Auto Un-Garrison

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

Can we talk about garrisoned units be "ejected" from a destroyed building too? Shouldn't units simply die if the building they're in is destroyed?

[fatherbushido]

5 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Can we talk about garrisoned units be "ejected" from a destroyed building too? Shouldn't units simply die if the building they're in is destroyed?

That can be done with removing them from the EjectOnDestroy list, isn't it?

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

4 hours ago, fatherbushido said:

That can be done with removing them from the EjectOnDestroy list, isn't it?

Well, yes, from a modding standpoint. 

[causative]

You can ungarrison the *moment* before the building is destroyed, though.  So it would just mean the units live if you ungarrison a split second earlier, and die if you ungarrison a split second too late.  It would have almost no effect as long as the player is alert to ungarrison beforehand.  So, I think the building should just ungarrison all of them when it's destroyed, as it does now.

IMO ships should also ungarrison everything when destroyed, instead of only certain undocumented unit types.  It's counterintuitive that only some of the units will automatically ungarrison, when you could ungarrison all of them if you clicked to do it one turn earlier.

Edited July 2, 2017 by causative

[Stan`]

Quote

IMO ships should also ungarrison everything when destroyed, instead of only certain undocumented unit types.  It's counterintuitive that only some of the units will automatically ungarrison, when you could ungarrison all of them if you clicked to do it one turn earlier.

I'd say siege units should sink with the ship though.

[causative]

The siege weapons make it to shore if you get them out half a second before the ship sinks.  It seems just arbitrary.

Edited July 2, 2017 by causative

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

10 hours ago, causative said:

The siege weapons make it to shore if you get them out half a second before the ship sinks.  It seems just arbitrary.

Yes, because of player input. I don't think the game should do everything for you.

[causative]

• Hardly anybody even knows that not all units will automatically ungarrison from a sinking ship, or which types of units will do so.  It's not something that's easily discoverable from playing the game.  A strategy game ought to be discoverable through playing it, without hidden gameplay secrets only devs know about.  If your ship full of horses or priests fails to ungarrison when it sinks, the average player is more likely to figure it's because the ship wasn't close enough to shore, or there was only enough space on the shore to unload the infantry but not the priests.
  Spoiler

  Female, Infantry, Dog will eject on destroy.  non-Female support, Cavalry, Siege, and Elephant will not.

   

• It's not realistic that units will make it to shore if their king tells them to do it an instant before the ship sinks, but aren't able to do that on their own.  People on a sinking ship would take their own initiative to save their lives.
• It's irritating when your units act excessively dumb.  It's like bad pathfinding.
• It's a similar kind of user interface problem as deleting buildings just before the capture bar reaches 50%.
• If you want siege engines to go down with the ship, there are better ways.  For example, there could be a "swim to shore unload range" that is greater than the ordinary unload range and only activates when the ship sinks, but does not apply to siege engines.

Edited July 3, 2017 by causative

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

I still think that its ridiculous that if a ship is destroyed that the units inside "ungarrison" to the nearest shore. They should just die, except maybe if the ship is destroyed in shallows. I'd apply the same behavior to all types of units.

Edited July 4, 2017 by wowgetoffyourcellphone

[Lion.Kanzen]

Just now, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

I still think that its ridiculous that if a ship is destroyed that the units inside "ungarrison" to the nearest shore. They should just die.

Can be nice heavy units die and little percentage of light units survives.

[causative]

57 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

I still think that its ridiculous that if a ship is destroyed that the units inside "ungarrison" to the nearest shore. They should just die, except maybe if the ship is destroyed in shallows. I'd apply the same behavior to all types of units.

If you think it's ridiculous that the units unload to the nearest shore when the ship is destroyed - don't you think it's equally ridiculous that the units can unload to the nearest shore an instant before the ship is destroyed?  If you are in an ancient sea battle and your ship has been 99% destroyed by enemy fire, it's a floating wreck unable to maneuver.  You couldn't get it onto shore or really do anything with it before it takes that final 1% damage.  If the sailors are able to make it to shore from a disabled hulk at 1% hp (bringing all their siege equipment and horses etc with them), they would also be able to make it to shore as that hulk starts to sink.

In real ancient sea battles, there weren't any lifeboats and not much chance of evacuating the crew and cargo from a damaged ship during the battle.  I might like a solution that made ship unloading take some time, say ten units per second.  That way you couldn't just unload the entire ship the turn before it is destroyed.

[Stan`]

Would it seem realistic though to have like 10% of infantry units managing to survive ? Assuming 30 units in a boat that would make three survivor if near the shore.

[Sundiata]

IMO, Siege equipement should always go down with the ship, but infantry and cavalry units should un-garrison, only if they're very close to the shore (un-deep water). Otherwise they should all just perish the same.

