Since I dislike gunships orbiting, and someone asked in a game, I made this widget. v0.1 http://www.mediafire.com/?hr24al3jmkgj1caPrevents gunships from orbiting targets when shooting at them. Can screw up targeting, gunships fail to jink against slow attacks, use with caution.
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Units affected: 31:armkam : banshee 120:corape : rapier 11:armbrawl : brawler 58:blackdawn : blackdawn 125:corbtrans : vindicator (heavy transport)
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Link has been updated. v0.2 is up. Now affects fight command as well. Increased the wobble by 30% to help dodge slow shots.
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Also fixed a bug where units would drift towards the target.
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Seems cool and useful. But yet a typical question arises: If orbiting is part of gameplay mechanics and balancing of the game is designed according it, isn't this more like a cheat than useful widget?
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Gunships are actually more vulnerable with the widget. They don't dodge cannons as well as they would if they orbited. Heck, in one of my tests, a banshee got shot down by a rocko. This makes gunships behave more like land units than gunships with regards to movement and attack. v0.2 manages to retain some of the advantages to gunship jinking though.
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If anyone uses it in a battle, could I ask for replays to review? As well as feedback on how well it worked and any issues you encountered.
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So in that sense, this shouldn't actually be external widget but rather unit movement option in unit order category?
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I'll try it and post a replay for you 'asap'.
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Last I heard, the ZK developers had a gadget that did something similar. But at least with a widget, you can turn it off if you don't like it. Not too sure about the balance arguments. I got the distinct impression that widgets that did not cheat and merely "microed stuff" were perfectly all right. Currently, I'm just shooting at low hanging fruit to practice coding in Lua. If I have time, I might make a cooperative air defence network widget (eg. hacksaws/screamers don't shoot low hp targets if other AA are targeting them. No more baiting hacksaws and screamers with gnats/blastwings) I'll need to learn UI elements first though.
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Well it's a pretty good rule that which you can micro you can also automize (so in that sense this is not a cheat) However, because the orbiting is actually 'automized' and part of game mechanics I was just asking if this is breaking the rule. But as you said, the advantage of using this isn't huge and straightforward, It's not a problem I think. If this were a gadget, which could be turned off/on in unit order category, it could be part of game mechanic and done by choice. The reason I think this, is that oribiting has its advantages and disadvantages (sometimes gunships orbit to the range of aa) and widget is pretty clumsy to use because the need is dependendent of situation.
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There is actually a param that turns this off in the unitdefs. When we first got this added to the engine, we turned it off on EVERYTHING. However, we found it really made a difference- not only could inaccurate shots hit gunships, but they were much easier to chase and pin down with raiders etc. So we turned it back on for everything but the krow. We did, however, turret almost all weapons so that most units can be controlled via move orders, to avoid any jinking (in BA, gunships -must- face -directly- at their targets to hit them- this can only be done with an attack order)- especially the rapier and blackdawn. If we can get it so that gunships move back and forward (and up and down) over a small fixed area (or rotates over a small arc) that would be PERFECT. Zero-K is all about open development. If you can make a widget that plays the game better than a player, go ahead. If it breaks the game, its the game that needs fixing.
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How would removing automation be cheating? I use hold position on prettymuch everything, that removes automation. I'd rather stuff like this was done in a gadget, there is already a gadget for forcing hold positioned gunships to not strafe when their last command was a move command. It uses Spring.SetUnitMoveGoal which is at a lower level than command queues. Widgets suffer from latency issues with this kind of thing. Get 400ms ping and see how well it works.
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How would I write gadgets? If gadgets are allowed in the same way as widgets, then I don't mind writing lua gadgets. Still, that means I can't test it in an actual game like in PW.
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v0.21 is up. Link updated. Behaviour can be turned off by setting the gunships to Roam. I'll see about adding a button to the UI. Need to check how other widgets do it.
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You write gadgets practically the same way as widgets except you are allowed to use LuaSyncedCtrl (there are some other differences, look at Spring wiki). Gadgets will run in synced context which means they will run on every player comp. Since they can modify game mechanic they must be included in mod.
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Two request enable = false by default and unload if spectator
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v0.22 http://www.mediafire.com/?25w9axjpwh96orwenable = false unloads if spec will work on gunships built before widget starts Hold Position has v0.1's behaviour. (almost no orbiting) Maneuver has orbiting behaviour increased significantly. (some orbiting) Ignored roaming gunships.
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known bug Will report this: Anti-gnat Micro Spectator mode. Widget removed. when unloading due to spec. This is just a reporting error and it is unloading correctly. Fixed in next.
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