Engineer Always-reclaim

@kdrafa91 Yes, that sucks for me too.

I´m a relatively new player, so i maybe don´t see all the issues with this feature, but it would be awsome if reclaim woulde be much less annoying,
especially on maps with much scattered mass. You have to manage many engineers all over the map, they stop working or drive crazy etc.
Big reclaim fields after a battle are nicely to reclaim with attack-move, because you can focus on a single spot, thats fine i think.

Yes, the biggest issue is to prevent eating while the storage is full, probably not possible with this engine or to difficult to make.

I think there was/is a mod with a reclaim beacon building, i imagine an engineer is kind a "reclaim beacon" while not moving.

Another issue would be if you lose a key structure in your base, and would want to rebuild it from half HP, but cant because all your base BP immediately slurped it up as reclaim?

You might not want to auto reclaim as this will overflow and waste mass.

Its a bit more micro intensive i guess but you might be better off just using attack moves as standard out of factories in your games?

From a technical perspective:

• We don't have any cycles to spare. This sounds like a feature that would increase the path finding usage / commands being issued to dozens if not hundreds of engineers at a time.
• The game recognizes engineers as idle when their state is idle. Anything else (e.g., moving, reclaiming, etc) will remove them from the UI and you'd never have any idle engineers.

And from a gameplay perspective:

• The mass / reclaim is as hard to navigate for you as it is for your opponent. Being able to navigate it better shows skill - introducing a feature like this would reduce the depth of the game.

They did the same thing to Supreme Commander 2 until there was no depth to be found anymore. And now we thrive more than they ever did .

Why they need path finding? They don´t have to move, just reclaim the current location.
It would be enought to scan every secound or so for some mass on the ground, every frame would be total overkill indeed.

Idle -> 1000ms -> scan for mass ->nothing found ->idle -> ...
Idle -> 1000ms -> scan for mass ->reclaim found-> reclaim -> nothing found -> idle...

The storage overflow and building wracks issues are killing this idea, i know, but i wonder if
this would be relatively easy and possible to implement.

Try using attack move and click where you want the engie to stand, check back on said engie and drag the attack move to a new spot

This isn't really hard to do, and making what your thinking sounds like a lot of work for little gain.

Do you have any devs on board for this?

@ghnaf

Engineers need pathfinding before the reclaim order is issued.
If you don't do that and the reclaim is on a hill or deep valley then the engineer will start
moving around the hill etc to reach the reclaim.

Also your example with Idle -> 1000ms -> scan for mass ->nothing found ->idle -> has the drawback that we
need to run a LUA thread for every engineer to check for reclaim every 10 gameticks.

Maybe another solution could be a mod:

This mod adds auto-reclaim units to your game:
https://forum.faforever.com/topic/356/ninja-reclaim-drones-v18-for-all-game-versions
Have in mind this mod can't be converted in a UI style mod, and every player in the same game needs this mod installed.

It shows how a full automated reclaim work and maybe you find someone who is willing to make a mod
that is only moving idle engineers instead of using new units like my mod.

[edit] the reclaim function is the same that is used in the Uveso-AI.

So I don't really have an opinion whether it's a good idea to do this or not, but don't think it matters much anyway because it is pretty easy to attack move some engies instead so this gives very little advantage or help to noobs anyway.

But from a technical perspective, could it be done by just automatically issuing an attack move order directly underneath idle engis? (and maybe have this order time out or only get implemented once a minute or something, so if there is nothing around to reclaim the engi doesn't continuously get new orders?)
You could make the argument it is helpful for some noobs but worse for better players because they want to know when their engis go idle and would be better off disabling the toggleable ability.

But in that case you could have the best of both worlds. It makes life a bit easier for noobs, but doesn't reduce the skill ceiling either. Otherwise, we'd have to accept the argument that attack moving engis AT ALL reduces the skill ceiling of the game and makes it worse, because manual reclaiming requires more clicking...and we all know the faster you click the more skilled you are, right? Sure, but just like including both attack moving engies and manual reclaim is perfectly fine, ADDING a less effective, easy option doesn't remove the skill ceiling. It is perfectly fine to allow some automation of tasks as long as there are also ways to do things more efficiently by micromanaging more.

So I'd say it just comes down to whether or not there is a reasonably easy technical solution that doesn't bog the game down much.

The OP specifically doesn't want attack move:

4# engi will not move to far in enemy territory!

Why they need path finding? They don´t have to move, just reclaim the current location.
It would be enought to scan every secound or so for some mass on the ground, every frame would be total overkill indeed.

In my opinion this would introduce a feature that will cap your skill ceiling, without you even knowing it. Similar to having custom strategic icons that are 2x the size of the regular icons. The latter is a choice because it is UI related. This would be either:

• Turned on by default, making new players unable to learn that you can easily rebuild structures and / or overflow a lot.
• Turned off by default and no new players would know this feature exists.

