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 17 hours 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.

[Thalatta]

12 minutes ago, Atrik said:

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.

By "building footprints (their size) always be the territory of the building owner" you mean as long as that territory is connected with root territory? Otherwise decay would seem impossible in certain situations.

[Atrik]

39 minutes ago, Thalatta said:

you mean as long as that territory is connected with root territory? Otherwise decay would seem impossible in certain situations.

Meaning another building cannot extend the territory into another's player building. This should still allow decay if this piece of territory is not connected to a territory root. Your misconception here is to think the building needs to be outside his territory to decay but really it's about being connected to a territory root.
In the scenario with the barrack, the territory limit would happen exactly between the CC and the barrack => not into the CC

Edited 16 hours ago by Atrik

[Thalatta]

17 minutes ago, Atrik said:

Meaning another building cannot extend the territory into another's player building. This should still allow decay if this piece of territory is not connected to a territory root. Your misconception here is to think the building needs to be outside his territory to decay but really it's about being connected to a territory root.
In the scenario with the barrack, the territory limit would happen exactly between the CC and the barrack => not into the CC

That's not my misconception since I know that a bunch of territory starts decaying if it's detached from the territory root (it's a useful strategy when invading).

Saying "really it's about being connected to a territory root" is what I mean, that is, that's how it should be.

I was wondering if buildings not connected to territory root would still decay if their "footprints (their size) always be the territory of the building owner", because said like that sounds like they would be "self-sustaining" territories, but maybe the workings of the algorithm are not so straightforward (I'm just thinking of it as: you move the borders, and if a building falls into enemy territory, it decays, but with what you propose that would seem an impossibility).

[Atrik]

4 hours ago, Thalatta said:

I was wondering if buildings not connected to territory root would still decay if their "footprints (their size) always be the territory of the building owner", because said like that sounds like they would be "self-sustaining" territories [...]

There is no need for whatever complication you imagine. We just want buildings to always be in owner's territory. Which is how it should be, you cannot own a building but the land is to someone else (in this game at least). If this land is not connected to a root, then all buildings on it decays still, like what happens commonly in games when buildings are reasonably spaced.
Basically in the picture with the CC in the comment above, the territory line would be between the CC and the barrack. There will be no more territory lines crossing buildings, which makes sense. None of the decay conditions are changed, beside that now the CC center point will actually be in the owner's territory (as it makes intuitive sense) and therefore buildings in the territory won't decay unless the CC is totally enclaved.

[Thalatta]

52 minutes ago, Atrik said:

There is no need for whatever complication you imagine.

Your misconception here is to think I'm imagining something I'm not. I'm just trying to mentally emulate the consequences of the fix and point out anything unintended, given that you said "maybe I'm overlooking some potential drawbacks of doing so.. Anyone can think of one?". And I'm thinking of a couple of things, as I'll mention (I guess related to your "buildings are reasonably spaced" observation).

Indeed "you cannot own a building but the land is to someone else" (except if they are decaying because of that). "There will be no more territory lines crossing buildings" is indeed the direct consequence of the fix, as is "buildings in the territory won't decay unless the CC is totally enclaved", that was your point all along.

 

I see now why there won't actually be "self-sustaining" territories: their footprints are not root, so they should decay if detached from root territory. But I was also thinking about this situation: I've had the issue that part of my walls would decay if the enemy territory expands. If I'm not wrong, this won't be the case anymore, since the fix wouldn't allow anymore for only a part of a long wall to decay. I don't have a problem with this, in fact I think the present behaviour is a problem (because my towers get distracted shooting the converted walls I want to gain back!), and your fix might have solved this.

But considering all that, and, again, if I'm not wrong, it would seem that the fix would make buildings not "reasonably spaced" way harder to convert just by territory expansion since, given that "there will be no more territory lines crossing buildings", one would have to detach a whole not "reasonably spaced" group of buildings from the root territory. Maybe this is preferable for some, but seems a bit of a drawback for me.

[Atrik]

Buildings don't decay because they are outside your territory (in 95%+ of cases, they sit on their own territory influence), they decay if not connected to a root. This would be unchanged. Territory ownership and connection to territory root are two different things.

So nothing will change if you capture a CC and opponent have no other root attached to buildings => all buildings will decay.
Your opponent will still own the "blinking" territory until the buildings are decayed to a new owner (unchanged and unaffected by proposed modification).

[LeJardindEpicure]

"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."

 

@ffm2 I think its fixed now, when enemies start building your units automatically moves away

[Thalatta]

8 hours ago, Atrik said:

Buildings don't decay because they are outside your territory (in 95%+ of cases, they sit on their own territory influence), they decay if not connected to a root. This would be unchanged. Territory ownership and connection to territory root are two different things.

I've always agreed on this in practise, but I didn't word it correctly when I said:

8 hours ago, Thalatta said:

"you cannot own a building but the land is to someone else" (except if they are decaying because of that)

Indeed that territory is not yours (yet), just detached from root, so its buildings decay (the main rule). A small detail: there are some exceptions to that "they decay if not connected to a root" (garrisons) and even "cannot own a building but the land is to someone else" (docks).

 

8 hours ago, Atrik said:

So nothing will change if you capture a CC and opponent have no other root attached to buildings => all buildings will decay.
Your opponent will still own the "blinking" territory until the buildings are decayed to a new owner (unchanged and unaffected by proposed modification).

Yes, this has been clear all along. But none of the things you've said address the couple of things I've mentioned (that I marked in bold font), although maybe because you agree that both will indeed be the case after the fix.

Edited 32 minutes ago by Thalatta