[Stan`]

To me cavalry should not. Horses get crazy with water especially if ship is sinking. And since we don't have a dismount feature and generating infantry from cavalry doesn't make much sense...

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

12 hours ago, causative said:

If you think it's ridiculous that the units unload to the nearest shore when the ship is destroyed - don't you think it's equally ridiculous that the units can unload to the nearest shore an instant before the ship is destroyed?  If you are in an ancient sea battle and your ship has been 99% destroyed by enemy fire, it's a floating wreck unable to maneuver.  You couldn't get it onto shore or really do anything with it before it takes that final 1% damage.  If the sailors are able to make it to shore from a disabled hulk at 1% hp (bringing all their siege equipment and horses etc with them), they would also be able to make it to shore as that hulk starts to sink.

In real ancient sea battles, there weren't any lifeboats and not much chance of evacuating the crew and cargo from a damaged ship during the battle.  I might like a solution that made ship unloading take some time, say ten units per second.  That way you couldn't just unload the entire ship the turn before it is destroyed.

My point is less about realism and more about gameplay. If you load up your ships with units, you gain a great advantage in firepower, but you should also be taking a great risk, that of losing your units in combat. That risk is mitigated greatly if all of your units just pop up on shore when the boat sinks. Same sentiment for me when talking about garrisoning arrow-shooting buildings.

 

And if we want to talk about a realism thing: if a ship sinks, shouldn't some of the people on board die? The waters in the game usually represent the ocean, not some little pond. I'd imagine that most would drown, be killed by enemy ships when they tried to swim ashore, or be killed in the battle.

 

Maybe @feneur could split this topic. My fault for derailing it.

[feneur]

5 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Maybe @feneur could split this topic. My fault for derailing it.

Probably a good idea yeah Done

[causative]

5 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

My point is less about realism and more about gameplay. If you load up your ships with units, you gain a great advantage in firepower, but you should also be taking a great risk, that of losing your units in combat. That risk is mitigated greatly if all of your units just pop up on shore when the boat sinks. Same sentiment for me when talking about garrisoning arrow-shooting buildings.

Just to be clear - ships only unload onto shore if they are destroyed while at the shore.  If the ship is well away from shore, all the units will die, and you can't manually ungarrison them before it sinks either, and both of those things are good.  You do take a risk when loading your ship with units.

Also, making the player click to unload instead of unloading automatically on destruction doesn't affect the theoretical risk of filling the ship with units.  A good player would always be able to unload just before the ship sinks, assuming the ship is at the shore.  So your proposed change would not really affect balance among skilled players.

For buildings - I don't think there should be any damage to units when the building is destroyed.  In ancient combat the enemy was never able to actually collapse a stone fortification like a demolition.  They would at most punch a hole in the wall or collapse part of it.  That's not going to kill many if any defenders by itself.

It might be different for wooden buildings, that could be burned, but the most common case where you'd be worried about defenders dying is when the fortress or CC is destroyed, and both would presumably be stone fortifications.  Ancient sieges were characterized by huge stone city walls.

5 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

And if we want to talk about a realism thing: if a ship sinks, shouldn't some of the people on board die? The waters in the game usually represent the ocean, not some little pond. I'd imagine that most would drown, be killed by enemy ships when they tried to swim ashore, or be killed in the battle.

The core realism issue is that a ship that is fighting "near the shore" is also considered to be docked at the shore.  A ship that's docked can certainly load and unload units, and if someone destroys a ship in dock it's reasonable that most of the people onboard could get to shore.  But a ship that's docked should not be able to fight or move.  In 0ad docked ships can move and fight - not realistic, but it explains why units can survive a sinking ship or why they can unload from the ship at the last moment.

Edited July 5, 2017 by causative

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

Here's what I would like to see when buildings get destroyed:

I think the units should emerge from the rubble rather than "ungarrison" once health reaches 10%.

[sphyrth]

The survivor mechanic is a tricky one:
I don't expect any when a whole tower/fortress caves in on you. But I would expect that some will survive the crumbling walls of, say, the Military Colony since its current design has "less roof" to fall on soldiers.

And on sea battles. It messes my head for quite a lot:
Pulling down the drawbridge, I think, creates an imbalance on ships... even on shallow waters. So I'm not sure ungarrisoning is quite viable. And there is also a risk for soldiers who abandon ship. Which reminds me shouldn't units move slower even on shallow waters?

Creating delay time for garrisoning, and ungarrisoning is interesting to me. I can say that it would create some slight gameplay adjustments, but it can be done. It's not Total War after all. You don't wait until the 1,001th soldier gets into the walls so you can ungarrison them again.