Ability 'guides' weapon shots | raider's charge ability

[mynth]

I'm sure that more seasoned players, know that you can for instance use the helicopters stun ability to guide or at least increase the chances to have a weapon's shot go behind creep lines and hit an enemy tank, that the stun ability 'marked'.
However with the raider's charge ability this little 'bug' creates too much of an advantage early game imo, due to the abilities low cd. It kinda makes it impossible to have those interesting early game fights, using creeps as your protection, when you play with a heli against a raider, because the raider will most likely than not hit you multiple times even when you're behind creeps.

Any suggestions, on how to balance this or remove the bug all together?

[ssl]

I'm sure that more seasoned players, know that you can for instance use the helicopters stun ability to guide or at least increase the chances to have a weapon's shot go behind creep lines and hit an enemy tank, that the stun ability 'marked'.

WHAT? Can anyone confirm this?

[LIoOoOoIL]

was wonderd by my own.. never heard or felt about this szenario.

[eSVau]

AFAIK weapons locks target ahead of their cooldown. So if someone take cover inside of creep he will be hit for sure, at least thats my observersion playing high cooldown weapons.

[ssl]

That is VERY interesing! I always noted about bugs with the weapons systems, for example if you stay next to a tower to attack it, every now and then a single weapon will not fire a single shot in a series.
But I guess we can't change this as it is the native pheonixfire ability of warcraft.

[UnifiedDoom]

i was always suspicious that something like this might be true, especially after playing many games against long range. It's good to see some confirmation.

[unpredictable_m]

AFAIK weapons locks target ahead of their cooldown. So if someone take cover inside of creep he will be hit for sure, at least thats my observersion playing high cooldown weapons.

Are you sure about this? I was wondering how this algorithm is implemented and it would be really helpful to know.
I thought that the determination of which unit to hit is done after the the cooldown of each weapon has passed.

But now you mentioned that the determination of which unit to hit is done at the beginning of the cooldown and locked to it. So let me ask if my following scenario is true or false?
tank A with 3 items -> 1 porter + 2 torpedos
tank B with 1 item -> 1 troops

Assume that the two tanks have nothing else to hit in range and the distance between them is 1500. A ports near B(lets say distance between A and B is 1000 now). B as soon as he saw A porting close to him, it activates troops with a delay of 0.5 sec.
The torpedos will hit B?(since the target is locked during the 0.5 delay)
or the torpedos will hit B at the same probability as the other creeps also?

[ssl]

AFAIK weapons locks target ahead of their cooldown. So if someone take cover inside of creep he will be hit for sure, at least thats my observersion playing high cooldown weapons.

Are you sure about this? I was wondering how this algorithm is implemented and it would be really helpful to know.
I thought that the determination of which unit to hit is done after the the cooldown of each weapon has passed.

But now you mentioned that the determination of which unit to hit is done at the beginning of the cooldown and locked to it. So let me ask if my following scenario is true or false?
tank A with 3 items -> 1 porter + 2 torpedos
tank B with 1 item -> 1 troops

Assume that the two tanks have nothing else to hit in range and the distance between them is 1500. A ports near B(lets say distance between A and B is 1000 now). B as soon as he saw A porting close to him, it activates troops with a delay of 0.5 sec.
The torpedos will hit B?(since the target is locked during the 0.5 delay)
or the torpedos will hit B at the same probability as the other creeps also?

That's a good scenario for you to test and find out When done, please tell us ^^

[mynth]

AFAIK weapons locks target ahead of their cooldown. So if someone take cover inside of creep he will be hit for sure, at least thats my observersion playing high cooldown weapons.

Yes this is true also but its a separate issue, if you want to call it that.

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Here's a small clip I uploaded to YouTube... what do u think?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSHJPYLzfVU

[Bob666]

I was just looking through the forum again since some time. So this thread is quite old, but maybe someone is still interested.

Once I did a little experiment and placed two units with different maximum hp next to each other and had them attacked by phoenix fire. It seemed like both of their hp percentage was going down about at the same speed, though one of them had more hp.

I did not investigate any further. However, if it is true, then the chance of a target to be hit should be dependent on either maximum hp, hp ratio, or current hp. I think low hp targets are hit often enough to dismiss ratio and current hp, so it should be about the maximum hp only. Now this would explain tanks to be hit more often than creeps, not just in a specific situation, but always.

One thing I am confused about then, is that some early version of shield implemented into battle tanks did not take almost every shot on it, though the hp were extremely high.

And there's something else you should know about how phoenix fire works: It is meant to deal damage over time with just a small amount of initial damage, so it does only target units, which do not already have a phoenix fire buff. In battle tanks / battle ships etc the damage over time duration is just set to 0.01 (because 0 means infinite duration). This probably has no effect, since it should be smaller than the frame size with which the warcraft engine works. But anyways, depending on how warcraft works, it could also be possible that this 0.01 seconds still divert some projectiles.

