Targets: Bad habit or necessary gameplay?

Should infantry targets exist?
Yes. The only way to make some people do things is to spam them with targets, they refuse to listen to any other form of command.
Yet to the question:
Should mass targets exist?
Well, that's a yes from me too. It is by no means ideal now for com or inf, I think the best solution I've seen so far would be listening posts. A real way to regulate wall hax to cost and territory, sounds good to me.

 

Thats a good point, some kind of listening post thing would give a team an advantage in their own territory but not in contested areas. I think thats a good thing, as stuff tends not to be properly defended anyway because its boring.

 

Another thing I like about having commander wall hax is that it makes hackers less prone to use wall hacks. I hate not having them when I have a bad commander but I love them when I have good commanders and this game should be made for people who know how to play.

 

Its not unfair cos both comms can do it. If you take advantage of it fair game. Keep it.

 

It's not so much a question of unfair. Comm A click and Drag Targeting is an unnecessary manual feature, like a mini-game. To put things into perspective, it's like playing Pong so that your team has increased attack damage.

It makes some features redundant, and ruins infantry combat. Games become a relatively straightforward question of shooting everything in front of you. Flanking, ambushing are all pointless because every few seconds the comm can "scan" an area that size.

In the hands of comms of equal competence, it makes gameplay between players too straightforward. In the case a comm has no idea how to use it, the team will lose horribly. Of course, if you do have such a comm, you will be liable to lose no matter what.

But the result of this is that anything, like "recon" is pointless, and so therefore the misnomered Scout has no use at all.

 

Personally I feel that having each player be able to receive 1 attack order is best. The way it is now is wallhaxish and limiting the comm to just 1 target is to limiting and might as well be removed altogether.

Letting each player be able to receive 1 attack order would make Comm'ing alot more RTS like because that's how most RTS are.

 

I like this idea but I think that each persons target should only be seen by his squad members. That would make squad work more valuable and stop the teams spam of spotting or targeting in 64 man servers especially...

Also I would then suggest having it be set to a key instead of thru the f menu.. Some people have it binded like how I have the spotted command binded to my mouse wheel button. But if they could add it to the options to make it easier to bind would be cool.

And finally I would like the commander to be able to target one thing at a time BUT not have it interrupt the current targets given by the squad members.. Like when I give a target as a squad leader it gets rid of the comms current targets and when he gives them they get rid of mine.

 

Cameras and radars are somewhat underused. I believe this is a direct result of over-reliance on targets. I believe targets are somewhat necessary to gameplay and should only be replaced by an alternative (such as listening posts) and not removed entirely. I am also somewhat confused as to why target fading has been taken out for commander targets. I was fairly sure we had it in one version, didn't we?

There may be another good alternative to targets and that is the ability to designate an "attack" or "conflict" zone, where your troops can expect an enemy presence. This would mean instead of painting specific infantry targets, you would blanket an area as unsafe and alert your troops to the fact that enemies are around there. This would also be very useful for planning strategy and designating choke points and major points to hold. We could keep the singlular attack order for squads and the commander to use, too.

I can't see any problems with this really, and can't believe i'm only just thinking this. The way to implement it should be debated, but highlighting an area on the map in a red circle, could work at the least. The only question is (if you want it) how to show it in front of you in real-time, and there's two ways (that I can see) to do this. Either there's a big dome or some sort of representation where you can see the conflict area from far away, which may be quite intruding. Or, you could have a little tag along the bottom of the map, or at the middle of the bottom of the screen, which would pop up red when in the zone, and clear when not...probably with the words 'engage' and something else for normal.

I think this could be a pretty good idea, and at least, the painting of areas on the map as engagement zones could work without being too intrusive. Thoughts?

 

Voted yes, because it's still necessary to provide some means of designating targets as a commander, no matter how you do it.

The idea that specific targets can be designated only if in range of radar is good, because this would force engineers to use all of their deployables properly, as well as letting the scout mark targets with his binocs for everyone for, let's say 20 seconds.

If that still isn't enough, I have a nice solution to make detection deployables really worth it by enhancing nearby turrets. The quake 2 mod Gloom did this with great effect. The turrets could kill enemies but were constantly dodged by better players. Placing detectors near turrets or around the general direction where you expect enemies boosted the turrets accuracy and turning speed by a good amount.

 

There have been pleanty of suggestions to replace the mass A targets with a target system where commanders can point out individual targets from his view in the sky with a system that doesn't lock onto players and make any clever movement useless.

If the targetting isn't removed, the commander will have one less thing to do in that department, so he'll have more time to macromanage the team and micromanage squads.

What i'm most excited about with changing wallhacks isn't just the improvement of infantry combat, which I think is overdue, but the implementation of a way to have seperate movement orders and a target. Currently, commanders can't give permaneant move order, can't direct players around, because you can't have mass attack orders and movement orders. I've always hated this. You have to rather rely on players knowing where to go if they're in a combat situation, directing players to pull back, to flank, to take the high ground really just punishes them currently.

 

I voted to keep wallhacks, because in any RTS you send your infantry to a specified area saying "Attack here", and in the programming it has the equivalent of the red boxes, in a certain fashion.

I do have a solution though:

Expiration.

For instance, you cannot give an infantryman targets behind him, or to his side, or rather after receiving targets the infantryman have to look at the targets, or they expire in, say 5-10 seconds.

Also, targets should expire when you die, along with move orders and guard orders.

 

Guard and move orders shouldn't expire. There is no reason for them to. If the order is no longer relevant, the player or commander can cancel them. It's pointless.

Although, I do think it's a good idea for attack orders to expire like you suggested.

 

Who uses move and guard orders for more than a second anyway before giving attack orders back when you men have seen the large barracks looming behind them.

 

They're quite useful for telling people where they should go early, + spamming people that they should go the other way they are going.

 

See, I want them to expire because I hate when I respawn, the signal is still there, and the commander refuses to remove it.

 

Well you can manually remove them through the f menu. It's f space s? I think.

 

I think so. It's definitely F SPACE and then W or S.

 

IMHO, I don't see this a problem. If you have like in other games a UAV that points out enemy positions, why not this in a fantasy futuristic game. Although it would be nice if there is an element of randomness within perhaps 30 feet. Like instead of a diamond an area circle and won't exactly tell you precise number of troops.

 

In games with UAV's the targets aren't spammed and constantly on your screen. That's a really shitty comparison.

edit: and if you say otherwise, give an example this time. We can't read your mind. We can't figure out exactly what UAV implementation you are talking about.

 

COD4, and UAV is spammed on that. They only showed on the minimap, but it still meant you could find people with ease.