Little enigma : "Law & Order"

Hi there,

Here you have two replays ( 2 turns each) where spawn locations are identical and yet, the results aren’t!

Can you guess why?

replay1.replay (66.5 KB)
replay2.replay (70.9 KB)

It is not a real enigma in itself but I would like to discuss about this: Shouldn’t identical spawn locations produce the same result?

1 Like

I think it’s because of spawn order. In the first replay the pings at (24, 17) were all spawned before pings in (23, 18), while in second replay the order was mixed up. Then the units attack in order as they were spawned, so when they destroyed the firewall at (2, 13) in there were 2 pings left, which didn’t attack that frame. In first replay they were both at location (1, 15) and attacked firewall at (0, 13), but in second replay one was at (1, 15) and other was at (2, 16), so only the first attacked the firewall. And that’s why it stayed alive on frame 30.

that’s the answer! (there is also a difference of 1 health damage between the two replays)

But I feel like it is a bit weird to have the spawn order impact the game. Wouldn’t it be better if only rules were deciding the game and not rules and order ?
The spawns are all happening at the same time at frame 0, so I feel like the order in which they were written should not be taken into account

1 Like

I’m not sure if it’s good or bad, but it’s actually part of rules (Targeting section/Additional Clarifications). And if you think about it there would have to be some other rule, which would decide these rare cases. Imagine if on frame 27 there was enemy filter at (5, 15). How would you choose if all pings at (2, 16) would attack (2, 13) and pings at (1, 15) would attack (2, 13) and (0, 13) or all pings at (1, 15) would attack (2, 13) and pings at (2, 16) would attack (2, 13) and (5, 15)? (I know that blue filter at (5, 15) would be illegal move, but it’s just example, what could happen with different state.)

Yes I know
I would think of a rule close to the targeting rules: for each player, the first information units to attack are the ones closest to an edge and furthest into the player’s side. Or something along those lines

I think it would be more logical given the other rules

1 Like

I agree with your assessment. When discussing how to handle attack resolution order, we opted for a simple rule ‘units fire in the order they were spawned’ over a more complex, but logical one. Such a rule would have to handle different units stacked on each-other, and their locations. We tried to reach a balance between simplicity and logic with our rules, and decided that such a rule would be fairly complex and have almost no noticeable impact on gameplay.

For now, I think strong arguments could be made either way. We may consider changing it at some point in the future, but I think we are leaving it as is for now.

TLDR: “Its a feature!”

3 Likes

thanks for your answer!

I totally understand why you did that. Even if I would be more for a logical approach.
But as you said:

it has