Attack Move Command & Target Priorities

This is something that really bothers me in many RTS games, even recent ones, the lack of a proper and easy to use attack move command and the absence of target priorities.

Attack Move Command:
To make a long story short, I mean an attack move command that works like the one in Starcraft 2 and Warcraft 3. In other words units are ordered to move from point A to B and if they meet an enemy along the way they STOP, fire from MAXIMUM range, follow the target for a bit if necessary and when the target is killed or moves beyond the "leach" range they resume their course.
Also in Warcraft 3 you had the option (toggled on/off) to keep formation, essentially the units took a default preset formation (tanks in front, archers in back style) and the movement speed of the group becomes equal to that of its slowest member, this was very useful as it allowed the group to have a proper useful formation and to stay together.

Target Priorities:
In SC2 and War3, and probably every other Blizzard RTS, unit types have priorities. Essentially this means that some units are always targeted before others. For example if your forces encounter an enemy group, your units will always target the highest priority enemy unit first (the unit that causes the biggest threat/danger), and then they move down the list.
This really helps the player concentrate on more important decisions as it makes the AI of the units a little smart. Of course sometimes the player needs to step in and manually focus fire something, but in general, the units aren't "dumb", they kinda know which enemy units cause a bigger threat and target them first.

My question is, how will PA handle this? This is very important, it's essentially the most used/useful command that one can have in an RTS, so it's crucial to get it right.

There's nothing worse than losing a battle because you weren't able to control your army properly due to a lackluster set of commands. You were essentially fighting the enemy AND fighting the game at the same time (to control your army properly). You don't want to fight the game, you should only fight the enemy and if you end up having to fight the game too, then that means something is off with the designs of the game's control commands.

I'm very interested in knowing where the devs stand on this.

This was discussed quite a bit early on, just after the KS campaign. First off, I'm not sure how familiar you are with TA-style games, but units don't have to stop moving to fire. In TA, units had a variety of attack stances, whether they should hold fire, return fire, or always fire on an enemy. They also had movement stances, whether they should hold position, maneuver during combat, or roam during combat. (This affected such tasks as patrolling routes as well.)

In any case, PA will likely follow a similar style, albeit with a smoother stance implementation. This means that if you command your units to go from point A to point B, with the stances set to always/maneuver, if they get attacked on the way, they'll shoot the enemy while moving into a decent position, but still maintain their course to point B.

But this is only the most basic of features. There were a lot of other ideas discussed, many of which are implemented in some TA offshoots, like the game Zero K. There are commands such as setting priority targets, so that if those targets enter the range of your units, they'll shift their focus to those targets. There are also commands like Attack Area (which can be especially handy with bombers), or unit AI, which would automatically kite enemy units, swarm to dodge shots, or retreat when low on health. (The latter has been somewhat controversial in discussions, but it can definitely work wonders, as Zero K has proven.)

Starcraft and Starcraft II's system is very limited in comparison, since the game is so heavily focused on a very zoomed in, micromanagement based game style. The TA games focus more on the larger scale, especially with PA. In this case, it would be cumbersome NOT to have a rich command set to utilize.

I am not sure if this was mentioned before but for target priorities for PA should be something the player can set for each type of unit.

For TA and SupCom, there wasn't a huge amount of target priorities in the unit AI but then again it's been while since I've played either thoroughly. But taking a neat idea from another RTS game I play a lot, AI War: Fleet Command, in which the player could set the preferred target for each class of units. This was simply done by selecting a large group of units, let's say bombers or fighters. With the bombers selected the player could just slight click on several heavy starships and the game would remember the starships as the preferred target. The same could be done with fighters to focus on enemy bombers or even the same starships as the bombers.

A feature like this helps with minimizing the need for any micro on your large armies and I am sure a lot of people would prefer this over preset preferred targets in SC2 and WC3 or even the limited target priorities in TA. I just hope they don't fully remover all micro aspects of the game, such as keeping a key heavy unit alive or micro a group of stealth units.

Though it will be interesting to see any ideas the devs have on this topic of target priorities.

I kinda hope they do. Micro is a crutch that RT"S" players have relied on for far too long. If it's something that the computer can do better, then let the computer do it. Even on in a game of a smaller scale than PA, there are much more interesting things to be doing, such as in FA. (Which has a little micro, but we're getting closer.)

As to setting enemy priorities per unit, that works fine in AI Wars because the unit priorities tend to be fairly consistent. However, this would not be the case in a game like PA, where the importance of a unit would change drastically depending on a situation, such as the terrain the battle is occurring in. A more dynamic system, like ZK's, would be more welcome.

I do agree that micro has been a crutch for RTS games for way too long, but removing it fully and completely could potentioaly make the game more bland. Micro management shouldn't be the biggest key to being a good player in this game, but it should help increase a bit on the skill cap. We'll find out more once the game is in a playable state as far as more of less micro is needed. I just think micro could have a small place, but it should not be the key like in SC2.

Exactly. The real question is what the exact stances end up being.

I agree with this completely, SC2 is for Micro, with PA I think most people want Strategy and Spectacle, having to micromanage units distracts attention from both these things. Fighting on multiple worlds at once will be hard enough without having to tell tanks what exactly what they should be shooting at

I doubt removing micro completely is even possible. There will definitely be situations where you can just tell the unit-ai to do something in a suboptimal way or do it yourself more efficiently.

I can only deduce that we'll have most of the stances that TA had then?

