Can we agree on this?

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

Units shouldn't auto-attack nearby lions, tigers, and bears unless those animals attack first. Can we agree on this?

[elexis]

Spoiler

First post the observations, the anti-use-case rather than starting at the conclusion (and a possibly false dichotomy). The problem is when the starting units get killed by dangerous animals without the user wanting them to do that? Or is it always wrong for them to auto-attack units that they can't kill themselves?

As far as I'm aware it should be the unit stance that determines how units behave, whether they go out and 'suicide' against enemy targets regardless, whether they only do so if the enemy unit is really close, whether they only attack if they don't have to move or whether they never attack targets at all.

What if there is a map where a bunch of dangerous animals reside and you want to take them out with an army. If there is no way to have them auto-focus the animals, people can report this as a bug too, for instance #5101.

Another funny problem with tigers is that they can sometimes wipeout an entire woodcutter line with 20-30 women without the player noticing quickly enough.

So if it's only the startng units, perhaps we can set those to defensive, or perhaps the player could set the default stance.

(Sorry that I'm not giving the simple answer you were hoping for)

 

[Hannibal_Barca]

Poll choices are very biased and clearly want you to choose the view supported by the poster or be ridiculed as ignorant and stupid.

And elexis has a point. As far as colonists are concerned, dangerous animals are enemies.

So if you don't want units to go out of formation to kill them, the obvious solution is not to put units in formation 

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

Then vote the opposite? lol The poll was mostly facetious anyway.

Point is, other games handle this muuuuuch better than 0 A.D. from a gameplay standpoint. It's annoying for units to go berserking after lions and tigers unless those entities have shown to be a threat first by attacking a nearby unit. It's just annoying to me to see my guys run off to go kill a bear when I've placed them in an ambush or scouting position.

See the unit behavior in AOM for example in regards to this. What happens in AOM is that crocodiles and lions, et al., are ignored by military units within range until those animals attack a soldier or villager, then nearby soldiers are triggered to go attack and kill it.

Partially it's the core game's massive vision ranges, and partially it's unitAI behavior. Yes yes,  stances stances stances, I don't think you should have to mess with stances to prevent something so mundane. Stances should regulate your units reacting to enemy units, not a wolf that wanders into view. Just my respectful opinion. 

Edited July 8, 2018 by wowgetoffyourcellphone

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

20 minutes ago, Hannibal_Barca said:

ridiculed as ignorant and stupid

yikes

[Hannibal_Barca]

1 minute ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

yikes

Yeah I had to make you sound like an evil monstrosity to suit my purposes

But I'm not going to vote opposite, not the best solution either.

I know I'm not helpful, this place is one of the rare 0ad places where I can be a pest.

Both of you got a point but middle ground is needed IMO

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

1 minute ago, Hannibal_Barca said:

Yeah I had to make you sound like an evil monstrosity to suit my purposes

[Lion.Kanzen]

1 hour ago, Hannibal_Barca said:

Poll choices are very biased and clearly want you to choose the view supported by the poster or be ridiculed as ignorant and stupid.

And elexis has a point. As far as colonists are concerned, dangerous animals are enemies.

So if you don't want units to go out of formation to kill them, the obvious solution is not to put units in formation 

Really ? 100%?

[Sundiata]

29 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

It's just annoying to me to see my guys run off to go kill a bear when I've placed them in an ambush or scouting position.

Exactly

 

28 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

See the unit behavior in AOM for example in regards to this. What happens in AOM is that crocodiles and lions, et al., are ignored by military units within range until those animals attack a soldier or villager, then nearby soldiers are triggered to go attack and kill it.

That feels much more intuitive

 

30 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Partially it's the core game's massive vision ranges, and partially it's unitAI behavior.

Isn't there a difference between vision range and the range at which a unit decides to attack? Wouldn't reducing attack range in general be a good idea to stop random berserking behavior. I'm personally not in favor of reducing vision ranges as you sometimes don't even see what you're being attacked by as it stands, which is a little bit ridiculous.

Units just flying off individually to attack anything that comes within vision range is horrible. Stances are nice to have, but is a bit tedious to keep an eye on. It's a good way of loosing an entire army if not paying close attention (which is often the case when fighting on multiple fronts). 

