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But I found one player (sanafur) that is currently active and has this unusual active sniping: Maybe he can provide some insight how this is done. commands.zip Sniping with alt+rightclick gives the command to one unit. Or more precisely to the unit with the lowest entity ID / oldest. In a game one can't know realistically which would be that in a group. So if one would alt-rightclick one couldn't give the command to the nearest unit. This would only make sense with a target in range of everyone in a group. Archers and slingers might use this in bigger groups (30+). Skirmishers might try to reach a target on the other side of the group and would need to run between their own army. Halt command (H-key) makes more sense then to attack the next target near each unit without sniping.

I analyzed a game of Stockfish and stumbled up on some weird behavior regarding unusual high sniping activity. Now I analyzed a few more game of him and others. The unusual sniping acts in that way, that one players sends individual attack commands to individual units. In the commands.txt it looks like this in one turn: cmd 2 {"type":"attack","entities":[2472],"target":2963,"queued":false,"pushFront":false,"allowCapture":false,"formation":"special/formations/null"} cmd 2 {"type":"attack","entities":[2483],"target":2963,"queued":false,"pushFront":false,"allowCapture":false,"formation":"special/formations/null"} cmd 2 {"type":"attack","entities":[2533],"target":2963,"queued":false,"pushFront":false,"allowCapture":false,"formation":"special/formations/null"} ... In the following graphs I count only these individual attack commands for each player. Here are 4 games of Stockfish which all show this behavior and I did not find a game which didn't have this that were longer than 10 min: Here are some games of other high ranked players that don't have this unusual sniping activity:

1 turn is 0.2 seconds game time (in this alpha). During lag and pauses (if you have autociv) spikes can occur. Usually more players have a high command count then. In the second plot of the sanafur section one can see Decger have one high spike at the end. But looking at other games Decger one cant see this. So one needs to check a few games. For other commands, like holding the ungarrison key, multiple commands can also be send during one turn. But in this case the target changes where one would need to click on to. This is very rare, can be code executed or some overlooked mechanic of which no one else knows. Like this funny exploit

See the attack area thread. Sniping exists. We should just implement attack area.

just run that python script ffm attached you can get it yourself

Here is a zoom on the sanafur-Decger game. Apart from the one spike of 30 he gets rarely over 4 and max. 7. You reached 5 here in one game too. Maybe you can try and send a command.txt? The big difference is that it's in every game over 10 min. of sanafur and Stockfish that I checked. Decger and you have it on rare occasions.

I'm ofc not talking about removing the ability to make a single unit attack, but rather to add a feature to make sniping less spamy. In my opinion too much workaround are considered when any fun micro feature could just make a great fix for this spamy meta. Example of feature I suggested in another workaround tweaking by @real_tabasco_sauce:

Thoughts. If you disagree with any I can explain. There's a pretty strong association between maps being based on a real place and the map being unenjoyable. Great Ambush Archipelago Continent Hyraccian Shores Mainland Cross Foothills Frontier Slopes Stronghold Unknown Wrench Fun African Plains Alpine Lakes Alpine Mountains (but basically the same as alpine valley) Alpine Valley (but basically the same as alpine mountains) Ardennes Forest Atlas Mountains Corinthian Isthmus (I personally hate it but others like it) Deep Forest Flood Gear Guadalquivir River Gulf of Bohemia Harbor Hell's Pass Lake (basically the same as Harbor, though. I would make these consolidated the way that Gulf of Bohemia is for frozen lake) Latium (I personally hate this map but others like it) Lorraine Plain Ngorongo (a bit unbalanced, though) Oasis (I personally hate this map but others like it) Persian Highlands (could use more wood, though. If it had more wood it would be a better version of Ngorongo) Pyrienne Sierra Ratumacus Rhine Marshlands Saharian Oasis (I personally hate this map but others like it) Schwarzwald (very similar to deep forest) Meh Arctic Winter Brittanic Road Cantabrian Highlands Canyon Kerela (just a worse version of Hyrancian Shores) Lion's Den Marmara Migration Neareastern Badlands Phoencian Levant (Just a much, much worse version of Hyrancian Shores) Rivers (basically Harbor but more ship focused) Sahel Watering Holes Syria (getting close to feeling the pain) Nile Feeling the pain Belgian Uplands (borderline painful but would be fun if wood wasn't awful) Botswana Haven (borderline painful but would be fun if wood wasn't awful) Caledeonian Meadows Fields of Meroe (the spam spot positioning on this are nonsense but if that was fixed it could be fun) Hellas (the spam spot positioning on this are nonsense but fixing that still won't make it fun) India (could be fun if wood wasn't awful) Lower Nubia (the spam spot positioning on this are nonsense but fixing that still won't make it fun) River Archipelago Sythian Rivulet Wild Lake (basically the same as other good maps except it throws AI units in to make it a bad map) Painful Anatolian Plateau Northern Lights Pompeii Snowflake Searocks Volanic Land (also basically the same as Pompeii) AI Maps Danubius Jebel Barkal Survival of the Fittest Gimmick Maps Empire Extinct Volcano Fortress Polar Sea (but really belongs in the painful category) Sahel (it's a trade map) "Atlas" Maps Mediterranean (the spam spot positioning on this map are nonsense and make balancing impossible) Red Sea (the spam spot positioning on this map are nonsense and make balancing impossible) "Creator" Maps RMS Test Wall Demo Naval (unplayable right now because of issues with ships but still deserving of their own category and shouldn't be deleted because hopefully ships become playable in the future) Aegean Sea Bahrain Corsica vs Sardinia Cycladic Archipeliago Dodecanese Elephantine English Channel Island Stronghold Islands

so sniping is still a thing with the community mod? was it nerfed though, right?

