Harbingers reclaim on attack order

[lebensnebel]

Hey,

harbingers reclaim when using a normal attack order, e.g. I press "a" behind enemy base but they stay and reclaim trees. Of course this is really annoying.
I was told in chat that this is intended, but I thought that they should only reclaim using patrol or strg+a.
Sooo.... do other people notice this? Intended or bug?

Best regards

Edit: The only changelog I found about them was in 3626, where reclaim on patrol was added.

[TheRedViper]

If they really reclaim while on an attack order, that is a bug for sure. They are T3 direct fire units, not T3 engis with guns. I haven't noticed this, but I rarely play Aeon

[Vicarian]

If you issue a targeted attack order, as in you press A and then click on a valid target, they will move to attack that target without reclaiming. However, if you press Alt+A, it'll issue an attack move, in which case the Harbs will reclaim in the vicinity until all reclamation targets are removed, then move on. If they encounter an enemy unit while doing so, they will prioritize killing that unit over the reclaim.

TLDR: Direct attack will work as you intend,
Attack move behavior with harbs has been this way since Vanilla, IIRC.

[JaggedAppliance]

Harbs were recently changed so they can no longer reclaim and attack at the same time.

[speed2]

Attack move and patrol are basically the same thing. Patrol is endless attack move. Not sure if you can have different behaviour

[Zock]

They got changed about a year ago to be able to reclaim on patrol, I think it was not possible to make a different behaviour for attackmove as speed said.

[lebensnebel]

Hey,

thanks for the replies.
So I don't press "alt+a", I only press "a" and click on the ground somewhere (nothing there).
I think there are different types of attackmove - maybe this is outdated - but I thought engies behave differently for "a" and "strg+a", which also enables harbies to use the "normal attack move" (a) or alternatively "reclaim attack move" (strg+a) or patrol.

Furthermore, I think the reclaiming with "a" is only a recent development for harbies and it did not start with the reclaim on patrol patch.
Unfortunately I did not play very much in the last year and only restarted playing ~3 weeks ago, so I might be mistaken. Can someone verify this?

Anyhow, if this is working as intended, can you give me advice on how to get harbies to a battle? Do just issue move order after move order? That is much more micro compared to using attack move, as I have to pay attention that they don't run into pds single file.

Does the ACU reclaim when using attack move?

Best regards!

[DeimosEvotec]

To clarify some of this:
There is the "direct attack" which is used when you have a combat unit selected and use an attack command on a vaible target*. The unit then moves towards the target and doesn't stop until it's in range, when it's in range it fires on the target until it's dead or leaves the range which forces the combat unit to move towards it again.

Then there is "attack move" which is used when you use the attack command on the ground and causes combat units(this includes (s)ACUs) to move to target location and whenever there is viable target* inside their range they stop and fire on it, until it's dead or leaves their range, before moving towards the target location again.
Engineers will move to the target location and when your storage is not full, they'll reclaim everything inside a large area around their path to the location that has the needed resource.

"Patrol" has the same effects as "attack move" but the target loaction always the next waypoint, with the exception of (s)ACUs which act like engineers, instead of combat units like they do when you use "attack move".

*A viable target an enemy unit or building that can be attack with the weapons of the your unit and in case of the "direct attack" it musst also be targetable.

Conclusion: Harbingers don't work as intended as they should do the same as (s)ACUs but instead they act like engineers that can also use "direct attack".

Fun Fact: Harbingers can assist and shoot at the same time.

[JaggedAppliance]

I agree, harbs should be changed to have the same behaviour as ACUs and SACUs wrt patrol and attack move.

[ax0lotl]

Maybe a toggle to turn off reclaiming by harbingers would be nice. With a build power of 3 (compared to a t1 engy with 5), to me this feature seems as useless as torpedo's on wagners.