I have noticed recently that planes very often just completely ignore what I tell them to do. e.g. have a couple of swifts and use shift to queue up a flight path for scouting. The swifts don't make any attempt to start the route and continue circling where they are. Holding shift shows the queue still there. Bombers sometimes ignore commands to turn around? Bombers instantly forget where things are when they cloak or disappear from radar / sonar. This is especially annoying when targeting say a cloaked lance, it will get to the point it's just about to drop a bomb, then the unit cloaks and it fly's over without dropping the bomb. This often results in the plane circling in AA and dying. For most bombers even if you are watching it and immediately use F to manually bomb it needs to turn around before that happens, which usually means it dies. Raptors have a tendency to ignore move orders when engaging a target. I also noticed that sometimes retreat doesn't work and my radar planes are sitting with low health and retreat turned on but not repairing. I think the weird move order behaviour is related to maneuverleashlength? Maybe bombers could target where the target last was when it disappears for a second or something?
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I've found something like this can happen if the planes are just about to turn one way but at the last second you command it to go another way. Instead of turning that direction it just keeps going straight while course correcting and inevitably dies from AA. Also happens if its "pathfinding" gets confused.
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I've noticed this with my likho spam when playing chickens solo as well. I don't have any replays on hand at the moment but I can make sure I get one when it happens again. It's been happening for months. For me, it happens when the likhos take enough damage to want to retreat to a repair spot. 95% of them (out of ~200) do the right thing and return for rearm and/or repair, but there's always 5-10 derps that just... fly in circles over chicken territory until they die or until I notice and give them a different command.
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Pls also check owls, they like to forget the "retreat at 95%" order/setting.
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This post has been downvoted below -5 and collapsed, click here to expand
quote:
Pls also check owls, they like to forget the "retreat at 95%" order/setting. |
This has been a problem for many months. Just face it the devs hate airplanes/gunships and instead of fixing problems they just nerf them. They want airplanes/gunships to only be niche side shows rather than an integral part of the game. They give every single factory an AA unit, but do not give every single factory an airplane or gunship - that tells you the devs priority. To be balanced all dedicated AA would be in a single factory.
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It often happens recently, me and    Sigero have been complaining about it for weeks (not online though, only in mumble). I did not establish steps to reproduce but it happens quite often, usually at least once per game when playing air.
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I feel pretty confident that it's a pathing issue, not commands getting lost. Think about it as if you're doing a bombing run -- when you drop the bomb, the bomber's going to tend to go in that direction and kind of make a circle around, with an acceleration force in the direction it's attempting to head to. If you click-move the plane to go back to your base right when it's at the elbow of that acceleration curve, depending on if you click before or after that elbow, then the pathing will either go left or it'll go right. So in the plane's attempt to "correct" itself by having an acceleration going the opposite way, it ends up going straight until the acceleration catches up, allowing it to finally turn around. It's kinda like slamming on the brakes, but with air's braking dynamics. A pathing lookahead could easily solve this specific problem.
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(Pardon the double post) At the very end (>8:00) of this replay I show how it can happen: https://zero-k.info/Battles/Detail/1277440If you watch carefully you can see that when the likho drops its bomb, I'm clicking behind the likho and instead of turning around it just keeps going straight. If the likho is about to turn right, clicking directly behind the likho and to the left will make it go straight for a second. Then once it starts going left, click directly behind and to the right and it'll start going straight again. So, probably not as easy as a pathing lookahead.
