Why should ranged units be forced to attack closest units?

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

@wowgetoffyourcellphone I think this would be fine, but not if you could select a particular kind of unit that you want to attack out of the bunch. 

The existing diff demonstration only shows it vs a single horse, I wonder how it might behave in a more realistic 0ad battle. I feel like a mod could be helpful to evaluate whether or not the feature would be a good addition to 0ad and we could also investigate whether it results in the unit balance improvements that are anticipated.

[alre]

I think literal attcak ground wpuld be always inferior to normal attack. Attack group instead is more interesting, but maybe a third option is even better: attack group on that ground. doesn't consider the targets that exit the initial area, doesn't include other units that later enter the area. Or maybe just drops the units that exit the line of sight of the shooters.

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

1 hour ago, alre said:

I think literal attcak ground wpuld be always inferior to normal attack

not when you now have the option to shoot enemy skirms instead of pikes, because they would be further back in the enemy group, and 1/4 damage output vs skirms will get you more value as 100% damage against pikes. I suppose there would be times where either mode of attack would be good. I do see what you mean about attack-ground doing less damage overall and I remain open minded to other options like the ones you mentioned, but I would still like to try out the feature that currently exists.

[alre]

9 minutes ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

1/4 damage output vs skirms will get you more value as 100% damage against pikes

Let's say 1/4 is a good estimate of how much damage is worth shoveling at skirms rather than at pikes. Attack ground would still be better than nothing only if the targets are very concentrated in the target location, which is very possible, but the requirement in term of micromanagament make it probably unworthy. You can already now target individual skirms that are in an area where overkill isn't problematic because of the concentration of enemy units: compare this to attack ground, with which you need to stop your archers when the target units are dead, with just as much need of micro.

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

17 minutes ago, alre said:

Attack ground would still be better than nothing only if the targets are very concentrated in the target location, which is very possible, but the requirement in term of micromanagament make it probably unworthy

Do you know this for sure or are you speculating? The only piece of content about it that I saw was a video where the demonstrator used 20 archers and a single horse (before turn rate increased), he danced the horse back and forth, but it does not give me any clues as to how it would perform in normal sized battles. 

My favorite idea for the concept was from @Jofursloft, he brought up the idea to have attack-ground just establish an area to attack, drawn by a corner-rectangle, and have the ranged units prioritize them. I am not sure how hard/laggy it would be to make each ranged unit target a random unit in the area, but I think using the current preference system (closest=best target) would be ok to prioritize the units inside the area. 

Edited October 21, 2021 by BreakfastBurrito_007

[alre]

you are describing a more advanced concept than "literal attack ground", which is what that "piece of content" shows well enough, I think. I also called for a more advanced implementation, sensible to the position of the enemy units.

[Stan`]

One could test https://code.wildfiregames.com/D1971 pretty easily by making a mod, no compilation needed.

[Freagarach]

Note that when attacking a formation, your units will attack the formations closest member. Example: Enemy has a line of archers, which form a formation, you click to attack one of them, they will all attack the closest member of that formation, not the specific unit you targetted. Which is kind of what you want, right?

So if you could force your enemy to use formations, your problem is solved?

[alre]

1 hour ago, Freagarach said:

Note that when attacking a formation, your units will attack the formations closest member.

already now? why is that?

[Freagarach]

7 minutes ago, alre said:

already now?

Since 2014 I guess: https://code.wildfiregames.com/rP14628.

[Micfild]

1 hour ago, Freagarach said:

So if you could force your enemy to use formations, your problem is solved

Not really, if they put pikemen and archers in the same formation, you'll end up attacking the pikemen anyway.

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

4 hours ago, Stan` said:

One could test https://code.wildfiregames.com/D1971 pretty easily by making a mod, no compilation needed.

I suppose I could try to figure it out sometime. How can I do that? (for dummies aka me). If it eventually works I could team up with @real_tabasco_sauce or someone to check out how well the feature plays in more realistic battles. I am particularly interested in how balance between pikes, skirms, and archers will be affected by the feature.