"auto-sniping" thoughts and tests

[Atrik]

On 02/06/2023 at 6:53 PM, alre said:

there still will be fun in finding new tactics and micro techniques, just not this one.

^
Some players, even JC, don't spend the battle sniping. Don't think the game feels dead to him because he don't. And he does still micro, just not sniping. If you had a way to reduce 80clicks required to order units to focus weaker units in vanilla game, It would just look obvious feature and no one will think about removing it. It could be as simple as the ability to switch between focusing the closest unit <-> weakest unit in current range.

Making such feature as a mod would cause balance problems and this is the reason why nobody made/released this mod to this date.

12 hours ago, borg- said:

How is this different from an aimbot in counter strike for example?

FPS games are about aiming, RTS strategy. Sniping in 0ad is about clicking compulsively very very fast. The fact that this game-play meta shouldn't evolve is merely a debate, @real_tabasco_sauce work's accounted for next alpha's unit balancing.
 


... ProGUI is another topic. I won't be worried about this mod impact on balance, it has been around and fair people don't cry about it. Even the "trainer" feature that is so controversial is just doing vanilla auto-queue's job differently. Much more concerned by the stat: 30% of players revealing enemy chat and stats found by a player's testing.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

43 minutes ago, Atrik said:

The fact that this game-play meta shouldn't evolve is merely a debate, @real_tabasco_sauce work's accounted for next alpha's unit balancing.

Well, I hope it can make it into the next alpha, but I wouldn't count on it. It might make its way into a fifth a26 community mod in order to be more effectively play tested.

[borg-]

Well, name me one other rts game where at the beginning the units move automatically to the resources and the micro is automatic.

SC has insane micros/clicks, and not really there is automatic micro.

[Atrik]

1 hour ago, borg- said:

name me one other rts game where at the beginning the units move automatically to the resources and the micro is automatic

Northgard is a RTS example where units are assigned to gather resources at the beginning.

Also this is off-topic. But now I wonder: would you advocate to remove auto-assignment of units when a drop-site building like a colony is built?
Very probably not. Any "auto" feature that currently exist doesn't feel weird. If new features where introduced, including "auto-sniping", it would just appear to be a very normal feature to have.

[roscany]

How can you identify which mods a player is using in a TG? Isn't this info only available for the host of the TG?

Edit: I also think the level of automation that is starting to pop up is starting to kill the game. With this auto-train feature (not auto-queue) players can spend all their time focussing on microing their units without having to check up on their eco and unit production. I'm only really able to tell who is using this feature when I'm spectating a game. It's frustrating realizing afterwards that a player I lost to in a 1v1 was using this mod when I wasn't, even though it was an unrated game. 

Edited July 23, 2023 by roscany
addition of thought

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

RTS games have a focus on using strategies to beat opponents, however good rts games force players to execute those strategies using skill, focus, and multitasking. To see an example of this compare the success of AoE 2 to AoE 4. In order to execute strategies in Aoe4 players just choose a landmark to age up which decides their strategy and then follow a formulaic build order. 

There is nothing inherently good about reducing the clicks needed to execute strategies in 0ad like ProGUI does. I am not upset yet about proGUI only because I haven't lost to it yet, but I am sure that it will happen sooner or later.

13 hours ago, Atrik said:

But now I wonder: would you advocate to remove auto-assignment of units when a drop-site building like a colony is built?

Definitely not. Unlike the ProGUI army composition manager and population generator, this feature is not optimized. Some players spread out their units and focus them so that they gather the right resources and gather them efficiently. In other cases and situations, players rely on the automatic behavior of the storehouse, accepting the inefficiency, because their focus is on more important things.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

13 hours ago, Atrik said:

Also this is off-topic. But now I wonder: would you advocate to remove auto-assignment of units when a drop-site building like a colony is built?
Very probably not. Any "auto" feature that currently exist doesn't feel weird. If new features where introduced, including "auto-sniping", it would just appear to be a very normal feature to have.

