Improved Management of Combat

Suggestions
1

Hello! First post here! Sorry if there is some format error etc.

I often feel like I have to micromanage my army, as in footmen sprinting FAR away from my healers, causing them to die.

Formation
If there was a possibility to restrict them to some kind of formation, where everyone walks at the same pace, and reach the target together.

Aswell having your Archers & Healers in the backline and your Knights in the front.

Target Priority
When the game gets to a stage where there are Archers / Healers you would want to focus them, but having to pause, target, unpause, pause, target, unpause and so forth gets a bit tedious. It would be nice to have an option to toggle if you want them to focus one target at a time or spread out, and the cherry on top of the icecream would be what kind of target, as in focus the Healers, Archers, Footmen, Knights etc.

I know this is a bit extensive but thought it would be a cool concept.
Let’s compile a few Ideas ^^,

From replies:

RTS Selection & Attack - @Banto

"I think this game would benefit from some standard drag select over troops and simple right click when having them selected to attack the target you right click like it works in most RTS games.

Other things like Cleric running away not healing your army when in combat and focusing on villagers that’s not soldiers which kills your group instead."

Defend Zone / Guardpost - @Fornjotr

If an enemy enters the “Defend Zone / Guardpost” the assigned parties / hearthlings will attack them.

  • Drag-Able, Like the Stockpile, Farm, Trapper etc.
  • Assign Combat Parties / Hearthlings to said Zones

Patroling Zone - @Fornjotr

Be able to take control over where the guards patrol, instead of around fields etc, to gain more control over what you are protecting and not.

  • Drag-Able, Like the Stockpile, Farm, Trapper etc.
  • Assign Combat Parties / Hearthlings to said Zones

Misc

  • Cleric running away not healing your army when in combat and focusing on villagers that’s not soldiers which kills your group instead - @Banto

  • Naming the combatparties! We had this option back in the past, but it is not there anymore? - @Fornjotr

  • A new UI for the use of potions, with a timer and maybe an autofeature? - @Fornjotr

6 Likes
2

I agree that the combat is a bit strange atm. Even if combat is not the main part of the game it’s still important to get controls and movement correct and good.

Hotkeys
What i do to make everything a bit easier for me is that i have my party 1 bound to a button and also move and attack bound so i can atleast click hotkeys instead of UI Buttons.

RTS Selection & Attack
I think this game would benefit from some standard drag select over troops and simple right click when having them selected to attack the target you right click like it works in most RTS games.

Other things like Cleric running away not healing your army when in combat and focusing on villagers that’s not soldiers which kills your group instead.

2 Likes
3

Yeah, I have my party set to a hotkey aswell, but dividing my units to several parties just to split up the Knights -> Healers is a bit too much :sweat_smile:

The RTS selections sounds like a great idea tbh! The Clerics running away might also be because of low spirit, but I agree, sometimes you need to kite, and micromanaging the knights to move and keeping the Cleric still just to get a few more heals in takes too much time.

4

Yeah it would be so much better and feel better to control them by drag select and stuff not sure why we can’t do that. They can still keep the current system but allow the RTS selection and order way also.

Defend Area
Having to defend an area is also very strange because the size of it and how it works enemy archers will stand outside melee range and fire arrows at your troops. It would be good if defend location allowed your hearthlings to move a certain range outside this area to fight and run back when getting to far away from the zone to run back and fight them or endless area outside to fight but always try to guard that zone when no attack has come yet.

Hinder movement
I also think that melee troops should have a chance to cripple fleeing enemies like some mmo’s does it like WoW. You can make those spiky quivers but i wouldn’t mind if melee weapons had like 25% chance to hinder movement of a fleeing enemy by maybe 20% speed. It could perhaps even be a perk they aquire at level 3-4 something maybe :slight_smile:

2 Likes
5

So true! I’ve been wondering if there should be a “Spiky Melee” weapon, or have the Knights learn some CC (Crowd Control)

As an example; Charge in WoW

1 Like
6

Oh yeah that be nice :slight_smile:
those kobold archers always annoys me when they run like chickens :smiley:
Maybe hitting them while they flee should increase damage also

1 Like
7

Yeah, because they let their “guard” down, getting the spikey arrows before the Archers come is essential IMO

1 Like
8

Yeah taking out the kobold archers fleeing takes longer than taking out enemy tank ^^

9

I have mentioned this a good while back, but that defend location, should not be a flag where the soilders stand around, but simply a zone that the player can drag out, just like the trappers area for example, or stockpiles.
Then only if an enemy enters that zone, the combatparty assigned to defend that zone, should react, no matter where they are on the map, and go straight there to defend the location.

The defend locationflag, could be changed to a guardpost thing? Where an assigned hearthling will stand there as a guard.

Even the patrolbehaviour could be changed to not circle stockpiles and farmingzones, but be inside a new patrolingzone? Then the player can drag out pathways, where the soilders need to patrol.

As mentioned elsewhere, i would like to have a new UI for the use of potions, with a timer and maybe an autofeature?

