Command & Conquer

They've had this since C&C3 haven't they?

AFAIK they could choose their targets intelligently but not switch targets when they already had one. Say a group of 5 soldiers and one tank approached your AI defense, if the tank got into range first the defense would focus on it until it was dead, then pick a soldier - if a soldier were in range first, the defense would then proceed with killing of the soldiers one by one (provided they were in range when the current target died).
I wouldn't add this as an option like the TW stances but rather as the default and only behavior type. If you give an object a target manually, it will attack it until it's dead; if an object is idling/auto-attacking, it will switch targets if a higher-priority target enters its weapon range.

yeah im pretty sure thats the case

I have NEVER understood this line of thinking in all honesty. What exactly do you mean by "major army"? Surely army control is simply a series of SPECIFIC commands, and not some abstract monolithic concept of passive decision making? Do you mean that you want to be able to box select a dozen or so units and just send them to a part of the map and then pat yourself on the back that you made a "high level" strategic decision? As if doing something like that is so difficult that you can't be bothered to take a second to click on a bunker and tell it to attack a tank instead of an infantry unit near-by?

Even at top level play, there is not so much going on in a game that it would preclude even a casual player from performing such an action. Quite frankly, it's all in your head that you need to make "1000 clicks a minute" in order to win a game. You seem to look at the game through some distorted reality that controlling your army is more important than....................... controlling your army. A word of advice: telling a bunker to attack a tank instead of an infantry unit is in fact, controlling your army.

You are describing a non-issue.

Moreover, you are only looking at it from ONE perspective. If you made some "high level arm-chair general" decision to attack your opponent with some units, wouldn't you want your opponent's bunker to be as stupid as possible such that your attack is more successful? Wouldn't you want to be able to out-smart your opponent's defenses by distracting them with a unit that they can't kill effectively? Or do you also have more important things to be doing than ... you know ... trying to win the game?

Though I at least have to give you credit for your designer to make the choice of target up to the player, rather than letting the game automatically do that for you.

Nah units only auto-attacked enemies within their range. But they never chose the targets themselfes where they could do most damage. Tanks attacked infantry, infantry tried to shot commando, gattlings shot tanks, bunkers shot infantry. That all was sensless. Due to this most players didnt even try to get a well combined army but just spammed one type of unit (like 10 quad cannon - because quad cannons were effective against all kind of enemy)

Another example: Airplanes (like Raptors were fast shot down by aa turrets - so i just used carpet bombers and other bombers that could take lots of damage - the turrets focused on them - and i could do my airstrike against the other vehicles)

There was never intelligent chose from units themselfes on targets. Also this should be just an option given to players hand like

Unit tankhunter
Attack:
- Airplanes / Choppers
- Tanks
- Infantry

Now player could set like this
- Airplanes/Choppers 2
- Tanks 1
- Infantry 3

If enemy army would come it attacks all in this row and not the infantry first.



"Moreover, you are only looking at it from ONE perspective. If you made some "high level arm-chair general" decision to attack your opponent with some units, wouldn't you want your opponent's bunker to be as stupid as possible such that your attack is more successful? Wouldn't you want to be able to out-smart your opponent's defenses by distracting them with a unit that they can't kill effectively? Or do you also have more important things to be doing than ... you know ... trying to win the game?"

In fact NO. This is no real challenge to kill enemies defense because the KI is just dumb. Where is the tactic here ? The whole tactic here is to use defense leaks and hope the enemy cant click fast enough to control his defense. Thats really stupid and makes me angry.

And especially singleplayer sucked most due this fact. I could take out high armored bunker with tanks just luring enemy rockets shoting from bunker on to one of my red guard soldiers running around and taking no damage. Now if you want tell me that THIS is fun discussion is over for me.

Singleplayer is not fun in general because the AI will never be as good as a human. My argument is purely from a multiplayer standpoint where in fact, the very essence of a strategy game is to do things better than your opponent. If your opponent is not paying attention to his defenses, and you are paying attention to how you attack his defenses, then you SHOULD GET AN ADVANTAGE FROM THAT. To suggest otherwise renders the entire point of a strategy game obsolete.

No point in playing if you can't build an advantage over your opponent, big or small.

