Advanced Prophet droids MK3

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Iluvalar
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Advanced Prophet droids MK3

Post by Iluvalar »

Situation : There is 4 blue, 3 red and 3 green units on the batle field. To simply the problems, everyone have the same cannon with 50% accuracy.

You are the 4rth blue droids. You were the first unit in the battle and you already hitted a green unit once. You know that if 4 more rounds hit the green unit it will die. What will you do on you second shot 5 second later ?

You an me would take a second shot on that green unit. Assuming we have god like intelligence and we have all the time to analysis that situation between exactly 2 shots, we would deduct that that even if all the blue and the red units shoot at that green it would most likely survive (about 55% chance) so there would be no reason at all to change your target on that shot.

But not if you are a 3.1 droids ! Not only the 3.1 droids would know where each red unit shoted, but they would also already know the issues of the cannon rounds that are still in the mid-air ! They would know exaclty (even in a gigantic battle field) how much bullet in mid-air will make damage to any units and they would base their target on that prophetic knowledge. :annoyed:

I believe it's a HUGE balance issue, it increased seriously the DPS of the units in the game as they barely never use a single shot more than necessary with a prophetic knowledge of the projectile still in mid-air.
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Re: Advanced Prophet droids MK3

Post by iap »

On the other hand, it happened to me where I had a million artillry fully loaded and ready to fire, .that was assigned to a commander. When I targeted something all of them fired at ones, killing the target and wasting lots of valuable time, because more then half of them fired in vain on a dead target, now all of them need to reload.
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Re: Advanced Prophet droids MK3

Post by Iluvalar »

I agree, and I'm not asking to return to the 2.3 targeting. But now that I looked at the C++ code, I do believe 2.3 was better on this. The targeting system should not have future sight !
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Re: Advanced Prophet droids MK3

Post by iap »

So how do you suggest to solve this? If 5 shots are needed to kill a unit, on average conditions, then why make 10 units or more shoot at the same time?
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Iluvalar
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Re: Advanced Prophet droids MK3

Post by Iluvalar »

I believe I would shoot 5 shots and that would mean that on average, half of my target survive one more shot.

But now, the droids shoot between 3-7 shots depending on the specific condition (that should be unknown) and all the units die !

I hope you understand it's not just a semantic difference.
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Re: Advanced Prophet droids MK3

Post by iap »

Sure i know. If shooting only 5 with taking the risk of the unit survival is programmable, the I'd like it. Maybe even tweeking it to 75 percent. This could even be reasearchable. I mean the chance of collaborative killing.
But in this scenario there can be downsides, like shooting at a unit with not enough fire power, and moving to the other target, and until you realized that, the unit shoots back.
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Re: Advanced Prophet droids MK3

Post by Stratadrake »

Interesting . . . I can agree that a unit deciding whether to switch targets or not cannot and should not rely on actually querying whether the fired projectiles are hits or misses. If a human can't do it, the game engine shouldn't either, even if it is in equal favor.

For example, if I know that one shot from a salvo is enough to kill the target (assuming it hits) then I might consider switching to a new target to spend the remainder of the salvo on. HOWEVER, if some of the shots were misses then I'll still need to go back and make sure I finish the job.

It kindof reminds me of the original Final Fantasy 1 where when you order your party to "Fight" they won't switch targets if one of your party members kills it early. You learn to plan your targets based on how much damage you expect to do to each one, which makes combat thinking more interesting than in later games where you can simply tell everyone to attack the same monster and they'll take care of the rest on their own.

This has less effect with non-salvo weapons, where you don't risk losing partial salvo if you overkill. A single unit will simply fire until the target is destroyed, and most weapons just don't reload fast enough to make a difference whether the unit switches targets before or after the killing shot scores - i.e. the first projectile has already exploded before the second projectile is fired.

As a corollary, when you select "Optimum Range" the game silently and invisibly decides whether that translates into "short" or "long" range for each unit - weapons with better shortrange accuracy will choose short range, weapons with equal/better longrange accuracy will choose long range. But you have no way of knowing this beforehand, as the Design Screen only shows one accuracy value (longrange, I think) for each weapon.

