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IDProjectCategoryLast Update
0002925AI War 1 / ClassicSuggestion - Game MechanicsAug 26, 2014 6:53 pm
Reportercorfe83 Assigned ToChris_McElligottPark  
Status consideringResolutionopen 
Product Version5.002 
Summary0002925: Attacking targets with Military Command Center
DescriptionYesterday 0000032:0000020 bombers and a bunch of fighters were zeroing in on my military command station, and it was unfortuntely firing a lot of shots to the fighters - I wanted it to target the bombers to save my command station, but to my surprise, right-clicking on a bomber made it fire every single translocating shot it had to the same bomber. What I intended to happen, was that it would fire each shot to a different bomber, hopefully saving the command station from getting bombed to oblivion.

I think units with multi-fire translocating shots, when told to target specific units, shouldn't focus fire all their shots to exactly that one unit, they should spread each shot out to a separate unit, so it will translocate as many of the unit type as possible. Unless it's a unit that can't be translocated (like a starship), of course - then focus firing all shots to the same unit makes sense.
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corfe83

Feb 23, 2011 4:09 pm

reporter   ~0010694

After typing this up, I thought of something else. Maybe translocating shots should prefer the enemies that are closest, as well (and if one type, i.e. bombers is targeted, they fire all their shots at bombers, in order of closeness, and only fire at other ship types if at least one shot is already aimed at every bomber within range)?

Just trying to make my military command stations more useful by them intelligently keeping themselves alive :-)

KDR_11k

Feb 23, 2011 4:30 pm

reporter   ~0010695

Maybe give the military command a slight bonus against polycrystal, then it'll automatically prefer bombers.

Red Spot

Mar 12, 2011 6:28 am

reporter   ~0011050

Please dont as that would just shift the issue. When an other shiptype gets close and some group of bombers is nuking some harvesters (or exo-shield) your CC is toast because it will default targeting bombers and you cant manually make it target anything else (properly).
Basicly, imo, there are 2 ways this can be handled:
-fix it so you can use the CC to manually target ('full fix')
-fix it so you can no longer use the CC to manually target ('fix that takes away the ability to trigger the issue')

(Having it auto-target the nearest foes would be nice, but would not solve the issue at hand.)

HTL2001

Mar 12, 2011 7:27 am

reporter   ~0011051

I notice that units firing translocate shots (somewhat) focus fire even without specifying a target. While it usually goes for 2-3 unique targets, this leads to a lot of wasted shots (and mk II/III versions of military command stations don't really target more unique units while having more shots, making them almost useless to unlock)

bugsydorb

Mar 12, 2011 7:47 am

reporter   ~0011052

I support this. It is not fun watching your command station die because it fires all of its shots at one thing, completely ignoring the many other ships right next to it. This needs new targeting logic.

HTL2001

Mar 12, 2011 8:21 pm

reporter   ~0011067

An update to my last comment: fleet units that can fire translocation shots are WORSE than the command station.

Also, it would be nice if turrets also didn't fire on a unit that was about to be translocated. Perhaps marking it "dead" (however it is done to prevent massive overkill / ion cannon overkill) until it is actually translocated could be done?

motai

Mar 13, 2011 5:05 am

reporter   ~0011069

i fully support the idea that translocating shots should mark a target as overkilled and cause the logic to switch to next target. the purpose of translocating is area denial to protect (usually the command station) as a plus it would speed the system with less wasted shots bouncing back and forth tracking a target they will never reach.

KDR_11k

Mar 13, 2011 6:12 am

reporter   ~0011076

I think for the other shots issue a translocated unit should just be treated like a unit that's going through a wormhole, i.e. have all projectiles hit it instantly. Since it doesn't seem like projectiles are ever meant to miss that would just prevent the awkward re-aiming effect.

Sunshine

Mar 21, 2011 2:00 pm

reporter   ~0011185

"I think for the other shots issue a translocated unit should just be treated like a unit that's going through a wormhole, i.e. have all projectiles hit it instantly. Since it doesn't seem like projectiles are ever meant to miss that would just prevent the awkward re-aiming effect. "

This.

Also, maybe giving the Military Command Station a button to power down its weapon. When there are 30 enemy ships in-system, it's not really effective to have your fleet spend 10 minutes chasing the tiny number of enemy ships all over kingdom come as they get bounced around.

As a side note - if you want a military command station to focus fire on a specific type of ship (but not focus fire on a specific single ship), hold the V key down and right click. It works for turrets to stick them on FRD targeting a ship type, so it should work for military commands.

zoutzakje

Mar 22, 2011 4:57 pm

reporter   ~0011227

I fully support the idea of making military cc smarter like this. It's exactly because I can't order it around and because it is doing the awkard re-aiming thing that I switched to only using logistics command station (unless I got an AI type that uses a lot of cloacked ships and I need mk III military for planetary tachyon).
Can't believe I never though of making a mantis ticket for this lol :P

Sunshine

Mar 22, 2011 8:31 pm

reporter   ~0011264

I mean, I love the translocation effect. But sometimes, it's really, really awkward to have running.

Chris_McElligottPark

Mar 23, 2011 12:17 am

administrator   ~0011316

Coming in the next version:

* When a ship is translocated away from its current location, all incoming projectiles now are also immediately translocated to its new destination, and thus will hit it instead of fizzling. This makes the military command stations a lot less unwieldly.

