Shortrange-pathfinder allows to capture a tower without being in minimum attackrange

[elexis]

Sometimes when your units capture a tower, they are standing so close to the tower that they are not in attack range anymore. Thus they won't be targettet by arrows and can capture the tower without taking any damage.

The tower on the left was reached with a shortpath, the one on the right after a longpath:

On AoE2 this is wanted and you need a tech (murder-holes) to be able to attack enemies that are standing right under your tower. But it seems this is not wanted with the current templates.

In fact this is a pathfinder issue as units that have a longpath will stand far enough away from the tower to be attacked, but all units that get a shortpath to the tower will be too close.

Reproduce: Order a unit to move near the tower, then order it to capture the tower.

This might be related or duplicate of some other pathfinder tickets, like #3410, #3530, #3539?

[wraitii]

This one is WAD, I suspect the new pathfinder simply allows getting closer to the tower and we now can fall under than minrange (which is 8.0 for some reason?).

Suggested fix is removing the minrange for towers since it has no reasons to be.

[Josh]

Replying to wraitii:

This one is WAD, I suspect the new pathfinder simply allows getting closer to the tower and we now can fall under than minrange (which is 8.0 for some reason?).

Suggested fix is removing the minrange for towers since it has no reasons to be.

The minrange functionality was added by #1960 for better realism. I would suggest not removing it if possible.

[wraitii]

In 17167:

Lowers the minrange of towers and the briton fortress, which were too big and resulted in units close to them being impossible to attack. This seems like an oversight and not a feature, as we currently do not have murder holes or similar technologies.

I left outpost minrange higher so that it's actually safe to attack outposts when you reach their foot. Seemed realistic.
Fixes #3559

[historic_bruno]

This was discussed today. It would be better to have a "murder holes" tech and increase the minrange again to make it effective. That can be added for A19 now that we are out of string freeze again. Or r17167 can be left as a workaround if we don't have time to add a tech before release.

[Stan]

icon proposal for the murder hole tech

[mimo]

Here is a possible patch to have this minRange change through a tech, but better to wait after A19 release. (This patch also includes one phase change in the requirement of one of tower techs which were all available on town phase).

[Stan]

Niektb's version

[mimo]

patch with the minRange change with a tech

[mimo]

Pushing to A20 for the tech change, as we already have r17167 which solves the initial problem.

[mimo]

In 17344:

restore min range distance of defense towers, and make it removable with murder_hole tech, fixes #3559

[mimo]

new murder_hole icon provided by stanislas69 and niektb