isSuicideOnHit - Resolved -

Frostion

@general_zod I agree it would be good if you would be prompted to select the number of units you want to suicide, defensively, for something like kamikaze. Anyways, this is a feature request.

Would it not be better if isSuicide units could have an XML option to always attack and/or defend one at a time, up until the point where the last enemy unit is dead, where then all isSuicides would stop killing themselves in their efforts to kill enemies that are no longer there?

Anyway, that would make much more sense with kamikaze suicide planes, and it would also be very nice for Age of Tribes if the ammo units (mortar shells and rockets) would stop depleting themselves (blowing themselves up) just because a single enemy enters their territory

Maybe something like:

    <property name="Defending Suicide and Munition Units Strike One At A Time" value="true" editable="false">
        <boolean/>
    </property>
    <property name="Attacking Suicide and Munition Units Strike One At A Time" value="true" editable="false">
        <boolean/>
    </property>

redrum

@frostion Interesting idea. Though I do wonder if it wouldn't just be better to make that always be the case rather than adding a property. At least on defense. On attack, I don't really think it matters that much since for regular suicide units you should know how many to attack and suicideOnHit units only potentially the final battle round of rolls matter. Given that though might just be better to move towards that behavior across the board if there is a strong consensus.

General_Zod

@redrum @Frostion

I don't know if this particular method makes sense from a battle sequence viewpoint. Unless I'm misunderstanding it.

Suicide units usually roll at the top of the order in a battle sequence. If they roll one at a time, the sequence would become lengthy. I don't know if dice/LL will influence the order either.

That being said I think they should not be lemmings on defense either.

On a tangent thought. Personally I think suicide units, first strike units, and subs should have an option to use dice in a LL game. This would allow them to maintain their threat level edge as a special unit since their hits are lethal with no return fire (if setup right).

Cernel

@redrum I think that if in attack it works that you choose how much you send and they all die, what it would be consistent the most is that in defence you choose how much you use and they all die. The rest should be removed from the battle, and captured if the territory is overtaken (there is the option of setting destroyed upon capture).
So, for the regular suicide, I would rather have an additional property to decide if you can choose how much to suicide or have to use all (default have to use all), when defending.

What @Frostion says would rather fit better as a different unit option.
Personally, a thing that I always considered is "ammunition consumption", rather than the kamikaze case, as being much more important (actually, ammunition consumption, in WW2, was more important a cost than producing the artilleries themselves, and even more so in WW1, that was pretty much mostly about keeping producing artillery shells and sending fodder to die). So for that (as @Frostion is mentioning shells, but we could talk about arrows too) I would actually suggest this behaviour:
The unit sacrifices itself only if it rolls 1 or more dice (no matter at what strength, comprising strength 0) and only if there is something it could hit.
coupled with:
allowing suicide units to receive support (currently cannot).

That way, you could represent ammunition consumption by having "shell" units and "artillery" units, the "shell" having the above behaviour and dice rolls = 0 and the "artillery" giving (via support) 1 bonus roll to 1 "shell" unit.
That way, you could use only the "shell" that get the support (as 0 dice rolls units are never sacrificed) but only until there is something to use them for. Like you would roll for all the "shell" units that can roll, put the dice results randomly in list left to right, but use (and sacrifice) only those up to max possible casualties, ignoring the rolls on the right of the one that killed the last eligible enemy unit.

For example, you have 3 infantry and 10 shells that roll at 3, and have these rolls:
1,5,6,2,3,4,1,1,6,5
in this case, all the 3 infantry are killed, and the last is killed by the unit that rolled the "3"', so 5 shells units are sacrificed (the ones that rolled 1,5,6,2,3), while 5 shells units are considered not having actually fired off.
Practically, this would be the same as progressively rolling all those dice from left to right until all possible targets are taken as casualties, then stop rolling.
On top of the above, you could say that those shells have 0 dice rolls, and artillery gives 1 dice roll to 1 shell, so it would go the same way only as long as you have 10 or more artillery (and actually would need only 5 artillery, for the first 5 shells to fire).
This would be great to represent ammunition consumption (and I guess @Frostion ,would adopt it at least for the mortars of Age of Tribes) and good for kamikaze too.

Frostion

@General_Zod @redrum @Cernel
The solution/two properties I am suggesting should not be noticed in any way by the player. No extra clicking, extra steps or new choices to be made by the isSuicide units owner or victims of the isSuicide units compared to now. Technically the only difference would be how the engine did the triggering of the isSuicides during their one and only activation in start of battle round 1.

I am not talking about a system where the victim player of a long line of isSuicide units, that attack one at a time, had to pick a casualty every time there is a hit. The engine should of course, before the “Suicide and Munitions units Attack” battle step, be made to determine the total number of potential casualties/HP that the isSuicide attackers are up against and must kill before the isSuicide units stop rolling their attacks in their effort to kill off ALL enemies. When/if this happens, some units do not have to kill themselves and may survive the battle.

Let me try to explain:
Right now the battle step “Suicide and Munitions units Attack” rolls one single time for all the involved isSuicide units, lining their dice results up hits and misses. Like if two kamikaze planes attacked a single ship, Kamikaze plane 1 would maybe roll a hit and kill the ship, but Kamikaze plane 2 would still roll and die in vain in the process:

The “Attacking Suicide and Munition Units Strike One At A Time” “true” property I listed above could prevent Kamikaze plane 2 from triggering and let it return home if otherwise possible (as ALL enemies are dead and Kamikaze plane 2 did not roll ).

In my proposal, only if the first Kamikaze misses (and ALL enemies are NOT dead) plane 2 would roll and try to kill. If plain 2 also misses and if the attacker had brought along a ship also, then the two ships would now be in battle as normal.

I think this system would work well with ammo units also.

Yes, it would be strange to have like 10 ammo units attack and then maybe 5 be alive in the enemy territory after battle. But this is why there is also the “Attacking Suicide and Munition Units Strike One At A Time” “false” option, that would make the battle take place just as now, where all the isSuicide die when attacking because they all rolle at once and not one at a time.

“Defending Suicide and Munition Units Strike One At A Time” “true” would of course prevent all the ammo from triggering just because a single enemy unit moves into the defender's territory. This property true would make the ammo trigger one at a time up until the point where the ammo has potentially killed units up to the number that matches the attackers invading units/HP. The rest of the ammo (or kamikaze planes for that matter) would live to fight another day. Yay!

I don’t know if I have missed some aspects here?

redrum

@frostion I see what you are getting at though I'm fairly hesitant to create a bunch of properties that allow lots of different behaviors for suicide units and even if we did want more flexibility then I start to think different unit properties might be better than global properties so you could have different functionality for say kamikaze planes vs ammo units on the same map.

Here are a few additional things you probably need to consider in the 'strike one at a time' situation:

How does it work with LL?
How is order of suicide units rolls determined if there are different types of suicide units (attacking with say kamikaze and ammo units in the same battle)? Weakest rolls first? Strongest rolls first? Tie breaker? Essentially, you need a sense of ordering of the suicide units.
Need to consider 'isSuicide' vs 'isSuicideOnHit' and whether they both would use the property as well as ordering.

As you can probably see from these questions, this gets a bit complex fairly quickly which is probably the primary reason it works as it does currently.