I wouldn't go so far as to say this renders it impossible to achieve an advantage over someone not managing their defenses. Actually picking relevant targets in a high-impact situation requires a lot more than just selecting a target your gun is effective against, you have to take into account what priorities the troops have for your enemy etc. A commando and engineer would be of the same vulnerability type, but picking the correct one depends heavily on the situation, for example. You could also try to confuse a defense by cycling through unit types with your attackers, forcing it to switch constantly.
Anyways, having a unit behave purposely stupid is the epitome of fake difficulty. There is no difficulty in having a unit pick a better target over a clearly bad one, in fact since TW units are already meant to do this (as mentioned above, they are simply not allowed switching targets yet). Trying to forcibly increase the skill-barrier by creating artificial obstacles is a sure way to create a frustrating, demotivating niche game. There is really no need to min-max every single feature of the game.

Yeah of course you have to do things better than your enemy.

Attack the rocket troopers instead of red guards. Attack the commando instead of the red guards. Attack the Aurora Bomber after it throw its bomb instead of raptor.
Theres enough to handle at your own
BUT
If your whole fucking army focus one dumb soldier instead of enemy tanks it really sucks. I dont get the point why you have such a problem with this. It makes unit handling more easy.

Same goes for the thread i started once about airplanes. Airplanes shouldnt shot 8 missiles at once. They should shot 2 or 4 or 8 missles - players choice. its really dumb if airplanes shot 8 missiles on a simple solider ( 1 shot enough ) if there are lots of solidiers they could take out.

Also keep in your minds that there are not only C&C pros out there figuring out with 100 hours of gameplay to press the mouse button 200 clicks a minute to handle everything. tatics should win not simple fast mouse clicking.

Well actually....

When you lead a squad, yeah, it's definitely very specific.
But the higher you go the more detached you become from your troops and the more... abstract the commands become. Of course it depends on the situation and the commands are still specific enough, but if you compare the commands of a Platoon Leader and a Regiment Command and a Brigade Commander, it will, relatively, look much more abstract the higher you go.

However, you are absolutely right about the Gameplay aspects of this.

If we are talking about things that made single-player suck in Generals/ZH, then superweapon spam and the AI being extremely bad at beating defences were far bigger issues than what you described. The former was a freewin button once you had a decent economy and the latter removed all the threat the AI posed once your defences were set up. Combine the two and you have a very dull way to reliably beat the majority of both games.

You do realize I said C&C3 and not Gens right?

yeah i was thinking he'd miss understood aswel, im pretty sure your right with c&c3

This is completely arbitrary though. If the units/defenses are smart enough to differentiate between tanks/infantry, then why shouldn't they also be smart enough to distinguish between high value and low value targets such as raptors vs auroras?

YOU may think it's fine to leave that up to the player, but someone who is worse at playing than you are will say that they find it too hard, and want the game to do it automatically. Moreover, what if the counter system is such that raptors and auroras have totally different armor types? For example King Raptors are as immune to missile fire as infantry are. So if you don't want a bunker full of rocket infantry firing at a red guard instead of tanks, then you also don't want it firing at King Raptors instead of Auroras or Comanches etc. So why not automate that too?

Your desire for semi-automation is completely arbitrary. Meanwhile if we say we want units to be "dumb as rocks", then that's an end point of a spectrum, and not as arbitrary - it's a more natural design that puts control in the hands of the player.

Raptor vs. Aurora isn't a clear decision of weapon type. It can depend on a lot of factors, like viable targets for each and how important they are to you. Picking a priority target here is a matter of making a clever/tactical decision. Picking a priority target from a group of a heavy piece of armor and a regular soldier is a matter of not being a complete retard.

Come on, don't go around picking strawmen again. The classifications of tanks, infantry, aircraft etc. were clearly used as stand-ins for vulnerability classes, i.e. armor types. Your Raptor vs. Aurora/Comanche example is exactly what's been proposed.
On a sidenote, many games with jet-aircraft absolutely require auto-priorities precisely because aircraft move so fast you cannot reliably give an attack order. I admit that even my own 1337 skills often weren't enough to handle this in Gen1, either, without half my mobile forces picking up a move command or my static AA not being able to react in time unless the enemy has his jets fly in circles.

Thing is, they aren't dumb as rocks, not by a long shot. Units can pick targets freely when idle, they can move to pursue, pick their own path, you can even already order them to be not-quite-as-stupid with guard mode. The proper use of the later, I'm sure you know lots of example when guard mode is a very stupid thing to do, being a nice parallel to how automated behavior doesn't just take all work out of your hands.