Important: Changeable Target Priorities are unfair/cheating

[MrTBSC]

and what is the general direction it should go then? being unessary complex with rather little depth, a vast puddle? because this is what the game has been for the longest time in my eyes .. doesn´t have to be an ocean, a filled well does it for me too ...

I think target priority makes the game *more* complex and not less... adjustable target priority expands the overall pool of possible actions, while also removing depth (removing the choice of whether u want to move or focus fire). Ie. it makes the game harder to learn and easier to master, that sounds like a lose-lose to me.

the game is already hard to learn and complex without depth in places such as imo adjancecybonuses were you don´t realy have a choice to not make use of it vs a player who does to the point were structurevolatility is secondary ..

unlike adjacencybonuses were TP in itself might be a complex system however should in theory ease the use on controling an army with different units
were the implementation of the AB system makes it more difficult/requires more effort to build efficient bases ..

a system that is complex but allows for a bit of depth would be f.e. the ability to chaindrop units from a transport
or the commander upgradetrees .. (which imo could be a bit expanded upon)

[Morax]

I promise I'm not trying to be mean, but I can barely follow what you wrote in that preceding post.

More depth = more complexity, though, so not sure how this helps...?

[keyser]

if anything i see this as an addition of micro.
Yes you remove the need of focus fire micro (not all though, if you want to kill unit 1 by 1)
But you can see that as 3 levels :
guy managing his army with no target priorities
guy that use target priorities when needed (need to kill the parasheild first etc)
guy that does dodging micro and use target priorities so it still shoot at what he intend his unit to shoot at

The target priorities is something that was asked since a long time already, there is several thread about it on forum. The game team found a solution for this issue of lacking control over your unit. There is members of the balance team in the game team, and this change didn't seems like it was changing balance. Or at least not that much. (Idea was for example allowing a exp to shoot at an acu while pursuing it)

After the patch, we realized that several balance issue came up, the issue of com dying too fast on a simple move order. (for example)
For now we let the player adapt to that shift in balance, their evaluation of danger has overall not adapted yet. There is some idea of possibly buffing the ACU so that they aren't as vulnerable.

The balance team is indeed splitted on this question. I feel like this is a big improvement that need tweaking.

removing depth (removing the choice of whether u want to move or focus fire)

So that's the worst argument so far. I will patch the game so you get 1 sec freeze on unit when you give order, now you will have to choose if you give a lot of order or keep with the current one you gave. Hope you enjoy the depth of the game the patch will offer you.

[MrTBSC]

I promise I'm not trying to be mean, but I can barely follow what you wrote in that preceding post.

More depth = more complexity, though, so not sure how this helps...?

so there are a) complex systems/concepts that can offer depth

there are also b) complex systems/concepts that can offer ease of use

what we don´t neccesarily want are c) complex systems/concepts that make things more difficult to understand/execute ..

depth comes from complexity but not nessesarily vice versa so depending on how you implement a system can mean - more complexity =/= more depth ...

and as mentioned imo SupCom has a number of major cases c) were the game is rather difficult to understand and to play

[MrTBSC]

if anything i see this as an addition of micro.
Yes you remove the need of focus fire micro (not all though, if you want to kill unit 1 by 1)
But you can see that as 3 levels :
guy managing his army with no target priorities
guy that use target priorities when needed (need to kill the parasheild first etc)
guy that does dodging micro and use target priorities so it still shoot at what he intend his unit to shoot at

more like a shift imo than true addition ...
cause with or without TP you have the choice what or how to focusfire/shift-g regardless
however depending on how the AI works you may not be able to focusfire and dodge without TP (correct me if wrong)
instead you can only dodge while your unit is firing at whatever enemy is closest to it? so in that case you ease the ammount of micro neccesary, no?

edit:sry for multipost

[____]

This kind of reminds me about the discussion when spread move was introduced. Just like with the introduction of target priorities it was a significant nerf to acus, punishing misplaced acus a lot more than before. Imo blocking acus via spread move (im talking about the shift g version) did overall not have a positive impact on gameplay.

Yet the introduction of it also added a lot of other beneficial stuff, I personally would not like to micro my air or naval units without it anymore. For example, using shift g kind of fixed the sometimes buggy Zthuee movement, where they simply ignore all normal move orders and just move towards the unit they are attacking.

Just like spread move, target priorities also nerf acus pretty severely, but also introduces a lot of other possibilities, by being able to tell your units exactly what they have to shoot at, giving you more control over the engagement.

I personally really like the change, but it cannot be denied that it also introduces significant unbalances. I understand ofc, that all this is still kind of work in progress, but imo there should be changes made to the balance to reflect this nerf to acus. I am personally not quite sure about how to achieve this but rethinking the nerfs to acu upgrades from the last patch seems like a good first step. Maybe acus, should even have more regen or slightly more hp to begin with, but I am not sure if that would really have an impact significant enough to warrant such a change.

[Evildrew]

Well at least we now know why so many of the replays are broken since different players having different target priorities will desync them and make it difficult to find enough decent games to cast that played out the way they did in real time

FAF keeps melting more and more day by day as development and gameplay changes keep going in the wrong direction, really sad.

[PhilipJFry]

Well at least we now know why so many of the replays are broken since different players having different target priorities will desync them and make it difficult to find enough decent games to cast that played out the way they did in real time

do you have any evidence to back this up?

[MrTBSC]

Maybe acus, should even have more regen or slightly more hp to begin with, but I am not sure if that would really have an impact significant enough to warrant such a change.

depends on how the acu should generaly be allowed to be used during a match .. how powerfull/vulnerable should it be by default? how powerful as a guncom? how vulnerable as a advanced engineer? etc ...

[Evildrew]

Well at least we now know why so many of the replays are broken since different players having different target priorities will desync them and make it difficult to find enough decent games to cast that played out the way they did in real time

do you have any evidence to back this up?

Well... I was told by some devs that the replays are replayed from some kind of file that simulates what happened in game based on your version of the game i.e. they are not like video recordings, ergo if my version/target priorities are different from yours and i watch it with my version, then the units will fire on something else in the replay than they did in the game. Different version=desync, like when you have a map you edited and then play someone with the unedited map, you get a desync. My evidence is logic and reason. I know though from many council decisions that these 2 concepts are alien to the thought process behind many decisions made in particular by balance team people

Anyway, if you care to check, play with someone who uses different target priorities that are used in a battle and then test if the replay desyncs in the vault if you want empirical evidence for or against...