There is a pretty huge difference in elegance. It is logical and sometimes helpful that workers automatically go to near resources after building a new cc, and it is nice that farmers look for empty farms to work at.

ProGui and the discussed autosniping feature are not very elegant, as they require additional modes, gui panels and settings to work (all requiring clicks of some kind). ProGui sits on top of 0ad and you have to learn it almost like a separate game. It would definitely feel out of place and overly contrived if it were a vanilla feature.

[Atrik]

 

2 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

gui panels and settings to work (all requiring clicks of some kind). ProGui sits on top of 0ad

This is why I think I already admited said that progui's trainer would never make sens in vanilla. ProGUI is off-topic anyway.

 

2 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

There is a pretty huge difference in elegance. It is logical and sometimes helpful that workers automatically go to near resources after building a new cc, and it is nice that farmers look for empty farms to work at.

But "elegance" here is purely subjective, my view is that having to click 80times to sort out some arrays is not elegant. It doesn't empower the user, and it's faster cps win.
Just like it's obvious to you that: "it's logical and sometimes helpful that workers automatically go to near resources after building"
Why "it's logical and sometimes helpful that soldiers focus weaker unit first." sounds any less reasonable?
Nope, anything that would change attack from closest unit, is too "auto" and "will kill the game".
Anyway now it's very sure 0ad will never see any better battles where players are just rushing to hit the best cps. There is no room for improvements like some units ability (charges, maybe other abilities...)  if 100% of the fights is already taken by players having to sort arrays manually. I hope at least your meta @real_tabasco_sauce would pass and would really make attacking closest unit reasonable in most situations as we are kinda in a dead end with this topic. Can't make a mod, because it would be too op and break unit balance in general, and devs aren't going to do anything especially not if it's controversial. However dumb the controversy is.

 

Edited July 23, 2023 by Atrik

[real_tabasco_sauce]

14 minutes ago, Atrik said:

But "elegance" here is purely subjective, my view is that having to click 80times to sort out some arrays is not elegant. It doesn't empower the user, and it's faster cps win.

Well, I would say it is not elegant to implement a stance to do a highly specific action that is only occasionally helpful (assuming proper balance). Especially when that action is just a sum of multiple clicks. It sort of sends us towards a slippery slope of adding more and more 'bells and whistles' that distract from core gameplay mechanics. What happens when the meta changes in the future? Would you want to have a setting to automatically execute that meta?

My main argument against this is that automating too many things for the player makes things less fun. For instance automatically targeting the weakest unit is automatically calculating and executing what is currently a fun and exciting part of gameplay.

Ex. I have been raided and notice that one retreating cavalry has 1 hp. I pick out the weak one and get a kill. This is a lot less fun if my units were already on a stance to do this for me. I probably wouldn't even notice :l

If this stance could actually snipe automatically, It is more fun to snipe manually than to click a button and watch it all happen.

[Atrik]

59 minutes ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

Especially when that action is just a sum of multiple clicks

The game has enough examples of actions you could divide in more clicks. Auto-gathering after building was one, units are continuously queuing actions that you could divide. If you wanted to be very lame you could want gatherers to not automatically queue an order to gather next resource once he depleted the one he was assigned to.

59 minutes ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

Ex. I have been raided and notice that one retreating cavalry has 1 hp. I pick out the weak one and get a kill. This is a lot less fun if my units were already on a stance to do this for me. I probably wouldn't even notice :l

Fair point, you'll lose this.
 

59 minutes ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

If this stance could actually snipe automatically, It is more fun to snipe manually than to click a button and watch it all happen.

Main misconception, if this stance 'snipe automatically' in unit's range , then instead of letting pathfinder and enemy units define your unit positions, you now have control over it precisely. You have more time to maneuver melee and all units. You would do more interesting micro overall then just being tasked with spamming alt-clicks.
 

