Replace "Return Fire" with something useful

[KDR_11k]

Seriously, does anyopne ever use the "return fire" setting? All that means is your enemy gets to leisurely pick your units off one by one. It might be useful if it applied to the whole group but I'd rather have a setting like "respond to threat" that means a unit will shoot at anything that could shoot at it. AFAIK the fire options are there to prevent fire from giving away your position, this way they'd only give it away when the enemy already knows about it.

[rattle]

Hmm like shoot at enemy if enemy is targeting me.

[KDR_11k]

Targeting wouldn't work since your enemy would most likely target your units one by one, leaving most of the group inactive.

[chlue]

In my opinion a good behavior would be, if the whole group in which the unit is, is set on 'aggessive' till the threat is eliminated, when a unit under 'return fire' get attacked bye an emeny

But something like this is probably better handeld by a widget, because such a behavior would irritate a lot of (new) players.

You need to consider if the units is attacked on purpose or accidental, too. (For example a cloaked unit that only get in the line of fire or AOE effect should now let your army of stealth units attack)

Thats currently my main reason to set an unit on "return fire". If a sniper sneaking in the emeny base get detected by an peewee, it is better to kill this thing and hope to recloak fast enough...

[Saktoth]

Yeah, hold fire is rarely used as well, its mostly useful on cloaked units. However, it might be better to put these units on return fire, so, as chlue says, they will at least get a shot or two off if they are detected (no point letting your sneaky snipers just stand there and die if they get spotted).

Any other option would probably be difficult to script and have all sorts of circumstances where it wouldnt work- especially something that assesses 'threats' or works by 'groups'.

[Machiosabre]

the most natural addition to hold fire and fire at will would be constant fire! finally we'll have pyros just walking around burning everything!

[KDR_11k]

One solution I've seen is that a unit under attack will notify all units in a certain radius which will notify others, etc and all notified units shoot.

[trepan]

This could be implemented relatively easily with LuaRules
or LuaUI. Use the UnitDamaged() call-in to tell when a unit
has been hit, and check if it is in ReturnFire mode. Then use
the GetUnitsInCylinder() or a similar call to issue attack orders
to other units in ReturnFire mode. You could do it by group if
using LuaUI (LuaRules doesn't have access to user unit
groups).

You could also have lua automatically put units in ReturnFire
mode when they are cloaked (although this is probably best
done in LuaUI as a widget). Once cloaking is disabled, you
could return them to their (saved) original mode.

[Radja]

what about fire only buildings? that way slow arty would not attack faster units, that endes up in my own troops being attacked by accident

attack units who can fire back

attack not paralyzed units only + attack units not targeted by other unit in group

etc

[smoth]

I use both return fire and hold fire.

[EXit_W0und]

Last time i checked, return fire didn't even work. When did you use it Smoth?

I would replace it with a 'go mental' button, where the units get a faster rate of fire but less accuracy, and the chances of them targeting and killing each other increases

[PauloMorfeo]

Hold Fire has some uses.

Return Fire Only has one very important use, and not all that uncomon. In artilery wars, when one has a pop-up firing at your own pop-up, you often want to have it in Return Fire so it only targets the enemy pop-up and not the LLTs/Peewees/whatever around it. Many times, one pop-up survives while the other not, because the doomed one spent it's time firing at other stuff.

[Licho]

what about fire only buildings? that way slow arty would not attack faster units, that endes up in my own troops being attacked by accident

attack units who can fire back

attack not paralyzed units only + attack units not targeted by other unit in group

etc

These are very good ideas, I would like "paralyze non-paralyzed" and "target structures only" most.

But tbh, paralyze units should only target non-paralyzed units by default..

[1v0ry_k1ng]

what about fire only buildings?
etc

+10000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000

finally raiders wont get distracted by things trying to kill them and can focus on the windfarms!