Which is rather ironic, meaning that weapons with better shortrange accuracy will fight better than the displayed accuracy but worse than the displayed range.
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Iluvalar
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Re: Advanced Prophet droids MK3

Post by Iluvalar »

Stratadrake wrote: This has less effect with non-salvo weapons, where you don't risk losing partial salvo if you overkill. A single unit will simply fire until the target is destroyed, and most weapons just don't reload fast enough to make a difference whether the unit switches targets before or after the killing shot scores - i.e. the first projectile has already exploded before the second projectile is fired.
IF the unit is single, if they are in group than the prophetic gift is valid again. I dont think a "single units" is anything close to a regular situation.
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Re: Advanced Prophet droids MK3

Post by Stratadrake »

I'm not so sure of that. I've seen plenty cases where I issue an attack queue to, say, three Bunker Buster VTOLs. They all take off at (about) the same time, arrive at (about) the same time, fire at (about) the same time. At the same target. If the prophetic principle applies here, should it not mean that only one or two VTOL's fire at the first target in the queue, and the rest fire at the second? I do not witness that occuring at all, and I end up with a lot of wasted firepower as a result. (Which isn't a flaw. I just give individual VTOL's different group numbers so I can instruct them individually to take out separate targets.)

Likewise, I've seen plenty of cases where sending a suicide Bug VTOL into enemy airspace sees multiple Vindicator missiles from multiple defensive sites shot at it even though the first missile is definitely enough to frag it. Again, would the prophetic principle not mean that only one total missile gets fired?
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Re: Advanced Prophet droids MK3

Post by Giani »

Stratadrake wrote:I'm not so sure of that. I've seen plenty cases where I issue an attack queue to, say, three Bunker Buster VTOLs. They all take off at (about) the same time, arrive at (about) the same time, fire at (about) the same time. At the same target. If the prophetic principle applies here, should it not mean that only one or two VTOL's fire at the first target in the queue, and the rest fire at the second? I do not witness that occuring at all, and I end up with a lot of wasted firepower as a result. (Which isn't a flaw. I just give individual VTOL's different group numbers so I can instruct them individually to take out separate targets.)

Likewise, I've seen plenty of cases where sending a suicide Bug VTOL into enemy airspace sees multiple Vindicator missiles from multiple defensive sites shot at it even though the first missile is definitely enough to frag it. Again, would the prophetic principle not mean that only one total missile gets fired?
The same happens with tanks. The "Prophet droids bug" only happens with artillery, because it is the only type of weapon that can calculate how much shots they need for killing the target. The bug is that they know if the bullet will hit or miss, even if it still is in mid-air.
(but I think you know that last part).
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Re: Advanced Prophet droids MK3

Post by Iluvalar »

No, it's calculated for every projectiles. Not only arty.

Stratadrake are you sure you base your experience on 3.1 ?
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Re: Advanced Prophet droids MK3

Post by Giani »

Iluvalar wrote:No, it's calculated for every projectiles. Not only arty.
I have never seen that happening with other type of weapons. And in 3.1 happens the same than stratadrake said.
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Re: Advanced Prophet droids MK3

Post by Stratadrake »

Iluvalar wrote:No, it's calculated for every projectiles. Not only arty.

Stratadrake are you sure you base your experience on 3.1 ?
Yes. I've seen my Lancers split their salvos between separate targets in Cam1 (before the first rocket actually hits), I do see Ripple Rockets splitting salvos between targets in Cam2 (again, before the rockets actually land), AND I do see Nexus Vindicators wasting full salvos on single Bug VTOLs.

There is another factor: If the actual hit/miss is called by a hitbox check (see other topic about range/accuracy) and NOT the initial diceroll, then another reason why checking projectile hit/miss is not valid is because if the target changes movement in the meantime the shot will always miss, something that CAN NOT be predicted in advance.
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Re: Advanced Prophet droids MK3

Post by Iluvalar »

So maybe there is another unknown bug about vtols or something similar ?

The projectiles are too fast for the direction changes to have any impact. You'd need good like reflex with light bodies hover going perpendicular to the fight to have any impact at all. And that would be done by asking your hover (expensive for the extra speed) to stop in the middle of the battle.
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Re: Advanced Prophet droids MK3

Post by Stratadrake »

The projectiles are too fast for the direction changes to have any impact.
Not with VTOLs. SAMs fly barely any faster than VTOL speed, and when a BB or Lancer VTOL unloads its shot it actually seems to stop before it turns around, so rounds of Hurricane flak miss by a good 2-3 squares while the turrets corrects its aim.

It's only a small impact, but yes it is there nonetheless.
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