BreakfastBurrito_007

That makes sense. This will probably make chariots more fun to use. It is probably also more balance-risk to enable this for non-chariot units.

@Yekaterina I was wondering if it is possible to limit the shooting range for moving, non-chariot ranged units to the front 180 degrees? Reasons: no ones back is that flexible allows melee cav to chase gives the mechanic a weak side, so they should go toward or alongside an enemy but not away. This way they wont behave quite like siege towers.

Keep in mind that as it exists now, the mechanic does not operate on a volley basis (neither does anything in 0ad). You can't even choose what target to attack with the mouse. As for the first shot being more important, do you mean in real life, in 0ad, or in most RTS games? As far as I know, the first shot only matters in 0ad if you hope to take out a high value target quickly. Ideally there would still be advantages to stationary shooting from horses and it should probably make more dps overall.

It is true that horse archers are more powerful than regular archers, and adding this mechanic to them will make them more powerful. However, it is undeniable that there is potential added value for gameplay as well as realism. Which brings me to Dragonoar's point below. Horse riding takes balance and it is my guess that it is harder to shoot at the same rate as when you are stationary. Also I think bigger bows are stronger (provided other construction qualities are constant), and would tend to shoot farther, so it makes sense in general that horse archers should have shorter range. This is not a balance problem since horse archers are faster than regular archers. I feel going for a 1.5x multiplier to attack repeat time and an accuracy nerf while moving should be enough to balance the "shooting while moving" aspect. @Player of 0AD I know that horse archers are pretty OP in a24 and likely a25, but doing this is a way to fix them in the long term. The goal is to make the unit more distinct in usage, and to add skill depth to the unit. We are fortunate that we can add some realism while helping gameplay. I initially wanted to consider this mechanic for skirmisher cavalry but I am not so sure now...

@Yekaterina This looks great. I am thinking this mechanic will go far to differentiate cavalry archers from regular archers in use. Maybe as archer cavalry rank up, they can shoot more accurately or at a higher fire rate while moving, as obviously it would take a lot of experience to improve with shooting while galloping. Four questions for everybody who wants to contribute an opinion: Should moving while shooting be less accurate, less range, less damage, or less fire rate? Should mounted archers improve this ability as they rank up? Should cavalry/chariot javelineers be capable of this as well?, and should the mechanic have special rules for them? Should chariot based units be better at shooting while moving? I would argue sure since chariot units are champions, and they are already expensive. I think it is important to make sure that there are advantages to shooting while moving and shooting while stationary, this way it is a more skillful gameplay decision on how to use ranged cavalry.

@wowgetoffyourcellphone It is a cool feature to have the units hop off the chariot when the horses die, but I was talking about having the unit in the back of the chariot launching projectiles even if the chariot is moving, just at some decreased stats from when told to attack a particular target.

@Yekaterina I don't know if you did a good enough job of scratching out the name of the player XD. This player's point about the power of the pop bonus being nearly the free equivalent of a wonder. The player makes a good point about the status effect champions, but at least for iberians, their champion does not have as good a hero as Boudicca to empower them. If it becomes possible, I think it would be cool to allow ranged chariot units to shoot independently from their movement perhaps at a reduced accuracy, range and/or fire rate. if you click to attack a unit normally, it is a normal stationary attack, but if you are moving and the unit sees an enemy it will shoot at it without changing its velocity.

I think it would be my preference to give something else to other civs rather than take away from some unique aspects. I know it is not always possible balance-wise but it helps to get creative.

@wowgetoffyourcellphone what is a battalion system? only other RTS I have played is AoE3 and that had some very frustrating pathfinding and battle mechanics. If I remember correctly, any group of units were always in a formation of some kind. One thing I liked about 0ad when I joined was the freedom with which units moved.

It is true I am pretty ignorant of what is possible/easy to program or easier/harder for the engine to run, so I thought a simpler solution would automatically be better. The more I think about it, the charge mechanic could be pretty good. If people like this charge mechanic, then I think we would like a way to select the units that are ready to charge, or at least see how many of the units are ready to charge. Please could you just be a little bit nicer when you talk to me? I was not saying I would be incapable of microing such a situation, I was saying that there needs to be some kind of way to micromanage this effect, like there is for most other things in 0ad. I was also not trying to denigrate your idea, in fact I like it quite a bit. I was just coming up with what I thought was a simpler alternative for people to consider.

I like this quite a bit but I am worried about the timing, what if you attack once with 20 spears and then add 20 more spears, then your army separates from each other and it could get frustrating. What do you guys think about melee units simply moving at a faster (x% faster) when they are 10 or 20 m from an enemy? I feel this is simple, but there might be situations where this is frustrating that are not coming to mind. I don't think it can be eco-abused at least. maybe the x% faster within 10 m mechanic could be used only when an attack order is given, so they could not retreat at the same speed which would be super annoying. I have been bugged by this for a long time and I am very appreciative of you guys for starting to do something about it

This is an awesome idea and I like the creativity of having blended buildings. From this, I expect the traders of this civ to be easier to protect, and to have a more blended economy. The only thing about the general design of the civ is that people will want to play it on land too. I love the idea of making a dock/military colony/market, but I am worried about how infrequently 0ad players in general use water maps. Perhaps there can be added a function similar to iber starting walls, where on an all land map a pond spawns somewhere along the p1 border of territory so that a syracuse playe could at least build one "fortified port". This would enable the civ to be played more comfortably on land maps. I think this civ idea is unique and awesome. Good work

I just tried romans and I really like the compromise that was reached at the army camps. Training the rank 2 units is a nice perk for the camps and the rams make them a lethal threat. I think I prefer this so far to the a23 camps where a great variety of ranged siege was available to torture civs like ptol and gauls/brits from the back of the base. In a23, the army camps were mostly used either to quickly spam out some siege weapons without a fort or to do what I previously described. Nice work!

