Having read through those threads Sheikah linked, it seems this feature should be added imo. Some points and counterpoints in favor of adding a reclaim brush:
- It would be a QoL improvement
- It would make the game more fun for most players - Most players would rather spend their apm microing units, dodging shells, basebuilding, using activated powers like OC/stealth/etc, scouting, adjusting buildqueues, focusing on macro, managing drops, etc than spam clicking rocks/etc.
- It would make the game more modern
- It would add a feature many new players expect based on the features of similar games and would help slightly with player retention
- It would be consistent with FAF's precedent/pattern of adding UI improvements/features that reduce click count and improve QoL for most users - some examples:
o spread attack
o spread move
o templates
o hotbuild
o gazui
o advanced target priorities
o eco manager
o supreme scoreboard's 1-click resource sending
o easy ringing of storages/pgens/fabs
o automated mass fabricator behavior - Its functionality would be clearer than attack move's functionality is (especially for new players) - attack move often sends units in seemingly bizarre ways that I (a 1700 with coding knowledge) haven't even figured out yet, it seems to auto stop/end the order when the player's storage is close to full (people often want to overflow/keep reclaiming/not have the order cancelled), it reclaims things of lower value, and it is less clear exactly what area it applies to when clicked
- Spam clicking rocks/tedious micro is not the point of this game - some satire from a relevant thread:
- High APM players could still take advantage of their high APM - While this would be a nice QoL feature that would do a decent job, it would not be optimally efficient in general, and so, high APM players could still manually click rocks to their hearts' content to gain some advantage. However, after the first few minutes of the game, high APM players would still generally be better off spending less of their high APM on spam clicking rocks and instead taking advantage of their high APM by spending more of their APM on fun things (see point 2) and strategic things (ie: thinking about game macro, strategy, and tactics).
- Attack move and regular manual reclaim would still be desirable to use in many cases; this feature would obviously compete with them, but it would not replace them, as there are pros and cons to each in comparison to the others.
- This can be implemented in a way that's not laggy and doesn't add too much processing burden - It can be done in a sensible way, and it can have limitations to its impact on processing, if desired (ie: small max brush size, tick-based limitations, max order limitations, etc).