Barrack Hack (Bug or Feature)

[manowar]

For a while myself and others when playing nomad have been referring to an issue as the 'barrack hack' but I am interested to know if it is a bug or intended. It occurs when two nomad players place CCs relatively close together. If player one then places a barrack building up against the opponents CC then the CC begins to lose health - presumably due to the territorial influence of the barracks. Personally I feel that the influence of the CC should win out in this case so I was looking for opinions from devs about what the intended behavior is. 
I have attached some screenshots to demonstrate this from a game yesterday. Further to the normal influence gain over the CC @gianlucalp  also had his storehouse decay to Gaia and to his opponent (uff). This understandably made several players think there was a cheat in action so I think this deserves attention. 

Attachments:

• 102: Notice uff's barracks against the opponent (gian) CC - we have been calling this the barrack hack. The CC is losing health because of the barracks.
• 104: gian built a storehouse which immediately loses health to Gaia ? and to the opponent
• 108: Notice the house also losing health to Gaia and opponent despite arguably being closer to gian's CC 

[manowar]

I have been toying around with potential fixes for this issue. I had tried to counter TerritoryDecay to trigger only when the relevant territory was owned by an actual enemy, preventing neutral or one-sided allied barrack influence from draining capture points during a ceasefire.

That had mixed success so I then attempted to block CC placement within 200 meters of another placed CC and I think I might prefer that method as it would also reduce arguments in-game when people place too closely together. 

I'd appreciate feedback / thoughts from players. 

[dinuruian]

I do encounter 4 5 times the situation, my believe is that what we call barrck exploit should not occur, simply cause the recipient is not the emitent of the inflicted concept [ ownership]. so, adressing it as exploit/bug/hack it fair act by me, on contrary, deployed values as equal oportunities became a nonfucntional fair game rule [ is non understable why CC does not recover ownership, or why then, in case of CC captured, the recipients -containers of ownership does not recover adiacents - its simply a garbage bug, a shiet exploit]

. 

good point adressing the issue, hope you will adress other garbage things too.

Edited Friday at 21:11 by dinuruian

[ffm2]

IMO nomad games are even earlier broken by too near set CCs. The barracks are just one hack.

Too often 2 ccs foundations are set too near without intention. The barrack hack is then often executed with the help of team mates that sponsor the early barrack.

A minimum radius between cc foundations would be a cleaner solution. Even without barrack hack too close CCs ruin games early on.

Another interesting thing is this capture doesn't respect the ceasefire but captures even during it.

Noteworthy other mention: CC denial through units on the foundation. If one is lucky, one can put their cavalry on the enemy foundation during ceasefire and the enemy can't start their foundation because the cavalry won't move.

Edited Friday at 22:53 by ffm2

[dinuruian]

if u sum it, get annoyed playing:

-- speed sieges is equal to infantry, denial of accuracy miss percentage [ultra inccreased for some] , snipping [ultra reduction of missing percentage ] pathfindg for some doesnt create inline movement but line block front movement on free arangement, different atack speed for units, etc, arbitrary or for certain users. timestamps arent a general condition - can be struck in the eye with.... a realy, realy annoying overall experience, and its no suprise that lobby is populated by a hand of players and perpetual newbies refreshing  to  come-n-go. may be cause the app isnt a protected - normated source? who knows, and who cares after the experience as such.

 

re-edited.

Edited Saturday at 08:50 by dinuruian

[manowar]

PR here to restrict placing a CC within 200 m of an already placed CC:

https://gitea.wildfiregames.com/0ad/0ad/pulls/9176

[ffm2]

Thanks, that is better. Although I like the a attack where one could capture a barrack and place a cc foundation in the decaying territory within a full developed city.

[giovanni]

Up! Lots of games has been broken because of barrack hack. Players resign at the start of game because they are losing cc.  Players are trying to prevent barrack hack by game rules but sometimes  somebody dont respect rules or forget to say rules. Fix of this issue with a bug fix update will be best solition.

[manowar]

@Atrik adding detail here about why your approach (and what I tried first myself) still has problems. (reference PR comment)

I added your code, built and ran the game twice as player1 (blue) and player2 (red). In the attached first screenshot player1 has built a barracks close to player2 CC. The new code stops the CC from decaying BUT notice that buildings created by player2 have auto reverted to being owned by player1  AND while they are in the process of decaying the territory line of player2 starts flashing and it is not possible for player2 to add any other building within his own territory (see building highlighted red). 

It is for this reason that I approached the problem from another angle i.e. allowing the host to impose a CC distance in the Game Setup. The alternative of messing with the weights of buildings, owning tiles, decay rates felt like a more dangerous change. 

[manowar]

Screenshot below shows another test but with the health bars so you can see the decay clearly 

[Thalatta]

Ah, I was confused. This has nothing to do with "losing health" or "health bars". You mean capture points.

Now that I think, maybe that should be called loyalty or allegiance, to pair it with "health", since saying "losing capture" wouldn't make much sense.

[Atrik]

@manowar, I see.. The issue seems that even if the territory area is influenced by the CC (the territory root), the CC is still considered outside of it, so "no root is attached to the territory".  Good catch. A enclaved CC is probably expected to have territory outside the enclave to decay. But here the enclave is just created by the barrack having bigger weight then the CC. So here I would say it's definitively a territory influence weight problem/bug.

[Atrik]

@manowar I still think we should try to fix the underlying issue. If I build a barrack next to my CC and it gets captured by an opponent then I will also have my entire territory decaying right (something that could happen in any game mode)?

I've just tested and it is indeed the case :

You can see here the house is decaying although there the CC looks very much not so much enclaved 

Edited 19 minutes ago by Atrik

[Atrik]

One fix idea, although haven't digged into what would take, could be to have building footprints (their size) always be the territory of the building owner.
This would kinda make sens too.
Maybe I'm overlooking some potential drawbacks of doing so.. Anyone can think of one? I think for non-root, this shouldn't prevent decay if not connected.

IIRC I noticed a bug where dropsites, owned player but "outside" your territory (example enclaved by an allied barrack) is not considered by your gatherer. So that would also fix this kind of bug.