BreakfastBurrito_007

Dude perhaps you could lure cavalry to a place where its too tight for them to turn at their faster speed, and surprise them with spearmen. The main reason I was in support of cav having regular unit movement (no wide turns) at speeds below 10 m/s was for fear of them getting stuck, and because they would behave weird in battles. Physically, wide turns are caused by having more speed, but for gameplay consistency it is better to have turns be either wide or “pinpoint” like in 0ad now. I feel some mild acceleration would be ok where it is just enough to make a difference in gameplay but not so much to be annoying.

To click and drag a radius from the center of a circle seems to be a good way to draw the area for attack-ground. This way, a player only needs to locate the center of enemy units, and then drag the radius to the approximate size of the group (direction of radius of course does not matter :D).

@maroder its funny right now people are mad at AoE 4 for having the same ship movement mechanics as AoE2 lol.

That would be awesome in some instances like cinematics, but I worry about how they would move around during a melee fight. I think a few mechanics to allude to the momentum and speed of cavalry would be nice, but we would need to keep in mind the balance and practicality of them in game. Perhaps add cavalry acceleration and once they are faster than 10 m/s they do wider turns like what we see with the boats here. I guess the best way to start would be to add some cavalry acceleration and see what is the next most practical/ logical step. I think cavalry acceleration would be a good way to nerf cavalry, especially champions that are able to disengage so easily and avoid losses. With cavalry acceleration, a player using spears to defend would have more opportunities to counter them. champions discussion here by @Dizaka

I would absolutely rather do less damage against skirms than 0 damage vs pikes if I were using archers, I would count on strong melee or skirms to beat pikes. the tradeoff is there in my opinion.

I can become gaia by being rushed and then resigning. Also a mean thing to do is move a bunch of cav into ur allies farms to then resign. It basically just ruins a TG and people will be upset with you.

@Freagarach This looks really good and could be a great tool to satisfy multiple parties in the "ranged units forced to shoot closest unit debate". People are concerned about melee units losing some of their "meat shield" role, and others are concerned about the "meat shield" role being too important and forced by the game mechanics. If attack-ground were to do a bit less overall damage, then this would make sense because it is "beyond visual range", and this could provide an important tradeoff between dealing full damage (shooting closest targets) and shooting particular units (attack-ground) at reduced damage output.

There is a good discussion going on about attack-ground in the "proposals for formations" discussion attack ground, as it exists in the video from that forum would seem to be able to re-instate my original idea as a contender: attack ground to shoot target area of enemies after scoring a kill during the attack-ground order, unit breaks the attack ground to automatically look for the next closest unit to target. less overkill than original idea Another option: perhaps attack-ground is already enough of a nerf to the ability of ranged units to shoot "beyond visual range" and would satisfy gameplay balance and the concerns about melee units raised by @Jofursloft

I like the visions for the civs, to give them all some unique mechanics. I am particularly interested in this in the shorter term however: I like this idea, and I feel these upgrades should be more expensive than regular blacksmith upgrades especially the one for elite rank (assuming its the same as "veteran" rank). Perhaps the "elite" upgrade would be more expensive, and add a 10 metal cost to the unit.

The ideas posted here are for ranged units. To understand the balancing situation I give an example: an army of skirms and pikes against an army of spears and archers. pikes and spears fight in the middle, and the spears die out first because the skirms are doing a lot more damage to the spears than the archers can do to the pikes. Once the spears die, the pikes and skirms can advance and kill the archers. Now another scenario with the same units: archers target the skirmishers with their longer range and stop the skirmishers from killing the spears as they did in example 1. Now, the spears kill the remaining pikes because the pikes do not do enough damage on their own to overpower the spears. In 0ad it is effectively not possible to do example 2 in-game, because ranged units will always target melee first. Because of the lack of this option for 0ad players, infantry battles come down to: 1. how much damage a melee unit can take, and 2. how much damage a ranged unit can deal. Does that make sense @ChronA?

It is true that there is great inaccuracy with elephants in 0ad. But in terms of gameplay, elephants are pretty easy to counter. A few tips that might make it easier for you: focus on getting a large population as fast as you can, this will make it easier to afford everything, and the AI's army will seem smaller if you have many more units. skirmishers are a good counter to elephants because they do a lot of pierce damage, and can all attack the elephant at once

@wowgetoffyourcellphone I think it is drawn out. Corner-drawn rectangle would be pretty ideal.

