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I am currently having some issues with attack priority, mainly to do with Zergling vs Worker Lines and Anything vs Medivac.
Ex 1. Sending in a group (around 12) of Zerglings into a Protoss players mineral line. Overwhelming majority of the time I understand those zerglings are screwed, but I want them to kill the probes not all run at a zealot that is parked between two minerals. Shift queuing helps but watching a bunch of zerglings hump each other while all trying to kill probes one at a time is sad.
Ex 2. Medivacs, omg the frustration never ends. An example from the Altitude TL Open Strelok vs Select; Select made thors at one point in the game on Lost Temple and in one specific battle in the middle of the map Select had the superior force to Streloks MMM and would've won that battle if the thors targeted the Marauder/Marine instead of slowly trying to volley down the medivacs.
In example #1 I am not very frustrated, this can be solved with my own improvement by splitting and queuing the zerglings up in groups of 4-3, hard no doubt, but I can solve it.
In example #2 when terran has 3-4 medivacs parked above his bio I don't have a choice in what I'm attacking unless I spin the camera down which makes it really damn hard to try and pick out the units. As a zerg player this makes muta control frustrating against MMM and if the terran has thors it makes it even more frustrating as it effectively adds a medivac worth of HP onto the thor/marines. If I try to focus fire with mutas thors trash them, if I don't do anything they spread their damage out without really killing much.
Edit: Numbers in this link are probably wrong, sorry, I just used it to check on the worker priorities which agree with what I've seen in gameplay ie. mining workers are at the bottom of the chain in most cases.
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=122736
^ That topic has a list of all attack priorities, big thanks to DubPoker for working that out.
What are your thoughts on attack priorities? Should they be reworked completely? Is it no problem for you? Or should there be some tweaks?
My current opinion is that in some situations I’m fighting the game not the other player which makes certain fights frustrating but then again this goes both ways. I'm currently in the mind set that there should be some major tweaks.
NOTE: I understand the repairing SCV problem but that has been discussed to death so please don't bring that up in this topic unless it’s to back up your opinion. I’m trying to make a thread to discuss the general concept of attack priorities with examples to back up your opinions not to focus on specific examples your entire post.
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I can agree with the "major tweaks" school of thought.
If they can't make the priorities something I would do anyway, then they need to get rid of it completely.
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I think in general, bigger, less massable units should have lower priorities because you can always manually focus the bigger units if you want to...
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On September 19 2010 07:40 Saracen wrote:
I think in general, bigger, less massable units should have lower priorities because you can always manually focus the bigger units if you want to... This
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Situation 1 is crucial to balance imo.
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Actually I like the current attack priority system, because I think that it highlights the player's ability to pull off good micro, and define the difference between average and great players; at the same time this attack priority as it is now doesn't punish lower level players.
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The only thing I want changed is Medivac priority, it's seriously annoying. It's more effective than a PDD at screwing Thors over, I have raged quite a few times over it and actually lost a game today because of it. Or, because I forgot I had to micro it rather. I guess you just have to remember how the targeting AI works and adjust your micro...
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According to the spread sheet all units have exactly the same priority. With buildings having less.
This isn't conducive with in game behaviour though so I don't know why you are referring to what are either irrelevant or incorrect figures.
With situation #1 that works both ways, if you want workers to be higher priority you will see zerg players against terran complaining that they can use SCVs to distract lings from marines, or similar.
#2 is a problem with thors, not target priority in general, thors will always shoot missiles over using their main guns, it doesn't matter what kind of air unit it is.
Any units with spilt weapon systems should be able to toggle between weapon type priorities and that would completely override that problem.
Do you have any hard evidence or examples of what the attack priorities and parameters actually are?
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On September 19 2010 08:05 Kazang wrote:
According to the spread sheet all units have exactly the same priority. With buildings having less.
This isn't conducive with in game behaviour though so I don't know why you are referring to what are either irrelevant or incorrect figures.
With situation #1 that works both ways, if you want workers to be higher priority you will see zerg players against terran complaining that they can use SCVs to distract lings from marines, or similar.
#2 is a problem with thors, not target priority in general, thors will always shoot missiles over using their main guns, it doesn't matter what kind of air unit it is.
Any units with spilt weapon systems should be able to toggle between weapon type priorities and that would completely override that problem.
Do you have any hard evidence or examples of what the attack priorities and parameters actually are?
Sorry, I just used that to check mining worker priorities which agree with what i've seen in gameplay ie. they are targeted as the priority until something attacks and then their priority is dropped. I edited the OP to note that.
I'm pretty sure many players use attacking workers to take hits already. And after tests in the unit tester attacking workers have the same priority as attacking units, however since they are melee they will usually be targeted first because when picking a target to attack first units seem to use the closest target possible which is logical
#2 also works on anything that shoots up as long as the medivac is healing.
Unit Tester
3 Marines 2 Medivacs > 4 Mutas
no upgrades
Also if medivacs are parked over thors the mutalisks will kill the medivacs first
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Personally, I think targeting AI should be able to be toggled. Simply have a button which when on one setting, will target the first unit it see's, and the second setting, will be the current "smart" AI attacking.
