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It would be great if we can tribute units and buildings to allies, like sending resources. For example, a Roman player can give a few catapults to a Maurya teammate who needs it to siege enemy forts, then the Maurya player can send a few archers to the Roman. This is often a great-to-have in team games. I would like to work on a mod which can do this, but before I get started, I would like to hear what the community thinks about it so I don't waste my time on something useless. Why this is great to have: Less need for extremely precise balancing across the civs - missing units can be obtained via allies More friendly corporation between allies and less internal fighting New team strategies, for example, one player manages all of the economy and the other manages rushes. Unlocks the potential of a spectator taking the place of a player who left This feature already exists in other RTS games such as https://www.beyondallreason.info/ and would be a great addition to 0 A.D.

I'd rather that a resigning player's units can convert to allies if they send soldiers into the area. So, like in AOE where your scout or other unit comes around an unclaimed sheep and converts automatically to the player. Similarly, we could make the resigning player's buildings easier to capture/convert for their remaining allies.

The next step is for allies or spectators to take over units from another player who is considered inactive. We can start with allies being able to take over players who have left the game, so that the game can still continue despite on disconnected player. This is necessary because many games are ruined by one leaving: Due to bad network / OOS / technical faults Due to real life emergencies Ragequit Due to conflict with others If someone needs to get a pizza delivery, their ally can take over their units instead of pausing the game for 5 mins If this feature is here, then nobody can hold a game hostage in incidents described in this thread: Most problems would be solved immediately.

Thanks @Atrik So some units have slight chance to "block" poison and reduction in duration. Fortress have 100 chance to block fire, while greek civs/stone buildings have anywhere from 50-90% chance to block fire.

By the way we need that AoE mechanic. I remember a video of Fork AD testing this mechanics.

We can exclude heroes from the list of tributable units. The tributable units I had in mind were catapults and ranged units. We can also exclude Civilisation-special buildings from the list.

You might be observing overshoot in the prepare time. Pikes take i think a second to prepare. I intentionally avoided checks during the prepare time because if the unit entered the attack range, it should be attacked. If you add checks to the prepare time, you could have attacks get canceled before they happen, which is not possible in the current setup. Also, are you testing the new version or the one in the com mod? The first version had a means for units to overshoot if they kill the unit they originally targeted. This was fixed in the later versions.

Ideally, we need move-attack (not attack-move, a totally different thing). Essentially, units need the ability to attack while moving. Take melee cavalry for example, chasing down a fleeing enemy soldier. But until we have something like that, there needs to be ways to mitigate ugliness and not displaying strange things to the player. @real_tabasco_sauce is attempting to do that very thing.

well, too late on the first part XD. I can't say definitely what the effect on performance is. https://gitea.wildfiregames.com/0ad/0ad/pulls/7178 In here you can see the profile of the more recent version and it appears to be a net improvement for some reason. This performance test is based on the "combat demo huge" which is 630 units vs 630 units all fighting at the same time. If the affect isn't detrimental to a27, i would hope its not terrible in a26, but we will find out. It is indeed making a major difference for bolts and catas, and my suspicion is it will make bolts much weaker and less frustrating to play against. However, you are wrong in thinking other units are unchanged. Certainly it is more noticeable for low fire rate units, but pikemen, crossbows, and in particular ram ships will be noticeably less able to attack beyond their intended range. I will be curious to learn if retreating in general will become less punishing because of this change. This patch increases these situations a bit, with animations and sound being cut short when chasing. I will need to find a solution for this in the long run. yes and yes. Good questions. Actually part of question 2 is no: prepare time is only involved for the first attack. If the last repeat time is unfinished when a new order comes along and the remaining repeat time is longer than the prepare time, the remaining repeat time is used. I did 2 as a test, but the current version adds as many checks as the number of seconds in the repeat time rounded up. So 1 for swords, 2 for slings, 3 for crossbows, 6 for bolt shooters. In this case, you would often have a unit trying to shoot something, only for it to realize right before attacking that it needs to instead move closer to the target. If you just get rid of the first one, the unit won't know that they need to chase the target until it is time to attack again. Well, the animations don't cause the prepare and repeat time, the animations are adjusted to keep in sync with what the unit is doing. What happens here is that the animation and sound is longer than the prepare time, and since a unit might decide to move before the animation plays in full, the animation is cut short.

The distant overshoot attacks are ugly to look at for sure. Interestingly, it's already the case that something weird happens with sword cav pursuing enemies. The animation is canceled but the damage is still done. Looks very bad but not having the damage done would be more frustrating. The challenge is that all units except towers and boats units are stationary when they attack. Additional performance cost means the game will be LESS responsive, right? But sure, intuitive because the unit would not die when visibly out of range. Did you do this performance test with a large p3 4v4 online battle? If so an additional 0.7 ms per frame doesn't seem too bad. Otherwise I'm weary about it. Help me understand the current sequence of things. So I know there is "prepare time" and "repeat time": Does "prepare time" represent the time spent in attack animation before either melee damage is dealt or a projectile is launched? By "after attack completion" do you mean after "prepare time?" Is "repeat time" is the duration immediately following "prepare time", during which the attack animation is completing and it's weapon is being brought back? And then does "prepare time" again immediately follow "repeat time" If the answer is yes to those questions, why 2 additional range checks? Why not 1 additional check at the end of repeat time? Or even better, why not get rid of the check at the end of "prepare time" and just have one range check at the end of "repeat time"? If the answer is no to those questions, instead of additional range checks could the animations be adjusted to represent what is happening better? For non-siege/boat attacks, could the animations be sped up at the beginning, perhaps with a slight pause at completion and then slowed during the reset? (Overshoot issue aside, striking animations tend to look better that way anyways.)

There is someone working on something better: https://gitea.wildfiregames.com/0ad/0ad/pulls/7047 As a mod, fine. However, in general i don't like the unit sharing idea because: 1) Each civ has a limited unit availability on purpose as part of civ design, so that they have strengths and weaknesses. 2) Transferring units to a new player has risks of combining disastrously with other bonuses: Ie fanatics + any speed hero, ptol bolt shooters + mace siege hero.

Its more about making sure that units obey their designed ranges.

Yeah, a lot of the Battle for Greece units are super terribly designed. There's no way I'd buy that DLC.

I made the wood color palette match the fort. I think it is fitting.

overshootFix_v2.zipThis new version based off of the com mod version 13 includes range checks during the leftover repeat time after a new target is acquired.

Umbrella factions I have an idea with this, a game mode. You start with a generic faction and evolve it. I won't give any more details.

The problem with buildable roads is pathfinding.