HTL2001

Mar 23, 2011 4:42 am

reporter   ~0011317

This helps, but marking them as overkilled would be better overall since the translocated ships are no longer immediate threats, but the ones that are still close are immediate threats

Of course this will really shine on single starships, especially raid starships, attacking the command center alone.

TechSY730

Mar 23, 2011 7:11 am

reporter   ~0011325

@HTL2001
I'm not sure if this would have the effect you intended. "Overkill refunding" of reload times works strangely with units that have multiple shot per firing. Most turrets do have multiple shots, for some reason.

HTL2001

Mar 23, 2011 3:28 pm

reporter   ~0011344

Yea, I'm probably using the overkill word wrong in the context of this game. I mean whatever logic is used so ships don't waste too many shots on a target that SHOULD die with the shots that are in the air.

My point is that the units with a pending translocation shot going to them should be considered "pending death" since they are not strategically relevant targets until they approach the command center again.

TechSY730

Mar 23, 2011 4:30 pm

reporter   ~0011349

@HTL2001

Ah, that behavior would be overkill avoidance, the avoidance of firing on stuff that already has enough projectiles heading towards it to kill it. Overkill is all those shots that were still heading towards to hit a target and then that target dies before it gets there.

I'm not sure how computationally intense adding "soon to be translocated" ships to the "avoid firing upon per overkill avoidance rules" would be.
And there are those not all that likely but still very possible cases where the translocated ship would be teleported to a spot that is still within a ship's or turret's range.

corfe83

Aug 25, 2014 2:17 pm

reporter   ~0039092

I don't know when it was fixed, but I believe this works fine in AI War 8.000. I suggest the issue be closed.

motai

Aug 25, 2014 5:42 pm

reporter   ~0039114

Last edited: Aug 25, 2014 5:44 pm

main issue i see is they are almost always deposited just within the turret range so they abosorb the shots from damage output perspective that is fine. problem is even now they dont choose targets based on proximity to translocate the closest first(given annoying lvels of target analysis) but they also will shoot multiple shots at targets instead of poof 50 per cycle pushed so its hard to keep them healty when they should be able ideally to handle 200+ ships they really tend to die to anything between 75 and 100 because they wont target cycle.i am curious how more effective the station would be with a .02 reload time instead of 50 shots per cycle

corfe83

Aug 25, 2014 10:52 pm

reporter   ~0039118

Yeah, you're right. Apparently my earlier test there just weren't enough ships attacking me, so it looked like it was working great. When there are a ton of ships, you can see it does not prefer targeting the closest ones.

HTL2001

Aug 26, 2014 5:58 pm

reporter   ~0039120

@corfe83, I believe this issue was reported when military stations fired minor electric translocating shots, instead of the current railgun knockback shots. There have been improvements (to things that still use minor electric translocation shots, of which there seems to be very little) but there is still a bit of an issue, I think. One of the annoying things about it too was the shots would not be "cancelled" when the translocation happened but instead keep tracking it, so when there's 5 shots fired on it the target will eventually be translocated 5 times after the shots travel across the map 3 times.

corfe83

Aug 26, 2014 6:53 pm

reporter   ~0039122

@HTL2001, you're right, I do recall those shots took time to arrive at destination, and also translocated instead of just pushing back, and it was annoying having the same ship translocate randomly a few times for one volley of shots.

I do hope military command stations can be made more intelligent about their automatic targeting.

Issue History

Date Modified Username Field Change
Feb 23, 2011 3:22 pm corfe83 New Issue
Feb 23, 2011 3:25 pm Chris_McElligottPark Assigned To => Chris_McElligottPark
Feb 23, 2011 3:25 pm Chris_McElligottPark Status new => considering
Feb 23, 2011 4:09 pm corfe83 Note Added: 0010694
Feb 23, 2011 4:30 pm KDR_11k Note Added: 0010695
Mar 12, 2011 6:28 am Red Spot Note Added: 0011050
Mar 12, 2011 7:27 am HTL2001 Note Added: 0011051
Mar 12, 2011 7:47 am bugsydorb Note Added: 0011052
Mar 12, 2011 8:21 pm HTL2001 Note Added: 0011067
Mar 13, 2011 5:05 am motai Note Added: 0011069
Mar 13, 2011 6:12 am KDR_11k Note Added: 0011076
Mar 21, 2011 2:00 pm Sunshine Note Added: 0011185
Mar 22, 2011 4:57 pm zoutzakje Note Added: 0011227
Mar 22, 2011 8:31 pm Sunshine Note Added: 0011264
Mar 23, 2011 12:17 am Chris_McElligottPark Note Added: 0011316
Mar 23, 2011 4:42 am HTL2001 Note Added: 0011317
Mar 23, 2011 7:11 am TechSY730 Note Added: 0011325
Mar 23, 2011 3:28 pm HTL2001 Note Added: 0011344
Mar 23, 2011 4:30 pm TechSY730 Note Added: 0011349
Aug 25, 2014 2:17 pm corfe83 Note Added: 0039092
Aug 25, 2014 5:42 pm motai Note Added: 0039114
Aug 25, 2014 5:44 pm motai Note Edited: 0039114
Aug 25, 2014 10:52 pm corfe83 Note Added: 0039118
Aug 26, 2014 5:58 pm HTL2001 Note Added: 0039120
Aug 26, 2014 6:53 pm corfe83 Note Added: 0039122