Combatrelated, i am not a huge fan of mixing the drag to select units into the game (But it would surely be an improvement) But rather see the AI of the hearthlings improved, so they understood that in certain situations, they needed to focus on what threat is biggest. For example, if the enemy they fight take to long to kill, check if the opponent have a healer? If yes, go target that healer! In any situation, any other teammember than the clerics, should check if they are inside the range of the cleric, if not? Go towards the healer!

Naming the combatparties! We had this option back in the past, but it is not there anymore?

Thank you for making this thread @SnorrLaxZ, it is surely needed! :heartpulse: :merry:

4 Likes
10

That’s a lot of good suggestions @Fornjotr !

1 Like
11

I too have strong (sadly mostly negative) opinions about the combat UX, as it stands today. Specific to your guard post/defend UX suggestion, I second this (along with defining patrol routes through way points… kind of like how you define a bus route in City: Skylines).

But perhaps my most important gripe with combat today is the fact that ranged units do not prioritize higher Y axis when determining where to path. If an archer CAN take a position on higher ground and still hit their target, they should always do so. Further, when defining a guard/defense zone, the zone should show as three-dimensional, so the player can know exactly what is and is not in range.

And a note about range – the defense zone should be a movement boundary, not an engagement boundary (but the UI should absolutely display them both discreetly) – that is to say, as long as the unit stays physically within the boundary, they should engage any hostiles within their range. That means archers can and should stand on the edge of the defined zone a fire upon anything they’re able to hit, even if that target is physically outside the boundary.

Perhaps the zone is to define movement boundary, and when you click on a military class, the UI shows a reach zone (in 3D).

If the zone was three-dimensional AND ranged units always preferred higher Y values over lower ones AND they were never allowed to physically leave their defense zones, then archers would properly leverage things like towers, castle walls, and so on, without requiring player intervention.

Also: defend/guard zones should be resize-able, and not require the player to first remove the zone to create a new one.

@sdee @max99x your thoughts?

2 Likes
12

Oh, and squads should intelligently hold defend positions – e.g. taking shifts for R&R so that the position is never left undefended.

1 Like
13

There is just this issue with the soilders having to stay in a defend location/zone. They have to leave it when they need to sleep or eat? And ussually they tend to not do it all at once… So most of the times, when Invaders alert pops up, there is one single footman or archer standing there, with no back up. If it is the enemy that has to step into the zone, it dont matter where the rest is? Eating, sleeping, talking, hauling even? they will rush there to intercept.

But i see the point with the archers and i agree that they should have something special to take account for height :slight_smile:

Maybe i am misunderstanding what you where writting?..

14

True. I think the first problem is that, as it stands today, they will stand there until they die unless the player intervenes. I honestly can’t remember if they fixed that problem yet or not, but, either way, I would still like to see more purposeful self-management of zones such that a minimum force is always active.

Right now squads don’t have a concept of a unit – they’re just a group of individuals tied together. So the game handles their needs like individuals, and not as a unit. Someone should be allowed to stay hungry/tired/in need of social time until they are relieved.

They don’t have an off-duty vs. on-duty state. If they’re off-duty, they should be allowed to path like a normal worker and ignore the defense zone. If someone in their unit is on-duty and sounds the alarm, they should immediately go back on duty and rush to participate, no matter if they’re currently tired or hungry.

1 Like
15

We appreciate all these combat suggestions, and I definitely feel your pain with the way the controls and UX and really, everything works at the moment. In an ideal universe, we’d like to do a complete overhaul! That said, We’re focused hard on bugs and performance right now, though, and unfortunately have no plans to update combat since I strongly suspect it’s like a ball of yarn–touch one combat AI thing, and soon you’ll be touching them all. :frowning:

3 Likes
16

Hmm… sad day. After having played through the game nearly end-to-end again after waiting to do so for a long time (I think it’s been a year or two since I tried it), I can honestly say combat now feels, by far, the most under-baked. To the point where, in the late game, I’ve started just pausing when a large orc + senior archer + cleric party spawns and manually destroy them with console commands, because the sub-par combat + the (IMHO) OP senior raid parties are game-breaking. I have a squad of six, all max level with good kit, 2 of each class, with turrets near my town, and they get crushed because of the combat AI problems. I can’t micro them fast enough, is what it comes down to. And I shouldn’t have to micro them at all, ideally.

4 Likes
17

I can honestly say combat now feels, by far, the most under-baked.

I know, and I’m really sorry. We haven’t touched it basically since mid-2016, when we added the archer, knight, and cleric.

4 Likes
18

I hope you guys gets to touch it sometime in the future to polish it into a great experience once there is time and money to :slight_smile:

2 Likes
19

Is it realistic to hope the team will be able to prioritize it at some point in 2018/2019? Or should we give up on that, accept it likely won’t happen, and look at ways to mod it? I’d prefer vanilla improvement over community mod, but if it’s the only route, it’d be good to know.

4 Likes
20

This is actually my next UI mod project, in which I plan to include not just potions but all usable items, like market stalls. If someone else wants to make it, go ahead, but if you want to wait, I’ll get there eventually. :stuck_out_tongue:

7 Likes