Adjust the build skirt of naval factories

While it uses the same function, the land unit spawns on unpathable terrain, while the navy unit does not, right?

So could we maybe make that part of the factory where the battleship is being built unpathable too to achieve the same "phase through unpathable terrain" effect?

Yes, and it can phase through the naval factory. It can already do that 🙂 . But the issue is in the roll off point, not where the unit spawns. It is too close to the naval factory.

And that doesn't remove the issue that if placed improperly you can create a pathfinding garbage can between naval factories, especially for - yet again, battleships and the like.

A work of art is never finished, merely abandoned

It seems to me like I don't actually understand the exact problem you want to solve.

For me the main problem with navy factory pathing are the ~5 seconds after a unit is built being very inconsistent. It takes seemingly random paths, sometimes driving into a wall or the naval factory it was built from, and then just stopping there.
The problem could be summarized as: "Make navy unit roll of consistent for all queued movement directions"

This could, I think, be solved by having the ships phase through the factory that built them and adding two horizontal roll off points in addition to the two vertical roll of points that already exist.

Is your problem description closer to: "Make it impossible to block navy traffic with naval factories." ?

The roll off points are already solved and are part of the patch that is released today. The issue is that naval factories do not guarantee that there is sufficient space around the factory to allow ships to leave the docks properly. Combine that with the hectic pathing of ships and you have a pathfinding mess that is frustrating, especially for larger ships.

Note that all other factories do make this guarantee, hence we in general experience no pathing issues with those except when we chuck it with 100 assisting engineers.

See also:

A work of art is never finished, merely abandoned

@cheeseberry said in Adjust the build skirt of naval factories:

This could, I think, be solved by having the ships phase through the factory that built them and adding two horizontal roll off points in addition to the two vertical roll of points that already exist.

And this is not a solution, it is a band aid. Same for decreasing the size of the naval factories, or decreasing the size of naval units in general. They all affect the immersion of the game, which is relevant for casual players.

A work of art is never finished, merely abandoned

I continue to be confused:

@jip said in Adjust the build skirt of naval factories:

But the issue is in the roll off point, not where the unit spawns. It is too close to the naval factory.

@jip said in Adjust the build skirt of naval factories:

The roll off points are already solved and are part of the patch that is released today.

So, if I understand correctly, the first stop is/was moving the roll of points further away from the factory, and you have already patched that in.

Now you want to ensure that the factories are actually placed far enough apart that said further out roll of points are not intersecting with another factory by increasing the skirt size?

My first hunch is that this would create more problem than it solves, but everything else you have implemented so far was great, so I'd say just put it on faf dev so I can change my mind 😄

@jip said in Adjust the build skirt of naval factories:

We could also only apply a vertical stretch, but not a horizontal stretch.

a7c2864e-30b0-4763-983e-d5583069a38a-image.png

That allows them to be cliff buildable in the majority of cases as we have right now, but still encourages people to space them out more.

Wouldn't it also make sense to only stretch the skirt in the direction of the roll off point instead of symmetrically? This would make it impossible to place your factories so, that the ships would have to go into a cliff to leave the factory.
But it's still strange, as naval factories aren't symmetric, one side of the map will have an advantage in an up/down split map, because you'd have to place your factory much farther from the cliff on one side of the map, than on the other.

Wouldn't it also make sense to only stretch the skirt in the direction of the roll off point instead of symmetrically?

Roll off point is determined on where your rally point is, it can be either at the top or to the bottom of the naval factory. Hence it is symmetrical.

But it's still strange, as naval factories aren't symmetric, one side of the map will have an advantage in an up/down split map, because you'd have to place your factory much farther from the cliff on one side of the map, than on the other.

At the moment the horizontal distance has not been changed - what you see here (the green build skirt, not the circles - that is something else) is (horizontally) the same as it is right now.

A work of art is never finished, merely abandoned

Another possible solution: How about adjusting the behavior for dragging a line of naval factories so that they are spaced apart farther than they are currently, while not forbidding the placement of individual factories to be as close as they are now.

