Watching units respond to the
[Spoiler]Op terrapluk troll AI strategy that tournament circuit used
got me to thinking a lot about unit AI. While the
[Spoiler]terraform breaks unit AI in horrible ways the worst part was that any attempt at arty would fail because the arty (in that case would have been hammers) would have ended up exclusively targetting darts instead of things they could do damage by shooting at.
I've browsed through unitdefs quite a bit and even tinkered with some of them, and from what I've seen ZK does not make very good use of targetting categories. While spring doesn't allow you to specify what a unit should prefer to target (and it should!) it at least allows you to specify what a unit should not target, which could definitely be used to improve how arty behaves on fight move.
My proposed changes:
-This will only affect Hammers,
Sharpshooters, Aspis, Spectre, Penetrators, Impalers, Racketeers, Crusaders and Tremors. Other arty (firewalker, pillagers, wolvs) have enough generalist capabilities that they don't need to be too picky about their targets, although they could be included if a strong case is made.
-I intend to add two target categories, "SMALLFAST" and "MEDFAST" to describe raiders/fleas and the quicker assaults, respectively. Slow moving/large assaults like grizzly and striders are easy for even hammers to hit, so I intend to allow them to continue targetting them, and hopefully with more specificity than currently.
-Hammers, Crusaders, Impalers and Tremors will not shoot at MEDFAST. None will shoot at SMALLFAST.
A possible addition is a CHEAP category for porc for the high-burst-damage arties, depending on what testing reveals.