on "push" mechanic

[wraitii]

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Well I can't hold habituation against you. But ultra dense unit packing does cause problems for gameplay and balance:

1. Choke points have less gameplay impact. This limits the ability of map designers to finesse away certain balance issues, and reduces gameplay diversity. (See this situation for an example of choke points not working: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPuNEQEomGQ&t=2229s).

Less but not none, because moving units can't cross through non-moving units, so chokepoint can remain relatively crowded and ultimately impassable. And their ability to be turtled and ranged by more units remain

Also, conversely, artificial choke points because of bad pathfinding feel terrible.

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1. It also reduces combat readability and control, which makes it harder to used mixed unit compositions effectively and reduces opportunities for players to distinguish themselves with individual unit micro.

That is a good point, but the mosh pit design that we had already made this somewhat difficult.

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Overall, I agree that the pushing feature can and should ideally be tweaked and improved, but I believe the good offsets the bad. We'll see how people feel in testing.

[maroder]

9 hours ago, ChronA said:

Choke points have less gameplay impact. This limits the ability of map designers to finesse away certain balance issues, and reduces gameplay diversity. (See this situation for an example of choke points not working: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPuNEQEomGQ&t=2229s).

True, but choke points only working because of bad unit movement and pathfinding seems also bad to me From my point of view, choke point are restrictive, not because only few units can pass is, but because you can realistically block it with wall and palisades.

9 hours ago, ChronA said:

Same story with attack surface-area and concavity.

Well but for which attacks do you need surface-area? Not sure if I understand your point. Do you think catapults will be too strong because they can theoretically affect more units with their splash damage?

9 hours ago, ChronA said:

It also reduces combat readability and control, which makes it harder to used mixed unit compositions effectively and reduces opportunities for players to distinguish themselves with individual unit micro.

True, but that depends if people use formations or not. Also I'm not a fan of individual micro, so my opinion is very biased here.

[wraitii]

Good news still on this front: I've increased the flexibility of the system so you can play with 3 more settings, and fixed an issue so it's possible to have units push each other more, so things should death ball _less_. See https://code.wildfiregames.com/D4098 which I've merged.

I'll still take player input during Feature Freeze, but I expect these new settings will be overall more satisfactory.

[ChronA]

@wraithii

 I appreciate your dedication, and based on their description the new parameters seem like great additions to the tool kit. I must tell you though that, in my testing, the new dials aren't producing much of a noticeable effect for me. I've even tired turning everything up to double digits, and while a few units on the edge of my groups have begun wandering around where otherwise they would remain stationary, as a group they are pretty much behaving just as before. The only parameter with a clear effect is Clearance.

Forgive me for asking, but in your own testing are you sure the pushing feature is working as you intended? I think by far the most likely explanation for these discrepancies is that I managed to corrupt my test installation somehow; but there's an the off chance I might be helping you find a bug... So I thought I'd better speak up 

Edit: Actually looking at your screen shots on the diff, there is very clearly something not working right with my installation. I'm having teething problems with using SVN it seems. Pay me no mind. 

Edited June 7, 2021 by ChronA

[alre]

13 hours ago, maroder said:

True, but that depends if people use formations or not. Also I'm not a fan of individual micro, so my opinion is very biased here.

noone is going to use formations in a25. this feature makes them totally useless.

[Stan`]

35 minutes ago, alre said:

noone is going to use formations in a25. this feature makes them totally useless.

Can you elaborate on this?

[alre]

With this feature soldiers move much more smootly, meaning that in those situations where you would use formations in a24 to smooth out your men, you don't need anymore. On the other hand, formations still move in a clumsy and rigid way that loses a lot of time, and brings no advantage anymore.

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

Formations were exclusively used to position units and dance. Since formations do not change unit stats, like the effect of "phalanx", it is not a loss to the game.

It is still possible to use that one formation that puts healers in the middle which is obviously still useful. Also, players can still use a more manual approach to get effects in their fights. One time @Dizaka's ele spam was overcome by my border ally, and I think he ran out of metal ---> archie spam. I (with many metal mines) simply take 2 halves of my cav army and split early and converge on his archer ball and he is trapped.

I think smooth movement in general will be much more welcome as a replacement for the formations which were necessitated by the bad pathing of units in a24.

[wraitii]

10 hours ago, ChronA said:

I appreciate your dedication, and based on their description the new parameters seem like great additions to the tool kit. I must tell you though that, in my testing, the new dials aren't producing much of a noticeable effect for me. I've even tired turning everything up to double digits, and while a few units on the edge of my groups have begun wandering around where otherwise they would remain stationary, as a group they are pretty much behaving just as before. The only parameter with a clear effect is Clearance.

I think it's likely you didn't recompile? I should have specified this was necessary. Now there has been an auto build, so you should be able to tweak things.

It is definitely working for me, see the following comparison screenshots.

This is 2 groups of 100 units crossing each other's path at 0 extension, 2.5 extension,  5 extension, and then at 2.5 with lower MinPushing factors.

This is ordering these 200 units to go somewhere at 0/2.5/5

 

Edit -> BTW, you can 'hotload' your changes by quick saving and quick loading.

[Dizaka]

13 hours ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

Formations were exclusively used to position units and dance. Since formations do not change unit stats, like the effect of "phalanx", it is not a loss to the game.

It is still possible to use that one formation that puts healers in the middle which is obviously still useful. Also, players can still use a more manual approach to get effects in their fights. One time @Dizaka's ele spam was overcome by my border ally, and I think he ran out of metal ---> archie spam. I (with many metal mines) simply take 2 halves of my cav army and split early and converge on his archer ball and he is trapped.

I think smooth movement in general will be much more welcome as a replacement for the formations which were necessitated by the bad pathing of units in a24.

There's the formation that puts healers in the middle.

There's also the formation that puts elephants in the front (they 'god-walk' through your own units).  Use this one when eles get stuck in the middle of units.

 

The formation that puts elephants in the front, coincidentally, also puts rams up front.  Rams, unlike eles, cannot attack units and/or farms.  Makes it frustrating with rams.