No doubt all of you have played other games such as Homeworld and C&C 3 with units stances. I feel they would be a nice feature to have in Starcraft 2 and since Blizzard is very apt at taking others peoples ideas and making them gold it is a case of anything they can do Blizz can do better. Stances are very useful because they are a way of altering the unit AI to make it act differently in the same situation. I think we can just stick with the standard 3 stances: Aggressive, defensive and passive. Aggressive: Units will automatically attack any units that come within sight range range ad will give chase to the units. This is good in base assaults because units will choose new targets as soon as the last one is dead but will require close supervision to prevent your units from chasing an enemy across the map into a death trap. Option 1--Units will have an unlimited lease and will chase units until they or their target is dead or you issue an order to it Option 2--Units will chase the unit for a long distance (1 screen perhaps) but any further they will return to their original location. Defensive: Units will attack any units that attack them, the units around them or a unit or building they have been set to guard. They will also attack on sight if set to patrol but they will not stray as far from the path as on aggressive stance. Th advantage of this is it will print your units from chasing a stray drone across the map ck into certain death at its base. A disadvantage is that if they are not set to patrolling they will require supervision to prevent them from letting enemies into your base. Option 1--Units will attack any units that come into firing range (as opposed to sight range in aggressive stance) Option 2--Units will only fire in retaliation to the enemy firing first Passive: Units will not fire in any circumstances whatsoever unless given an order by the player even if fired upon first. This is a good way of setting up an ambush. A dark Templar will be able to hide effectively because it wont alert enemy players of its location by killing their units. The advantage will be that you can keep your forces hidden until the enemy is in a good position to die. The disadvantage will be that the units will not fire back at any units that fire upon them so if left unattended they can possibly allow themselves to die. Option 1--attack order by the player is accepted and the unit will fire but will stay in passive mode and stop firing as soon as the target is dead Option 2--Upon being given an attack order by the player the unit will automatically switch to defensive or aggressive mode. Please leave any thoughts here and vote for the options you think are better. Please vote for only one option per stance
Haven't played it in so long Iforgot it had stances. Would you mind refreshing my memory _________________________________________________ Poll edited: added item for come up with your own idea
Aggressive: Pursue unit until either one is dead, or unit leaves LoS Defensive: Pursue until dead, out of LoS, or a certain distance from Starting point is reached Stand Ground: Unit stands ground Passive: Unit will only attack when ordered to to attack (Aggressive) or is attacked (Defensive)
I though about adding stand ground as well. The whole point of passive though is to keep your units form blowing your cover by shooting. Even if they cannot see the siege tank if it fires they know it is there. Same with a DT or Ghost
Stand ground is a separate thing I thought....Obviously, they'd have it. Passive would be god like for a siege tank ambush
Stand ground could be a stance or a command. C&C3 had 4 stances if I remember correctly. One of them was one where the unit would attack any enemies in its range but would not move unless given an order but I figured hold ground could just be a command that would add an additional layer to stances Use the stand ground to prevent passive units from retreating which is good for keeping idle workers fro,m being chased out of your base and for defensive mode to cause the unit to fire from its position Aggressive would work the same because aggressive only affects the unit chasing the unit
Stand ground was in the original Starcraft, as 'Hold Position.' I am 50/50 on this idea. I like more and easier control for your units, but I also like having to order everything and keep a close watch. So I will be happy no matter what Blizzard does.
Well, Ghosts don't shoot while cloaked unless ordered to. But for DT's and Siege Tanks your right, that would be excellent. As it is now, you would have to just constatnly click stop to keep em from attaking and that might not even work. Right now with siege tanks, the only way to pull off a trap is to keep em in tank mode and siege them when the time comes, but that won't even always work since tanks in tank mode still shoot. I'm liking this passive idea. As for the defensive/agressive I don't think it is necessary. To me, this is just a macro vs micro situation. Altering stances is a micro solution to the problem while selecting the units and tell them to back off is the macro solution. I think a good player should be able to keep a handle of his own units. Besides, in the UMS game evolves one of my main strategies to get an edge is to lure enemy units away from the main force and cut them to pieces, that and making bombs. Edit: I voted for Agressive 1 and Defense 1&2. The Defense 2 idea is better than passive mode to me since I can't really think of a reason why I would want my unit to stand and take hits without returning fire. If a ghost is detected and is attacked I want it to shoot back not just stand there and take it.
Well stances are more of a who to attack. Aggressive is everyone Defensive is only those attacking you Passive is nobody. It is a case of do you want your units chasing after and attacking every stray zergling. Well I was using existing games for example and that is how it is in those. The unit will allow itself to die. It annoys me too. Although in C&C 3 there was a use for having the unit not forme back in a few cases. One was the laser relay ability you get from venoms and beam cannons where you can relay a laser from across the map using a line of aircraft but it does not work when the unit is shooting
The stances A.I. modes seem to me that they overcomplicate things while accomplishing little. A passive "stance" A.I. would be easy to exploit. You can kill a unit easily with ranged units while suffering minimal damage yourself, because the target unit would keep wanting to return to its original position after only a short chase. You can keep abusing it by having ranged units standing at the boundary limit where the target unit would turn around and run back, then it's free target practice. You can just keep luring units with a single unit and kill them off one after another. Most things you can already accomplish manually with commands currently available anyway. I think all we really need is a non-attack command. Don't see the need to complicate things while dumbing down micro, especially in a flawed way.
i agree with needing an on/off button for attack and that should be fine. people need to learn to manage their units
@ Remy. Well it isn't the attacking player's fault if the defender does not control his units right. once an attack begins you should always assume control f your units manually. The stances are just to prevent them from doing something bad in the 2 seconds before that happens. Also have you played C&C 3 or Homeworld that have stances? If not you can't judge them really because in those two games stances had a large effect on micro and actually added another layer to micro because you have to micro the stances to be the most effective. During an attack some units work better on aggressive while others work better on defensive
No I haven't. But SC is not the kind of game that hands a big part of the micro or combat strategy to the A.I. Just because something was a great feature in one game doesn't necessarily mean it will be in another game. From what I understand, SC is more fast paced and hands-on action than most other RTS games. I think in the heat of battle, having to switch to different modes of A.I. would create far more situations where your unit would act stupidly, at least in SC. You can just use the hold position command. On top of everything else, the addition of a hold fire command would really be all we need in SC.
a "hold your fire" button would be useful, as for the rest i don't really have an opinion, though i certainly don't think there should be a chase certain distance then retreat mode.