Edited July 23, 2023 by Atrik

[borg-]

21 hours ago, Atrik said:

Northgard is a RTS example where units are assigned to gather resources at the beginning.

Northgard is another style of rts, can't serve as an example.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

8 hours ago, Atrik said:

You have more time to maneuver melee and all units. You would do more interesting micro overall then just being tasked with spamming alt-clicks.

Ah see my perspective here would just be to let it come down to opportunity cost. You can only afford so much attention in different areas, so you have to choose (for example between micro techniques, or between managing army or managing eco). When you add automation you also lose some of these choices the player must make on how to spend their attention.

I say no need to force a solution when the root cause can be addressed. I expect my rebalance to make sniping useful about 15% of the time compared to about 80% of the time currently.

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

@Atrik I totally agree that spamming alt-clicks to win a fight is not a good place for the meta to be at, but I think adding automated tools that are optimized for the best results don't just remove clicks, they also remove the game we enjoy. This stands in stark contrast to the default unit and structure behavior which is not optimized and needs player engagement to get better results, meaning that players need skills to execute strategies as opposed to choosing them from a menu. I think the best case scenario is that we have a successful melee/ranged rebalance effort that makes alt-clicking less powerful.

[ufa]

IMO the fact that were this mod to exist, with: 

"ignoreInCompatibilityChecks": true

set, it would be undetectable in-lobby (as I understand it) is more worrying then how the mod is perceived ethically. Maybe my understanding of mods is wrong, although from what I gathered from the proGUI thread is that this is still more or less the case. The discussion of "what's fair play re: mods" is an interesting one but seems way too porous and lacking (surprisingly) authority for it to be productive, so again IMO the ability to see what mods someone is really using seems more useful than 10+ people pulling at opposite ends of a "what's fair" rope.

As with even the most basic semblance of lobby moderation and prohibition of racial slurs in usernames (has this happened yet?)—which was brought up numerous times on the forum to total inaction (and even push back)—I'm at least hoping that over time the total black box that is mod use will slowly get some attention. I suspect a few top players will change their approach (or at least lose some perks like totally revealed maps for allies and enemies) coincidentally around the same time.

[Atrik]

Stop calling for bans. The problem to solve is very obvious. A noob playing archers civs won't even understand why even against AI, archers feel very weak. Sniping is making a technical but very repetitive sequence of clicks just to achieve a simple none-strategic task because of a lack of feature. Some unit re-balance could remove the urge of having such feature, agreed, but still the game would be in my opinion more enjoyable if you had one of these example feature:

A special Stance where units attack weaker (or another criteria like class) units in there current attack range.
A shortcut/Button to order current selection to attack a selectable group of enemy units.
A shortcut/Button to order current selection to attack a type of units in range (you could hover one enemy unit and have all nearby units of the same class glowing to indicate which units are in range of your currently selected units, and that will be attacked).

I'm sure one could propose better feature with in mind ease of use. The feature could be more or less optimized to account or not for current hp, overkill etc, but in any case, the goal is to shift player focus and battle outcomes on more interesting metrics then cps.

Also you can see that all feature described require players engagement, speed, and for the stance one, some technical skills to reposition units in battle. They compress the spamming of 80 clicks down to a few one.
Right now, if you play archers civs and forgot to put your hero or another unit on the correct stance of target, the famous "opportunity cost" is to let it suicide else you may lose 2sec of sniping that will seal the outcome of the battle. Leading to easier unrewarding scenarios.

Since it seems proGUI is named on 50% of this topic posts, I can once again precise that my attempt with this mod was to remove the unrewarding limitations of the current GUI. It never felt rewarding to me to have to check manually which military building has stopped auto-queuing units for arguably arbitrary reasons.
So ProGUI suggest two approach to make it less painful:

1. Idle production buildings have clickable icons that you can use to view and reassign production.
   
   This is totally not "auto" and still you can use it to boom much better then if you add all barracks to a control group to queue units regardless of current production queue. I already advocated to think of an equivalent to implement in vanilla UI, because it's very useful.
    
