Target priority

[BloodyOrange]

Ive been having problems with this in WC3 as well, especialy in early game. If you have a lot of single target high damage towers (lvl 3 arrow, or however they are called in SC2 =P), they all attack the first creep to come, even though just 1 would be enough to kill it. This causes a lot of effectiveness to be lost (as well as lives eventualy).

My idea is to make it possible to chose target priority for each individual tower. Make the possibilities like First (original)/ Last (for the reason i said before)/ Strongest (=most hp left, useful for high damage towers)/ Weakest (for fast attacking towers to finish low hp creeps)/ Fastest (useful for slowing towers, so they change targets automaticaly)

Do you like this idea? Do you think its possible to implement this? Do you think it would change gameplay too much? Or something else to add? Feel free to comment

PS: this idea is not originaly mine, ive seen it in Vector TD (an online flash TD) and it worked there wery well.

[Chiquihuite]

The built-in target priority system is pretty basic, so our options for changing that behavior are somewhat limited.

My understanding of the Missile Mover system is that they can be set to re-target if the initial target dies while the Missile is in transit. Beams are another story.

On the other hand, there are already numerous factors in place to mitigate this. Early-game, you can space your arrow towers out without any loss in effectiveness (no slows that early). Late-game, towers will generally have different attack timings and will normally attack the nearest target. This means after their initial target dies, they'll spread out to different targets on their own.

Are there certain builds that suffer from this in particular?

[BloodyOrange]

Can't think of any particular builds now, the problem is mainly in the early game. Sometimes i think "hey, it would have been better if this tower was attacking this creep instead", but nothing really that big. In theory, if you had some tower with very high damage, that would leave creeps with like 1% hp left after one hit (again, usualy in early game), than 99% of the tower effectivity is lost.

I dont understand the advanced SC2 editor options too well, so I thought maybe if it is something easy to implement it would be nice. Its nothing essencial, you can still control the towers manualy to avoid some extreme situations =)

[Twilice]

It's called micro

[Chiquihuite]

It's called micro

That, and, it's our responsibility as developers to make sure players have the tools they need to succeed. If a tower's only good in the hands of someone who has 300apm, we probably need to buff it

[Karawasa]

There is a balance, as hinted above, between too unfriendly and too friendly. I don't believe something across the board would be good as then the game plays itself. However, if there are specific towers that require abnormal amounts of APM then we can look at them.

[Twilice]

Yes, yes of course. But I don't think arrow or cannon towers fit in to that criteria

[gwho]

Ive been having problems with this in WC3 as well, especialy in early game. If you have a lot of single target high damage towers (lvl 3 arrow, or however they are called in SC2 =P), they all attack the first creep to come, even though just 1 would be enough to kill it. This causes a lot of effectiveness to be lost (as well as lives eventualy).

My idea is to make it possible to chose target priority for each individual tower. Make the possibilities like First (original)/ Last (for the reason i said before)/ Strongest (=most hp left, useful for high damage towers)/ Weakest (for fast attacking towers to finish low hp creeps)/ Fastest (useful for slowing towers, so they change targets automaticaly)

Do you like this idea? Do you think its possible to implement this? Do you think it would change gameplay too much? Or something else to add? Feel free to comment

PS: this idea is not originaly mine, ive seen it in Vector TD (an online flash TD) and it worked there wery well.

i remember playing a defense game that had this sort of thing. "last/ first /healthiest/weakest/ground position". i was super impressed, and it made the game so much more fun b/c i could micro, but didn't have to "spam micro" every tower 24/7 in order to get a good deal of efficiency boosting.

flicking a mode on a tower over here, switching a mode in a tower over there encourages me to actually do micro, instead of going ok theres 10 towers that need continual micro for a slight bit of damage boost. not even Nada can do that. and it wont even be fun b/c it's spam clicking continuously. yeah. having micro is good, but it needs to be manageable, imo.

[WindStrike]

Celerity towers, often times to make them useful, you have to constantly target the farthest guys. If it were possible to cause them to always shoot the farthest target, that'd take off a lot of seemingly needless clicking.

