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Lobster usability

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An issue with lobsters. If the lobster has been told to attack an enemy unit - perhaps because you were just moving it around on the map and happened to click on one - then the lobster will keep that enemy unit as its target and continually launch to it whenever that enemy unit is in range, even if you click away from the enemy unit to move the lobster in a different direction. The last game I played it resulted in throwing a low-health Grizzly into the enemy shieldball, instead of launching it away from the shieldball where I told it. Lobsters should launch when you have just pressed d, and at no other time. I see there's already an option to make the lobster not respond to attack orders. This option should be on by default.

(edit: at first I thought that lobsters automatically repeated their d-orders, because that's the behavior I observed when throwing units into an enemy base. But it seems that's just the result of an accidental attack order too.)
+1 / -0
you can hit s to clear orders.. its not very clear when it has a priority target if the target is vanished by los/cloak

that is a bit of a trap..
+0 / -0
3 years ago
In the case of throwing raiders into the enemy base from below a cliff, what I do is I select my raiders and my lobster, tell them to group together, then press d. This means I still have the lobster selected along with the raiders as I'm starting to raid the base and click on enemy targets. So, pressing s would not even stop the lobster in this case; it might still automatically throw other units up the cliff in a second throw when I didn't want it to. I would have to press s, then deselect the lobster before I click on anything with my raiders.

Anyway, I think it's no longer a problem for me because my lobsters are now set to ignore attack orders.
+0 / -0


3 years ago
I think allowing attack is good default behaviour because it makes the Lobster more likely to do anything. This is the same reason Lance fires at will and shoots at radar dots. Having a unit do something a bit suboptimally is better than it requiring specific orders to do anything at all.
+1 / -0
There's a difference between "wasting some Lance shots" and "unexpectedly and confusingly throwing your valuable army at the enemy." It's much worse than useless. If someone hasn't worked out they need d to make the lobster work, how much less likely are they to work out why the lobster is suiciding their own units? It took me until today, with a careful look at a replay and some testing in single player mode, to figure out what was causing the lobster to seemingly randomly throw units. Other d-abilities don't automatically trigger when a targeted enemy is in range.

edit: Thinking of a way to make it more discoverable, why not make the d button in the interface flash (glowing smoothly on and off) whenever an ability is available to be used, that the user hasn't ever used yet? They'd quickly get the picture. Instead of "hasn't ever used yet," perhaps "hasn't used more than 3 times in the last month" would be better because it would remind them if they forget.
+1 / -0


3 years ago
quote:
There's a difference between "wasting some Lance shots" and "unexpectedly and confusingly throwing your valuable army at the enemy." It's much worse than useless


It is pretty funny though
+1 / -0

3 years ago
press and hold shift displays all orders for units. if you give an attack order, it is a red line to the target. when you then give a move order, the still present attack oder gets yellow. hit 's' (=stop) to cancel all orders
+0 / -0


3 years ago


The best lobster use.
+5 / -0