 

I think that everybody that voted in the poll had the faculties to understand it was "mostly facetious anyway", and they still voted (nobody was coerced, to my knowledge), which shows that it's something that's relatable for most, and they'd like to see it changed. At least that's my interpretation.  

[Lion.Kanzen]

The game have rare sense with wildlife-Human interaction. nor realistic nor game wise.

Why AoE1  or 2 have more sense, because this is a planned feature. 

There are exceptions.

[sphyrth]

Disagreeing just for the kicks. Because I want to put Women in formation, then send them to packs of lions. After that, watch them scatter for their lives.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

On 7/8/2018 at 7:45 PM, Sundiata said:

Isn't there a difference between vision range and the range at which a unit decides to attack? Wouldn't reducing attack range in general be a good idea to stop random berserking behavior.

The current game does not have separate action range and vision range; they are the same ranges. So, yeah, if an elephant has 100 meter vision range, then that is also his action range, so will walk over 100 meters to go attack something, including crocodiles and wolves. 100 meters is often over an entire screen width of distance. This is why I reduced all vision ranges in DE, for unit control. And, sure, units can be attacked by something outside their vision ranges and this is annoying, but that happens regardless if the average vision range is 50 meters or 100 meters. Decoupling "action range" from "vision range" is a must, IMHO, if you guys want such humongous vision ranges. Perhaps then you could have a separate action range when it comes to attacking dangerous animals? Just spitballing here. I understand that if you were to decouple these things then you'd have more range queries and potentially cause more lag*.

 

*

Spoiler

If we had battalions, we could reduce range queries to 1 per battalion, right? The battalion as a whole could have an action range. Could even have an action range for enemy units, and an even smaller action range vs. dangerous animals. Overall, the number of range queries could still be far less than we have even now.

 

Edited July 15, 2018 by wowgetoffyourcellphone

[Lion.Kanzen]

Quote

:..But while tigers kill humans, we would not normally say they prey on us. In the Sundarbans of Bangladesh, 100 to 150 people are killed every year by tigers; in the rest of the world humans are not really part of their diet and tigers avoid us..

Real  life vs AoK feature.

Spoiler

 

In this case I'm not see that "choices are very biased and clearly want you to choose the view supported by the poster or be ridiculed as ignorant and stupid. "

 

[Hannibal_Barca]

Would be nice if units in formation don't go after animals

Units outside of it do

[Lion.Kanzen]

Can be nice using random behavior (aggressive, avoid to sight and defensive) specially predators.

Other like Rhinoceros y Hippopotamus  must be aggressive.

Social wild animals like wolf attack in herd.(if is possibly) same elephants protecting their babies.

[aeonios]

This sounds like a stance issue rather than an issue with unit ai. Also, not having units attack aggressive animals automatically would mean they'd always be stuck fighting lions and things 1v1 even if they have a bunch of friends nearby that should be helping them. That wouldn't be very smart.

Probably stances should be split into range and behavior so that both can be controlled better. Also allowing users to set default stance settings for each unit would be good too.

[Sundiata]

9 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

The current game does not have separate action range and vision range; they are the same ranges.

Hmmm, that's a design flaw in the game that should be addressed in my opinion. 

 

9 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Perhaps then you could have a separate action range when it comes to attacking dangerous animals?

Uhu...

 

8 hours ago, Lion.Kanzen said:

humans are not really part of their diet and tigers avoid us..

This is very true... People often forget that we, humans, are the apex predator. Every other animal fears us, including big predators. Man-eaters are exceedingly rare. Those tigers in the Sunderbans drink brackish water which might cause them to be a little insane... 

"Humans will always choose what they understand over what they do not. [...] The only animals left in this world are the ones who they subjugated, who curl at their feet, or those who learn to flee at the very sound of their approach. There’s nothing in between." - Ford, from Westworld

 

But wild animals attacking is a fun gameplay feature, and isn't totally unrealistic (tigers of the Sunderbans, the Lions of Tsavo, rampaging elephants, A moose in heat, a macaque throwing feces...) 

 

9 hours ago, sphyrth said:

Because I want to put Women in formation,

I don't think it should be possible to put women in formation, because, you know, they're women... Only female military units should have formation options imo. 

