Units prioritizing acu

I just saw pillars continue to focus an acu despite t1 tanks running into range of the pillars. I thought tanks were supposed to switch to tanks when they come into range of them. Otherwise sniping acus could still work by just rightclicking the acu once and then following it around.

At min 13 you can see it happening to grimplex: #14540450

Advanced Target Priorities. Yes, UI mods are allowed in ladder. No, I don't like it.

@melanol acu focus of Advanced target priorities should not work anymore, also I didn't use it.

Does it depend on whether they were given a different order during the period that they were in range of the enemy tanks? i.e. will they switch from the ACU if they are given a different order?

@reckless_charger

@reckless_charger said in Units prioritizing acu:

Does it depend on whether they were given a different order during the period that they were in range of the enemy tanks? i.e. will they switch from the ACU if they are given a different order?

i guess if you give them attack order on something then they will probably switch target. But as you can see in ther replay, multiple move orders were given and pillars didn't stop shooting ACU.

Thing is at 1rst ACU was like only thing that was in range of pillars (except for t1 AA, but they are probably lower priority)
So they started shooting ACU but then they kept shooting ACU witch is not supposed to happed as i understand.

It happened to me once and I asked on Discord, apparently you can now toggle units to snipe priority. Been using it ever since.

@Valki a little while after that the game was patched in intentionally not allow all but a few select units to prioritize the ACU so this should not work and is most likely a bug.

i think units only reaquire targets after their orignal target has died. Normaly it doesn't really matter, because most units are not really tanky, but with the ACU it's quite noticable

No they are supposed to reacquire their highest priority once in range.
I ran some tests and you can see it happens correctly with all but the pillar and the percival of the units I tested with so is most likely a bug.

Evidence Replay
https://replay.faforever.com/14543436

@keyser @Fremy_Speeddraw

didn't have time to check the replay :
but the pr about target priorities is this one : https://github.com/FAForever/fa/commit/0891e455f5845ed62104a32ef24cfe72b6ae65b8
petric did change some stuff here, but shouldn't have any impact for what been reported : https://github.com/FAForever/fa/commit/39f5b3291a77f02fdd7cf1dc45f8d32117bcb796

target priorities on the fly should work (with unability to change target on the fly to the ACU unless unit have the category 'SNIPEMOD').
As for pillar not retargeting automaticaly to T1 unit, it works as in the code : It always has been the same, it's priority is to shoot mobile unit. ACU doesn't have a lower priority than the other mobile unit, so it won't retarget. I guess it can be change, if wanted.
For percy its target priority are T1<ACU<T2<T3

So I could make a custom priority for advanced target priorities for MOBILE units and target the ACU once with a bunch of units and hey presto snipe mode reactivated for all selected units?

No, unless the unit has the SNIPEMODE category the ACU is subtracted from any target priority.

So am I misunderstanding keysers post or is he wrong about pillars not switching because the ACU and tanks are both in the MOBILE category?

I assume the ACU is not subtracted from any of the default priorities built into the unit blueprint, but the ACU is subtracted from any custom priorities. So if you made a custom target priority for MOBILE it would be translated to MOBILE - ACU unless the unit is allowed to prioritize the ACU.

I'm not sure that assumption is correct. Will test

it's what thomas said. You need to separate what i call "target priority on the fly" or could also be called snipemod / custom target priority; from normal target priority that don't have anything to do with the 'SNIPEMOD' category.

Haven't tested but if you have a bunch of units who are not in range of any other units and switch them to a custom MOBILE target category then manage to move them into range of a lone ACU before any other units come into range (which is quite doable because a lot of the time the ACU is positioned up front) then won't they just retain there lock on the ACU as the pillars did in this example? What you've done is essentially designate a sniper squad before attacking. They won't automatically switch to the ACU if already firing at other targets though.

if they are unit without the 'SNIPEMOD' cat, they will retarget, as soon as mobile unit come in range.
what would be interesting to see is if pillar that would keep the target on the acu in that kind of situation without using custom MOBILE, would actually retarget to other unit if you use the custom MOBILE target prio.