Attack-ground: include in A26 or not?

[Grapjas]

2 hours ago, LetswaveaBook said:

Pyrogenesis doesn't actually simulate the physical trajectories of projectiles, so it has trouble detecting if a projectile hits a unit if the unit wasn't specifically targeted. That would make most of the arrows miss harmlessly, even if they landed in the middle of a group.

If i'm not mistaken, a projectile that lands within any footprint (the circle/square below the unit/building) counts as a hit. So a projectile missing the main target can easily hit his neighbour.

I'm gonna have to say that i think "target units within area" sounds a little to strong and a little cheesy tbh. Whereas "attack area" can have it's niche and strategic moments where it can be usefull like firing at chokepoint or a clustered group while involving some risk to it. Which would infinitely be more effective (gaining efficiency the larger the army) than if your units would target 1 unit at a time and overkill them, when properly used. Which happens all the time with for example 20 Javelins attacking 1 unit while with attack area you could potentially hit alot more different units at the same time depending on when and how it's used. 

 

It also can be backed up a little by history when archers as a group didn't really precisely target individuals in decently sized battles but mainly focused on volley arrows into a group of enemies.

Edited January 2, 2022 by Grapjas

[real_tabasco_sauce]

First of all thanks a lot @LetswaveaBook i'll give this a try. I like the concept and maybe it could be called "fire at will" or something in game. 

8 hours ago, LetswaveaBook said:

13 archers survived, but there appears significant randomness and sometimes the side with the javelins wins

Maybe this is because of the archer distance away from the skirms. If the archers are not hitting a certain number of the skirms, they lose?

Edited January 2, 2022 by real_tabasco_sauce

[real_tabasco_sauce]

6 hours ago, Grapjas said:

Whereas "attack area" can have it's niche and strategic moments where it can be usefull like firing at chokepoint

yes, and if people don't like the repetition as seen in the video, Im sure it could be made a one time attack that the player would order each time they would like to send a volley. This would also avoid the need to stop archers from attacking empty ground should a battle stop. Im curious to see if people would rather the attack be repeating or 1 per attack?

[chrstgtr]

30 minutes ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

Maybe this is because of the archer distance away from the skirms. If the archers are not hitting a certain number of the skirms, they lose?

I think it's because misses become very important. All units are low health, but slight variations (i.e. a little more luck on accuracy in equal fights or just more units) can lead to totally different outcomes. This is another form of what i was talking about

[real_tabasco_sauce]

This is me and @BreakfastBurrito_007

 

 

 

It seems we have unlocked the damage potential of archers. They are now able to range skirms over melee to a degree and because of this, the seem to be very powerful, easily beating 30 pike+ 30 skirm and 30 spear vs 30 skirm. Horse archers would be very powerful because they could kill the ranged units and run before the melee even arrives. This makes sense, because in the past archers have only been allowed attack melee first.

If this were implemented, archers would need nerfs.

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

9 minutes ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

This is me and @BreakfastBurrito_007

 

 

ArchersTowerAI.mov 26 MB · 1 download  

 

It seems we have unlocked the damage potential of archers. They are now able to range skirms over melee to a degree and because of this, the seem to be very powerful, easily beating 30 pike+ 30 skirm and 30 spear vs 30 skirm. Horse archers would be very powerful because they could kill the ranged units and run before the melee even arrives. This makes sense, because in the past archers have only been allowed attack melee first.

If this were implemented, archers would need nerfs.

I wonder if there is a way to make the archers get a greater accuracy penalty when shooting over other units? Maybe we could just give them an accuracy penalty when using these features.

Also, what are peoples thoughts on giving other ranged units these features? Do you think slingers or skirms would be able to see as much benefit from them?

[real_tabasco_sauce]

2 minutes ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

Do you think slingers or skirms would be able to see as much benefit from them?

yes, but this makes range more powerful. Skirms will benefit much less from this behavior, and slingers a little less.

5 minutes ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

I wonder if there is a way to make the archers get a greater accuracy penalty when shooting over other units? Maybe we could just give them an accuracy penalty when using these features.

I don't think its worth it to over-complicate something like this. Honestly a damage nerf for archers or armor buff for shorter ranged units sounds better.

[chrstgtr]

17 minutes ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

This is me and @BreakfastBurrito_007

 

 

 

It seems we have unlocked the damage potential of archers. They are now able to range skirms over melee to a degree and because of this, the seem to be very powerful, easily beating 30 pike+ 30 skirm and 30 spear vs 30 skirm. Horse archers would be very powerful because they could kill the ranged units and run before the melee even arrives. This makes sense, because in the past archers have only been allowed attack melee first.

