Petition to reinstate Guard, Persue and Hold orders!

Discuss the future of Warzone 2100 with us.
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Should the Guard Position & Pursue Orders be brought back?

Yes
74
94%
No
5
6%
 
Total votes: 79

KlassKill
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Re: Petition to reinstate Guard, Persue and Hold orders!

Post by KlassKill »

Per wrote:
KlassKill wrote:pursue means it should go out and attack the first target it detects and pursue it until death or until the unit is too damaged and not set on do or die
that seems clear right?
Yes. It may make a return at some point, as part of larger overhaul of the unit order GUI, but this won't make it for 3.2.0.
that does not sound good :(
why not put back old instead of waiting for new to show up if ever show up?
Per
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Re: Petition to reinstate Guard, Persue and Hold orders!

Post by Per »

KlassKill wrote:why not put back old instead of waiting for new to show up if ever show up?
Just a quick control question: Does Pursue work in 3.1?
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Re: Petition to reinstate Guard, Persue and Hold orders!

Post by Terminator »

Per wrote:Just a quick control question: Does Pursue work in 3.1?
Nope. It might works in 2.1.3, I remember testing it in 2.3.9 it doesn't work. I'm sure its works in 1.10 :D
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Re: Petition to reinstate Guard, Persue and Hold orders!

Post by KlassKill »

the main problem is things get removed then they are gone forever
as outlined in the other post the buttons are removed and there is only a keypress instead of what was there before
the formation setting was another thing that was removed and that also worked

when you say that it may be back that means that it will never be back like the other stuff that was removed and they never come back
the pursue and guard and hold buttons are still in need keypress is not better
this is why it seems the direction of game is heading to more arcade and not strategy :(
Per
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Re: Petition to reinstate Guard, Persue and Hold orders!

Post by Per »

No, not going to add back buttons that do not do anything. The entire unit menu system is in need of a re-make, there are several other orders that are missing buttons, and I do have some work in progress on that front. But first we need to get this release out the door.

And sorry, I really do have a hard time feeling bad about removing something that has been broken for I think at least six years, through many stable releases, and that nobody ever reported being broken (as far as I can tell, and I really tried looking). Clearly it is not a feature that people are constantly using. (Actually, I would bet that the majority of players never even open up the secondary orders menu. I think it needs to be made less obscure.)
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Re: Petition to reinstate Guard, Persue and Hold orders!

Post by MIH-XTC »

I just found this thread for the first time and read the whole thing. Ironically, the pursue function is what caused me to start making WZ videos, as strange as that might sound.

I discovered that patrol + pursue has very nice behavior for units that cannot fire while moving, namely mortars, plasma cannon and grenadiers. At the time nobody knew about it and it was very effective with grenadiers in 40 oil NTW. Capturing the behavior was the main reason why I recorded my first video

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJ8KsjRznGs[/youtube]

See 17:45 mark and observe grenadier behavior a little while. With pursue they have a mind of their own and will continue hunting down units beyond where they were told to patrol to. Since they have longer range than all other weapons during that time of game I don't have to worry about micro managing them. What's most desirable about pursue behavior in this case is that they periodically advance forward (move) which allows other units to easily retreat (not get stuck).
vexed wrote:
Heck, we could even make new sub-orders, like 'Call for reinforcements', 'Harass', 'Suicide' and so on... :3
I would think it's ideal to populate as many items on the unit menu as possible, granted that they have a purpose and no overlapping functionality. The discussion in the 3.2 beta thread about unit menu got me thinking about how we could have long distance pursue-like functionality on the repair droid unit menu to make them proactively seek out the closest damaged unit any where on the map. Also vice versa, have units retreat to repair droids instead of the HQ if no repair center is available.
stiv wrote: Seems to me we have two main categories: movement orders and behavior orders. Let's call them Movement Orders and Rules of Engagement (ROE). There are also Retreat Orders.

Movement
:
Move to a point
Self-Explanatory

Attack
Self-Explanatory

Patrol
Move to a point BUT stop moving and start firing from the short/optimal/long distance of the droid's turret when an enemy is spotted.

Stop
Stop moving BUT continue moving (pursuing) if enemy contact is made and enemy starts to retreat. (undesirable)


Rules of Engagement:
hold position vs pursue
Hold position is the same thing as stop except hold position does not pursue. At first I was convinced they had redundant functionality but upon looking closer there is a need for both. Hold position is really just a default "place holder" behavior state if pursue or guard position is not desirable. It essentially indicates that the droid is not set to pursue or guard position.

Pursue behavior does work in 3.1.x but it's not desirable in many cases. It's only useful for mortars. As already pointed out, players can bait wandering units out of an army by attacking then quickly retreating causing a few dumb pursue units to wander off into suicide. Guard position does the same thing except it limits wandering off to more than ~3 tiles.

Guard position causes units to pursue for up to 3 tiles before retreating to the guarded position but that's bad behavior because they do lone wolf attacks without other close by units helping them. Now that we know more about unit control than we did in 1999, I think the best "guard" or defensive behavior is to have units strafe 3 tiles from the left and right of where they're told to guard. This would mean units strafe a total of 6 tiles (guarding the center) and perhaps they can retreat 1 tile each pass for a maximum retreat of 3 tiles before resetting. Upon enemy contact, have the guarding units maintain the maximum distance of their turret range and don't let enemy get too close. That's the only "guard" behavior I can come up with.


fire at will vs hold fire vs return fire
These are the unit orders that I never understood. In what circumstances would we ever want to hold fire or wait for someone else to fire first before returning fire? Was return fire supposed to be like a pre-CB type behavior? I don't understand it. Fire at will is always the desirable behavior...

