Units loses its group when moving to repair

[gantsevdenis]

To Reproduce
Steps to reproduce the behavior:
Assign unit to a group, and set Return to repair limit to Yellow health bar, for ex
Damage this unit
Observe that as soon as it starts moving, group membership is lost

Expected behavior
Group membership must remain.

Bug reported by Evolution01

[highlander1599]

I don't call it a bug but a feature. Otherwise, units you set to retreat would attack again when you order the group to attack. In this case, a unit that is on the way to repair would go back to attack every time you call the group and would get destroyed instead of repaired at the end.

[gantsevdenis]

Ah, valid point.
It works for units under commander though: they don't get back to attack when you order to attack again
So I think it should be fixable

[stuart]

I have a WIP for this.
I tried not removing the group and having retreating droids ignore most commands except hold. A few play tests convinced me that I like it. I don't think it will be to everyone's liking.

I like that I can select a group and later when I give the group another order recently repaired units return to the action. It removes the micromanagement of re-assigning them to a group. I'd like not to have the returning units respond to a hold command to cancel their behaviour, but if I don't then there is no way of commanding damaged units if they cannot be repaired.

[Iluvalar]

This is a feature, not a bug!

There is always room for discussion, but stop "fixing" the fixes. Obviously someone in the dev team removed the repairing units from the groups. And he had a reason. It's been like that for ever. So consider the situation fully before throwing a "fix".

[SandJ]

Another 'wrinkle' relating to this is that when a unit is being repaired, I do not want it to re-join its group until fully repaired. I find myself micromanaging units under repair. For example, if using a meatgrinder army of cyborgs as group 2, many times I will <shift>-C <comma> <control>-2 to recreate the group with only repaired cyborgs, but it includes those being repaired that are above the threshold for returning for repair but not at 100%.

This is even more fiddly where I have multiple small groups of the same type of unit, such as build trucks. It would be nice if they would 'remember' the group they were in and, once 100% repaired, rejoin the group automatically. I am OK with them sitting at the repair until the group is given another order.

A workaround might be that when a selected unit is being repaired, pressing ',' or '.' deselects it as if it was more badly damaged.

Another alternative is to have a way of only selecting units that are at 100% health.

[gantsevdenis]

@SandJ that actually gave me idea, we could temporarely stash the group number somewhere, so to recapitualte:

• droids with a group number gets damaged below threshold. Association droid.id -> group Number gets saved.
• damaged droid gets fully repaired, group number is reassigned
• group receives an order. Damaged droid ignores it, because it doesn't have the group number temporarely.
• damaged droid receives a different order, while moving to repairs : droid executes the order as usual (stash is untouched)
• at some point droid either gets fully repaired or dies. Clear stash on destroyed event

@highlander1599 your opinion?

[TheMelmacian]

I really like this idea.
The same way the fire support assignment for units (to commander, turret) could be stashed and reassigned after they are fully repaired.

The stashed group and fire suport assigment must also be cleared if the player assigns the units manually.

[mirror176]

Admittedly having units deselect permanently is a major drawback against using autorepair with control groups without commanders. Why not make the unit's other possible orders just be overridden with the autorepair order until unit is fixed up again; if players don't like the unit doing that at the time then they can select it and change its autorepair setting and issue next desired order. This way doesn't matter what its previous attachments were as they are still there.

It may be possible to have units return to their previous duty+location but if the battlefield was lost and enemy is there or closer then they push into battle in an unorganized fashion. Trucks doing so would be even worse as they would not fight back though they could help repair if said battlefield isn't lost yet.

[KJeff01]

Done in #3628.