of clicks just to achieve a simple none-strategic task because of a lack of feature. Some unit re-balance could remove the urge of having such feature, agreed, but still the game would be in my opinion more enjoyable if you had one of these example feature: A special Stance where units attack weaker (or another criteria like class) units in there current attack range. A shortcut/Button to order current selection to attack a selectable group of enemy units. A shortcut/Button to order current selection to attack a type of units in range (you could hover one enemy unit and have all nearby units of the same class glowing to indicate which units are in range of your currently selected units, and that will be attacked). I'm sure one could propose better feature with in mind ease of use. The feature could be more or less optimized to account or not for current hp, overkill etc, but in any case, the goal is to shift player focus and battle outcomes on more interesting metrics then cps. Also you can see that all feature described require players engagement, speed, and for the stance one, some technical skills to reposition units in battle. They compress the spamming of 80 clicks down to a few one. Right now, if you play archers civs and forgot to put your hero or another unit on the correct stance of target, the famous "opportunity cost" is to let it suicide else you may lose 2sec of sniping that will seal the outcome of the battle. Leading to easier unrewarding scenarios. Since it seems proGUI is named on 50% of this topic posts, I can once again precise that my attempt with this mod was to remove the unrewarding limitations of the current GUI. It never felt rewarding to me to have to check manually which military building has stopped auto-queuing units for arguably arbitrary reasons. So ProGUI suggest two approach to make it less painful: Idle production buildings have clickable icons that you can use to view and reassign production. This is totally not "auto" and still you can use it to boom much better then if you add all barracks to a control group to queue units regardless of current production queue. I already advocated to think of an equivalent to implement in vanilla UI, because it's very useful. Auto-train (production controllable from a panel), where you control production variable for buildings to output exactly what you want them to, with the ability to task buildings to alternate unit production to make a specific unit composition. The basic usage of it is very easy, and late games are funnier when you have production you can handle easier by a overlay panel. As expected, removing unrewarding tasks (such looking for the barracks where auto-queue broke) from the game made it more enjoyable for me not less. The mod has a reaction time of 0.6 - 1.2sec and can't even make more then one order in that time-span, so it's probably not improving players gameplay because it's doing anything super-fast. The game is subjected to possible improvements and improvements are very often new features. On a open-source game you can kinda expect that mods experiment new features, that may or not inspire changes in main game. There aren't that much stakes at play in a 0ad game, AND the mod is available to all anyway.

there still will be fun in finding new tactics and micro techniques, just not this one.

There would still be significant overkill, especially with archers, because at any time there are only a handful of the "most forward" enemy units. Might be an especially large overkill with archers because all the archers stand in roughly the same spot so they would all have similar or the same "closest" units. Perfect sniping wouldn't be 1 unit attacking 1 unit, but maybe 5 attacking 1, depending on the average turns to kill. It is better to kill 50% of the enemy army while leaving the rest untouched, than to damage the whole enemy army by 50%. So you do want to focus on a subset of units, while not focusing so much that overkill is excessive.

True, the test I did with NoobDude WAS emulating the sniping of 1 unit attacking 1 unit automatically. I can show you if interested. I am not sure it's necessary to have a feature doing perfect sniping, If units would attack individually the closest enemy (matching the criteria) to themselves, this would already naturally spread the unit focus. I insisted this was a illustrative example, demonstrating that "sniping" wouldn't require any bots or scripts, but would look like a very basic amendment, if ever it was considered like a desirable feature.

That's only part of what sniping does. The other part is that you distribute your fire over a big portion of the enemy army, instead of wasting tons of damage on overkill of one unit at a time.

I get your point. But I stand that it is very reasonable to think of a stance or hotkey that would save players from having to click 100 times, to achieve the same as this example of amendment to unit_action.js "attack-move" : else if (Engine.HotkeyIsPressed("session.attackWeakUnits")) targetClasses = { "attack": ["Ranged", "Support"] }; 2 Lines of code => Hotkey to do "Auto-sniping" available in vanilla 0ad to everyone. I guess the idea is setting some people uncomfortable because the current meta is sniping, and we all tend to be attached to our playing habits. But metas evolve as the game does, so I think this is worth talking about.

Interesting developments! There has been work by @real_tabasco_sauce to give melee units more combat value which would go a long way to make sniping a secondary form of micro, with actual movement, formations, and positioning being more important. Sniping, automatic or not, is not a great place for the game to be. During fall of 2021, the meta was all about melee units (mainly pikemen) allowing ranged units to be invincible. Around that time I learned how to snipe using option/alt after watching berhudar spread women out on his berries and since then I have been teaching players to snipe who are frustrated/want to learn how. I figured if everyone knew about it it would be fair, but its just not good to have such a powerful micro technique not be obvious to newer players, 0ad in multiplayer right now is basically divided by those who snipe and those who don't. I suppose we just have to all vote for @real_tabasco_sauce's melee rework when its on the ballot

Thanks! I will try and find someone to mess around with it on. The problem with all the different mods is its harder to find games. Even community mod, not everyone is on board. I defintley prefer multiplayer games instead of the AI So i did mess around with it, and there are parts i LIKE! but it does seem a bit more complicated... I dont like how soldiers can't gather, only women and slaves... seems to be "slower" of a game. Hopefully they take some of the ideas from it though and implement into next alpha/community mod. I know skiriati are really powerful, but I dont remember if i've mention this above. It can be hard to mass them and push while ur still ahead/even pop/eco.

I say we should address this at the without thought item: bring balance to melee vs ranged engagements -> sniping becomes one of many options for micro AND only certain fights may be won by sniping.