2. Auto-train (production controllable from a panel), where you control production variable for buildings to output exactly what you want them to, with the ability to task buildings to alternate unit production to make a specific unit composition. The basic usage of it is very easy, and late games are funnier when you have production you can handle easier by a overlay panel.

As expected, removing unrewarding tasks (such looking for the barracks where auto-queue broke) from the game made it more enjoyable for me not less. The mod has a reaction time of 0.6 - 1.2sec and can't even make more then one order in that time-span, so it's probably not improving players gameplay because it's doing anything super-fast. The game is subjected to possible improvements and improvements are very often new features. On a open-source game you can kinda expect that mods experiment new features, that may or not inspire changes in main game. There aren't that much stakes at play in a 0ad game, AND the mod is available to all anyway.

Edited July 25, 2023 by Atrik

[ufa]

On 25/7/2023 at 3:00 AM, Atrik said:

Stop calling for bans. The problem to solve is very obvious. A noob playing archers civs won't even understand why even against AI, archers feel very weak. Sniping is making a technical but very repetitive sequence of clicks just to achieve a simple none-strategic task because of a lack of feature. Some unit re-balance could remove the urge of having such feature, agreed, but still the game would be in my opinion more enjoyable if you had one of these example feature:

A special Stance where units attack weaker (or another criteria like class) units in there current attack range.
A shortcut/Button to order current selection to attack a selectable group of enemy units.
A shortcut/Button to order current selection to attack a type of units in range (you could hover one enemy unit and have all nearby units of the same class glowing to indicate which units are in range of your currently selected units, and that will be attacked).

I'm sure one could propose better feature with in mind ease of use. The feature could be more or less optimized to account or not for current hp, overkill etc, but in any case, the goal is to shift player focus and battle outcomes on more interesting metrics then cps.

Also you can see that all feature described require players engagement, speed, and for the stance one, some technical skills to reposition units in battle. They compress the spamming of 80 clicks down to a few one.
Right now, if you play archers civs and forgot to put your hero or another unit on the correct stance of target, the famous "opportunity cost" is to let it suicide else you may lose 2sec of sniping that will seal the outcome of the battle. Leading to easier unrewarding scenarios.

Since it seems proGUI is named on 50% of this topic posts, I can once again precise that my attempt with this mod was to remove the unrewarding limitations of the current GUI. It never felt rewarding to me to have to check manually which military building has stopped auto-queuing units for arguably arbitrary reasons.
So ProGUI suggest two approach to make it less painful:

1. Idle production buildings have clickable icons that you can use to view and reassign production.
   
   This is totally not "auto" and still you can use it to boom much better then if you add all barracks to a control group to queue units regardless of current production queue. I already advocated to think of an equivalent to implement in vanilla UI, because it's very useful.
    
2. Auto-train (production controllable from a panel), where you control production variable for buildings to output exactly what you want them to, with the ability to task buildings to alternate unit production to make a specific unit composition. The basic usage of it is very easy, and late games are funnier when you have production you can handle easier by a overlay panel.

As expected, removing unrewarding tasks (such looking for the barracks where auto-queue broke) from the game made it more enjoyable for me not less. The mod has a reaction time of 0.6 - 1.2sec and can't even make more then one order in that time-span, so it's probably not improving players gameplay because it's doing anything super-fast. The game is subjected to possible improvements and improvements are very often new features. On a open-source game you can kinda expect that mods experiment new features, that may or not inspire changes in main game. There aren't that much stakes at play in a 0ad game, AND the mod is available to all anyway.

Not gonna read all that but assuming you're responding to me (if not, ignore): I'm not calling for bans, the opposite, live and let live re: mods (because there's no alternative, authority, or consensus), but one should be able to see what mods someone is using—simple.