[Karawasa]

Celerity towers, often times to make them useful, you have to constantly target the farthest guys. If it were possible to cause them to always shoot the farthest target, that'd take off a lot of seemingly needless clicking.

It would also take all of the skill out of them. I mean, you'd just place it and that would be it.

[gwho]

Celerity towers, often times to make them useful, you have to constantly target the farthest guys. If it were possible to cause them to always shoot the farthest target, that'd take off a lot of seemingly needless clicking.

agree. it's not skill, but actually impossible b/c it requires constant clicking. there are lots of other towers out there that also require constant clicking. and to do it for measly 4 towers would be pretty impossible if the clicking location isn't identical.

to have micro, and skill in TD, "switches" are what's needed. Micro should be managing tower priority modes and be possible.

micro that requires 24/7 clicking is bad and doesn't add much for the game.

There are lots of tower that dont have modes. you could 24/7 target-micro those as well.

24/7 micro should be optional for eeking out small bits more damage, not being ultra critical as in the case with celerity tower.

Even more problematic is that the celerity tower, even if you micro perfectly constnatly, isn't all that worth it. there are better towers that dont require that micro.

more towers could use the target location command. That's a great command b/c it requires adjustment, but not 24/7 clicking. microing a ton of tower targetting locations actually does become about micro. and it becomes possible too.

spamming =/= micro.

Something that ties down all your apm is not very conducive to encourage micro either.

switching triggers periodically for each tower makes microing fun.

[dg86]

Agree with the sentiments here. Things like constantly redirecting a mildew/fungus/mold tower's boomerang, or constantly redirecting a celerity/velocity tower's attack so it targets the furthest creep out, or whatever is just constant spam clicking. That's not good micro. Good micro = annihilation tower manual reloading. Good micro = choosing what tower to speed up or clone with a fountain or deceit tower, respectively.

Missing out on vital control elements because the creator decided to be sadistic=dislike. Yes, we know that we're supposed to put mildew/fungus/mold towers where they'll shoot into a line of creeps and only there. We know we're supposed to put celerity/velocity towers in a place that they'll most often shoot at the very edge of their range (aka the middle--hurr durr), and so on. This isn't rocket science.

The difference is whether or not the game allows us to execute what we want, or becomes anal about it.

[holepercent]

those who have been playing for a while probably got used to the constant micro some towers require. in the old LWFN build, there was plenty of micro to do. spawn the particle field, micro the celerity towers, douse when needed on tsunami towers and occasionally manually choosing towers for well tower.

that being said, there is a balance between too much clicking and optimally using towers by mirco to gain an advantage. good placement does help too.

towers that require micro deal better damage than regular towers to compensate when used optimally. without micro, it'll probably be the same or just slightly weaker as any other non-micro tower.

[dg86]

those who have been playing for a while probably got used to the constant micro some towers require. in the old LWFN build, there was plenty of micro to do. spawn the particle field, micro the celerity towers, douse when needed on tsunami towers and occasionally manually choosing towers for well tower.

that being said, there is a balance between too much clicking and optimally using towers by mirco to gain an advantage. good placement does help too.

towers that require micro deal better damage than regular towers to compensate when used optimally. without micro, it'll probably be the same or just slightly weaker as any other non-micro tower.

There's a difference between the occasional click (EG spawn particle field on ion/plasma) vs. "CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK SHOOT WHERE I WANT YOU TO DAMN IT CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK"

For instance, annihilation towers are a perfect example. Every so often, you'll want to manually reload them in the middle of a wave. No biggy. Good micro--easy to do, and you get a marginal benefit that might end up saving a few lives.

However, consider mildew/fungus/mold towers. Can you think of a single location where you can place them that they won't decide to fire diagonally at some point and therefore lose most of their AoE damage?

The former type of "micro" is just plain stupid. Also...why use a tsunami tower as your triple when you can use an annihilation which gives you mass AoE PER SHOT at 16 range instead of 10?

[Chiquihuite]

It's good to get feedback of this nature and it's absolutely been a major discussion point during the development process.

