Reclaim Brush

@Jip

No double standards please. Allowing (1), (2), (6), (7), and (10) but not this seems silly.

A reclaim brush can be implemented in a way that limits processing cost per unit time (just think of your own fabber behavior XP), and thereby avoids stutters.

Also, based on the numbers you listed, I think you're imagining a larger brush size than I am, and a smaller brush size would result in faster processing the way I'm imagining implementing this. Regardless, the brush size (or max brush size, if adjustable) could be tested in FAF develop and set to a sensible value.

Regarding the command queue; if it would be necessary, adding an arbitrary limit to the maximum number of units that the reclaim brush can issue to a unit would not be the end of the world. The user already has to deal with numerous arbitrary limitations to the game (ie: max number of concurrent message markers, attack move's odd arbitrary functionalities, templates' inability to properly handle t1 pd-sized objects at full density in combination with larger objects, the arbitrary values used by your new automated fabber behavior, an apparent arbitrary inability for many units to target priority ACU, an arbitrary unit cap, an arbitrary input lag, etc).

@FtXCommando @TheWheelie

No. Even if new players are already incentivized to prioritize fun stuff over manual reclaim, many of them often focus too much on manual reclaim for various reasons (they don't have to be good reasons, but this phenomenon clearly occurs). If a reclaim brush was added to the game, many noobs would consequently use it and spend less time focusing on reclaim (because it requires less time and fewer clicks than manual reclaiming the same stuff), and they'd spend more time focusing on fun stuff that they should be focusing more on anyway. That alone would make the game more fun for them, and it actually could help many noobs to improve a bit, and it would improve QoL and their perceptions about playing FAF in positive ways.

That's a lot of ifs ands and hopefully's. Just remove manual reclaim and accomplish the same purpose.

I don't see how this amazing reclaim brush will save you more time than just clicking ctrl + Rmb

Just need to disable the reclaim mechanic until you're 1k. No more issues for new players

@penguin_ said in Reclaim Brush:

@FtXCommando @TheWheelie

No. Even if new players are already incentivized to prioritize fun stuff over manual reclaim, many of them often focus too much on manual reclaim for various reasons (they don't have to be good reasons, but this phenomenon clearly occurs). If a reclaim brush was added to the game, many noobs would consequently use it and spend less time focusing on reclaim (because it requires less time and fewer clicks than manual reclaiming the same stuff), and they'd spend more time focusing on fun stuff that they should be focusing more on anyway. That alone would make the game more fun for them, and it actually could help many noobs to improve a bit, and it would improve QoL and their perceptions about playing FAF in positive ways.

Ngl none of all the ppl I trained or checked focused on manual reclaim lol

My point is that manual reclaim isn't worth spending apm on in the first place for 95% of the player base, so another option in place of attack move isn't necessary and will just add more confusion - patrol vs attack move vs some area reclaim order.

Not only would we now have 4 ways to reclaim (patrol, attack move, reclaim brush, manual) there are performance considerations for the brush which have been brought up before. Auto clickers are banned for UI mods which this would fall under, and should stay that way. Regardless of the benefits I don't want half baked ui mods crashing games by suddenly having a million reclaim orders on individual trees in broken tree groups.

Which means it would have to be a core game feature rather a UI mod implementation. I'd much rather the game devs spend their time on more useful things than this which is at best a minor QoL improvement for some people. Hell, not to sidetrack this even more, but there are UI mods like advanced target priorities that would have 100x the impact and I would argue strongly for adding to the base game long before yet another way to reclaim things.

No double standards please. Allowing (1), (2), (6), (7), and (10) but not this seems silly.

I wasn't involved with FAF when (1), (2), (and (9)) were integrated. (6) and (7) are UI mods, they are not integrated. (10) is a response to (7) to guarantee stable performance for something that was already possible. I'm not sure why it is in your list.

Calling me out for having double standards is inappropriate and closely resembles a personal attack. Don't do that.

but not this seems silly.

Using this argumentation (we have x, so why not y too) means we can allow anything. I'm quite confident that it is a logical fallacy, but I can't find the name. It is also what got us to the performance we had in May 2021, before I started my performance crusade.