If this were implemented, archers would need nerfs.

Javs only fought melee, though. It was basically archers using the new feature vs javs using the old (many units with overlapping targets) feature. Would need to see more

 

Also, what targeting feature is this? Random ground targets? Or group targeting?

 

 

[real_tabasco_sauce]

19 minutes ago, chrstgtr said:

Also, what targeting feature is this? Random ground targets? Or group targeting?

random, with no area selection. basically each archer is a tower.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

100 archers vs 100 skirmishers. can you guys now see how strong they are with almost no overkill?

this is amazing: no damage buff at all but now way stronger. To be honest i think this is OP (without considering archer nerfs that would be required), and that attack-ground would require more skill.

100 archers vs 100 skirms would normally be catastrophic for the archers but look at this video.

 

 

this one has better quality, sorry about how bad the last one was.

Edited January 3, 2022 by real_tabasco_sauce

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

@real_tabasco_sauce That really is a concerning amount of damage.

Perhaps attack-ground (from video) would be worth it even with many archers missing and hitting the ground, because there would still be the trade-off of doing less hits but on preferred targets (like skirms).

@LetswaveaBook had some concerns about making pikes useless. I am not sure, but it seemed that you could still use pikes as meat shields with @LetswaveaBook mod, but it is less effective and less easy as in a25. Pikes as a meatshield would be more effective if the pikes were a larger percentage of the army.

Perhaps also allowing skirms and slingers to use this would allow them to spread their dmg more efficiently.

Edited January 2, 2022 by BreakfastBurrito_007

[LetswaveaBook]

1 hour ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

100 archers vs 100 skirmishers. can you guys now see how strong they are with almost no overkill?

 

To be honest, if you use 100 skirmishers against a group of archers, then you are asking for a lot of overkill. A more practical situation would be 50 against 50. Secondly, from what I saw the skirmishers had path finding problems. I guess if the skirmishers used a wide formation, they would perform better.

1 hour ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

Perhaps also allowing skirms and slingers to use this would allow them to spread their dmg more efficiently.

My idea was to give players control over the type of targeting they like to use for every situation. For the mod, I only gave it to archers (because it is easy and) since they often have the other ranged units in range. If you give it to a skirmisher, the archers would be out of range and won't be hit. Being able to hit opponents in the back is mainly useful if you have long range.

 

3 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

Maybe this is because of the archer distance away from the skirms. If the archers are not hitting a certain number of the skirms, they lose?

I think the randomness was indeed the missing aspect. This is caused by their 2.5 spread stat. This stat can in game be improved if you research the archer training technology or if you have higher rank ranged units (promotion multiplies spread by 0.8).

Champion archers have with 1.0 spread near perfect aim, so that might also be fun testing. A special case is the Maurya poison archer, which will distribute its poison. For the current mod, champion archers do have unchanged targetting. So you will need to edit the mod for testing champion archers with tower targeting.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

10 minutes ago, LetswaveaBook said:

For the mod, I only gave it to archers (because it is easy and) since they often have the other ranged units in range. If you give it to a skirmisher, the archers would be out of range and won't be hit. Being able to hit opponents in the back is mainly useful if you have long range.

yes, this makes sense. What we basically found is that archers with this change are very strong. I can't think of a scenario where the archers are stronger only attacking the closest unit. Even for hero sniping, you can still do this by telling all archers to attack the hero, then they go back to random targeting.

I would say it is very OP, so for balance, other ranged units would need this even though the benefit would not be as significant as it is for archers. (then even more balance may be needed)

To be honest, the following units would become game breakingly strong: mauryan champ archers and their poison, probably crossbows, champ archer chariots, camels, and horse archers.

This is certainly an eye opener as it shows how much damage they can do without overkill. I think it is too powerful and would also reduce micro.

Edited January 2, 2022 by real_tabasco_sauce

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

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[LetswaveaBook]

3 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

It seems we have unlocked the damage potential of archers. They are now able to range skirms over melee to a degree and because of this, the seem to be very powerful, easily beating 30 pike+ 30 skirm and 30 spear vs 30 skirm.

In this situation, archers are able to exploit the weakness of these units: namely their low durability. So in those tests your army consisted for 50% out of units with an exploitable vulnerability. I tested 20 archers+20spears vs. 28 spears and 6 skirms and the side with the few skirms won (which again gets beaten by 15 spears+15 skirms). 