A similar, albeit much more conservative, version of this already exists in the base game where horizontally dragged lines of factories are spread apart farther than they need to be, presumably for pathing reasons:

Forged Alliance 20_06_2022 00_46_48.png

@jip said in Adjust the build skirt of naval factories:

Roll off point is determined on where your rally point is, it can be either at the top or to the bottom of the naval factory. Hence it is symmetrical.

oh didn't know that, i thought ships are always made facing the same direction.
i had that problem, when i placed factories over a cliff to the north, then the ships would still start facing south and would path into the cliff and turn there and crash with the factory etc. But i just tested it and they mirror. I must have been stupid somehow 🤷
i went through the replay and factories assisting other, seem to only lazily copy their rally point
screen.jpg
The right factory calculates the roll of point from it's own rally point, though it uses that of the other fac, so the frig comes out drives into the shore and the has to turn.

@jip said in Adjust the build skirt of naval factories:

At the moment the horizontal distance has not been changed - what you see here (the green build skirt, not the circles - that is something else) is (horizontally) the same as it is right now.

yeah i thought like vertically if one team has the top side and the other has the bottom, but if they are symmetrical(top/down) it doesn't matter

@nex said in Adjust the build skirt of naval factories:

i went through the replay and factories assisting other, seem to only lazily copy their rally point

Yep, I noticed this particular issue too. That is a bug, one that I will fix for the next release

A work of art is never finished, merely abandoned

Maybe a hotkey to rotate factories/structures before building 90-180

I understand that solution - but it isn't supported by this engine.

A work of art is never finished, merely abandoned

Is different rotation by different unit doable?

@veteranashe
@jip said in Adjust the build skirt of naval factories:

not without introducing a 2nd unit
As i understand it, you would need to have a different Unit for each possible rotation, which clumps up the UI.

We could also make a t1 only support factory, which has the same size as the current one with closer roll off point. So you could still spam t1 facs, which aren't oversized.

@jip maybe a joining of ideas, you mentioned adding another factory with it being rotated differently.

Maybe somehow, i dont know how, but is it possible to have those factories hidden from the engineer build list, but upon selecting a factory to build you could scroll through those rotated factories without them being in the list, technically being a different unit but not noticably.

so instead of actually rotating a unit when you have the green blueprint, you actually selecting a different unit, like scrolling though templates.

@caliber I think the problems with introducing (many) new units, like different rotations are:

  1. the UI would need to be developed to make one Unit in the build menu scroll through multiple actual units.
  2. this will still clutter hotbuild hotkeys, as they already scroll through multiple units.

So i think if at all, only a minimal amount of units should be added. for example a 180 degree rotation, for building across cliffs or a smaller t1 only version, to allow spamming t1 factories, without taking up too much space.

With the vertical only size increase @Jip suggested, i think both are more or less unneeded, as it will only affect horizontal cliffs, to a degree, where you shouldn't build a naval factory there anyway, as the units would have problems to leave and when spamming factories you mostly just draw a horizontal line, which will take the same amount of space as the current factories.

The best option (in terms of possible usages, not ui) would be to have a factory, that only has one roll of point and only secures space for that. But that would need a 180° rotated version or somehow detect, that if one side is occupied your not allowed to build on the other as well. I mean would be cool, but probably also hard to do.

Having rotatable factories or different set rotations doesn't solve the problem because anyone smart enough to rotate the factory would already be aware of the potential path finding issues anyway, and thus would already have spaced out the factories. Enlarging the build skirts, making factory placement faction dependent is also unacceptable in my opinion. This path finding issue doesn't seem very important to me, and I'm pretty sure nobody is quitting the game over it. I don't understand the sentiment that modern games do things better. In my experience, video games are at an all time high in terms of bugs and unplayability, plus there are currently no real competitors for FAF's niche.

why wouldn't you still try fixing an existing problem though?

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

Fixing the problem isnt the cause of concern. Negative side effects because of the fix are