It would fix all the problems, and let's say you were a zerg - enable you to turn off smart AI, run into the mineral line taking out all the probes, then switch back to normal...
or in the case of repairing SCV's - switch off smart AI, they will attack the first thing they see (SCV's repairing) - then continue on through to the unit behind.
Fairly simply to implement, but fixes the majority of problems.
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The priority should be:
1) closest unit within reasonable range. Worker OR attack unit (or medivac only if it's closest)
2) building
If I actually wanted to attack a planetary fortress I could just click on it??
And that also fixes ling in the worker line micro. It's so annoying that they run after 1 zealot on the other side of the probe line when you just want to kill probes.
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Not quite. The priority works something like this.
Ground or air units that can only attack on a single plane will shoot closest hostile target first.
Any ground unit that can shoot both ground and air will shoot the air target over the ground target given equal distances, otherwise it is closest unit first.
Any air unit that can hit both ground and air will hit air first given equal distances, other wise it will shoot closest target first.
With mutas this seems like it will target medivacs first because they are medivacs but really it is just becasue the medivac will nearly always be closer to the mutas than the marines.
Try it in the unit tester and have the medivacs back behind the marines, the mutas will shoot the marines first.
A second check is done that takes into account the state of aggression of a target, they will always be attacked over passive ones. Example; in a zergling vs probes and a zealot fight the zerglings will attack the closest aggressive unit, unless the probes are told to attack this will always be the zealot, if the probes are told to attack they become aggressive then priority for the zerglings is still closest target first and now this will most likely be the probes.
The same situation with SCVs repairing a thor, they are in passive mode while repairing, so have reduced priority over the hostile thor unit they are repairing. Otherwise any attacking units go by closest hostile target first rules.
The problems are repairing SCVs not being considered hostile, which is evident in the above example and with planetary fortresses, and thors not using their main weapons in favour of air targets.
I believe the problem with the thor is that the "closest target" is determined as a percentage of it's max range, so air target at 7 will be attacked over a ground target at 5 becasue in terms of percentage they are at near equal distance, in which case the thor defaults to shoot any hostile air.
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On September 19 2010 08:43 Klive5ive wrote:
The priority should be:
1) closest unit within reasonable range. Worker OR attack unit (or medivac only if it's closest)
2) building
If I actually wanted to attack a planetary fortress I could just click on it??
And that also fixes ling in the worker line micro. It's so annoying that they run after 1 zealot on the other side of the probe line when you just want to kill probes.
I think the medivac should have a lower priority than normal units because if I want to focus fire it I can click it pretty easily.
If you use "magic box" mutas and stop them right over a thor that has medivacs over it the mutas will kill the medivac first. This can be overcome by targeting the thors individually but with medivacs + your own mutas it can be near impossible to target the thors. This isn't that big of a deal by itself but it becomes quite annoying vs Marine/Medivac/Thor combinations.
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It should just be set to attack closest unit, if you want to attack something else you do it manually...
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It is set to attack the closest unit......
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On September 19 2010 09:00 Santiago4ever wrote:
It should just be set to attack closest unit, if you want to attack something else you do it manually...
totally agree dont understand why it isnt this way
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On September 19 2010 08:57 Kazang wrote:
Not quite. The priority works something like this.
Ground or air units that can only attack on a single plane will shoot closest hostile target first.
Any ground unit that can shoot both ground and air will shoot the air target over the ground target given equal distances, otherwise it is closest unit first.
Any air unit that can hit both ground and air will hit air first given equal distances, other wise it will shoot closest target first.
With mutas this seems like it will target medivacs first because they are medivacs but really it is just becasue the medivac will nearly always be closer to the mutas than the marines.
Try it in the unit tester and have the medivacs back behind the marines, the mutas will shoot the marines first.
A second check is done that takes into account the state of aggression of a target, they will always be attacked over passive ones. Example; in a zergling vs probes and a zealot fight the zerglings will attack the closest aggressive unit, unless the probes are told to attack this will always be the zealot, if the probes are told to attack they become aggressive then priority for the zerglings is still closest target first and now this will most likely be the probes.
The same situation with SCVs repairing a thor, they are in passive mode while repairing, so have reduced priority over the hostile thor unit they are repairing. Otherwise any attacking units go by closest hostile target first rules.
The problems are repairing SCVs not being considered hostile, which is evident in the above example and with planetary fortresses, and thors not using their main weapons in favour of air targets.
I believe the problem with the thor is that the "closest target" is determined as a percentage of it's max range, so air target at 7 will be attacked over a ground target at 5 becasue in terms of percentage they are at near equal distance, in which case the thor defaults to shoot any hostile air.
Thanks for clearing the priorities up, just checked with hydras/mutas and you're right with the medivacs.
And I'm quite sure you're right with the thors too, in medivac + marauder vs thor the thor will prioritize the marauders first but if the medivac is just slightly behind the marauders or closer the thor switches to its air attack.
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On September 19 2010 09:02 Gont wrote:Show nested quote +On September 19 2010 09:00 Santiago4ever wrote:
It should just be set to attack closest unit, if you want to attack something else you do it manually... totally agree dont understand why it isnt this way
Kazang has it right, I've been fiddling around in the unit tester double checking. The problems that I'm experiencing are what he describes as workers being designated as passive and air units (mutas) shooting the other air units(medivacs) that are beside them instead of the ground units (thor/marine) right under them.
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EPT