[Atrik]

9 hours ago, ufa said:

but one should be able to see what mods someone is using—simple

Yes, so looking at the 4 comments you posted on this forum, seems you already got answered. I could write down what I know of how this would been achievable and the challenges in making something at least more then trivial to defeat. So for now it's understandably a declarative system. But you aren't too interested in reading if I understand...
This would also help to prevent things like what this player was doing when he was accusing me of cheating and started to reply to a comment I typed in my allied chat.
Also probably a good thing we don't have such auth/signature feature in the game at the stage else some people would visibly try to use it to normalize players mods.

[Dizaka]

There will always be players who are ahead on the automation curve.

There is no reason why 0AD vanilla shouldn't include automation.  I think @Atrik is onto something.  The playing field should be evened out.

 

The game should be about getting more people interested in it.  People aren't going to be interested in this game if the curve is too high and current players have a huge advantage - by knowing which plugins to use.  Why not make sniping a multiplayer option on game start?  If the game has it on, great.  If not, not bad.  @BreakfastBurrito_007 @real_tabasco_sauce @roscany @alre

 

This game has already things that can't be automated.  For example, you can't automate the way you build out your "village" based on natural barriers.  Placement of buildings is extremely important in this game, especially if you can waste the time and resources of non-ranged siege civs.

To me, sniping is the same as using a hero to lure all the damage of ranged units and get hit for de minimis sums.  Except in the opposite direction.  Hero strafing, sniping, carthage merc cav, etc., are all in the same boat from my point of view.

Edited August 18, 2023 by Dizaka

[real_tabasco_sauce]

26 minutes ago, Dizaka said:

People aren't going to be interested in this game if the curve is too high

30 minutes ago, Dizaka said:

The playing field should be evened out.

Right, but the 'curve' or the 'playing field' for most players shouldn't be all about micro, sniping, hero baiting, quick walling, and other techniques. This should only be how the top 10% can get to the top 1%. For the majority of players, especially new players, the learning curve should be all about economy, technologies, and army composition.

Once sniping becomes a more nuanced approach, like how I expect things will turn out after my melee rebalance patch, it will seem silly to implement an auto-sniping feature with so little interest in sniping.

[0 calories]

Guys, where i can download that auto-snipping mod?

[Dizaka]

10 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

Right, but the 'curve' or the 'playing field' for most players shouldn't be all about micro, sniping, hero baiting, quick walling, and other techniques. This should only be how the top 10% can get to the top 1%. For the majority of players, especially new players, the learning curve should be all about economy, technologies, and army composition.

Once sniping becomes a more nuanced approach, like how I expect things will turn out after my melee rebalance patch, it will seem silly to implement an auto-sniping feature with so little interest in sniping.

Honestly, I think "damage balancing" / autosniping should be a game feature.  Overkill creates problems in the big balance scheme of things.

Currently, in RL you have small groups of soldiers with their own leadership who coordinate so that same targets on the same battlefield aren't chosen.  It wasn't and isn't the responsibility of the supreme commander to choose your targets.   Even in early Rome armies were split into smaller more manageable groups.  Look at modern battlefield stuff you see coming out of Ukraine.  Russia does extreme overkill - not really a good strategy.  

Why can't there be a formation or a hotkey to manage attacked targets?  Why can't 5 units only attack 1 target from each side? (e.g., make it similar to the "production" setting?)  Why do we have the unrealistic expectation that the "supreme commander" (player) somehow has some kind of magical micro that makes one better than the other on the battlefield.  The current "micro" is a poor emulation of IRL and turns new players away.  Also, it's a big enough issue that impacts balance.  As long as units don't target others as efficiently as possible then the learning curve for this game will be extreme and result in turning new players away.  @BreakfastBurrito_007 @real_tabasco_sauce @Atrik @roscany  @alre

 

 

Edited August 18, 2023 by Dizaka

[alre]

4 hours ago, 0 calories said:

Guys, where i can download that auto-snipping mod?

no one ever made it, that I know of. I'm not modding anymore.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

29 minutes ago, Dizaka said:

Why can't there be a formation or a hotkey to manage attacked targets?  Why can't 5 units only attack 1 target from each side? (

Throwing aside the effort to develop this, the potential performance costs, the UI clutter, and the difficulty for new players to learn something like this, I think this would be actually harder than using the mouse and hot keys to select and attack. (Aka micro).

