Unit Auto Rotate

Morbio · Post by **Morbio** » Wed May 12, 2010 7:43 pm

About a month or so ago I posted about a situation where a unit auto rotated after attack and I was persuaded that it did this because of being in contact with another unit. At the time I didn't have the screenshots, so I accepted it. Now I have the screenshots!

My question is: Is this normal behaviour or a bug?

Start position: Cat is attacked by pikes (causes fragmentation)

Next position: Sub Pikes charge for the kill (causes rout)

Final position: Pikes auto rotate to face threat to rear

Uploaded with ImageShack.us

Bug or feature?

batesmotel · Post by **batesmotel** » Wed May 12, 2010 7:51 pm

There is or was a bug that sometimes allowed units to rotate after routing a unit but I think that was supposed to be patched in one of the recent updates. Was the pike/sub that rotated under a human player's control or the AI? The bug I had run into allowed the unit facing to be changed by the owner but it wasn't an automatic behavior. If the pkes/sub were under the control of the AI, I can believe it might have taken advantage of the "bug" of still being allowed to change face after charging and routing the cataphracts but might have looked automatic. The automatic facing that was mentioned previously when you brought this up is facing that occurs after an enemy unit is adjacent to the rotating BG, not done in anticipation of a BG moving there.

Chris

Morbio · Post by **Morbio** » Wed May 12, 2010 7:55 pm

batesmotel wrote:Was the pike/sub that rotated under a human player's control or the AI?

I can't say, I was watching the replay.

batesmotel wrote:The automatic facing that was mentioned previously when you brought this up is facing that occurs after an enemy unit is adjacent to the rotating BG, not done in anticipation of a BG moving there.

Chris

My thought was that it was the same, but Deeter thought differently and I couldn't prove it one way or the other. It could have been as you say or it may have been like this.

Morbio · Post by **Morbio** » Wed May 12, 2010 9:31 pm

There's definitely something odd going on. The next turn was played out and the same thing happened again - same unit too. I could post the screenshots, but I'm sure you believe me

If the developers want to look at the game it is a 600 point DAG game Morbio (Seleucid) versus pcaravel (Macedonia). It's now over so it'll be there for a while....

Just for the record, the auto rotates weren't the reason I lost....

P.S. The replay is somewhat screwy at the start. It shows the cavalry in their break-off position (as at the end of the turn) and so the initial melees look odd with a pike BG hitting a Cat that's about 5 hexes away!

There's a couple of instances of that at the start!

pcaravel · Post by **pcaravel** » Thu May 13, 2010 7:04 am

Was the pike/sub that rotated under a human player's control or the AI?

It was me that rotated the pike/sub unit. After the cataphract unit was rooted I right-clicked my unit and changed its facing.
It did seem weird to me too but I didn't give it much thought.
This must be a bug and should be fixed.

The replay is somewhat screwy at the start. It shows the cavalry in their break-off position (as at the end of the turn) and so the initial melees look odd with a pike BG hitting a Cat that's about 5 hexes away!

I don't remember this incident. I definitely didn't charge 5 hexes away!

Maybe an error in the replay sequence?

Morbio · Post by **Morbio** » Thu May 13, 2010 11:31 am

pcaravel wrote:
Was the pike/sub that rotated under a human player's control or the AI?
It was me that rotated the pike/sub unit. After the cataphract unit was rooted I right-clicked my unit and changed its facing.
It did seem weird to me too but I didn't give it much thought.
This must be a bug and should be fixed.

Thanks for the input, that should help the devs fix the problem.

pcaravel wrote:
The replay is somewhat screwy at the start. It shows the cavalry in their break-off position (as at the end of the turn) and so the initial melees look odd with a pike BG hitting a Cat that's about 5 hexes away!
I don't remember this incident. I definitely didn't charge 5 hexes away!
Maybe an error in the replay sequence?

The problem is definitely with the replay, it certainly wasn't like that during the game.

Well played in the game. It's been a long time since I was hammered so comprehensively. It's made me rethink some of my tactics in some situations. Hopefully I'll play better next time!

pcaravel · Post by **pcaravel** » Thu May 13, 2010 12:12 pm

Well played in the game. It's been a long time since I was hammered so comprehensively. It's made me rethink some of my tactics in some situations. Hopefully I'll play better next time! Twisted Evil

Thanks for the good words.

I'm looking forward to our next encounter!

batesmotel · Post by **batesmotel** » Thu May 13, 2010 3:26 pm

Morbio or pcaravel,

Do you know what update version you were using when you played the game with the auto-rotate issue? Was this before the drilled unit facing changes or before the anarchy changes if you don't know what specific version?

Chris

pcaravel · Post by **pcaravel** » Thu May 13, 2010 6:51 pm

It was version 1.2.6.
But, as I previously said, it wasn't auto-rotate.
I manually rotated a unit when it normally shouldn't be able to do such a move, since it had already charged toward the opposite direction in the same turn.

Morbio · Post by **Morbio** » Thu May 13, 2010 8:50 pm

1.26 for me too

deeter · Post by **deeter** » Thu May 13, 2010 9:15 pm

I suspect, if you didn't use your free facing to move into contact (likely) and route your target, the PC will allow the freebee.

Deeter