Anyways, I am pretty sure phoenix fire doesn't check for stun or anything like that to increase the "target value".

So of course this is just an idea, but maybe it helps somebody understanding phoenix fire.

[UnifiedDoom]

But anyways, depending on how warcraft works, it could also be possible that this 0.01 seconds still divert some projectiles.

Hmm this is an interesting observation. Perhaps it could be shown that 3 weapons that fire at the exact same time (say 3 sync'd basic magics, a tank must die beforehand before identical weapons become perfectly sync'd) between 3 different targets. Whether the weapons will always hit each target exactly one time each, or whether the distribution of targets getting hit is random like 2 on one target and 0 on another, should be an interesting test.

This seems especially true with the likes of plasma torpedoes against which people often end up taking 2-3 hits at the same time from sync'd weapons.

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On another issue entirely, I think the reason people believe that static charge increases likelihood of being hit is often due to creep fire (particularly from the marines with their invisible projectile) that was often unnoticeable before the implementation of this ability.

[ssl]

Thanks for the information there Bob.
Sometimes when having low-cooldown weapons like flamer and standing next to an enemy tower, I can see there are quite some projectiles missing in the stream. This should be easily reproducable! I have the impression that when I start moving, there are less projectiles missing.

Would it be possible to re-implement the Phoenix Fire ability in own code? Then we could completly ignore all the trade-offs and bugs of the default implementation...

[Bob666]

First of all, I don't think that it affects multi-shot weapons in any kind, since the buff at the target just appears when the projectile hits it.

The reason for multiple energy torpedoes hitting the same target is probably a different one, too. Especially if it is true, that the target lock on happens before the cooldown is started. Then you try to escape into a bunch of creeps, but the weapon has already locked on.

A whole different thing is, that your weapons fire quite often, and nobody cares if it hits a creep. So the only situations remaining in your mind are those in which you actually got hit by multiple projectiles. This could distort the perception over the real probability.


Now about the low cooldown weapons attacking towers: Yes, that's what I noticed, too. And I also believe that it changes when you are moving. One possible explaination for this: If you stand just at the right position, one projectile will hit the target while another target is started at that same moment... or not, if it sees that the buff is on the target. Because no cooldown matches the exact frame rate, this should only happen periodically, like once a second. If you move though, you change your distance and it does not happen anymore. Or if it does, it only affects a single projectile, since the distance travelled will be different for the next one.

Rewriting it on own code: It takes up quite a lot of performance for two reasons. First, you cannot move effects in warcraft. this is solved by using a dummy unit with no model, attaching the effect and moving that unit. However, units seem to be implemented in a way, that low counts are assumed. So the warcraft code executed in the background adds to the performance cost. Secondly JASS is interpreted by warcraft, meaning that there is warcraft code running, and reading your code, and then translating it into machine code. However, the translation is not done before executing the map / code, it is just done when the code is executed. This means that JASS code is way slower than the actual warcraft 3 code (I think its a factor of about 20 or maybe 100, did some tests at some point). So basically yes, it is possible, but will lag if there are too many projectiles. There's a link to my supreme commander map in the signature, it uses only custom projectiles, works okay, but I don't think that it would be suitable for BT.
Some special weapons like the architects splash cannon however are already implemented in such way. Using it for everything would just put too many restrictions on the count.

[Wupti]

hi guys

Interesting topic u got here first to comment on the original post by mynth i believe the reason you think charge often activates when you hide in creeps IS because you hide in creeps. We all know that a creep target the first unit within it's range, aslong as the unit stays within that range. However one of the unit "artellery" (balista like) has splash damage with a relatively decent range. Normally you dont notice this dmg because it's like 10-20 hp and you regenerate that amount fast, but with a charge at you it will still go boom - because you take dmg. To make a short sum up, even though the artellery unit shots at 1 of your units in front of you it will still deal you damage if you are too close to that unit and affect the charge to blast off.

About the other topic i don't think it is a problem. Btanks has a lot of minor "Flawes" that can change the outcome of a battle if you know how to use it. But nothing i think does a huge impact at the game or should be changed. I don't think of them as flawes but as elements experienced players can try to practice to get an egde of people where it is yet undiscovered.

Here's some "flawes" I looked at

- port to a beacon for free (see other thread where it's explained nicely)
- stack mines
- healing at cp
- gain speed at mountain texture
- widen skill range
- pimping a tower
- take advantage of the different travel speed for weapons (in air after shot)

these are the flawes i could just think of right now.

[Wupti]

another reason could be because of the e skill is activated. so many people doesn't understand that skill fully.