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

Hepps

@prastle there is nothing "over" about it. If there is a better way to define a mine... please share it with me. If there is one already designed that functions reasonably good... point me in that direction... I will DL it and try it out.

prastle

@hepps I was just thinking that perhaps frostion's mortar/rocket = amo code could be reconfigured possibly from Tribes.

Hepps

@prastle Don't see how those would help in this situation. That is definitely good as a solution for a bombard capability and is a feature already included in GD in various ways. Explain to me how you would alter its behavior in an XML to perform as a mine?

Combaticus

Very new to this whole thing, but would there be a way to utilize anything that the battleship or sub uses?

Instead of a mine think more like a minefield. So when the containing territory is attacked it can roll for damage like a battleship would at the very beginning of a battle? Maybe have movement similar to an AA gun? And speaking of AA gun, it could just work like that but for ground units instead of air.

Or if you want it to be more like a unit, maybe it could work kinda like a sub works where there is a roll before the traditional combat and but it dies instead of submerging? In this way you could later have a minesweeper unit instead of a destroyer to counter it.

All this being said, I don't really know how to go about creating a new unit type, I just downloaded the code and haven't begun to look at it at all so I have no idea how feasible that would be, but I really like the idea!

Hepps

@combaticus Yah exactly what we are trying to achieve.

And to be clear... when I say a mine unit... what we are really saying is it is a group of mines or a mine field represented by a single unit on the map.

redrum

@hepps Do you have any examples of unit attachments that would use the new "isSuicideOnHit" attribute? Just want to make sure I can test something close to what you are looking to use.

prastle

@redrum Age of Tribes mortar shells would be an example but doesn't work for what he wants

Frostion

Is this thread still “alive”? Something defiantly needs to be done about the way suicide units work. At least in two of the maps I have made (or actually all my maps using suicide units) they don’t work as I would like them to. As @prastle mentions, the Mortars ammo units of Age of Tribes are among them:

    <attachment name="unitAttachment" attachTo="Mortar-Bombardment" javaClass="games.strategy.triplea.attachments.UnitAttachment" type="unitType">
        <option name="attack" value="2"/>
        <option name="defense" value="2"/>
        <option name="movement" value="1"/>
        <option name="isAir" value="true"/>
        <option name="isSuicide" value="true"/>
        <option name="isKamikaze" value="true"/>
        <option name="isStrategicBomber" value="true"/>
        <option name="bombingMaxDieSides" value="2"/>
    </attachment>

If the above bombard ammo unit is part of a defense force, and their territory is attacked by a sole enemy Mortar-Bombardment, then it triggers (as Defending Suicide and Munition Units Do Not Fire = false) and it dies. So bombing a territory with just one bombard ammo unit actually triggers ALL the defenders bombard ammo to go of needlessly... BOOM!

The problem is I cant avoid this. If “Defending Suicide and Munition Units Do Not Fire = true” then not even a full scale enemy attack with troops would trigger the suicide units, and of course suicide units should be usable as defense.

I would think that this is also an issue for all kamikaze planes, at least in Iron War. (Iron War’s Kamikaze planes have “Defending Suicide and Munition Units Do Not Fire = true”, and this bugs me.)

So maybe suicide units should not be able to be triggered enemy suicide unit, only by normal units?

I mean if a sole suicide unit attacks another suicide unit or a force containing a suicide unit, it would make sense that if the sole attacker misses the target and dies, the opposing suicide unit would not think of doing the same against the already dead enemy.

But if the attacking suicide unit had brought along normal troops, then it would make sense for the defending suicide unit to be a part of the defense, and thereby also being sure to die trying.

Hepps

@frostion This was intended to be handled with the "canHide" feature request.

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>