Flagging weapons

[mevitar]

Currently, if a unit attacks any object, other units of the same type aren't forbidden from attacking it too. The only exception to this are Yuri Disk's draining weapons (which somehow forbid other disks from draining the same building) and mind-control weapons (as objects, due to obvious reasons, won't try to mind-control something that is already mind-controlled). The idea of this feature is to make something similar available for all TechnoTypes/weapons (it doesn't matter for me whether if it will be a TechnoType or a weapon tag).

There should be 2 'variations' of this logic available: a 'timed flag' and an 'on-fire flag'.
Timed flag has a limited time duration, that renews after being fired at. This is mostly for EMP, Psychedelic and possibly modifier weapons, so other units won't try attack a target that already been affected by such.
On-fire flag simply prevents other objects of the same type (or firing the same weapon) from attacking the target as long as the 1st attacker is still firing its weapon on it.

Perhaps there will be no need for 2 variations, and only 'timed flag' will be enough, as long as it won't prevent the 1st attacker from firing its weapon on the target while the flag lasts.

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The reasoning behind this feature is both to improve the AI a bit without dabbling too much with the way it handles targets, and make micro-managing for some weapons easier. An example could be creating an AI version of an EMP beam unit utilizing this logic, which would give an illusion micro-managing multiple targets my the AI, forcing each of unit to attack a separate target at the same time (and if the mod creator sees it appropriate, make it so for the player version too).

[AlexB (alexander-b)]

There are some more examples of those one-on-one logics. It is a side effect of the way Westwood implemented those features. Tank Bunkers can only hold one tank, and the same tank cannot be held by any other bunker at the same time. Terror Drones in tanks, Squids and ships, Magnetron dragging, ...

With weapons and victims it's a little more complicated, because each weapon can damage more than one target (otherwise the Nuke would be useless), and a target can be attacked by more than one weapon at the same time.

This logic would have to be rather complex, because it affects auto-targeting and retaliation functions, and it has to keep a list of all weapons that are attacking a unit at the moment (which has to be kept up to date).