I feel like this would be too automatic as well. @Jofursloft's idea is great in my opinion because now there are two ways for melee to be a meat shield: 1 to be in front and stop melee from reaching ranged units, 2 to mix with ranged units and prevent an enemy from isolating them in the "target box". @wowgetoffyourcellphone @Freagarach does @Jofursloft's idea sound feasible to you?

If melee unit charging was implemented alongside this, then there would certainly be great ways to use melee beyond the meat shield. I would argue that having both these features would make 0ad combat more fun, more skillful, and more advanced compared to other rts games.

ok @alre, definitely my idea is too much overkill. I think the best one so far is @Jofursloft's as long as it can be done without performance loss.

I thought about this, and also your concern about melee units being less important due to their meat-shield role becoming less automatic. Do you think a nice way to balance between the two mechanics (1. shooting closest and 2. using your idea, the "targeting-box") would be for ranged units to "panic" at 15% of their total range and ignore the targeting-box so that they can shoot the closest unit?

In 0ad right now infantry battles are decided by which side kills the other's melee first. This means that the melee units that tank the most damage are the most useful, like pikemen. The feature like you mentioned in "magnetic pikemen" would be great as long as it did not did not cause perfomance problems (I don't know if it would or not). There are still ways pikes could act as a meat shield rather than a meat magnet: Ranged units could follow close to pikemen so that they can mooch off of the armor of the pikemen since they would most likely be in the same "targeting-box". In this situation, ranged units are in a location more vulnerable to higher dps melee units like swords. The main goals of the changes are to allow more player choice and make the natural behavior of 0ad units less overbearing.

Do you think it would be too much overkill to make it a worthwhile option? Going by the average 0ad army size, it would probably be a lot of overkill on the first and second volleys, but after that not so much, since the "targeted group" would expand out from where the first attack was. @alre do you agree that it would be beneficial to gameplay?

@hyperion @Player of 0AD I agree that performance issues are a primary concern. I was thinking rather than having a filter or smart unit behavior, the ranged units would attack the units closest to where their last target was when they killed it. So if a player wanted to attack a particular group of units, he would just choose one, and then the ones next to it would be the next targets. A player could still target the closest enemies by attack-clicking a closer enemy. If the ranged units are given no order, but are simply set still next to enemies (using "h") then they could default to shooting closest enemies.

In previous alphas the idea that units always attack the closest enemy has not been debated much, because recent alphas were about ranged vs ranged balance, for example: "slingers op" of a23. and "archers op" of a24. In these previous alphas, melee units did not matter as much as they do in a25. The gameplay balancing has gotten better, and more complicated since those alphas. In my opinion, this tendency of the ranged units to shoot the closest enemy results in some balancing issues that are not due to any units particular stats. And if we were able to choose our targets, then the options increase for the player and there are more opportunities for skill to succeed. My main question is: what part of the game would break if ranged units were able to shoot other units besides the closest enemies? I welcome debate, but I don't welcome slander.

When in doubt, just make 3 or 4 blacksmiths because they are cheap and you will need them later, this makes the p3 requirement less of a hassle.

@LetswaveaBookI like both these hotkey options, but I think I would use the easier “ungarrison all healthy” button most frequently. I imagine players who are very fast would like to use the “A+S” hotkeys for selecting cav for rushing. I feel giving more control over these things is very important and allows for a greater “skill ceiling”.

Ok perhaps the best way to explain it is like the Gaia groups that are sent on maps like Danubius. The animals would not be running away from you already and they would be walking in a predictable path that you would already know. I don’t think hunting this would be very challenging, what will be challenging is the timing of the hunt and the potential early map control battles that could result from it. Keep in mind this idea is not meant to replace the existing hunting. I agree that rubber-banding effect would be nice to keep the static herds (already in 0ad) together.

Perhaps I did not elaborate enough. I actually never noticed the migration in AoE3. I was thinking the animals are not even on the map for the first x minutes, then like 50 bison type animals spawn in from one edge and go across the map and then disappear off the edge for another interval. They would move as a group in a straight line with no stopping, so if players want to hunt they need to do it while the migration is happening. I would think this can exist alongside the current hunt behavior.

In 0ad all herds of Animals are static. I was hiking yesterday and thought what if a map or some maps could have a migration of huntable animals from one side of the map to the other at a time interval. For 1v1s it would go from one side to the other across the middle of the map. For TGs it would go across between the two teams. Every 5 minutes the herd comes back but no new animals are generated, (it saves the number from the last migration). Tell me what you think of the idea. I think it would be awesome for gameplay and visuals, but probably not a mainstream feature of most games of 0ad.