Also, based on the numbers you listed, I think you're imagining a larger brush size than I am, and a smaller brush size would result in faster processing the way I'm imagining implementing this. Regardless, the brush size (or max brush size, if adjustable) could be tested in FAF develop and set to a sensible value.

A brush means painting. Painting means you can include any amount of reclaim you desire. To quote you from your first post:

Imagine it like a brush in a visual editor (ie: paint), where you manually apply a circular brush, but instead of painting the terrain, it shows a visual circle where the brush would give manual reclaim orders within if used there.

If that is not your intend then you should've been more clear on what this actually means in practice. Add a picture with a clear interaction. The video and topics that Sheikah linked talks about a more generic area reclaiming, which is what the majority of us will be thinking about.

The user already has to deal with numerous arbitrary limitations to the game

Same logic used earlier that I think is a logical fallacy: just because there are already existing issues doesn't make it more legitimate to add more of them.

Don't get me wrong - I'd love to have a feature like this. But if we're not careful then we just introduce more stutters. It is also the same reason why my example here is on hold because I haven't figured out how to do it properly yet.

And on another note, we already have a solution made by @Strogo that makes manual reclaiming a lot less painful:

• https://forum.faforever.com/topic/3372/random-ui-improvements-ui-mod?_=1652741156996

I'd love to integrate that at some point, but I recall there were some issues with it. All of the changes Strogo suggests with that UI mod are improvements to existing features, he doesn't introduce new features.

@maudlin27 you are alloweded to automate mex capping only because you could automate it via doing a simple key binding.

It seems like you want the brush to not be as efficient as maual reclaim, but then the whole "people don't need to manual reclaim anymore" falls flat, as they will still see the pros do it and think it is important. If it's not supposed to completely replace manual reclaim it's just redundant because it provides a middle ground to two options which both have their role. We don't need another option that is a bit of both. One of the extremes will always be the better option.

Regardless of the above, I feel this feature would just collapse because of the processing power requirements that it will have.
You claim that is possible to implement it in a way that is not laggy, while still providing better pathfinding to the reclaim targets than attack move. Yet when looking at the details all evidence seems to point to the contrary. At this point you need to go into more details how you think you can solve this and why it would still be a good feature even with the limitations you need instead of handwaving the problems away with "we'll limit the number of commands somehow".

Not gonna get implemented. As it was already mentioned it does nothing to adress the actual issue which is that people think that manually reclaiming is the correct way to spend their APM in the first place. Just use attack move (I can get behind making it easier to use, more modern or w/e).
If we were to implement this it wouldn't have positive impact for most players while it would, in my opinion, be detrimental for high level play as Pros would be able to utilize this feature to quickly grab the mass after any attacks thus massively nerfing raiding.

Not to mention it would make the game lile 2x harder if it were as efficient/very close to manual reclaim because your economy would become even more volatile.
On the other hand if it were close in efficiency to the attack move then the feature would either have no point or would replace the attack move.

When engis reclaim on attack or patrol move, they stop between reclaims.? Engineer reclaims, does nothing, reclaims, does nothing, reclaims etc? While on manual reclaim they reclaim, reclaim, reclaim etc. So even when not considering advantage of choice of order on manual reclaim, manual reclaim is faster as long as player has apm for it.
Advantage in the beginning of the game can snowball into big advantage, it is not so important from what rating exactly people have necessary apm in average. It favors click spam like some game on smartphone where you do nothing but click as fast as you can. No tanks, units, nothing but clicking.

I can understand consideration of gamespeed. And at some extent the added complexity of new command. Althought having extra command seems easyer to learn, than to learn how to spam hundreds of clicks very fast.

