Solved & Confirmed - 0.9e-5 - Above ground battle lust

[wildmick]

i built up my dungeon pretty slowly and didn't invade above ground for quite a long time. My first 2 forays were small hit n runs. My third foray went as normal and after the evil meter reached the chicken icon i cancelled the rally flag and moved my view to the prison so i could feed the knights to the mother and get a few more knights in my ranks. I'm waiting and waiting and kept seeing the evil meter rise.. what the hell.. so i go above ground and check to see where all my minons are.. and they are rampaging across the country killing everything in sight instead of obeying the rally flag and returning below ground.. needless to say within about 5mins the humans came in force and obliterated me. (playing on normal)

[Xaos]

i built up my dungeon pretty slowly and didn't invade above ground for quite a long time. My first 2 forays were small hit n runs. My third foray went as normal and after the evil meter reached the chicken icon i cancelled the rally flag and moved my view to the prison so i could feed the knights to the mother and get a few more knights in my ranks. I'm waiting and waiting and kept seeing the evil meter rise.. what the hell.. so i go above ground and check to see where all my minons are.. and they are rampaging across the country killing everything in sight instead of obeying the rally flag and returning below ground.. needless to say within about 5mins the humans came in force and obliterated me. (playing on normal)

They will do this as long as there is something to attack in their sight range. I have noticed that say they are attacking a building, the building is completely wrecked, then along comes a rogue at the edge of their sight range. They will go after the rogue if he runs away. Then if they chase him in range of another building, they will attack the new building once the rogue is dead. Once they run out of stuff to attack, or they take too much damage, they will come back down. A force recall option would be nice for rally flags...

[Mello Tonin]

We had talked about this before and I think people were in favor of making it so the Rally Flag kept your minions rallied around it instead of how it works currently: place flag, minions assemble, then attack anything that moves and chase it for as far as it takes. The other problem will be that the response to battle range is set too far, so even if the Rally Flag has a radial limit for creature movement, if battle is nearby but past that limit creatures will go attack it anyways.

[Rasmus]

So I will make it so that the rally flag will be prioritized if it is more than X squares away.

Added to the list of Bugs/Issues & Crashes!

[Rasmus]

Solved with the next version!

I also fixed so that the creatures are walking around less when the rally flag is placed like seen here. The idea is that later on in the development they should auto stand with ranged creatures in the back and the tank creatures in the front, also being able to advance towards the enemy in squads so that it get less messy.


Here you can see how they are placed out. The lines shows available spots for the creatures to stand on (The lines are only there in this screenshot for debug purposes, they will not be visible in game):
[IMG]replace_photbucket_link/RallyFlagDebugLine.png[/IMG]

And here we see them standing on line without the lines:
[IMG]replace_photbucket_link/RallyFlag.png[/IMG]

[Rasmus]

Dwelvers Alpha 0.9f2 released, this bug is now solved but need confirmation (from players)

[Mello Tonin]

I haven't taken my troops above ground yet, but one thing about the creatures standing side by side at the rally flag that's weird is that this behavior happens with delivery flags too. When there is nothing going on, I find my creatures congregating around the blue flags in the same way.

[Rasmus]

Yeah but at the delivery flags they stand on each other which isn't all that good looking, there are still some congregations, but it is better now than before. In this case it is mostly about having some control of the creatures so that they don't walk all over the place.

[Mello Tonin]

What about just limiting them to not going more than 3 or 4 tiles outside of claimed space unless a Rally Flag is placed or there is combat initiated within that 3 - 4 tile boundary?

[Rasmus]

I could limit them within 3 or 4 tiles, but if we have a situation where there are 50+ creatures called to the rally flag it will not look very realistic if everyone is crammed up on such a small place. Then we have situations like corridors in that case 3 - 4 tiles is not enough without it looking to crammed and then we have to expand further out around the flag. It is also possible that there is no fights within the 3-4 tiles boundary because every creature is spread out fighting outside it.

How it works now is that the creatures called to the rally flag gets a position around the rally flag, and from that outermost position where a creature is placed there will be a boundary 5 tiles further out where the creatures are allowed to hunt down enemies. All creatures that is called by the rally flag will also see and attack all enemies within this boundary even if their viewing distance is not that good. This is so that not only the creatures with good eye sight goes to attack first, if one creature goes to attack I want all creatures to be able to do it! One more thing about this system is that the creature called by the rally flag will prioritize enemies closer to the rally flag (just as you recommended), this allows them to stay as a group as much as possible when fighting.

[Mello Tonin]

This is no longer an issue