Introducing the Official community mod for Alpha 26

[real_tabasco_sauce]

23 minutes ago, Atrik said:

Pretty sure most people know this. But preventing this from happening will pretty much be worse.
In case that's not obvious, if a unit reset or re-target when foe gets out of range, chasing will become very buggy and depending on how often you check for range you also impact performance. Maybe some other games have this figured it out but from what I know it's often either chasing get too weird or overshooting is allowed.

I think the target reset thing could be limited to siege units maybe. Siege units don't chase anyway, and I doubt performance would be bad since siege units have slow repeat times and you rarely see more than 25 of them.

On the overshoot situation, I'd like to think its just about when the target is acquired, but I suppose we wouldn't want units to wait a whole repeat time before deciding to follow a unit that is out of range! There's surely a solution, and to be honest, I'd be ok with dipping a little into performance to find it, same with @wraitii pathing patch: https://code.wildfiregames.com/D5037

imo such significant improvements like these are worth a little decrease in performance.

Edited 9 hours ago by real_tabasco_sauce

[Gurken Khan]

1 hour ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

Have you ever been retreating from some group of units and thought "how could that hit me?"

Yeah, quite often. I find it aggravating when I'm pulling cav back and some pedestrian motherhugger hits me from ~halfway across the map. Maybe pikemen do it, but of course it's very noticeable with the punch crossbows have.

[chrstgtr]

8 hours ago, Effervescent said:

e can't compare previous alphas with community mod patches. Most players don't know all the changes that take place in community mod, myself included. I didn't even know bolts were nerfed for example. The ease with which a soldier unit can be spammed is different from the ease with which a siege unit can be spammed. Even the alpha where mercs were super op did not have widespread use of merc cavs for a similar reason.

All the example you mention for op units are soldier units and not siege units. I recall siege towers were pretty op in some alpha but still they were never in widespread use like the op soldier units.

This is all so specious and clearly only reflects how you don’t pay attention to balance changes, which really makes it odd that you even involve yourself in this discussion. In community mod (unlike alphas) you are told exactly what changes happen. In the community mod, bolts were rarely used, then used a lot, and now suddenly not that much. The change is usage reflects how good the unit was/wasn't. It isn’t OP. 

Also, in a22, common game rules literally banned bolts within about a week because they were so op. 

Players very quickly figure out what units are OP and then spam them. This has not occurred with bolts in their current form and we can therefore deduce that they are not OP like you say. 

8 hours ago, Effervescent said:

I avoided taking strategic measures taken by players into consideration

You have to consider all strategies. Not considering bolts lack of mobility is akin to not considering cav’s mobility. It clearly gives an incomplete picture. 

This is particularly important here because the main nerf to bolts was changing their movement speed. Again, you need to pay attention to community mod changes to have an informed discussion. 

8 hours ago, Effervescent said:

The second replay I cannot comment on as it doesn't show my replay list. sorry.

I’ll try to resend the replays when I am by my computer. In short, bolts stop working when some units get too close. It doesn’t matter that there are other units within range but out of min distance. The bolts just sit idle on stand ground or unpack to move away on aggressive. @real_tabasco_sauce describes this exact situation above. This isn’t desirable gameplay. 

 

Edited 6 hours ago by chrstgtr

[chrstgtr]

3 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

ttps://gitea.wildfiregames.com/0ad/0ad/issues/7074

https://gitea.wildfiregames.com/0ad/0ad/issues/6948

These are necessary too. But does it get at the issue that I am getting at and that you are getting at here: 

3 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

then it seems the bolt goes idle and keeps trying to shoot this unit

My understand is that 6948 was just meant to deal with the building vs. unit issue. A unit will still be high priority (despite not being hittable) if it is within min range. 

[real_tabasco_sauce]

1 hour ago, chrstgtr said:

4 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

then it seems the bolt goes idle and keeps trying to shoot this unit

My understand is that 6948 was just meant to deal with the building vs. unit issue. A unit will still be high priority (despite not being hittable) if it is within min range. 

In checking that a higher priority unit exists, this unit would also have to be in the allowed range, so I think a single solution could solve both these issues.

Edited 5 hours ago by real_tabasco_sauce

[chrstgtr]

56 minutes ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

In checking that a higher priority unit exists, this unit would also have to be in the allowed range, so I think a single solution could solve both these issues.

Perfect