ATA - Targeting Addon For Windower 4

ATA does not stop you from targeting manually. There may be cases where the specific timing of the server's reply changes your target back, but that's purely coincidence. For instance: ATA picks a new target, injects incoming and outgoing packets. You decide you want to manually target something else before the server reply reaches you, then the reply from the original target switch comes in and changes your target back. I have tried to put in measures to reduce the chances of this happening but haven't yet figured out how to make it foolproof.

But, again, there is nothing in it that prevents you from manually switching your target. Also if you find yourself targeting something you don't want to there is the //ata next command which will force the addon to run through it's logic again to select the next best target according to your settings, other than what you're engaged to, and send all the relevant packets again. The visual enemy list is also clickable for precision targeting if you prefer that method.

Yes, that seems like what is happening. Will clarify that often hit switch target right after ata engages, after which it quickly switches target back, or I don't see target switch at all.

Presumably this is server sending reply back and target being switched before can see it happen on client. This is with instanced areas with heavy lag, Sheol C, plus packetflow in use.

All in all works great for what it does, thank you for sharing this.

@ToastWasTaken

I recently started using another add-on get around the horrible autotarget function in FFXI
however it had some horrible issues as well especially that any targeting would be overridden resulting in
- unable to target non-aggressive mob when aggressive mobs were nearby since it would change target to that one instead. making it impossible to spread out in oddy
- unable to target feathers in oddy as the add-on would try to target he non-targetable mobs instead.

So im ready to try yours but here is the other add-on in case there is potential for inspiration on how to handle things

https://github.com/Icydeath/ffxi-addons/blob/master/smarttarget/smarttarget.lua

A father's life is already hard as it is, they don't need your targeting and the addon knows it!

Odyssey and Dynamis Divergence are the bane of my existence. Inconsistent congestion, communications getting dropped, or repeated, and limited ability to enter those zones for testing.

I hope someday I can figure out a way to eliminate only the incoming target change chunks that are not needed, without causing any desync with the server, while still letting players have the flexibility to change targets at will.


I'm glad you're enjoying it.



I'll take a look at it, thank you

Just a quick report. and please note this is from the perception of what im trying to use it for and not from the perspective of what the add-on is meant to do.

autotargeting seems a bit inconsistent with keeping locked target on.
Smarttarget is way more consistent

smarttarget appears faster but might just be an me issue

smarttarget also has a nice priority of mobs (Aka do aurix before anything else. do statues last, dont do pets. etc)

HOWEVER:
ATA let me target something manually. Smart target takes that away and redirect my target to the nearest mob that has aggro. which makes it hard to pull nw stuff

ATA does not interfere with my personal targeting. Smart target will stop me from targeting an angon in oddy-C farm run if there are mobs nearby (Even the invisible ones) making it highly annoying here.

For dyna D i use smart target and its clear smart targets focused usage

i just really need a midt point

- fast and stable with lock as smart target
- But does not override manual targets (like ATA)

what I would love is a feature to target toselect between anything you party is already attacking (claimed mobs) or anything that is NOT claimed so you would spread out on individual mobs



This is just a subject experience, on a narrow scope of ATA. ATA comes with more functionality.

Hi. Sorry for reviving this old thread, it’s just I’m new to addons and such, so I was wondering how do I actually turn off the big HP bar that shows up when you engage an enemy? I’ve tried turning the things that say “true” to “false” next to “visible” in the bar.lua but it doesn’t work, and I’ve tried just outright deleting the bar.lua entirely but then I get a lua runtime error and the addon won’t load at all. I’ve also tried //ata barsettings and //ata setup but I can’t figure out how to actually modify the settings themselves. Can someone please walk me through it real quick?

This seems like the perfect addon what with autotargeting the next available engaged mob, it’s just I don’t want any visual elements from the majority of my addons. Can someone please help me configure this addon to remove the HP bar?

Edit: Evidently there are commands that I didn’t see from within the actual readme file in the file folder, but did see here: https://github.com/toast-ffxi/FFXIAddons/blob/main/ATA/README.md

Tbf I didn’t get the addon directly from GitHub, but that’s no excuse I think. Sorry for necrobumping this thread.

If anyone else is curious you can toggle it with “//ata bar visible <t/f>”.

Thank you for making this addon by the way. It’s really great. :)

I wanted to share my own thoughts about this as well. Someone recently noted smarttarget, and I wanted to also compare it to ata. For context, I tend to do a lot of Dynamis (not D) solo/with trusts, and these kinds of tools are very nice to have. I have been using smarttarget for a long time, but was getting annoyed with how it completely took over the targeting logic and would sometimes constantly switch between two mobs, not letting you hit either, often resulting in death since you couldn't get trusts to engage.

So, to start, that issue simply doesn't exist with ata. It only tries to switch once, and I've never had an issue manually switching to something else. I have, however, run into situations where what my client has targeted (locked onto) is different from what the server has me targeted (based on "unable to see" type log messages). It's generally easy to see, and simply "switching" to what I already have targeted easily fixes it. I think the tradeoff of not having to deal with the chance of constantly switching is worth it, but wanted to call it out.

One thing I also had to get used to was, with smarttarget, I could just engage on any mob (regardless of how far away it was - so, for example, the first mob I aggrod in a train, who often tends to be in the back of a train) and it would automatically pick better/closer targets. With ata I have to be smarter about the initial engagement, but this is a minor thing and I have gotten used to it pretty quick.

One final comparison I'd like to point out is that smarttarget, when it changes targets, will automatically turn your character to face them. This is nice when you are being swamped by a large group of mobs, since it means you can generally engage and not have to do anything for 75% of mobs (until you've killed all the melee and now need to do ranged/magic types). I do wish ata would do this, if possible, but just moving slightly after each kill obviously accomplishes the same thing.

I love how much more flexible ata is about choosing targets. For a while I was leaving the "target same" option on, but now I really just leave it on a simple "target closest" setting. Having those options (compared to smarttarget's simpler config) is awesome.

I also love the UI hate list. I've generally not had any issues with it, though sometimes mobs will be on the list even after I've killed everything. A simple clear resolves it, and it doesn't seem to cause any problems in that state. However, I do think it would be nice to have an option to sort the list - ideally so it's in the same order as you would engage things so it's more practical from an information standpoint, instead of your engagement hopping around the list. Even without sorting, having an easy to read glance of how many mobs I have left and a quick health check (for example, to see if an AoE WS might clear a lot of them) is something I greatly enjoy having, even if it didn't come with auto target functionality.

There is a note that some mobs won't appear on the hate list, and thus won't be auto-targeted. In my case, the Overlord's Tombstone in Dynamis - San d'Oria is one of these. The two assists that spawn with it work fine, but the statue never gets added to the list. I don't have an issue with this (and I understand it's not something you can do anything about), but I noticed that if I align myself so the normal auto-target would switch to it, I will switch but then ata will disengage me - which implies that ata will trigger me to stop attacking when it's hate list is empty. I think this is a bad call, and would suggest instead just make ata not do anything. I can't really think of any situation where I would want ata to explicitly disengage me when the default system would keep me engaged (maybe something with the blacklist where I never want to engage a particular mob). I think ata still handles this situation better than smarttarget, which has to be entirely disabled for my Dynamis example in order to engage the statue, but it think it can still be improved.

In all, I think ata is a giant improvement over smarttarget. The slight downsides (such as being perceived as laggier because it's not taking control over your targets as hard) are more than offset by the advantages and improvements. Thank you so much for this, and keep up the amazing work!