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Thanks    chaplol. You can enable cheats and nocost to make the demonstration smaller. For now, anyone else viewing the replay can do '/skip 510' to get to the action. I don't think the replay captures what    TechAUmNu is talking about. As far as I can tell, the Likho is always reacting to its current move order. If a command is slightly right of directly behind it then it will try to turn to the right. If it is already turning left then it will move straight for a moment as it banks around to the right (the bank is not animation, it controls how the plane turns). There have been bugs in the past where planes would fly dead straight for a noticeable period of time, and this does not seem like it. TechAUmNu the best thing you can do is make demonstration replays for: quote:
have a couple of swifts and use shift to queue up a flight path for scouting. The swifts don't make any attempt to start the route and continue circling where they are. Holding shift shows the queue still there. |
quote:
Bombers sometimes ignore commands to turn around? |
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Raptors have a tendency to ignore move orders when engaging a target. |
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sometimes retreat doesn't work and my radar planes are sitting with low health and retreat turned on but not repairing. |
Alternately, at least post replays with timestamps so others can try to isolate and reproduce the issue. There is some scope for lua hax to solve issues like these. I think the best approach would be to first get on the latest engine version, as air control is basically all in the engine. Bombers instantly forget where things are when they cloak or disappear has more nuance to it. This is just what every unit does when enemies disappear, they lose their target. I wouldn't want to override this on a level deeper than unit behaviour, and certainly not in the engine. This sounds like a good candidate for a gadget to assess the situation and force fire on the ground if there is a decent chance of hitting. I don't think any of this has to do with maneuverleashlength.
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Ah, my point there isn't that commands are lost, but it looks like commands are lost since it appears to keep going straight. That example was kind of a best care scenario, but in the heat of battle it manifests during AA/swifts avoidance. It also happens when making a very, very last-second targeting change. That's especially bad when the target cloaks. (I play air a lot these days and I haven't personally noticed commands getting fully dropped, but I usually babysit my likhos with micro. I wouldn't be surprised if my hyper clicking just resends dropped commands.. if there are dropped commands)
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No you're not alone. I experience the same thing - the Likhos often go straight (about lotus range circle far) after bombing even though they are ordered to turn back immediately. It's not only limited to Likhos - happened to me as well with Phoenix. As stated before, I haven't tried to reproduce the issue but may try soon and post feedback.
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Any text description could mean a lot of things, so a simple replay is best.
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Ok, so this thing is pretty elusive. I did some tests here without much conclusion - it's hard to reproduce. The closest to it happened at 3:38, 5:44 which was when bomber started turning back to launchpad after bombing one way and I ordered it to retreat the other way. You can't call that a bug though. The replay is in   B1277632 1 on AlienDesert. I remember experiences more exaggerated than this movement in team games when more latency is involved, so I'll keep a lookout for better replays to catch it.
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If that is all, then it just sounds like you want an engine change that takes roll into account when deciding which way to turn. If the plane is already rolled one way and it gets an order within a certain angle of behind it, don't roll the other way.
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Sounds like that'd work well!
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quote:
If the plane is already rolled one way and it gets an order within a certain angle of behind it, don't roll the other way. |
This would fix a lot of annoying behaviour on bombers. I think this behaviour is what causes my two points quote:
Bombers sometimes ignore commands to turn around?
Raptors have a tendency to ignore move orders when engaging a target.
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quote:
e.g. have a couple of swifts and use shift to queue up a flight path for scouting. The swifts don't make any attempt to start the route and continue circling where they are. Holding shift shows the queue still there. |
This is the game this happened in. At about 13:30 I queue up a scouting path for 2 swifts at north. They just keep circling and don't follow the orders. http://zero-k.info/Battles/Detail/1272712quote:
Raptors have a tendency to ignore move orders when engaging a target. |
http://zero-k.info/Battles/Detail/1274685At 8:00 look bottom mid left. There is some revenants I attack with raptors. Attack order is on revenant that dies. Then I give move order. Nothing appears to happen, but I think the raptors are at that moment pulling up from their dive and flying over the terrain. Which appears to delay the move order to turn, or at least make it look like it's delayed or not responding. This is probably accentuated by the slowdown from firing. It just feels really wrong when things don't happen immediately when microing things. quote:
sometimes retreat doesn't work and my radar planes are sitting with low health and retreat turned on but not repairing. |
not got a replay for this I can remember off my head. But it does happen quite a lot.
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A replay to add to the pile: https://zero-k.info/Battles/Detail/1278398 at 22:10 the southern Rapter is given an order to move away to the north (roughly a 90 degree angle from its current path) but instead continues on and dies.
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Looks like it was trying to turn, then the order spam reset its unit AI? Or perhaps it was navigating the bumpy terrain beneath it and prioritised gaining height over banking.
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