There is also possibility to modify actual attack move/ patrol. Removing that "do nothing" part should make it more effective. Without negative effects. Drawing a ring, or corridor of effect when placing it could make it easyer to learn and make it more "moderne" (maybe with option to remove it). And then placing shift attack moves( as some players do), would cover an area. There could be a reclaim choosing inside the actual reclaim circle/radius, eventually. So that engineer chooses higher than x mass reclaim before the small reclaim. But only around itself in the limit where it does not need to move to get it. So that althought it adds some calculations to game, it would be always very limited. Eventually recalculated when engie moves and stops on attack move. This also should add effectivenes, with minimal performance setback.
I would like the option, that engis just stop, when mass bar is almost full, rather than running into unbroken trees, but this is kind of out of the scope of this discussion...

on top of tagadas point, on maps where there are many rocks (10-30 mass) inbetween broken trees, I would assume such a mod to prioritise the rocks, enableling a player to massively increase the reclaim rate on such maps, which will change the meta on such maps. the reclaim is hidden in trees for exactly that reason.
Any changes that add prioritisation are not acceptable from a balance perspective since they will break the meta/balance on some maps.

"Advantage in the beginning of the game can snowball into big advantage, it is not so important from what rating exactly people have necessary apm in average. It favors click spam like some game on smartphone where you do nothing but click as fast as you can. No tanks, units, nothing but clicking."

this only matters if a) you are actually able to capitalise on the extra mass instead of just overflowing it, having no e , not noticing youre having idle facs/engies... (classic <1.5k issues)
b) you dont get a dissadvantage from not spending the time on sth else (e.g. not noticing youre suiciding 19 tanks into 20).
on high level there only rarely is actual coockie clicker reclaim after min 3 or so (youve nothing else to do before that anyways so clicking reclaim actually saves you from boredom there...)

Very conjectural to presume that <1500 people are not able to use mass
Anyway that was what I meant by saying "necessary apm".

If they knew how to use mass they wouldn't be below 1500. Sorry that's the truth no matter how you spin it.

@wikingest Having decent eco-management alone allows you to have 1.5x times more tanks than your opponent, if you follow that by moving your army into his expansion you can get you to 1.8k quite easily. That's exactly how I've done it. There is no real need for T2 or any tech or eco'ing. In 90% of the games on maps smaller than 20x20 you can finish your game on T1 stage. So yes, you can assume with 99% certainty that people below that level don't know or are not able to properly manage their economy, injecting 300 extra mass won't fix the lack of fundamentals nor the feel for the game's economy that's necessary to properly balance it.

@wikingest said in Reclaim Brush:

When engis reclaim on attack or patrol move, they stop between reclaims.?

We could fix this if engineers had better reclaiming while they were on patrol/attack move. If they can instantly switch targets instead of pausing every time they finish sucking up a thing, people wouldn't have to worry about manual reclaim.

It would also solve a lot of the problem of tree groups, because engineers would be much faster at sucking up all the trees in a broken group. If someone broke your trees, it would not be a big deal.

@E33144211332424 I never said they would know how to use mass perfectly. I said they would be "able to use mass". I am 1100 and if not braindead tired, I am not overflowing mass in first minutes. Yeah, you are surely better than me, and if you constantly need to underline your rating, you can say it again. But as he said: "this only matters if a) you are actually able to capitalise on the extra mass instead of just overflowing it..." "(classic <1.5k issues)" It kind of made me laugh. I would think that people at 1300-1400 are able to use mass in early game, even if not perfectly. Anyway, as said, it was under the assumption, that those people have "necessary apm".

@Tagada So you say, that if there is optimal way to win the game, it should not be won on other way? Lets say at x condition, it is better to win with t1, so no one should win it on t2? All the games should be played the same way? lets modify this example. I play CYB, and my opponent plays UEF. And for the sake of example, UEF t2 is 2times stronger massvise than CYb t2. Now all the noobs are screaming that this is unfair (or gives advantage to click spammers, on reclaim topic), and you tell that CYB should just win at t1 stage... So all is fine. The fact, that some other things (you pointed out eco-management, or playing t1 at x condition), give advantage, possibly bigger one, does not mean that manual reclaim does not give advantage also.

"injecting 300 extra mass won't fix the lack of fundamentals", but if I play against someone at my level, it can very well win the game for me. Even if you say that it is not optimal way, manual reclaim wins games in some conditions. Unluckily I dont remember in which ones of my games, but it gives quite big advantage sometimes. And I think that if this would not give such an advantage, game would be easyer to learn, player retention would be better, game would be more fun and less mechanic.