Vincentz Rangestrike

[Merkava120]

This is an amazing improvement over the old range strike system (mainly because this one can actually have less than 15% damage, or even a miss, whereas the old one couldn't go less than that)!

But, I've noticed a couple things that are lacking in this one, and I'm wondering if I've done something to screw it up or if it's just part of the code. If these are a part of the code I'm okay working around it, but I'd really like it if I could fix these...

1. The old system, the AI was killer good at the ranged strike and would use it in mass attacks which were awful to fight against. This system, the AI seems to know how to defend against it (their units all run for trees and hills) but doesn't ever use it, except for counter-fire. Is there a UnitAI I should be setting these guys to?
2. All the land units I give range strike to are unable to normally attack. Haven't tried it on navals yet. Is that a hardcoded thing?
3. The range doesn't seem to change itself based on terrain, like how in the old one units couldn't shoot over mountains and stuff. Any kind of GlobalDefine or something I can set for that?

 

[vincentz]

This is an amazing improvement over the old range strike system (mainly because this one can actually have less than 15% damage, or even a miss, whereas the old one couldn't go less than that)!

But, I've noticed a couple things that are lacking in this one, and I'm wondering if I've done something to screw it up or if it's just part of the code. If these are a part of the code I'm okay working around it, but I'd really like it if I could fix these...

1. The old system, the AI was killer good at the ranged strike and would use it in mass attacks which were awful to fight against. This system, the AI seems to know how to defend against it (their units all run for trees and hills) but doesn't ever use it, except for counter-fire. Is there a UnitAI I should be setting these guys to?
2. All the land units I give range strike to are unable to normally attack. Haven't tried it on navals yet. Is that a hardcoded thing?
3. The range doesn't seem to change itself based on terrain, like how in the old one units couldn't shoot over mountains and stuff. Any kind of GlobalDefine or something I can set for that?

1) The only thing is the UnitAI shouldn't be city_defense (or city_defender or what its called. cant remember), because they just fortifies with that UnitAI.
Have you tried it in my VIP mod? the AI is VERY efficient with it. However since it only shows same way as the airstrikes/airbombs, it can be difficult to see (though they do make a log entry)

2) Yup. If you have a gun and are 20 meters away from your enemy, you are going to shoot him, not walking over there to hit him in the head with it . Ships are still able to do direct combat though.

3) Yeah, I changed it so it didnt have to have "eyes on" the target. It can seem silly with a catapult in a city can shoot over a mountain, but later it would be even more silly if an artillery couldn't shoot over a forest Besides, I think early sieges should only have range 1, so it would only be a problem from cannon/artillery and up.

 

[Merkava120]

Ok that all makes sense. I haven't tried it with the vip mod yet - I've been building it into a sort of WW2 tactical mod with each tile representing 20 m, and I have to say I'm loving it. I can now give tanks huge strength and watch helpless infantry bounce bullets off them

Do you think the unitai_worker could mess things up? Right now I'm working on combat engineers and they're the ones that aren't doing anything.

 

[vincentz]

yup. or at least could be. Maybe make one of the Attack unitAIs the primary and make unitAI_worker a secondary unitAI?

I thought about doing a modern tactical 1UPT mod myself with much increased sight and range
I actually did a small one where I developed the UPT I have in VIP now, but decided to freshen up my VIP instead. My plan was to make the cities into factories/airbases/barracks that could be leveled up (buildings) and only produce units fitting for them (infantry in barracks, armored in factories, airunits in airbases etc) and make the bases upgradable (buildings would be "Level 1", "Level 2" etc with +% to what they produce).
By reducing the amount of "city-buildings" to 0% and increase the size of the base-building it would look good imho.
I think I kinda dropped it because the work that was needed on the AI movement seemed insurmountable at the time (kinda still does tbh )

 

[Merkava120]

yup. or at least could be. Maybe make one of the Attack unitAIs the primary and make unitAI_worker a secondary unitAI?

I'll give that a shot later today and see if it works. If not, removing the unitai_worker entirely would probably do it.

I thought about doing a modern tactical 1UPT mod myself with much increased sight and range
I actually did a small one where I developed the UPT I have in VIP now, but decided to freshen up my VIP instead. My plan was to make the cities into factories/airbases/barracks that could be leveled up (buildings) and only produce units fitting for them (infantry in barracks, armored in factories, airunits in airbases etc) and make the bases upgradable (buildings would be "Level 1", "Level 2" etc with +% to what they produce).
By reducing the amount of "city-buildings" to 0% and increase the size of the base-building it would look good imho.

That sounds really interesting, I'm glad someone else besides me has had this idea! That's an interesting way to do the cities, too. My plan was to replace the city buildings with tents and have each city represent one battalion, which could then produce certain units and such depending on the battalion (as accurately as possible to WW2, because, history nerd )

I think I kinda dropped it because the work that was needed on the AI movement seemed insurmountable at the time (kinda still does tbh )

Yeah, that's the problem with tactical mods . If I ever finish mine to the point where I can upload it, it'll have to be a multiplayer...the AI won't know what to do with 90% of the stuff I plan on adding

 

[Merkava120]

I'll give that a shot later today and see if it works. If not, removing the unitai_worker entirely would probably do it.

Well great. I just got absolutely roasted by the AI, which can use ranged attacks extremely well, it turns out.
I outnumbered the first few soldiers I ran into (decoys possibly??), so I started chasing after them and killing them. Soon I hit a hornet's nest of SMG guys that wiped me out in a hit-and-run mess in about 3 turns.
They were also using scouts to light up where my guys were, then using soldiers with more range than I had sight range to kill the blazes out of me before I could even find them.

Loads of fun.

 

[Merkava120]

Vincentz, two things about the rangedstrike are making some things really hard in my tactical mod.

One, the fact that land units can't attack each other makes land mines impossible. Any way you could upload a version without that?

Two, giving a unit a unitcombatmod doesn't seem to do anything for rangedstrikes. That makes things like bazookas and such really tricky to do right.

I understand if you don't have time to fix these things (obviously I don't have enough time to get my compiler working, either) - but it would be really nice...