Focus Fire

[Shrugging Khan]

Does Focus fire mean that even units with special effects - such as engine damage, paralysis, or reclamation - will all focus on a single target, even though their special effect then goes to waste?

[keith.lamothe]

Some background: all auto-target prioritization is accomplished by a comparison function that takes two ships and specifies which one to prefer (or "don't-care").

The focus-fire branch in that function comes after the branches that say "don't shoot at this if I prioritize engine damage and the target's engine health is already lower than my engine-damage-floor" and "don't shoot at this if I paralyze and the target's paralysis timer is already maxed out", etc.  So if any of those branches expresses a preference, the focus fire logic isn't even checked.

However, there are some ships that do minor engine damage that are explicitly set to not care very much about optimizing it since they're really just DPS ships with that minor bonus, and their branch for trying to optimize engine damage comes after the focus-fire branch.  Also, it looks like the Armor-Damage branch comes after focus-fire too.

[Shrugging Khan]

So I can use Spider turrets without having to turn FF off?

[keith.lamothe]

Yes, that should work quite well   It was one of my test cases back when I did the focus-fire controls, and also earlier when I implemented the engine-damage-prioritizing logic for spider turrets and whatnot.

The "engine damage can't take engines lower than 1" thing is much more recent, but it doesn't actually change any of the engine-health computations and thus doesn't mess with the engine-damage-prioritization; it functions by a "if less than 1, set to 1" rule in the speed computation after applying engine damage.

[Shrugging Khan]

So the turrets will not switch to Focus Fire even if all enemies are reduced to 1% of engine health?

I am no good with numberspeak  


PS: Does the FF logic also work for Nanoswarms? Because I have seen them, quite frequently, all together flowing into single targets rather than to spread out 

[keith.lamothe]

No, what I was saying is that the "engine damage can't take engines lower than 1" rule does not impact the sniper turret's interaction with the focus fire control in any way.  In truth, the engine health itself is taken all the way to zero, it's just that zero engine health can't take move speed lower than 1.  Not 1%, mind you, 1.

Anyway, the sniper turrets would only "switch to" (i.e. consider) focus fire if every single hostile eligible for "I can shoot at this" either had engine-health == 0 or was immune to engine damage.  At that point they should start focusing for damage if you have sniper-focus-fire on.  Which is roughly what people want them to do in that case, though it gets tricky when more ships come in since they don't constantly update target lists, etc.

[Shrugging Khan]

engine-health == 0

Does this work correctly with the new 1% minimal engine health system?


Also, just to make sure:

PS: Does the FF logic also work for Nanoswarms? Because I have seen them, quite frequently, all together flowing into single targets rather than to spread out  Undecided

[keith.lamothe]

engine-health == 0

Does this work correctly with the new 1% minimal engine health system?

What I was saying is that there is no new 1% minimal engine health system.  There is a move-speed-1 minimum rule, but engine health can and does still go down to zero.

Also, just to make sure:

PS: Does the FF logic also work for Nanoswarms? Because I have seen them, quite frequently, all together flowing into single targets rather than to spread out  Undecided

They intentionally spread out, actually, because their impact is considerably greater when spread out rather than piling tons and tons of paralyze, etc onto a few targets.

[Shrugging Khan]

Then my nanoswarms must have been a retarded breed 

Anyways, I am happy. Spider turrets shall be build! Good work mr. coder man!