 

47 minutes ago, aeonios said:

Also, not having units attack aggressive animals automatically would mean they'd always be stuck fighting lions and things 1v1 even if they have a bunch of friends nearby that should be helping them. That wouldn't be very smart.

?

11 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

What happens in AOM is that crocodiles and lions, et al., are ignored by military units within range until those animals attack a soldier or villager, then nearby soldiers are triggered to go attack and kill it.

!

Edited July 9, 2018 by Sundiata

[Nescio]

Although tigers, lions, bears etc. do not actively hunt humans, occassionally they do kill and eat them: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-44728507

Nonetheless, usually it are the humans who try to kill predators whenever they encounter them, therefore this gameplay feature isn't totally unrealistic.

[Sundiata]

32 minutes ago, Nescio said:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-44728507

Karma is a female dog.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

11 hours ago, Nescio said:

Although tigers, lions, bears etc. do not actively hunt humans, occassionally they do kill and eat them: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-44728507

Nonetheless, usually it are the humans who try to kill predators whenever they encounter them, therefore this gameplay feature isn't totally unrealistic.

The great Macedonian-Crocodile War of 328 BC where Alexander and his men hunted and killed every crocodile in Egypt. 

 

[Sundiata]

So... Can we agree on this? 

I believe, if not, the ones that don't agree should try to formulate one or two new options for a more "objective" poll, and urge everyone to vote on it. I think the results of the original poll were quite telling though...

 

On 7/9/2018 at 11:53 PM, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

The great Macedonian-Crocodile War of 328 BC where Alexander and his men hunted and killed every crocodile in Egypt. 

 I actually tried googling that... 

Edited July 13, 2018 by Sundiata

[elexis]

There are two use cases, in one situation one thing is good, in the other situation another thing is good (berserk vs ambush). It's not mutually exclusive, it's not an either-or. Settling on one of the two given choices means replacing a situational disadvantage with a differently situational disadvantage. Supporting both would remove any restriction.

There could be multiple implementations serving both use cases. But the most nearby implementation that satisfies the definition of unit stances seems like:  Use aggressive stance if you want to attack any visible foe (berserk) and click on passive if you plan an ambush and don't want your units to follow visible targets (such as bears, scouts, traders, females)

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

There are already games that handle this waaaaaay better than 0 A.D. Why try to reinvent the wheel with this particular thing?  In Age of Mythology (a very inexpensive game, you should acquire it), soldiers ignore animals until one attacks a nearby unit and then they are triggered to respond. It's simple, effective, and doesn't require extra input (click a stance button to prevent animal holocaust).

[Thorfinn the Shallow Minded]

I would agree with wow.  The objective rarely has to do with actively killing wildlife in 0 A.D, and making soldiers pursue this automatically seems peculiar.  The wildlife wound them, potentially weakening the troops for the next engagement.  The issue is that there is no actual purpose to killing them other than the point that they might need to be killed later.  What reward does the player get?  A good analogy is from mangonel behaviour in Age of Kings.  Prior to the conquerors expansion, they would actively target enemies regardless of the presence of friendly units.  This could prove disastrous.  For reference, here is a highly informative video depicting the destructive power of mangonels.  

 

[elexis]

Adding more letters to words or refering to other games doesn't make the proposition true. That onagers are dangerous isn't relevant here because none of our units deal friendly damage currently. I could not find the information online: how did they change onagers exactly? Did they change the default stance to passive or did they change the behavior of the stance for onagers? I read that in HD that onagers only attack enemies if they would not deal friendly fire. Sounds unrelated.

It seems the discussion is which view to force upon the player, not enabling the player to chose for himself whether he wants to ambush or clean an area of violent animals to establish a safe area for economic units that can't defend themselves. (If we are to throw in exotic examples, consider maps where dangerous animals are reoccuring.)

If the only actual argument is that a single click is too much effort in case you want to do ambush and if aggressive stance is a default that is a must have that the user may not change in the options and if a stance hotkey is considered equally complicated to a single click, at least keep the animal cleaning behavior for the violent stance (although I still don't see the issue and that wow still has to click the defensive, standground or passive button when he actually does want to do an ambush without his units walking away or revealing themselves, because the units still walk away when they see anything other than a dangerous animal that is a target).