Need for Station-Keeping in Unit Movement

Simply put, units need to make an effort to remain at the location that they have been placed at. This does not currently happen.

Example 1: Place a unit as a supplement to static defenses. Enemy enters range, unit moves to attack. Enemy is destroyed. Unit remains wherever it happened to be when enemy was destroyed, instead of returning to previous position (where it was when enemy was sighted).

Example 2: Unit is sent to a location and set to Hold Position. Large formation of friendly units pass through area with unit holding position. Stationary unit is pushed along by friendly unit formation, ends up out of position. Unit decides that its new location is just as good as where the player put it, and continues to Hold Position there.

Example 3: Unit set on patrol route. Enemy enters attack range. Unit moves to attack enemy. Enemy retreats at similar speed to patrol unit, remaining within visual range. Patrol unit follows enemy on a road trip across the continent, rather than turning back after moving sufficiently far away from the initial patrol route.


I can't speak for anyone else, but I find these scenarios to be a problem. When I put a mobile unit in a certain place, it's there for a reason, and I would like for it to remain where I put it until I want it to go somewhere else. As far as I can tell, the unit movement setting works as intended, with the exception of this oversight, where it does not make any attempt to remember the location of its last player-issued movement order. To my knowledge, other similar RTS games in the past did have this memory.

I'm pretty sure you either didn't read or didn't understand the post.

Here's the deal. I put a unit somewhere that I want it. Something happens that moves it, either bumping into friendlies or fighting something, or whatever. It then decides it should stand where it ended up after that happened, instead of going back to there I told the damn thing to stand.

Have you ever set a line of units up behind your turrets? Yeah, maybe some slings for indirect fire, or impalers? Then send a formation out from your base. That formation will go through the line of impalers like an avalance, carry some of them off as they go and leave others shoved far from where they will be useful or protected, and the impalers will ignore the fact that they were moved out of the place they were set to stay.

You mentioned the Move State. That's exactly what I was talking about. Unless set to Hold Position, a unit will follow an enemy based on the move state. The problem is that once that enemy is gone, the unit AI decides that it doesn't need to do anything else, and should stay at whatever random location is was at when the enemy died. Now, unlike older RTS games, the AI in ZK will actually try to stay at a safe distance when shooting at things, and maneuver during combat, which is very helpful under most scenarios. HOWEVER, once it's done killing things, I want the unit to go back to where I told the stupid thing to stand, not to stand in the middle of the map doing nothing until another enemy comes along to chase. I usually have something in a particular location for a reason. Maybe to intercept enemy units before they can get to my artillery, or to hold off the swarm until I'm done building my turrets, or whatever. If my units go off chasing enemies and never come back, that means THEY AREN'T DOING WHAT I NEED THEM TO DO ANYMORE. Having to watch the map and jump on every instance of combat to make sure my units haven't wandered off is a bit more micromanagement than I like to do.

Maybe this isn't a concern for people who just set up automated production queues and have all their units rush into combat in endless zerg waves so that the player doesn't have to do anything manually, but it's a problem me.

Or perhaps your assumption that I'm full of crap and clueless is based on your experience with multiplayer, where you're only against other human beings who do things vastly differently than any AI opponent? Is that where bothering to control individual units seems stupid to you? Try the campaign. Go ahead, it won't hurt. Try it. See how often your units don't stay doing what you want if they aren't actively executing a specific order. Then come and tell me that I'm talking about something that never happens. Go ahead, I'll wait.

I have not invested the time to think through the janky edge cases that could arise from various solutions. When does a unit decide to stop chasing and how does it do this? What if on its way back to its starting location it encounters more enemies?

I like the concept, especially near enemy defenses it is way too common for units to be lured in. How would it handle skirmishers though? If you set them to limited move and an enemy approaches, they will fall back to stay out of the enemy's range. With this change, would they stop falling back(kiting) at a point and die to the shorter range units that took their place?

For hold position you could probably try out your suggestion by setting the unit to repeat. Then it will keep repeating its move order, trying to go where it's supposed to be.

On the limited move setting, I wouldn't expect any change from the existing behavior while fighting an enemy unit. Just that it would return once there are no more enemies.

Perhaps the movement distance limitation would only apply when the unit is moving towards the enemy, but would be ignored while moving away? This would still potentially allow unlimited kiting if you get around behind the target and get it to back away in the desired direction, but that would be a lot more difficult and risky compared to the current system. Still, this should prevent units from being drawn forward towards enemy defenses like you mentioned.

I would suggest that the Home for any unit set to Hold Position is wherever the player (specifically the player, hopefully we can check for that) told them to move to, since the expectation for a Hold Position unit is it will try and hold whatever position it's put in.

A special case for the Crabe (and any other unit that loses armour on movement) should also prevent it from returning home unless it's a) already not receiving an armour bonus or optionally and more difficult b) hasn't received any incoming damage in, say, 10 seconds.



For units on Maneuver... A separate button for Set Home would be more distinct, but also a lot slower (and less intuitive?).

Let's consider what might break if units on Maneuver had a home auto-set to wherever the player last specifically told them to go. Does a Fight command also set a new home? A Move command probably should, but maybe a Fight command should not - in which case, it should probably un-set any existing home, or they will unintuitively leash back to it later.

After thinking about it for a few minutes, I can't think of any states where units on Maneuver shouldn't have a home set when receiving a direct Move command, and only occasionally would I complain if they got one from a Fight either.

I think if Roam behaviour specifically excludes units from this home-setting and returning behaviour, then I would be fine with all specific Move or Fight commands that weren't automatically added also set the units home to whatever position the command was ordered for. We can probably extend that to the Fight command for Hold Position without it undermining anything, because if you're telling Hold Position units to fight you expect them to get into trouble along the way.


Only drawback I can currently see is if you issue a very long range Fight command, you might mean "clear and chase everything along the way" so it's possible that the home should only be set for a Fight command after the unit reaches the target location and the Fight is cleared. If I understand the order system correctly, this would ensure it's fought everything it could, reached the place you wanted it at, and is now idle?

I have put all my units on hold position a long time ago because of this, and it sucks.

Fightmove is basically only useful for skirmishers and artillery anyway.

or you can just learn how to multitask.

well, you might think to yourself: "hm how are all other people managing this as they have the same problems."
So, since you downvoted me GoogleFrog: what do you do to prevent your units running into the enemy?

Multitasking is important, and attention is important, but one of the BIG things I like about Zero-K is that it tries to minimize unnecessary use of the attention resource wherever it can be minimized.

Maneuver returning to a set position seems like one of those things - the engine already supports better unit AI than most RTS games, and "You lot, guard this area, you can dodge but don't go too far, okay?" seems like a very reasonable command to be able to give to a group of units and then, ideally, forget about them when the battle is elsewhere, without having them run into some static defenses and die.

Having your units do something stupid and run off and die, OR stand still and be unable to dodge despite being quick, and choosing which of these bad things I prefer is not a fun problem for me.

I like this idea, I want this idea, I think it's the way stationkeeping and maneuver returning -should- work, and should HAVE worked, in all RTSes since the idea of maneuver stances were invented. That it doesn't already is sadness, and if it can be done, I would love it to be done.