So they are not all powerful. If both sides use swordsmen, then the side with the 6 javs gets a bigger advantage. Finally, damage is distributed over units, so that means that if the archers deplete the HP of the opposing army by 95%, there is a good chance that over 50% of the units survive (with low HP). Also if you run away mid fight, then you will not lose many troops and the damage that is dealt is distributed nicely and can be healed.

 

In the end, it would make 0ad a more complex game than just fight and run away once your melee is dead.

By the way, chrstgtr wanted to discuss 4 options and we currently are discussing only one. Maybe ask stan to split the topic if it gets out of hand.

Edited January 2, 2022 by LetswaveaBook

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

@LetswaveaBook do you think it makes sense to have the other ranged units have this behavior? Also, do you like it the way it is, or do you think the area where units look for targets should be controlled by the player?

Ideally we would play some multiplayer games to see whether this is OP in some situations, rather than reaching the fast and maybe not accurate conclusions that we got from simulated battle tests. Also, I am interested in healers becoming useful again.

[ChronA]

50 minutes ago, LetswaveaBook said:

By the way, chrstgtr wanted to discuss 4 options and we currently are discussing only one.

chrstgtr's analysis is based on a faulty understanding of the engine, as explained by Grapjas above. To my mind that answers all of their objections in one stroke. If they want to reformulate their argument based on the actual behavior, I think the ball is in their court. Give them a chance to make a new case before continuing to litigate the old one.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

Ok guys I added all other ranged units to the mod, now calling it the "sauce_update."

I figured if we add it to archers, other units should benefit from this change and we can now test it for all the ranged units in the game, does anyone want to setup a TG using the mod?

 

Edited January 4, 2022 by real_tabasco_sauce
delete old mod version.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

from brief testing of my mod update:

Pros:

• battles are more balanced with both melee units and ranged units taking damage from ranged units, no more meatshield meta.
• battles look cool.
• Encourages healing: the victor has a higher number of higher ranked, but also very damaged soldiers, healing these units will be valuable. Healing during fighting is stronger now.
• intricate army composition is key to victory.
• better performance because of less overkill.

Cons:

• less micro: players odds of winning an engagement are less dependent on their micro and more dependent on upgrades and army composition. (this is a big issue for me, but maybe new more subtle micro techniques will arise)

Let me know what u all think.

I think we should get a TG testing scheduled.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

23 minutes ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

but maybe new more subtle micro techniques will arise

This is a distinct possibility, and what I say when people argue against Hard Battalions™.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

2 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

Ok guys I added all other ranged units to the mod, now calling it the "sauce_update."

I figured if we add it to archers, other units should benefit from this change and we can now test it for all the ranged units in the game, does anyone want to setup a TG using the mod?

TemplateMod_sauce_update.zip 38 kB · 2 downloads

Looking at the templates, I'm wondering if these lines are necessary:

    <GarrisonArrowMultiplier>1</GarrisonArrowMultiplier>
    <MaxArrowCount>10</MaxArrowCount>
    <GarrisonArrowClasses>Infantry</GarrisonArrowClasses>
 

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

31 minutes ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

but maybe new more subtle micro techniques will arise

Yeah, like archer placement, distance, etc. to get a more efficient spread of arrow fire. 

[real_tabasco_sauce]

24 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

    <GarrisonArrowMultiplier>1</GarrisonArrowMultiplier>
    <MaxArrowCount>10</MaxArrowCount>
    <GarrisonArrowClasses>Infantry</GarrisonArrowClasses>

I don't think its necessary either, but since that is what @LetswaveaBook included for the first mod which only changed archers, I thought it best to continue with the same exact change for the other ranged units.

I don't think it makes a difference tho, but for simplicity's sake I could change it.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

5 minutes ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

I don't think its necessary either, but since that is what @LetswaveaBook included for the first mod which only changed archers, I thought it best to continue with the same exact change for the other ranged units.

I don't think it makes a difference tho, but for simplicity's sake I could change it.

Nah, that's fine for the mod. It would probably just get streamlined if folded into public.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

Hi everyone, I forgot to give building AI to the elephant archers, so here is the updated sauce/book mod.

(see next page)

While testing has seemed quite positive so far (see my comments above), we need to get more feedback, and I think the best way to do this is setup a large team game. 

like this if you want to try a TG with the mod, and maybe we should schedule it?

Edited January 5, 2022 by real_tabasco_sauce