Intel...ligent targeting

[Steel_Panther]

It seems a bit weird for how the game works that intel is often only necessary for a moment, rather than sustained. E.g. you send a scout across your enemy's base, notice he is loading a transport up, and immediately select your interceptors and issue an attack command. Your scout is immediately shot down, but as long as you saw the transport for a moment, your inties can lock on to it and follow it anywhere, without any sort of intel on its flight path, even if they're 10km away. As a game mechanic maybe this is fine because it reduces some micro, but maybe it isn't the best to allow that lock on to happen with almost zero intel. It seems like a more realistic, and possibly better mechanic would be that attack commands turn into an attack move order to the unit's last known location as soon as the targeted unit disappears from sight/radar, but also maybe if the same unit is seen again, the original attack order is reissued. I understand that might be quite complicated to implement...

I also can agree that sometimes the current mechanic seems a lot more realistic than other times, e.g. when you scout a land unit and order a bomber to attack it. Given how poor path-finding is in this game, bombers would get pretty useless If they couldn't more or less lock on, since they basically wouldn't drop bombs, and it seems realistic for slightly outdated intel to give a close enough read for them to make slight readjustments on the fly.

So maybe units should be able to lock on, but only for a few seconds, before the command changes. If a change like this was made perhaps some sort of buff to scouts might be warranted, or not.
Basically just wanted to say the way it works seems weird to have important advantages for even extremely out of date intel, and maybe there is a better way to do it. If anyone else thinks of better or more faf-engine-compatible adjustments would be great too.

[ZLO_RD]

this is a very tought topic. imagine bomber losing targetting on second pass just because he flew to far away from the target...

But i am not sure if it a big deal or not. i remember playing Supreme Commander, and i think this is how exactly everything works there - lost vision - lost order to attack (not 100% sure tho).

[PhilipJFry]

losing track of stuff you have an attack order on when it is out of radar/sonar/vision range would make dealing with air units (due to their speed) and cybran in general (due to stealth) incredibly annoying/borderline impossible

btw intel in general is kinda messed up in this game

• when you give structures to an allied player your opponent will be unable to give manual attack commands on the structure until he gets vision on the it
• upgrading a structure will give intel to your enemy
• giving units will cause your enemy to lose manual attack orders
• retreating units have "more vision" than chasing ones

at the end of the day you'll have to deal with some unreasonable things due to technical limitations

[JoonasTo]

We had this for a while and the community cried out that the game got too hard.
Zep reverted if before anybody could really adjust to it properly and see how it would turn out. I thought it was a huge shame back then and I still do.

It was like half-a-second cut then. I think we should seriously consider doing a five to ten second cut off timer for that.

[Petricpwnz]

Dealing with drops would become [~ C A N C E R ~ ]™

[ZeRenCZ]

Dealing with drops would become [~ C A N C E R ~ ]™

and sniping anything with bombers impossible

[MayorDamage]

Some inconsistent detail I stumbled over was that PD don't keep firing on units they loose sight on even if you manually target them...

[Steel_Panther]

I just want to reiterate that simply changing the attack target to an attack move might not make things quite as horrible as people are thinking, especially if the attack order is reissued automatically as soon as the same target reappears on either radar or in vision. Can someone describe if this is totally impossible, or a somewhat similar mechanic is workable?

PhilipJFry, I agree that all the intel issues you mentioned are also problems and those ought to be fixed as well. You should not be able to tell what factories or mexes the enemy has upgraded without scouting it. I'm not totally sure what you mean by retreating units having more vision though...how exactly does that work?

JoonasTo and Zlo, I think a 5 second or so cut off should be reasonable (I would leave that up to the balance Gods!), and it shouldn't make bombers useless anymore. I certainly don't want that. Maybe a different cut off time makes sense based on the speed of the target (much higher variance in possible position over time). So, for faster air units it could be 3 seconds, but for mantis it's 5 seconds, and a megalith it's more like 10 seconds. Or just different for land vs air, if that is easier and works as well.
Zeren I don't think sniping anything with bombers would become impossible, just that your scout cannot precede the bomber by too much.
Also, to be clear this certainly would not apply to targeting structures. If my idea above makes sense, then for structures which have zero speed, your target should never be lost. Again, the issues philip mentioned are related problems.

Petric, dealing with drops would get a bit more difficult, but again i think the attack move order and target reissue would help a lot. Mainly it would make scouts and radars a lot more valuable, which is why I suggested they may need a buff, such as being cheaper or maybe higher health or speed or something, whatever. My main point is that maybe dealing with drops should be slightly harder, particularly in some circumstances.
Think of a game on bermuda locket where inties lock on to a transport in the enemy base, from your home base. You have no idea if it is going to the left or the right, but you gain that intel for free.
I am guessing your main concern is enemy arty drops on your base, which I definitely don't want to make OP. So maybe a 5 second lock on time is enough most of the time for those types of drops. If those drops do become OP, maybe to balance things again transports would need some sort of nerf, like increased build time or cost.

Of course every change is complicated because there are many uses and strategies for every unit so I don't claim to say "this is the best solution." Merely, "this is my offering to you, oh wise balance Gods."

[Steel_Panther]

For a pretty good reference to why I think there should be a cap on the targeting, skip to 4:20 in this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gYknQOTdYE

He locks on with his bomber at 3:56 game time, and lands the bomb at 4:45. How is that intel still deserved after it is almost 50 seconds out of date? It shouldn't be too micro intensive and game breaking for the "epic pro players" that are the ones who complain any change like this is making it too difficult, to simply adjust the timing so the bomber is only a few seconds behind the scout. Or just scout more, like they will hypocritically demand of other players who complain about some other aspect of the game. (Not that anyone who commented on this specifically is a hypocrite, but it generally seems like most knowledgeable players who would be against this because it requires more scouting, will in other situations make the exact opposite argument. "Just scout more, you noob.")

Again, 5 or so seconds before the attack order changes to an attack move ought to allow for reasonably effective targeting without basically gifting free intel like we see here. E.g. if the bomber locked on around the second hill below the engi killed targeted in the replay.

[Mach]

- when you give structures to an allied player your opponent will be unable to give manual attack commands on the structure until he gets vision on the it
- upgrading a structure will give intel to your enemy
- giving units will cause your enemy to lose manual attack orders

Can those be fixed? seems you just need to have those blips turn into whoever-it-was-given-to blips if they were already scouted and stay gray if not. and have attack orders copy to new blips from old ones. and upgrading/removing structure should just not change icon unless it is in vision range (removing should if it was in radar range)
idk what exactly this works like tho