Useful in-game micro tricks

[vinme]

23 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

I was just brainstorming a way to encourage spreading out one's attacks instead of constantly focus-firing. 

im still confused. perhaps you dont quite understand what sniping is. 
focus fire isnt the way to snipe. if by focus fire you mean target a small amount of units to take them out. 
while one may target a singular ranged inf when sniping, via shift clicking with a selection of own units, this is becuase that unit is in the center of an enemy army thats densely packed, so missed projectiles will hit adjacents. that is the inferior way to snipe tho, generally, as projectiles still hit far more often than they miss, so many might not hit adjacents. 
tha default way is to alt click spam on enemy ranged inf group. the benefit is to abuse the tank/dps carry type unit mechanic rn, by taking out weaker hp/armor units that deal most dmg first. 
 

[vinme]

On 20/10/2023 at 8:22 AM, real_tabasco_sauce said:

So @vinme basically the damage for ranged units is much higher across the board, while to balance this high damage, melee units currently just have a lot of armor so they last longer. The reason they rarely rank up is because they do so little damage. Basically my rebalance patch is as follows:

melee units +50% damage 

ranged units -25% damage

melee units less armor (ex 3h 3p instead of 5h 5p for spearman)

melee units +.5 m/s walk speed

overall, this will push melee units into a more exciting damage-dealing role rather than being more of a damage sponge.

so your solution is to hugely buff mele units overall. 6%+ move speed and 50% dmg buff.
especially considering the factor of micro, that would make mele the primary unit to use in an inf battle. i understand the rankup idea, one of my secondary/tertiary solutions involve reducing considerably the xp requirement for rank up to punish ignoring taking out mele. this already works with civs like sparta with the halved xp tech for spear inf.
all the civ xp things would need to be rebalanced. overall in multitude of ways reduing xp requirement for rankup would improve the game. 

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

8 hours ago, chrstgtr said:

Healing just isn’t very effective while in a fight.

I think the main point would be that by spreading out your attacks, you are causing damage to a larger number of units and this is affecting those units' ability to fight back. 

[real_tabasco_sauce]

1 hour ago, vinme said:

so your solution is to hugely buff mele units overall. 6%+ move speed and 50% dmg buff.

essentially, yes. The armor reduction on melee is supposed to roughly match the -25% ranged damage. This way melee units do more damage to melee units + ranged units, but also take more damage from only melee units.

The move speed change may or may not be needed.

[vinme]

13 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

essentially, yes. The armor reduction on melee is supposed to roughly match the -25% ranged damage. This way melee units do more damage to melee units + ranged units, but also take more damage from only melee units.

The move speed change may or may not be needed.

i do think that mele unit speed is their weakness but in a non snipe world perhaps its necessary for avoiding a complete opposite problem of mele being able to chase down and or focus ranged inf. i remember a time when ranking up mele units gave them movement speed. so you could have a really mobile army as sparta, with skiritai+javelineers. i like the idea of ranking up giving mele more speed, and ranged untis more range. i feel profitable fights should be promoted more to incentivize and reward agression.
i dont have an opinion on your solution but youll have to adress pikes spears and swordsmen balancing surely. relating to their dmg. i dont like that they nerfect pikes armor, while keeping their dmg same. they shouldve boosted it proportionally. and if mele dmg will be so important, swordsmen will become op naturally. also how this all interplays with cav is questionable.
i initially had missed the utility of removing armor from mele and removing dmg from ranged but now i see. 
also, ofc all this will be useless unless theres mod regulations to get rid of cheat mods forever. ofc simple solution being some standard of having visibility of what mods non hosts are using. 
i did have many (what i think are really good) ideas relating to solving for sniping but i havent been motivated to organize and articulate them in a post or posts. 
also it would be cool to find someone to collaborate with, i have a lot of ideas for simple tweaks that would improve the game overall but cba to learn to code or to make mods. 

[alre]

12 hours ago, vinme said:

i do think that mele unit speed is their weakness but in a non snipe world perhaps its necessary for avoiding a complete opposite problem of mele being able to chase down and or focus ranged inf.

agree. melee inf being slow is their main weakness and it should stay that way imo. it characterizes them.

also I don't quite support melee inf going insta-kill on othet melee. in any case, there should be testing and then some version of the change should be merged into the community mod for longer-term balance tuning.

14 hours ago, vinme said:

also, ofc all this will be useless unless theres mod regulations to get rid of cheat mods forever. ofc simple solution being some standard of having visibility of what mods non hosts are using. 

this is impossible, and also really unrelated.

[vinme]

15 hours ago, alre said:

agree. melee inf being slow is their main weakness and it should stay that way imo. it characterizes them.

also I don't quite support melee inf going insta-kill on othet melee. in any case, there should be testing and then some version of the change should be merged into the community mod for longer-term balance tuning.

this is impossible, and also really unrelated.

cant type much rn but, if a mod can auto select, focus x type of units to kill, with ranged, or mele or whatever. effectively infinite CPS, and 0 effort cost. 
no balancing you do will matter. insofar as, ranged /mele paradigm of current day relating to squishier but higher dps ranged vs tankier but lower dps mele. 
unless you plan to completely revolutionize this fundamental and DEFINING 0ad piece, some way or another. 

[man_s_our]

On 21/10/2023 at 5:42 AM, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

I think the main point would be that by spreading out your attacks, you are causing damage to a larger number of units and this is affecting those units' ability to fight back. 

realistically. to balance the ranged units you need to give them higher spread. especially for non promoted units.

in most battles, archers used to need carpet shooting entire areas to be able to kill enemy soldiers. while they didn't need much arrow hits to kill someone.

[LienRag]

On 17/10/2023 at 2:35 PM, real_tabasco_sauce said:

1. Micro: When in a fight, you want to control units based on unit characteristics. Flanking, retreating wounded units, targeting the weaker enemy units, protecting vulnerable units, encircling units, spreading units out, and formation control are all means for one's micro skills to take effect in a fight. This is the top of the pyramid, as it is the hardest to learn and makes the least difference.

What is the effect of flanking ?

And how do you encircle units ?

I was only able to do that once (to a relic that the enemy was bringing to his territory) and it took me around ten attempts, all at minimum speed, before succeeding...

Every other attempt, the Relic had no trouble going through my soldiers to run away before being captured.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

43 minutes ago, LienRag said:

And how do you encircle units ?

 

The right-click-drag feature for unit placement is key here, and I use it all the time. It's something I'd like to see in other AAA games of this type.