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    beating a dead horse - Area Commands

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    • FemtoZettaF Offline
      FemtoZetta
      last edited by

      After having played BAR which has much better command capabilities (like line move or area commands) I think Sup Com could greatly benefit from having that too, it just makes gameplay more fun.
      I doubt it's gonna happen in FAF though, we'd probably need a new game for people to accept stuff like area reclaim. It's a bit like with StarCraft where people get aggressive when you suggest longer unit queues or even repeat queues.

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      • B Offline
        Broken Banned
        last edited by

        Is this like an improved version of attack move or patrol? If so QOL change would be great. Currently, reclaim is very derpy on trees, as sometimes engi will priotize tree clumps that are behind others causing them to break trees to get in reclaim range.

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        • JipJ Offline
          Jip
          last edited by

          As a fan of area commands I'm willing to integrate it. There are performance issues to take into account. Queueing a lot of individual commands in quick succession can slow down the game - just look at Spread Attack when you have 200 bombers. If this does get accepted, we'd need to find a way to balance the number of commands.

          A work of art is never finished, merely abandoned

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          • ResistanceR Offline
            Resistance
            last edited by

            Area commands like Area recalim are banned,all you need to do is report that with evidence since those types of mods are forbidden by rules

            queuing with a newbie to show him the beauty of tmm and meeting tagada be like:
            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLcRpdZ0Xb0&ab_channel=Tomoko

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            • JipJ Offline
              Jip
              last edited by

              Those mods are sim-related and are not banned as far as I am aware. They're just unranked. See also the mod vault:

              2f9953a8-4b6f-4b2e-9923-9eefc804ae70-image.png

              A work of art is never finished, merely abandoned

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              • H-masterH Offline
                H-master
                last edited by H-master

                I agree, I would like the reclaiming proces to be much easier. SupCom always had the philosophy to take simple tasks outside your hand so you can focus on the big decisions.

                What I would like to see is to give the engineer 3 buttons.

                1. Reclaim area, focussing on getting as much mass in as is possible
                2. Reclaim area, and make the income as steady as possible
                3. Reclaim area, focus first on small mass spots and safe the big mass spots for later.

                Check out my maps here:

                Madness 1 - 10

                https://forum.faforever.com/topic/480/h-master-s-maps

                JipJ 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • X Offline
                  Xayo
                  last edited by

                  Isn't patrol/attack move engis basically a reclaim area order? As long as you are lacking mass, the engis will prioritize reclaim over other tasks.

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                  • JipJ Offline
                    Jip @H-master
                    last edited by

                    @h-master said in beating a dead horse - Area Commands:

                    I agree, I would like the reclaiming proces to be much easier. SupCom always had the philosophy to take simple tasks outside your hand so you can focus on the big decisions.

                    What I would like to see is to give the engineer 3 buttons.

                    1. Reclaim area, focussing on getting as much mass in as is possible
                    2. Reclaim area, and make the income as steady as possible
                    3. Reclaim area, focus first on small mass spots and safe the big mass spots for later.

                    Prioritizing reclaim would require sorting it and that is out of the question performance-wise.

                    A work of art is never finished, merely abandoned

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                    • O Offline
                      Optymistyk @Xayo
                      last edited by Optymistyk

                      @xayo when you use patrol/attack move the engineer takes breaks after each individual reclaim, but with manual reclaim there's no breaks. The difference can be quite significant from what I've seen. When reclaiming big groups of trees the manual reclaim engineer can be so much more efficient that it allows the player to skip an additional generator or two in their initial build - saving mass, time and energy and allowing for a much faster rush

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                      • T Offline
                        Tagada Balance Team
                        last edited by Tagada

                        Yes and that extra efficiency is only needed at a high level, I would say 1.6+. If you are below that level you shouldn't worry about such things, attack moving is just fine. If you have the APM and time in game to manually reclaim go ahead, if you don't then just attack move. If we would introduce an area command which would result in manual reclaim orders being placed on all the props & wrecks in the area it would break nearly every single high level BO and also drastically change how the game is played on a high level while making the lower level games actually harder because the economy management would become a lot harder with sudden influxes of resources from reclaim.

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                        • D Offline
                          darkym
                          last edited by

                          Not to mention that 'important' mass reclaim is often hidden/mixed in with other almost/virtually useless props, so I'm not sure it would actually be on the same level as manual reclaim. If you're not sure why you aren't winning try reaching out to coaches.