I took the liberty of watching some Supcom FA and some old TA games, I've noticed that when people attack, they simply tell their units to move towards the enemy. Now as units can attack on the move, they keep moving as they attack until they reach their destination. This seems to be the type of attack that was used the most in all of the games I watched, in fact I didn't notice any other type of attack move. It was all units moving towards each other and keep moving as they attack.

Now that brings a couple of questions to my mind, how is this more efficient than stopping and firing from maximum range essentially staying out of range of most of the enemy forces? And if moving while attacking is used to dodge enemy fire, then wouldn't it make more sense to move sideways while staying at maximum range than to move towards more and more enemies?

The Supcom games I watched are supposedly high level 1v1 games, and during the engagements the players would simply move towards the enemy while attacking, and when they see things aren't going well they would retreat in a straight line. None of them move sideways or perform any other type of maneuvers.

Did I watch the wrong games? can someone link me high level games of TA or Supcom that demonstrate different types of maneuvers and show they're cons and pros or something?

I still feel that stopping and attacking from max range seems to be the superior type of attack move command, at least compared to what i saw in the high level supcom games. btw were you able to attack move ala War3 in supcom? I remember when I tried it, I had to press like 3 buttons at the same time something like ALT + Shift + Right Click or something like that, which was really odd, and the worst part is that the command is hard to find, it's not bound to a single hotkey like "A" for example and it's not even on the command card. On top of all that it didn't work well, a lot of unit never fired from max range, some of them even bugged out and never fired at all.

It felt like the game (supcom) just wanted you to simply MOVE towards the enemy when you want to attack.

There are some ways to do that, but I'm sure Uber won't implement them.
For example, the units in SupCom need about 0.5s to react to your commands, which hinders micro a lot, now imagine how could a player micro if it is 5s.

You should try playing it.

Attack move command does have units stopping when enemies get in range, but the thing is when you're not moving you're an easier target, so using queues to set up paths and the like can be more beneficial especially if you're actually commanding the battle, Attack move is usually preferable otherwise.

Seriously, I think this is the kind of thing you can't really see the difference unless you've played it, it plays so much differently from the "standard" RTSs.

Mike

I would like to have an Attack Move where units move from A to B and attack Enemies wich get in "aggro" range or attack the attack movers. There should be differant formation and stances. The enemies are chased by the attack mover until they get out of "leech range".
Different stances should change the "aggro" and "leach" range.
Units on "Move" command should attack enemies in range, but with less dmg (like 50%) while moving.
Attack Priority is important, but shouldnt completly negate micromanagement, there shouldnt be to much.
Non-combat units<combat units< unit actually can attack army<units attacking army
So if the enemy got alot of AA and u attack with ground units, your units should focus the anti ground units.
PS: i would like to have a rating system for posts! to make it more clear what the community likes/dislike; in what it agrees/disagrees.

I'd agree that if you're not moving you're an easier target, but moving more and more towards the enemy is even worse as you'll get in range of ALL the enemy forces and that's exactly what was happening in ALL the high level games i watched. In every single one of them that's how the players ordered their units to attack move. If high level players play this way, then either that's the best attack move there is or that's the only viable attack move available. I'd like to think the latter is true as I can't imagine how telling my forces to keep moving towards the enemy and getting in range of ALL of their units is a good thing.

You can easily tell the difference between different types of attack moves. For example the traditional one (Sc2 style) the units stop and fire from max range in the other (Supcom) they keep moving.

No they don't, in SupCom a proper attack move has units stopping, like I said.

Mike

How do you issue such a command? is it easy and on the command card? is it hot keyed to a single button? When I played that game it sure wasn't and it DID NOT work properly at all. Like i said in one of my previous posts, units would NOT fire from max range, and some wouldn't even fire at all. Now i'm not sure if it was due to a bug that was later fixed, but this was the experience i had with Supcom FA.

Alt-Right Click, In SupCom FA at least.

Mike

1) This command was not on the command card, you had to somehow know that such a command existed, either by looking at hotkeys or searching online. Why is that? Seems to me like such a basic command should be easy and obvious to the player.

2) Units did not fire from max range, i've tested it many times in-game and was really shocked when i learned it. I didn't understand why units would always move a little closer and then fire as opposed to stop at max range and fire.

3) This command doesn't keep the units in formation, the one that does keep units in formation is even more complicated and suffers the same flaws as the Alt-Right Click one, also again it's hidden, "Move to Attack in Formation" = "Ctrl-Alt-Right-Click" as opposed to its War3 equivalent a simple "A" that's right there on your command card and units fire from max range all the time.

1] Yes it is, its the "Attack(A)".

2] In all my tests, they do stop moving and attack, keep in mind that units don't start and stop on a dime in SupCom.

3] But the command works, that's the main point of this thread, learning about it is a separate issue altogether.

Mike

You just said it's Alt+A. I'm trying to find more info online but it's not really clear if the units stop and then attack or simply attack while moving if we simply use "A".

And there' the problem they'll always move closer before they stop and start shooting, hence giving the defending player an advantage (his units will fire before yours and your units will be in range of more enemy units than they should have simply because they moved further in). IMO this is a flaw and it shouldn't happen. Keep in mind they're not shooting for realism, they're shooting for AWESOME

True, i'll agree with you on this one .

Mike

They're both the same;

-Go to the command card, click on attack, right-click location.
-Hit 'A' right-click on location
-Hold Alt, right-click on location.

They're all attack move, with the emphasis on queue commands(using Shift) I find using alt to be a lot easier personally.

First Read this.

Second that entirely depends on the units involved on both sides, but the amount moved is rather minimal, and as I said, it has nothing to do with a flaw in the attack command.

Mike