Autocast Restriction Reworks

from Sins2 Forums

Hi!

I'd like to ask and talk about certain ability autocast restriction, that make those (mostly spammable) ablities practically unusable on a larger scale.
The best example for abilities like this is the Nanite Armor from the Skirantra Carrier, but there are quite some both offensive and defensive abilities like this.
The core problem with these is, that they have an autocast targeting restriction of a buff/debuff related to the ability, that is not necessarily the main part of the ability's effect, but the autocast is restricted by it, not targeting entities affected by the buff/debuff, making it not a viable target for the ability.

The main example of the above mentiones Nanite Armor is, that the Armor buff part is meaningless if the target has no more armor, yet the ability is designed, so that it can't b a target for another Nanite Armor (to heal back the armor) as long as the buff is present... the Armor buff has (at lvl 3) a 108 sec duration. The ability CD is 12 sec.
The ability - by design - is an anti-burst support ability, but if it's not possible to effectively use it by autocast, it's just an unusable 'dead' ability, you won't have the time to one-by-one recast it manually by 4-5 ships during a large scale fight, while you also have to pay attention to other things, like another battlefield, other ships, etc.

Autocast is supposed to reduce the micromanagement burden on the player at the cost of potentially sub-optimal use of the ability.

Regardless of the ability itself being completely broken when massed, the specific autocast restriction, regarding the armor strengthening buff part makes it unusable by autocast. With the original game file setup, it will watch a ship die with 5 Skirantras being around it with max AM, just because it still has the Armor buff part active... even if it is at 5% crippled hull.
It's immensely annoying for a game of this caliber to have dumb restriction on abilities that are supposedly 'spam-like' ones to not be autocast spammable by this kind of restriction.
I'm using a simple mod, that deletes the single line responsible for the tracking of the Armor buff... that's it, delete a single line from the game file of the ability.
The ability doesn't get changet in any way other, than it actually becoming autocastable.

Someone made a more extensive mod available in the ingame mods (Better Auto Selection Nanites - by Vash)
There are probably more more abilities with similar problems.
He writes, that this makes the game 'easier'... I don't see a point in a game code part that prevents an ability with 12 sec CD, requiring manual casting and targetint becoming a 'skill factor' for how fast can you rotate between 10 quick select groups of individual Skirantras... or in other cases, other capitals, that worth massing for a specific effect.

In that mod, there are other problematic abilities, like consumable items with only a debuff part, that actually LACK this kind of restriction, ending up autocasted and wasted on targets, that still have the debuff.
In case of things, that ONLY have a debuff part, where you catually need a restriction like this, it's not there... when it's an ability, that would become actually usable by autocast without a restriction like that, it's there.

It's like the developers responsible for this part of the game are intentionally making the game more frustrating to play instead of making it enjoyable, so the player can focus on actually managing the battle, focusing on the use of more tactical abilities, that truly require manual casting or strategic decisions, like fleet deployment on other fronts, planet management, etc.

It's not a 'skill' in multiplayer to manually recast an ability, that restores armor on a target, that is under heavy focus fire and has no armor left... or at least it shouldn't be. If you want to create a game, that requires this amount of micromanaging short CD stuff, than you should have designed an MMO or an FPS game, that's where milisecond-based decisionmaking is important, not a 4X - RTS - Grand Strategy hybrid game.

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Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top

Your read of the restriction is correct. Both autocast target filters on Nanite Armor exclude anything already carrying the Nanite Armor buff, and they count pending applications as well, so a second Skirantra will not queue one onto a target that already has an application in flight.

The manual target filter carries none of that. It checks that the target is friendly and not the caster, and nothing else. That gap is exactly why hand casting lands and autocast sits on its hands.

One gate you did not mention matters for the case you are describing. Autocast also requires the target to be missing sixty percent of its armor and to have taken damage recently. A ship stripped to bare hull clears that part easily, so the buff check really is what is blocking you rather than the damage threshold.

Your clocks are right too. The cooldown is 12 seconds at every level and the duration runs 36, 72 and 108 by level. An ability whose refresh is nine times faster than the buff it refuses to overwrite is worth a report as you have written it.