This game has already received a lot of automation in the past. This is one of those features where I draw the line. The alternative is to just attack move an engineer. That way you control what happens. And it is just two clicks. And it is already implemented .

If the OP or other people are that positive towards this feature - make a mod. Play with it. Then play ten more games with it. Then come back and tell us how it worked out while the engineers were reclaiming that T2 PD you wanted to rebuild.

@jip said in Engineer Always-reclaim:

If the OP or other people are that positive towards this feature - make a mod. Play with it. Then play ten more games with it. Then come back and tell us how it worked out while the engineers were reclaiming that T2 PD you wanted to rebuild.

I play with that mod and occasionally get banned for it, and find it very convinient
"Playing with auto-reclaim >> getting banned" for me.
My skill did not get any higher at all, so this is more of QOL than "advantage".
Actually eco-manager with automatic e-stalling prevention is way more OP,).
The only downside - allies can complain if you reclaim their stuff and engies running away into enemy armies .

@jip said in Engineer Always-reclaim:

The OP specifically doesn't want attack move:
4# engi will not move to far in enemy territory!

You are 100% wrong. The main complaint is the mundane micro of issuing the order. You can very obviously prevent engies from going "too far into enemy territory" by not setting the reclaim order "too far into enemy territory." Further, this is why I said to issue the attack move directly underneath the engi.

@ghnaf said in Engineer Always-reclaim:

Yes, i know attacke-move and i use it ofc. It´s just about less clicks in many situations.

@jip said in Engineer Always-reclaim:

The alternative is to just attack move an engineer. That way you control what happens. And it is just two clicks.

Ok, multiply two clicks times many different engis or groups of engis, times many times per game. Spoiler alert, it's much larger than two.

@jip said in Engineer Always-reclaim:

Then come back and tell us how it worked out while the engineers were reclaiming that T2 PD you wanted to rebuild.

Every single time I see someone do this I cringe because the build time is almost never as important as the mass forgone. You gain HALF the mass and build time, while losing the 80% mass reclaim value. I actively and intentionally reclaim dead t2 pd before rebuilding them, so I would love this feature.

@archsimkat godlike lmao

But attack move is really only one click with hotkeys. By just holding alt and then clicking, it takes the same effort as placing a move order. It is not taking any extra time, and is arguably a better and more effective way to reclaim.

IMO there is no benefit for a player having this feature. Any role it can fill is already done better and more efficiently by an existing option, and furthermore, engineers ideally should not be idle in the first place as that is a waste of build-power.

@corvathranoob said in Engineer Always-reclaim:

You are 100% wrong. The main complaint is the mundane micro of issuing the order. You can very obviously prevent engies from going "too far into enemy territory" by not setting the reclaim order "too far into enemy territory." Further, this is why I said to issue the attack move directly underneath the engi.

I've yet to meet the attack move order that doesn't take my engineers across the map for some odd reason - with the exception of attack move orders from a factory.

@corvathranoob said in Engineer Always-reclaim:

Ok, multiply two clicks times many different engis or groups of engis, times many times per game. Spoiler alert, it's much larger than two.

You're right: it is probably three: you want to move them to the reclaim field first. And if you use any hotkeys (I'd recommend trying that out) then it is two again.

@hlpstpbroimstuck said in Engineer Always-reclaim:

I play with that mod and occasionally get banned for it, and find it very convinient

I wasn't aware there was a mod that did this already , is it a UI mod or a sim mod? Because you can't get banned for a sim mod.

Jip try putting the attack move where you want them to stand, works great for me.

I think the banned ui mod is a auto clicker

If you want to get the effect that the op is wanting, every once in awhile hot idle engie hot key then attack move into your base

Adding something like this would become another shitfest where everyone either complains it’s unbalanced or great as they have 10 APM

@jip said in Engineer Always-reclaim:

You're right: it is probably three: you want to move them to the reclaim field first. And if you use any hotkeys (I'd recommend trying that out) then it is two again.

Yeah, now it's obvious you're just trolling. Thanks.

I wasn't.

I'm just not going to implement a feature that you're not able to proof to me adds any value over playing the game as it is.

@corvathranoob It is RTS game, not arcade kid sandbox. Manual reclaim is part of game, and game developers already made tools for making it less stressful. Attack, patrol. No one requires from you hard manual reclaim. There is players with less than 30 APM and even they can do some reclaim with patrol and attack. Do you know how much it is? And again, as said before, you can make one, or search that is already exists, and use it as you want in unranked games. You are just trying to make noise.

You are trying to argue against the bad performance of this mod, well, do it, show us how it will improve the faf in way of gameplay and perfomance. I need results, not empty words