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What should happen when a unit loses track of an enemy?

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4 hours ago
There is a bug where attack commands on enemy buildings disappear and are completely invisible to the player if you lose radar and Line of Sight to the target.
I described this issue here:
https://github.com/ZeroK-RTS/Zero-K/issues/5783

Mobile units with a weapon will still go towards the enemy units position until they can spot it, but the attack command will be completely hidden from the player.
Ironically, if you have AI enabled and "Hold position" on a unit like Lance, it will go towards the position until it can spot the enemy, while if you have AI enabled and have it Maneuver(not Hold Position) it will try to skirmish the building around max range.
So Hold Position clearly does not work as intended here.

I also think this is kind of inconsistent behaviour in regards to targeting enemy mobile units. If you target mobile units, the attack command will quickly disappear as soon as the enemy is not a radar dot or in Line of Sight anymore. A Lance will still nudge a tiny bit forward as the unit disappears.

Losing track of mobile units can be particularly annoying when you are trying to chase enemy raiders in bumpy terrain and order your units to attack them.
Even tiny bumps can break Line of Sight and radar so that your mobile units lose track of them easily.
Personally I would prefer if your units at least try to go to the last known position of the mobile enemy unit, if they lose the target.
Reacquiring the target, could still be a bit weird as you as a player can't see the difference between the identical glaives that disappears behind the mound blocking Line of Sight, while the targeting can still persist as the game can still keep track of the unit IDs of the enemy, but maybe that is a desired behaviour.

On the other hand, I don't want my Lance to go towards the enemy position if it is on "Hold Position" and the enemy building gets radar jammed.
But if I have raiders, I do want Raiders to go forward even if it is on Hold Position and I lose track of the enemy building because raiders have short range and will reveal the enemy with their long Line of Sight anyway.

You can still see enemy buildings explode even if they are outside radar and Line of Sight, so even if you force fire the ground with artillery when you have no radar or Line of Sight on the enemy building, you can see if the enemy building explodes or not.

Maybe it would be too strong if artillery units could persistently attack buildings, and know when they are destroyed even if you lack any radar or Line of Sight on that position.
Some games do work like that, like the original Total Annihilation or Supreme Commander. Although, it Total Annihilation your units could even track mobile units which I don't think is desired in a modern RTS.

If I remember correctly, losing track of mobile units in Zero-K is a custom gadget written for Zero-K.
How does it work in BAR?
I think BAR has the default Recoil engine behaviour.
How should it work in your opinion?
+2 / -0


4 hours ago
Maybe the desired behaviour for a mobile unit depends on if it has longer range than Line of Sight.
If the unit has longer range than Line of Sight, it is probably an artillery unit.
So if you order an artillery unit to attack a specific enemy, and it then loses track of that unit, it will just remain or move in range of the target location or drop the attack command entirely.
On the other hand, most non-artillery units have shorter range than Line of Sight so they should move towards the location where they last saw the enemy and look for it there.
+0 / -0

3 hours ago
I think there's 2 main issues at play here, but I'll first touch on the things I didn't know.

I didn't know that unit move state affects the attack order. This post makes me want to test that.

Until recently I didn't know that the attack command behaves differently on a unit or a building. When a unit is the target it drops the command quickly on losing los, when it's a building it tries to gain los of the building footprint almost indefinately.

Now for the issues at play:

Invisible Attack command in unit's queue
  • When a unit has a queue of orders, if the first order is a forcefire command on a specific target (has a unitID?) and the target exits line of sight, that attack command is invisible in the drawn order queue. If the 2nd order is a move command, the game displays that as the first order, and it's confusing watching the unit not pathfind at the move command.

Artillery behavior with forcefire command against building that exit line of sight (but aren't dead)
  • In conjunction with the previous issue, artillery units will encroach on enemy position, and enter enemy range, and probably die when they shouldn't.

As for the first issue, invisible forcefire command, I'd like something to be visible, like a drawn command line to the last known position with a purple/red (---?) or something of that nature.
+1 / -0


2 hours ago
quote:
I didn't know that unit move state affects the attack order. This post makes me want to test that.
This is because of Zero-K unit AI.
When the unit is on "Maneuver", the AI will still try to keep lances at max range even with an attack command.
If you turn off the AI, the unit will approach the building with both maneuver and hold position.
+0 / -0
2 hours ago
i made a mod to help to fix this issue:

https://zero-k.info/Mods/Detail/206
+2 / -0