Friendly fire is killing this game.

Started by Kadrush, April 12, 2016, 01:09:43 PM

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Kadrush

Seriously, i am loosing more colonists to friendly fire than to enemy fire, a brawler get close to my line and my colonists shoot the other ones, they dont check for friendly fire or line of sight, it is a slugfest.

It is annyoing and unrealistic that colonists care so less for friendly fire. plz fix that.

Goldenpotatoes

Sending a brawler into a gunfight without proper protection is asking to get shot, either by your colonists or the enemy.

Two words: Personal shields.

PotatoeTater

Even in real life, friendly fire is a huge problem.
Life is Strange

JimmyAgnt007

If you are being attacked at a lot of enemies the pawns tend to keep shooting at their target that charged into melee instead of targeting enemies that are still approaching. 

whats worse is that now we cant manually re target the turrets to stop them from shooting into melee.

also when its just hunting, people walk into gunfire all the time if you have more than one hunter out. 

my solution is to ignore 90% of friendly fire while hunting and have pawns require targets if theirs gets into melee unless there is no other targets.  maybe make it so that when their target goes into melee they charge into melee themselves instead of shooting.

also if we cant manually target with turrets then give us an ignore target option.

Limdood

ignore target has the same thematic problems as assigning a target for turrets.  Tynan added that the AI was rudimentary and cobbled together and imprefect on the new turret description...it makes sense that the turret would keep shooting at a designated "hostile" until that hostile went down.

JimmyAgnt007

true, but also people were using turrets to mine and other exploity stuff.  even a remote off or standby button would be nice.

Limdood

i think one big concern on the turrets was that they were one of the only things that used direct player input.  An "off" or "standby" button would almost certainly have to be flicked by a pawn to fit with the current rimworld flavor.

DFKabuto

The only friendly fire protection I'm particularly concerned about is during hunting. Hunting accidents happen, sure, but a hauler going to grab some steel by running back and forth between a turtle and an assault rifle isn't great. It adds an unnecessary - albeit small - extra bit of micro to the game that can have tremendous consequences if the wrong body part is hit.

NephilimNexus

The thing is that friendly fire in this game isn't realistic or random.  I've watched this happen:

A brawler colonist engages a raider in melee.  About seven squares behind him is another colonist with a shotgun.  She's a terrible shot and decides that, rather than engage the raider shooting at her on the right, she's going to shoot at the raider involved in the melee on the left.

To no great surprise she ends up shooting my brawler, who immediately goes down from having his arm blown off by the idiot behind him.  But wait, that's just the start - it gets hilarious next!

I order her to move up to one square away from the raider - just outside melee range.  Surely she can't miss from this range, right?  Ha ha, of course not!  BLAM!  She fires, misses, and hits the brawler again!  Stunned I sit there and watch as she fires and misses five times in a row from one square away.  But wait, it gets better!

Every single one of those missed shots ended up hitting the brawler laying KO next to her target.  None went past him, none fell short, none veered off to the right instead of the left.  Nope.  Every single shot ended up homing in on my downed colonist like a guided missile.

Now what can we learn from this?  That the mechanics of friendly fire are broken as hell.  Very clearly, rather than simply allowing missed shots to strike randomly as they do in every other situation, the game has decided that if you've got a friendly adjacent to an enemy that every shot that misses that enemy will strike a friendly, no RNG involved.  It's automatic, inevitable, and about as realistic as a pink flying unicorn becoming president of the NRA.

Mikhail Reign

Nah its not like that. Its because you have a higher change to hit something between you and your target. If you REALLY want to hit a raider, pause, put a sleeping spot directly behind them and have the colonist aim at that instead of the raider. Works awesome for mini guns (since they miss by design).

A shot that 'misses' is almost definitelygoing to hit something (anything) that is between the shooter and the target. If you had moved your colonist so that there was nothing between where and the raider, she still would have missed, but the shots would have hit the ground. If there was a stone between you, it would have hit them.

Fluffy (l2032)

Quote from: Mikhail Reign on April 13, 2016, 04:05:36 AM
Nah its not like that. Its because you have a higher change to hit something between you and your target. If you REALLY want to hit a raider, pause, put a sleeping spot directly behind them and have the colonist aim at that instead of the raider. Works awesome for mini guns (since they miss by design).

A shot that 'misses' is almost definitelygoing to hit something (anything) that is between the shooter and the target. If you had moved your colonist so that there was nothing between where and the raider, she still would have missed, but the shots would have hit the ground. If there was a stone between you, it would have hit them.
This in itself is of course also broken as <insert explitive here>

AllenWL

Quote from: Limdood on April 12, 2016, 01:31:09 PM
ignore target has the same thematic problems as assigning a target for turrets.  Tynan added that the AI was rudimentary and cobbled together and imprefect on the new turret description...it makes sense that the turret would keep shooting at a designated "hostile" until that hostile went down.

On the other hand, an AI that can tell a hostile from non hostile before hostile action takes place, separate friendly from hostile mid-battle, react to instantaneous changes in alliance, and tell the difference between a manhunting animal, normal animal, and tame animal seems really advanced to me.

Regarding friendly fire, I think it would help if colonists stopped walking into bullets because 'it's the shorter path'

keylocke

i dunno. right now the game already allows the player to let multiple colonists shoot at the same target all in one click (this is awesome btw. thanks tynan and ison for adding that feature up)

but i can't remember if there is a button that tells multiple colonists to attack the same target and engage in melee combat rather than shoot with guns.

the gist is : if an enemy manages to get in melee range, people should stop shooting and start ganging up on him with melee. that's just common sense. it quickly eliminates the threat allowing you to get back to shooting positions.

that's probably the most times i get friendly fire problems. the rest can be easily dealt with using the new feature that allows multiple colonists to focus fire against a single target

Rock5

Quote from: keylocke on April 13, 2016, 07:39:01 AM... new feature that allows multiple colonists to focus fire against a single target
I thought that was always there. But it would be nice to be able to do the same with melee; select a bunch of people and tell them all to melee attack instead of having to select and tell each one separately.

In regards to friendly fire, it may be a real danger in war but it should be less of a danger while hunting. There is no adrenaline rush and desperation to cause mishaps. When hunting hunters can take the time to be sure of their target and make sure no one is in the line of sight. If unsure they don't shoot. In real life hunters don't accidentally shoot people unless they are being foolish and most hunters aren't, they fully respect the danger of their weapon (I'm from a family of hunters if you can't tell). I don't think it's unreasonable that in the game hunters never hit colonists or at least it's a MUCH rarer occurrence. Or maybe they could stop shooting or try to get a better angle if a colonist gets in the way.
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