32 minutes ago, Dizaka said:

players away

There is simply no way it turns new players away. New players don’t experience micro unless they go against a player far better than themselves.

new players get turned away by difficulties in finding matches, performance issues, and boredom.

the learning curve for micro is actually part of a “skill gap” and it is essential for games to be fun and learnable.

people who have played for years should be able to beat new players because they are better. There is nothing wrong with this.

now overkill can be addressed partially by modifying unitAI. I think there was a motion for ranged units to target the next closest unit of the closest is already being attacked by x units. Personally I am 50/50 on this idea, but in the grand scheme of things, it should be the player’s responsibility to manage overkill.

[Atrik]

9 minutes ago, Dizaka said:

Honestly, I think "damage balancing" / autosniping should be a game feature.  Overkill creates problems.

Yes it definitively does. Currently players are nearly forced to use box formation as only viable formation in big part because sending melee units 1by1 (like it happens when you use box) is the best at exploiting default units focus and overkills. 

8 minutes ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

There is simply no way it turns new players away. New players don’t experience micro unless they go against a player far better than themselves.

Since this topic was open, I asked a few 1300-1500 players that don't snip what they think about sniping, and it's seemed to me, most of them view sniping as exploiting a bug, or had a very negative view of this meta. Heck I even saw Vali call sniping "dµmb@ss mechanic". It's clear to me that the majority of players (even yourself @real_tabasco_sauce) want this meta to evolve.

On the other hand, some are so frightened by the idea of some features like new stances or hotkey, that would change default unit focus. (literally saw 50times + : "this would kill 0ad"). If it came with some unit re-balance (since now ranged units will lose a considerable debuff), it will feel totaly natural. For example, I'm not sure anyone ever wanted to make 'sniping' even less auto, where your archers would still attack rams if it's closer compared to the organic unit just behind it.

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

Many modern games in a variety of forms like fps rts and whatever have attempted to dumb down, simplify, and remove skills when compared to older games. In RTS games you have strategies and then strategy execution, a higher skill player will beat a lower skill player when using the same strategy and that is expected and good. There are examples of fps and rts games that attempt to "level the playing field" by limiting the advantages that skilled players can develop over unskilled players. The expectation in fps games is that "everyone will have fun", and in rts games the expectation is that "the game will be purely strategic", but in reality it makes the game very shallow and gives no reward for someone who is trying to learn to play better.

In fps games an example is removing and simplifying player movement mechanics and learnable gun recoil control. These are things players can learn and master to beat other players, and if they are removed or randomized or automated it makes the game both "noob friendly" and boring to play because once you max out the basic mechanics there is nothing else to learn.

In Rts games such as Aoe4 you can see that strategies for different civs are decided entirely by which "landmark" you choose when you age up. The landmarks usually have some automatic, non-executable bonus that has no actionable effect on the game, the game-winning actions of the player are focused on to one simple A or B decision of what landmark to build. Another example from aoe4 is the removal of opportunities for battle micro, where battles become entirely decided by previous eco and landmark choices.

RTS games should absolutely have skills involved, strategy execution should take skill. It gives games depth, makes them more fun, and improves player retention. Removing opportunities for learning skills and strategy execution will have a negative effect on 0ad. I'm not saying that sniping is a good thing, its just that when aspects of the game are optimally automated, we effectively lose those features of the game.