Unit Option Which Suicides Only When It Registers A Hit (Mines)

General_Zod

I agree this is terrible behavior for isSuicide units. I have issue in my Big World 3 map where if a territory with a stack of kamikaze is attacked the whole stack dies needlessly. Even if there are plenty of normal units to defend, and with zero player input on it.

Especially bad if the isSuicide unit does not have a defend value to begin with. Like mine.

The kamikaze are primarily used to dissuade allies from coming in too close to japan, too early. So they may not even want to use them as defenders at all. (like mine since they have no defense values)

This was on my list of issues to mention. But wasn't sure if it is a bug or a feature request.

I would suggest defender should get to decide whether to engage isSuicide units on defense. And then on an individual basis as well.

Hepps

@general_zod You can deal with this already by triggering the "isSuicide" out of the unit attributes after the players turn is done. then re-triggering it back to suicide before its combat moves.

General_Zod

@hepps True but it will mess up battle calculator. If I'm not mistaken.

Hepps

@hepps Well it depends on how you handle it. You could also trigger those unit to become "isInfrastructure" so then they would be ignored in combat altogether... thus not affecting the battle calc at all.

General_Zod

@hepps True, but what if jap player wants to calc something with kamikaze on offence. There's are negative side effects to triggering units battle related abilities on or off. As battle calc goes.

Hepps

@general_zod Yes. You would have to do it on your own turn... but I was just offering you an available solution currently available to you.

General_Zod

@hepps I hear, ya. I do appreciate the suggestions. They are good ideas. Unfortunately the side effects follow.

But I can live with the side effect more then the current to be honest.

However I still keep my fingers crossed for a fix.

Hepps

@general_zod Yah. that is why I had also said that this issue could also be handled with the "canHide" feature request we have on the list.... which involved allowing non-naval units to have the "canSubmerge" ability currently available to naval units. If these types of units had the ability to "hide" then they could avoid combat all together without having to trigger a change to their primary behaviors.

redrum

So if folks have potential recommended changes for isSuicide, it would probably be better to start a new thread given that this thread is about isSuicideOnHit and has already been implemented.

Cernel

I think this option would be much better if it would offer a numerical value at which the unit suicides, with a boolean for determining if this value is influenced by supports (and maybe splitting the options between attack and defence and between regular attack and AA ones).

The current behaviour would be a subset, where you set such value equal to the attack/defence value (so that it suicides only when it hits).

This way, the regular suicide option would become redundant too (and could be deprecated or refactored as a shortcut for generating such option with value equal to the dice sides), as it could be covered by the above option, setting the value equal to the dice sides.

Moreover, I understand this would fully cover this feature request, as well:
https://forums.triplea-game.org/topic/1579/suicide-munitions-unit-with-support

And I also understand it would allow supporting suicide units (for example, for representing ammunition consumption).

Practically, instead of having:

<attachment name="unitAttachment" attachTo="germanNavalMine" javaClass="games.strategy.triplea.attachments.UnitAttachment" type="unitType">
<option name="attack" value="0"/>
<option name="defense" value="0"/>
<option name="isSea" value="true"/>
<option name="isSub" value="true"/>
<option name="isAAforCombatOnly" value="true"/>
<option name="mayOverStackAA" value="true"/>
<option name="typeAA" value="navalmine"/>
<option name="targetsAA" value="Battleship:Cruiser:Destroyer:Submarine:Transport"/>
<option name="maxAAattacks" value="1"/>
<option name="maxRoundsAA" value="1"/> 
<option name="movement" value="0"/>
<option name="attackAA" value="2"/>
<option name="damageableAA" value="true"/>
<option name="canInvadeOnlyFrom" value="none"/>
<option name="isSuicideOnHit" value="true"/>
</attachment>

you would have:

<attachment name="unitAttachment" attachTo="germanNavalMine" javaClass="games.strategy.triplea.attachments.UnitAttachment" type="unitType">
<option name="attack" value="0"/>
<option name="defense" value="0"/>
<option name="isSea" value="true"/>
<option name="isSub" value="true"/>
<option name="isAAforCombatOnly" value="true"/>
<option name="mayOverStackAA" value="true"/>
<option name="typeAA" value="navalmine"/>
<option name="targetsAA" value="Battleship:Cruiser:Destroyer:Submarine:Transport"/>
<option name="maxAAattacks" value="1"/>
<option name="maxRoundsAA" value="1"/> 
<option name="movement" value="0"/>
<option name="attackAA" value="2"/>
<option name="damageableAA" value="true"/>
<option name="canInvadeOnlyFrom" value="none"/>
<option name="isSuicideOnRolling" value="2"/>
</attachment>