Air and ground units with air and ground attacks should have 3 options for manually choose to attack:
ground or
air or
any
It’s a preference not an exclusion.
In programming it’s an ‘xor’ before an ‘and’.
It could be applied for all the units of the 3 races of both air and ground type that have both types of attacks.
For example, the battle cruisers have two squares of arms, if ground is selected, BCs will attack all ground units first until terminated and air units after.
The game will become more gimmicky.
If this faculty is added, players will apply specific strategies easier !
This won’t affect balance but improve the gameplay!
If you hope that there are units that prioritises either air or ground, it is currently in place for specific units. Take the Thor for e.g., it will prioritise air over ground whenever available. I can’t recall which other units have such priorities when it comes to attacking. However, most of the others fall on an attack-the-next-closest-and-available-enemy kind of system.
If your request is to have the option to do so, then I don’t think it is an approach that Activision will consider. That is because, SC2 is intended to be an easy game to pick up (just build units and attack), but difficult game to master (you are rewarded for having better skill / performance).
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Take the tug-of-war between a Ling Bane army vs a Bio ball for e.g… Naturally a Ling Bane will win the Bio ball just due to unit composition. However, the T is rewarded if they can micro to split the army and reduce Bane splash. When the T adds Mines / Tanks, the Z is rewarded if they know how to micro a few Lines to soak the mines; or surround the Tanks / catch the Tanks when they are unsieged. So as you can see, it is very heavy on rewarding more APM.
The only other similar changes that I have come across would be:
- Allowing Queens to stack injects (so that Z doesn’t miss injects). - I view this as something that is too critical for newbies because a lack of larvae will cost any Z the game. However, this is also at the expense of Queens having sufficient energy for Transfuse if needed.
- P having Chrono Boost which requires energy instead of it being a constant but free buff. - This meant that P can actually save up Chronos and use it on multiple structures in a row. In a sense, using Chronos where it matters most. However, the flip side is that they no longer have a permanent Chrono that they don’t need to babysit anymore (just park it on a production facility). It may possibly be to prevent multiple Nexii abuse? But I haven’t actually seen it happening even in a pro level game play.
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I do think that your suggestion offers more customisation and makes armies more personalised (kind of a bit like customising an avatar’s clothes / colour). Although I don’t think this is the direction that Activision wants to take, considering:
- It will completely change the state of gameplay.
- This has never been a consideration since SC1. It is somewhat similar to the request to have army formations.
- It makes the gameplay more complex for newbies to learn. (It is already complex enough with the unit composition / armour types system.)
- It is counter to the idea of rewarding more ‘effort’ (APM). In this case, if you want to attack air or ground, have your units click on it (or even queue up via shift-click if needed).
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The same target priorities exist for all units:
- Constant threats (casters like HT, etc) or units that can attack the target (air/ground) have the highest priority.
- Everything else has lower priority: Edit, I did mean combat units, then non-combatants for this, assuming their actual “priority” is set to the same integer.
- Targets are acquired by distance unless the unit’s weapons are explicitly set to acquire targets by angle.
Units will always follow that priority list; however:
- If a unit has multiple weapons and a choice between equal-priority targets on each weapon, then the unit will “prefer” one of the two weapons. This is why Thors will often prioritize air units that attack ground over ground units.
- If multiple weapons can hit the same target, then the stronger weapon will be preferred: This is why Thors in HIP mode will attack Colossus with the anti-air attack at >7 range and the ground attack at <=7 range.
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Er… no.
At least for Thor I do know because it was in one of the patch notes.
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Here is the link to Liquipedia:
https://liquipedia.net/starcraft2/Thor_(Legacy_of_the_Void)
- The Thor prioritizes targeting air units over ground units.
With a few exceptions, Thors and Queens will attack targets in this order:
- Air-to-ground units
- Ground-to-ground units/buildings
- Other air units
- Other ground units
- Workers
- Other buildings
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If you want the full details (numbers) regarding targeting priority, you can check this article out:
https://liquipedia.net/starcraft2/Automatic_Targeting
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Reread the second section of my post:
That explains the behavior for units with separate air/ground weapons such as the Queen and Thor.
Specifically, when given the choice between equal priority targets on separate weapons, one weapon (by convention this is the air attack) will be “preferred”. If I recall correctly, the “preferred” weapon is based on the order of the weapons within the unit’s weapon queue, so you can change it by swapping the weapon order.
The LOTV patch that you brought up fixed an issue where the Thor’s weapons were prioritized in the wrong order (ground before air instead of air before ground) in HIP mode. This bug was accidentally introduced when the Thor’s second air attack was re-added for Legacy of the Void multiplayer.
Admittedly, I was being lazy about the part I had to edit later.
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