So this has been a bit of an issue in the game Snipers Bald Locks for awhile and I just figured I would post about it and see if its something that can be helped or not.

The first question I guess is just simply, if you lose vision of a unit you have attack-clicked (Locked, targeted ect.) for X amount of time does it eventually lose focus and break the lock?

If its not a natural thing, what could cause this? This is a problem in Snipers Bald Locks because sometimes when you lock someone and they travel a bit of a distance your lock is dropped.

Isn't locking on in such a fashion considered 'Nub Locking'?

I would guess it's natural, it's possible that it's due to the various vision and alliance mechanics in Snipers, an easy way to test is to copy the terrain of Bald Locks into a fresh map and see if you can reproduce the target-loss.

Oh, it wasn't until jjf's post that I realized you're talking about attack ordering, rather than using Lockdown. Here's my general understanding:

Yes, it is based on vision. If your client has no vision for their target, they will move to the last location you saw the target at and then stop there. This mechanic makes sense in that it doesn't allow you to track your opponents' units when you don't actually know where they are.

If the targeted unit is seen again, your unit will update its order, though not immediately: there's a periodic poll to determine if the unit's order should be updated. This means the AI doesn't always take the most efficient path to its destination, as it doesn't immediately act on new information.

It's not a problem: it's a feature, one that Bald Locks was built around. If you lose and regain vision on a unit you've targeted, the time it takes for your unit to attack is slower than if you reissue the order manually. You can't just target last-second and then lean back and expect to automatically win the exchange: you have to be ready to issue a fresh target for optimal results, which requires dexterity and reflexes.

Here's a shitty gif I made, using the powers of SCMDraft, GIMP, and MSPaint:


The orange circle is where Red last saw Blue's Ghost, so that's where his Ghost goes. If Blue never shows up again, Red would stop at the orange circle and switch to a "Stop" order. However, Blue wanders back into view, but before Red's Ghost updates its target, Blue's Ghost is ordered to attack and gets the kill first.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Oct 30 2015, 12:57 am by Roy.