Not "to do anything" but "to attack directly". Many players (like me) mainly use attack-move or select entire groups to queue-snipe, which doesnt increase the counter of "sent a single unit to directly attack an enemy".

I agree. I'd go with "Generated Maps."

This is one of the trends of RTS. Battle Aces. From former Blizzard employees. It's made for short games. Very mobile style. It's interesting that you can create a deck before the game starts.

Oh, you mean the legend entry, that's the sum over the whole game. Should have labeled it better. The value of each turn is on the y-axis

@Philip the Swaggerless sure its simple, but its limited. <<<<<%>>>>>>>>>>>>!<<<<<<<<<<<<<%>>>>>>>>>>>>!<<<<<<<<<<< ..........O------------------|-----------------O-------------------|----------------|O In the above (for pikemen) if you don't check immediately after the attack (|), the unit must wait a whole second before it realizes it needs to move to attack the unit again. This would be really bad. Have you played it yet? The pikemen really don't look bad at all, its spearcav and swordcav chasing that look a bit weird. There can certainly be improvements to try and fit the animation better, but timing it perfectly would be tough as all units have differing animations, repeat times, and prepare times. You would end up doing some crazy mathematical gymnastics to try and get it to work! Up to a point, it would be easier to tweak animations and audio (except I haven't done that yet XD).

How so? It changes gameplay, but that doesn't mean it would be a bad change.

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.

I made some script to load game data in to python to plot it as I'm more familiar with python for plotting and analysis. Also it's much nicer to view all the variables in a variable explorer like the one from spyder. Commands per seconds or turn (0.2 s) have the disadvantage that during lag (or later in the game) a player is able to do a lot of commands in one turn. Here is me doing 10 commands in one turn: turn 5455 200 cmd 2 {"type":"walk","entities":[10472,7963,8997,10619,11200,10735,9713,8881,10288,10455,10152,11198,6126,10820,9851,9287,10734,10641,10289,8975,9333,9008,9220,9281,9355,9356,9451,9453,9471,9561,9562,11199,9706,9712,9734,9838,9852,10620,10745,9926,10016,10151,10153,10575,10576,10291,10454,10574,10703,10775,10819,10830],"x":368.4579772949219,"z":944.2227783203125,"queued":false,"pushFront":false} cmd 2 {"type":"walk","entities":[10472,7963,8997,10619,11200,10735,9713,8881,10288,10455,10152,11198,6126,10820,9851,9287,10734,10641,10289,8975,9333,9008,9220,9281,9355,9356,9451,9453,9471,9561,9562,11199,9706,9712,9734,9838,9852,10620,10745,9926,10016,10151,10153,10575,10576,10291,10454,10574,10703,10775,10819,10830],"x":374.57586669921875,"z":970.2582397460938,"queued":false,"pushFront":false} cmd 2 {"type":"attack","entities":[10472,7963,8997,10619,11200,10735,9713,8881,10288,10455,10152,11198,6126,10820,9851,9287,10734,10641,10289,8975,9333,9008,9220,9281,9355,9356,9451,9453,9471,9561,9562,11199,9706,9712,9734,9838,9852,10620,10745,9926,10016,10151,10153,10575,10576,10291,10454,10574,10703,10775,10819,10830],"target":6368,"allowCapture":true,"queued":true,"pushFront":false,"formation":"special/formations/null"} cmd 6 {"type":"walk","entities":[11159,10853,10854,10963,10965],"x":233.2589111328125,"z":647.6427001953125,"queued":false,"pushFront":false} cmd 6 {"type":"walk","entities":[11159,10853,10854,10963,10965],"x":289.00238037109375,"z":808.5845336914062,"queued":false,"pushFront":false} cmd 6 {"type":"walk","entities":[11159,10853,10854,10963,10965],"x":289.2769470214844,"z":809.2060546875,"queued":false,"pushFront":false} cmd 6 {"type":"walk","entities":[11159,10853,10854,10963,10965],"x":289.27691650390625,"z":809.2093505859375,"queued":false,"pushFront":false} cmd 6 {"type":"walk","entities":[7228,7882,7883,8114,8943,11225,11230],"x":309.6015625,"z":795.3712158203125,"queued":false,"pushFront":false} cmd 6 {"type":"walk","entities":[7228,7882,7883,8114,8943,11225,11230],"x":309.6015625,"z":795.3712158203125,"queued":false,"pushFront":false} cmd 6 {"type":"walk","entities":[7228,7882,7883,8114,8943,11225,11230],"x":309.6001281738281,"z":795.1552734375,"queued":false,"pushFront":false} cmd 6 {"type":"walk","entities":[7228,7882,7883,8114,8943,11225,11230],"x":297.7958984375,"z":817.514892578125,"queued":false,"pushFront":false} cmd 6 {"type":"walk","entities":[7228,7882,7883,8114,8943,11225,11230],"x":297.3807067871094,"z":812.8035278320312,"queued":false,"pushFront":false} cmd 6 {"type":"walk","entities":[7228,7882,7883,8114,8943,11225,11230],"x":297.3807067871094,"z":812.8035278320312,"queued":false,"pushFront":false} end Notice player 6 (me) just does actually do 2 commands with 2 unit groups as these walks are not queued. If your familiar with python / matplotlib go ahead and tinker with the script and analyze some games.

You can see some stats like that on https://replay-pallas.wildfiregames.ovh/ Maybe with the help of @Dizaka we could add such graphs.

Maybe should be an opt out option like ranked. This way you can still play with custom maps and whatnot should you want to.

Yeah, like decency and basic courtesy. Call me old and conservative.