Retreat Orders:
do or die
retreat at minimal damage
retreat at max damage

I don't think there's any debate here. We could do retreat at first sight and have the units auto-beacon. I realize that's a pretty lame attempt at adding functionality lol

Am I missing anything?
Guard position
Thanks for enumerating and categorizing the different items of discussion. This is the most organized approach to understanding unit menus. I elaborated on the behavior of each and based on the verbiage of the words, wrote down what I think their behavior should be (blue text).
Per wrote: I completely agree, visual cues are important.

Primary orders are simple: They are on/off. Secondary orders are just slightly more difficult, since they sometimes have multiple states, rather than on/off.

So here is a list of orders that are lacking visual cues: Move, attack, demolish, retreat, guard (no, not the pursue/hold/guard guard - this is the other guard, the one that is actually useful for something), repair/restore, scout, patrol (has button but no visual cue), circle (same), and hold (no, not the pursue/hold/guard hold - this is the other hold, the one that is better). And pursue, of course.
Agreed too but I don't think visual cues are necessary for the primary orders move, attack, demolish and retreat because they are somewhat trivial. I think only the droid states that persist after a player gives them a command are the ones that need visual cues. Thanks for explaining the difference between primary and secondary orders, it helps to think of droid behavior states in this manner.

I know I would find the visual cue for patrol to be very helpful. The cue is there when selecting patrol but disappears after setting it. Sometimes I'm left wondering if my VTOL's and grenadiers are patrolling or just moving. I'm not aware of what you mean when you say there is an additional guard other than the pursue/hold/guard guard.
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Re: Petition to reinstate Guard, Persue and Hold orders!

Post by Per »

MIH-XTC wrote:I'm not aware of what you mean when you say there is an additional guard other than the pursue/hold/guard guard.
If you select a weapon droid, and hover the mouse over one of your buildings or non-weapon droids, you'll see that it changes the mouse cursor to a shield. This means that if you click this target, you'll issue a primary order guard. And it is has nothing to do with secondary order guard. As far as I can tell, there is no way to make a weapon droid guard another weapon droid, which would seem useful, but that is only an UI issue, because the code seems to support this fine under the hood.
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Re: Petition to reinstate Guard, Persue and Hold orders!

Post by MIH-XTC »

Per wrote:
MIH-XTC wrote:I'm not aware of what you mean when you say there is an additional guard other than the pursue/hold/guard guard.
If you select a weapon droid, and hover the mouse over one of your buildings or non-weapon droids, you'll see that it changes the mouse cursor to a shield. This means that if you click this target, you'll issue a primary order guard. And it is has nothing to do with secondary order guard. As far as I can tell, there is no way to make a weapon droid guard another weapon droid, which would seem useful, but that is only an UI issue, because the code seems to support this fine under the hood.
oh yea, that's right, I forgot all about that type of guard. I've never had any use for it :(
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Re: Petition to reinstate Guard, Persue and Hold orders!

Post by KlassKill »

Per wrote: And sorry, I really do have a hard time feeling bad about removing something that has been broken for I think at least six years, through many stable releases, and that nobody ever reported being broken (as far as I can tell, and I really tried looking). Clearly it is not a feature that people are constantly using. (Actually, I would bet that the majority of players never even open up the secondary orders menu. I think it needs to be made less obscure.)
did you look at the poll?
I bet you all those people thought it was working fine and that is why nobody reported it broken
you also did not explain why remove it instead of fixing it?
why was fog removed instead of fixing?
why was formations removed instead of fixing?
what is target version for when things be put back?
Per
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Re: Petition to reinstate Guard, Persue and Hold orders!

Post by Per »

I don't think there is much more left to say on this topic that has not already been said. Move on.
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Re: Petition to reinstate Guard, Persue and Hold orders!

Post by Berg »

KlassKill wrote:I bet you all those people thought it was working fine and that is why nobody reported it broken
Im sorry the topic is not over I never thought things were broken till you removed them without notice.

Please listen to the players.

I know you have classed me as a rabble rouse and a malcontent but please stop removing features.

We want the removed stuff back.

Start with unit orders and work way back to formations.
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Re: Petition to reinstate Guard, Persue and Hold orders!

Post by KlassKill »

Per wrote:I don't think there is much more left to say on this topic that has not already been said. Move on.
I scan from beginning it has not been said why not fix and go direct to remove?
does this mean path finding will be removed as well since it is broken?
it also works some times as pursue did
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Re: Petition to reinstate Guard, Persue and Hold orders!

Post by KlassKill »

I beg friend to find the problem for persue and he found it!!!
it works now!
he says you fix 3.2 to replace what was removed and he will convert patch for you guys!
we spent 5 hours testing patch and when unit is set to persue and another unit comes in range it will follow it everyplace like original!!!
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Re: Petition to reinstate Guard, Persue and Hold orders!

Post by KlassKill »

Hello?
Here is video of proof!
look https://youtu.be/Fz_vvwFovIo
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fz_vvwFovIo[/youtube]
Per
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Re: Petition to reinstate Guard, Persue and Hold orders!

Post by Per »

I suggest you post the patch he made so that it could be added to 3.1 branch for future reference.
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