A modification of "target" suggestions (inspired by "Tesla VenomZ" on Steam)

Rayalot72

Maximum difficulty
Beta Tester
Extremely Helpful Person
One of their proposals:

This first suggestion is something that I thought about whilst attempting 2.1 on insane. because of the regenerating factor of the crabs I thought that the level would be so much easier if I could command my ants to focus on one target at a time as opposed to the dps being spread out and slowly wittling them all down at once so what do yous think about having a tool that lets you select a priority target? I know that that there are some measures taken to ensure that every ant seems to have a mind of its own for the aesthetics of the game so pherhaps when setting a priority target ants that are being attacked by another enemy will ignore it in favor of the one attacking them or if ants have enemies blocking them from the high priority they will go for that instead.

While the devs have made it quite clear that selecting a specific target would go against the "mindless swarm" design given to the ants to make them feel more realistic, I believe it's possible to make the best of two worlds.

Possible Implementation:

Essentially, if a priority target is selected, instead of all ants attempting to go for that, maybe 25% of the total ants will make an attempt to change targets (tracked even when inactive, so that there is no benefit to constantly refreshing the targeting or swapping targets without deaths occurring first).

So, if I were to have 40 ants in a fight, fighting 4 enemies for simplicity, a priority target might check for ants in range, and then and then randomly pick from those to change/set target (which would include ants already on that foe), ensuring that at least 10 ants will be taking on the target at once. If a second target is picked, then 25% of the remaining ants, subtracting any remaining ants with a target that is still alive, will receive that second target in the same fashion (if 5 of the locked ants die and their target is still alive, with maybe 25 ants remaining total, the targeting would try to reach 25% ants selected again; since 5 is already 20%, only 1 ant will be selected, which hits the 24% goal.

Motivation:

Not would would this make the mechanics a little more intuitive for those coming from more traditional RTS games, it might help to remove random elements by guaranteeing that a certain portion of your army will fight the desired enemy (vs the current delayed stutter-stepping that can be used instead).

It also, by only giving direct control over a fraction of your army, helps to maintain the original chaotic nature of the game's combat, wherein your army cannot ever truly be used "optimally."
 
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