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                          • TheWeakieT Offline
                            TheWeakie
                            last edited by

                            I've almost never seen a 500 rated player attack move to get reclaim, 99% just ignore the reclaim altogether. What makes you think that changing the attack move button for an area command reclaim button will make them take the reclaim all of a sudden?

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                            • maudlin27M Offline
                              maudlin27
                              last edited by

                              I see this as something that could be useful not just for reclaim but more generally
                              e.g. instead of needing to select a group of bombers, and then shift-click on every enemy in an area before using spread-attack, you just click the 'attack area' button, click to drag over the area in question, and they will randomly target any enemy in the area (at the time the command is issued, so it's a 1-off order).

                              Similarly with engineers they would randomly reclaim anything in that area, and keep reclaiming until the area is cleared of reclaim.

                              M27AI and M28AI developer; Devlogs and more general AI development guide:
                              https://forum.faforever.com/topic/2373/ai-development-guide-and-m27ai-v71-devlog
                              https://forum.faforever.com/topic/5331/m28ai-devlog-v150

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                              • TheWeakieT Offline
                                TheWeakie
                                last edited by

                                @optymistyk said in beating a dead horse - Area Commands:

                                I'm sure implementing Area Commands in FAF would do great for retaining new players such as myself. And more new players = longer and healthier lifespan of the game. New players have no chance of matching the high APM of old veterans who got used to the outdated UI - putting them at a tangible disadvantage simply because they aren't fast enough at clicking rocks

                                Im not sure why you think that this is an issue.

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                                • CaptainKlutzC Offline
                                  CaptainKlutz
                                  last edited by

                                  As a 'new' player, I was very sad that FAF did not have area reclaim, line move, area split attack, and more QOL move types that Zero-k and BAR had, but I was willing to shrug it off because the game is over a decade old. Some people may not have made that compromise.

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                                  • KaletheQuickK Offline
                                    KaletheQuick
                                    last edited by

                                    What is BAR? I cannot google "BAR Game" and get anything relevant.

                                    I remember being blown away by how good the command and control features of FAF were, though before this I played Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds, so having air transports assist factories and moving patrol routes already placed was mind blowing... in 2007.

                                    @TheWheelie
                                    He probably sees it as an issue because he misses those features from other similar games and thinks he would have more fun if they were implemented here. Seems reasonable.

                                    @Jip
                                    Would it be possible to implement some sort of "order limit" of like 50 per tick or something? Then all the mods that reshuffle orders would have to dole them out over time, not slowing the sim horrifically.

                                    @maudlin27
                                    It seems like what you would ideally want is some kind of "Area of Operations" command system. Where you designate an area and then things follow out orders within that area without leaving it. Like you plop down a few points and give an order of "Clear the reclaim in here" or "Move around and fight stuff but don't leave the area" (Fixing air patrol issues, lol)

                                    You must deceive the enemy, sometimes your allies, but you must always deceive yourself!

                                    arma473A 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                                    • FtXCommandoF Offline
                                      FtXCommando
                                      last edited by FtXCommando

                                      There is a tradeoff with manual reclaim, attack move, attack move from fac, and patrol. Some require constant engie babysitting, some require apm, some give engies more freedom at the cost of them not making you aware they’re idle.

                                      If you add area commands you entirely eliminate this part of the game because it’s strictly dominant. The only thing it doesn’t destroy the point of is attack move from factory which gives engies more range.

                                      This does not add more decisions nor improve micro potential like advanced target priorities does and so I fail to see how it improves anything except give dudes that think they lose because they "can't spend 150 apm on clicking rocks" one less excuse.

                                      ZeldafanboyZ 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                                      • TheWeakieT Offline
                                        TheWeakie
                                        last edited by

                                        you can ignore what i said i went full psycho

                                        32220e6b-6a8c-4c88-a399-84b5d6389277-image.png

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                                        • arma473A Offline
                                          arma473 @KaletheQuick
                                          last edited by

                                          @kalethequick search for "BAR RTS"

                                          KaletheQuickK 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                          • KaletheQuickK Offline
                                            KaletheQuick @arma473
                                            last edited by

                                            @arma473 oh look, i found a link:
                                            https://www.beyondallreason.info/

                                            You must deceive the enemy, sometimes your allies, but you must always deceive yourself!

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