I saw the 1,2,3 tiers of upgrades are available in the blacksmith. I think I like this change so far. Would it be good to correlate the tier 1,2,3 techs with phase 1,2,3 and make blacksmith available in p1? I feel this would be an interesting option to allow players to somewhat counter that booming=turtling situation that we have discussed a lot. If I remember correctly @ValihrAnt you came up with the third tier? what do you think?

Ok I got the svn version and tried it with my brother, it seems the fighting is much faster paced which I like. Who wants to setup some kind of TG on the svn version? I think we could do a TG using as many different civs as possible, to get a feel for the balance.

From what I remember, this was to allow mauryas to more easily train that archer champion. Sparta has an identically functioning building called "mess hall" that can be built as much as needed as well.

Awesome news @wraitii, I will try it out tonight after work! I have heard only good things so far and can't wait to try it out.

Nice. This is good to hear. Are the release candidates easier for people who are not so good at computer stuff to test? I might try one out if that is the case.

metal is different from other resources. 50 metal is not worth 50 wood in a game of 0ad. The mining rates are slower than wood and food. And most importantly, metal is a limited resource, which is ok, but it means the things you buy with it must be consequential. This is why I don't like mercs costing metal (a side note). so 25 spear cav are cheaper than 5 cataphracts

Oh yea that effect probably did depend on what "order" they were on, they probably would not move then. The reason the ranged units move I think is to try to get within range boundaries again. It is quite rough and would need to be more developed if it were to be implemented.

I am not sure how I feel about buffing champions more. Seleucid spearcav are very good units and I don't think they die too fast, they are strong and do high damage, their main weakness is players correctly choosing to kill them first with their ranged units. If you have 15 sele cataphracts, and you attack 50 archers with them, the champions will all die. If you have 10 persian cataphracts (same unit) and 25 spearcav, you will have much more success at a lower cost. Buffing each champion does not help this problem. For nearer to future alphas I would advocate for adding a suitable minimum range for slingers and archers. Some skilled mod folk demonstrated the effects of this earlier in the year, and I thought it produced a nice melee versus ranged unit "rout" effect.

Seles are basically not a cav civ what on earth. Iber cavalry is way better than seles. If it is true that antiochus does not effect ranged cav then there is no excuse not to give seles a spearcav unit for a25.

It better, because seles hardly have cavalry besides ranged cavalry. All other cav civs besides seles can pair a more expensive melee cavalry (champions, or mercenaries if they were ever worth getting) with CS melee cavalry to extend their lives and make the metal investment worth it. With a melee cavalry sele army, you would be relegated to never using champions or mercenaries in open combat since they are too expensive to lose. People recognize how much metal champions and mercenaries cost and will simply focus them down. Even if they lose 100 units to 40 units, economically it is a win for the non-cav player. Melee champions are most useful when they are embedded with large numbers of citizen soldiers so that an enemy has a harder time killing your most expensive units first, seles do not have this option and I really think they should if their mercenary or champion melee cavalry are ever to be used for anything other than killing traders or killing women (a task CS cavalry can do just fine).

I think civ differentiation, balancing, and mercenary rework (depending on how good they are in a25) should be a focus during life-cycle of a25. In the long term I think it would be cool to add new mechanics that deepen gameplay and could contribute to historical accuracy/physics realism. These things are undestandably quite challenging and I am ignorant of how hard they will be to code. Also some of these are divisive and will need long discussions to get right. Cavalry acceleration and momentum system more realistic system for ranged units, volleys, walls blocking projectiles in different circumstances unit differentiation: examples seleucid champ spear cav different from persians spear cav champ, advantages/disadvantages to both. extended debate on blacksmith upgrades.

Personally I have never seen a player use autotrain to any winnable effect. I feel that if it were to be the ideal unit production method that it would be very bad and boring. It can be like AoE2 Auto-scout. Lazy players or players who are going afk for beer or coffee or both can use auto-train and accept the losses in exchange for comfort and concentration elsewhere. Sometimes it may be a good way to top-off the population during a battle, but it should not be comparable in results to a player putting focus and effort into eco. I would be in favor of making it slightly inefficient. The one I saw seems quite inefficient, but I have not seen many players use this. I think it is important to note that @chrstgtr's point about APM works the other way too: unit training and timing is APM that serves a purpose to the game, and it is skill based. Much of the frustration in the game comes from Actions that have a probability of being translated into the game, like moving an ele past a house. We need to reduce necessary APM in the right areas: like how many clicks it should take to get an ele past the godforsaken house, or how many clicks you need to make to keep all of your units from bleeding to an enemy tower, or how many times you must click "unpack" or "pack" on catapults.