I've personally found myself shying away from towers like Ice and Mushroom because of their unwieldy nature. That doesn't mean they're inherently bad, but we're totally open to discussing the possibility of changes.

It's worth noting that "attack ground" functionality is not innate in SC2 and so its implementation can be kind of hacky. Smart targeting for something like celerity could also prove tricky. Not that either would stop us from doing it if we felt like it was a good idea

[dg86]

It's good to get feedback of this nature and it's absolutely been a major discussion point during the development process.

I've personally found myself shying away from towers like Ice and Mushroom because of their unwieldy nature. That doesn't mean they're inherently bad, but we're totally open to discussing the possibility of changes.

It's worth noting that "attack ground" functionality is not innate in SC2 and so its implementation can be kind of hacky. Smart targeting for something like celerity could also prove tricky. Not that either would stop us from doing it if we felt like it was a good idea

Oh right, attack ground is a war3 attribute...hmmm...

Well, all I have to say is that Karasawa proved he could do it with the Jet tree of towers, so the mushroom boomerang tower tree should prove to be exactly the same deal. "Shoot boomerang to yea point".

Ditto with ice tree. "Fire helixes to yea point".

[Karawasa]

Indeed, it would be possible to make Mildew/Ice function similar to Jet. I am leaning towards doing this.

[gwho]

towers that require micro deal better damage than regular towers to compensate when used optimally.

they definitely should. i dont know if this always the case though.

take celerity for example:

maximum damage is 22/14.5 * 280 / .066= 638 ish damage per second. and that's single target.

might as well just get some other tower that does with splash. that does way more total damage with zero micro. (like level 2 darkness tower, which has 833 dps / 2125 cost = .39 , compared to celerity's maximum possible 638 dps / 1500 = .42

ok? that's .39 compared to .42

Do you really want to sit there spamming (hopefully perfectly) in order to get .03 more dps per mineral?

and keep in mind there is a TON of room for imperfection within 22 range.

you can even argue that level 2 dark tower requires only 2 elements, while celerity tower requires 3 elements.

i am not doing that tedious $h17 for a measly .03 efficiency * (2125 - 1500) = 18.75 DPS

18.75 additional dps for perfect celerity tower micro. compared to light tower's zero micro dps.

The celerity tower needs a MASSIVE dps boost to justify its 24/7 micro, or it needs some sort of non-24/7 micro mechanism. "Range bracket priority" is a starting point for the latter.

without micro, it'll probably be the same or just slightly weaker as any other non-micro tower.

There is 24/7 constant spam micro in EVERY td of any RTS. you should be comparing to other sc2 TD's not something like bloon's where you can't individually target micro. But then again bloons has first/weak/strong/last targetting, so u can switch a bunch of things, rather than spam clicking.

[Chiquihuite]

The celerity tower needs a MASSIVE dps boost to justify its 24/7 micro, or it needs some sort of non-24/7 micro mechanism. "Range bracket priority" is a starting point for the latter.

I don't know if "range bracket" priority is something we can actually do.

What about making it really work like Impetus from DotA, where the damage is calculated at the time the projectile arrives? We could then either slow down the projectile, or offer a toggle for fast/slow projectiles so you can use the mode that best suits your situation (fast at a distance, slow up close).

[Karawasa]

Celerity works differently now. Mildew is already a powerhouse I hear. Ice will be getting some love soon.

[dg86]

Mildew being a powerhouse is a misnomer. It leaks element guardians and fire waves like crazy. If you go with water third element, jet absolutely sucks, and well is a support, not a damage tower. Unless you want to go with straight up water (which is also AoE, not good single target damage), fire will eat you all game.

I don't think the 50->40 damage nerf was also warranted. The weakness to mildew is that if you're getting a support tower (either well or forge), both of your triples are really lacking. Ephemeral is just absolute trash, and earthquake despite me trying it over and over, just really has too little range to work. If it had 10 or 12 range, it might be something worth building a strategy around.

[Karawasa]

Ephemeral is getting remade in the next version. The days of it being trash are numbered. I personally like Quake. As for Jet, I'll start a topic on it.